Filmmaker
Don't Confuse Jesus With Caesar
Social Conservatives And Shot In Foot Disease
2012-05-02
Filed Under: ShotInFootDisease
Woke up this morning to see that Ric Grenell resigned from Mitten's campaign. Jennifer Rubin, volunteer for the Romney Campaign, former Dreamworks employee, and writer for the Washington Post, pens:
Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.
And...
In the National Review, Matthew J. Franck wrote late last week: "Suppose Barack Obama comes out - as Grenell wishes he would - in favor of same-sex marriage in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. How fast and how publicly will Richard Grenell decamp from Romney to Obama?"
Hey, Franck, did you try to ask Grenell what he would do in that case before assuming - like lefties assume that you're a racist hatemonger for being a conservative - in your hit piece on him? I don't see you mentioning that Grenell worked for George W. Bush and John Bolton. Why not? And why didn't you attack them for having Grenell on their payroll back then?
Lisa Graas, whom I like but disagree with this time, said in her blog:
Grenell's resignation is a win for social conservatives and a loss for Mitt Romney. No one on either side of the aisle thinks it's honorable to have a "token gay" on staff. Further, considering that Grenell says Romney had no problem with his "openly" (his word) sharing about this "personal" (his word) issue, social conservatives like myself are right not to place any level of trust in Romney's candidacy.
Hmm. I don't think this is a win for social or religious conservatives. At the very least, it's certainly bad PR for them and bad PR for Romney. Also, I wouldn't consider Grenell a "token gay" nor would I reduce him to being a "gay activist," as she does in her piece.
When Lisa and I discussed this on Twitter, a few things popped out at me. She said:
If it takes a Mitt Romney loss to preserve the GOP platform on these issues, so be it.
And...
Whatever we do to others, we do to Jesus. Are you surprised I'm not okay with my Lord being sodomized? I mean, really.
And...
I'll side with Jesus over Mitt Romney any day of the week.
I know it was a bit of hyperbole, but...
Look, this is a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. One of those core principles is Free Will. Put simply: God doesn't force you to refrain from sinning (heck, He doesn't even force you to believe in His existence!). By what right the State? Only in cases of third party harm (i.e., murder, theft, etc.) should the State intervene. "Render unto Caesar" meant a lot of things that social conservatives always seem to forget.
This is why on the issue of gay marriage I disagree with both social conservatives and those who would have gay marriage legalized. I don't think the State should have a damned thing to do with licensing marriages to anyone. The State started to get into that business back in the early 20th century at the behest of progressives who wanted to prevent miscegenation, a truly wretched and evil purpose.
Update: I forgot Malthusian eugenics as well. My bad.
The State can't "protect" marriage, anymore than a rabid dog can protect the chicken coop. It's madness. Get Caesar out of it altogether, don't push for laws that get him more involved. Caesar is not the arbiter of what is holy. Your conscience and your faith is, and nothing else.
The sooner social conservatives remember the phrase "render unto Caesar" the sooner we can all get down to the serious business of electing a liberty-minded House and Senate to get Caesar out of our churches, whoever that Caesar ends up being in November.
Until then, maybe Franck and others like Lisa could refrain from the group-think hive-mindism that drives them to attack conservatives like Grenell the same way lefties do when attacking conservatives like Rush Limbaugh - that is, without fact, thought, or decency. I've met Richard Grenell and he is not as they are trying to drive-by-pigeonhole him.
Update:
From Lisa...
I don't expect you to understand Christianity.
Which pretty much ends the conversation, with only an addendum.
Thought: the best thing for Christianity is to get the State out of the Church as much as possible - adoption services, marriage, birth control, abortion, hiring practices, the whole nine yards. If that means you have to let the Church of Granola Chewing Dirty Gay Hippies "think" they're having a marriage out in San Francisco that is neither sanctioned nor unsanctioned by the State, who gives a rat's rip?
Marriage started to decline when the State started licensing it, not when most social conservatives tend to think - the 1960's. Marriage was "protected" by the State (in one local form of government or another) for almost the entire 20th century. That sure worked out well, didn't it?
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