The Ballad of Ake Green: An E. coli conservatism postscript

If you prefer not to hate on those godly, godly preachers, here's an explanation that lets them somewhat off the hook.

It's easy to imagine - in fact, likely - that this strategy was originally hatched far from any house of worship. Say in the house of Grover Norquist, or perhaps Karl Rove (who, reportedly, is an atheist). Or maybe some wood-paneled conference room deep within those moral dungeons the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers. In this scenario the ministers are merely the punks.

If the new hate crimes bill passes, it will be the first federal statute to establish sexual orientation as a protected category in a civil rights law. That will have ramifications far beyond preachers. Indeed, it takes us deep within the world of the E. coli conservatives - those ideologues, as Paul Krugman has usefully defined them, "who won’t accept even the most compelling case for government regulation."

Recognizing sexual orientation in a hate crimes bill is the camel's nose under the tent. How long, these economic royalists would have to wonder, before sexual orientation became recognized in employment discrimination law too? It's easy to forget - most Americans don't know it in the first place - that, rare among industrial nations, American employers can "fire at will": can get rid of an employee for any reason, or no reason at all. One of the rare exceptions - one of the few tenuous toeholds on fairness that Americans enjoy in the workplace - is that under the 1964 Civil Rights Act (as amended) and laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, firing someone for reason of race, gender, religion, age, disability, or military status is illegal.

Making it illegal to fire someone because they are gay would be a tiny chink in corporate America's plenipotentiary power. Wouldn't it be interesting if some wily business lobbyist sat bolt upright and realized Kennedy's sexual-orientation hate crimes amendment back in 2003 as an opportunity: Eureka! - get the preachers shrieking about Jesus on a wanted poster and the broadening of civil rights laws to include sexual orientation - just a backdoor way to put "thought crime" in the statute books!! - will have been strangled in its crib.

Or maybe that's just too convoluted. Maybe it's just that the Christian right is so choked with hatred.

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