Apple owners seemingly had no issue with the fact that the people making their phones in China were killing themselves so often that protective nets had to be built to keep them from hitting the ground when they jumped off the roof. I doubt they have any issue with what I suspect are many toxins these people are exposed to.
They have no issue selling to Saudi Arabia, which KILLS homosexuals–typically by public decapitation (you can see a picture on that link of a man who was apparently beheaded and THEN crucified)–or to any number of other Muslim nations which are PROFOUNDLY violent towards gays. They have no issue with the fact that men are allowed to marry 10 year olds. They will never issue a public statement on this. To hell with little girls: they are not a powerful political constituency, and the whole thing is theater anyway. There is no principled moral reasoning going on.
To this I would contrast the DEMAND–not the request–that little Quaker and Amish couples be forced by law to sell penis cakes with white frosting at the end of them, or cakes depicting men having anal intercourse. Ridiculous, you say. I ask: why? Once we have established that the State can tell people what to do, where and how do we draw lines? They can’t refuse service to anyone. That is the message I am hearing.
And logically the demand for what amounts to free speech should go both ways. Gay bakers should be forced to bake cakes with anti-gay slogans, and black bakers should be forced to bake KKK cakes. But of course no one is clamoring for these rights, and if the shoe were on the other foot this would be called HATE speech, which of course is defined as awful.
But this whole notion of hate speech creates a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable, and the STATE decides which is which, and what it decides depends on the political winds of the moment. Leftists assume they will always be in charge because their skill in–and moral willingness to stoop to the expedience of using–propaganda is vastly bigger than conservatives. All we have is logic and facts. We have not spent decades learning to tell colorful and emotionally powerful lies. We want dialogue, but no propagandist does.
They want to breed into their subjects a conditioned response of visceral hatred, one which does not even attempt to see the enemy as human, but solely as pure evil. They want to create, in their subjects, exactly what Hitler created in his SS, and Lenin in his Cheka. They want to create, ultimately, the capacity for murder and the tolerance of murder. That is the logical emotional end of all this. I cannot begin to tally the vast oceans of the most ugly, nasty hate that have been directed at me merely for asking inconvenient question. I have seen this a thousand times if I’ve seen it once.
When we see people being bullied, we must always ask: who is next? If it is illegal for little Amish couples to refuse to bake a penis cake for a gay wedding, might it at some point be illegal to use the word Jesus in public? We seemingly are coming to that, and it is an absolute certainty that the people creating the propaganda have something like that as a goal. Guns and God get in the way of their narcissistic fantasies of unlimited power.
Here is my advice to Mike Pence: attack, attack, attack. You cannot counter propaganda negatively. There is no value to answering the question “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” The answer to this question is “Why did you beat your wife last week? I hear you beat her every night. I also heard you have a girlfriend you beat. How do you sleep at night?” With propaganda, of course, truth is utterly irrelevant. It merely needs to be plausible enough, and repeated enough.
Practically, Christians need to organize counter-boycotts. They need to make a list and post them publicly of all the companies that are embracing illiberalism, and refuse to buy from them. When my Apple comes up, I’m going to get a Samsung or something. I was uncomfortable buying it in the first place, since I knew about the factories in China.
And I don’t think this should originate with Pence, but another list of Indiana companies who are not boycotting anyone should be made, and people encouraged to buy from them.
If you get substantially every church in the country lined up, that will make a difference. As we are seeing, there is power in numbers. People just need to grasp they are dealing with really, really nasty people who do not see them as human.
We all need to be clear: there are powerful interests who hate Christians and Christianity. Obama is one of them–Jerry Wright’s church was a beard, and on his own account he only started going there because someone told him it would help his organizing–but he of course is backed by people whose names we don’t know, or have to guess.
And I want to say this, too: I believe in common decency. I believe in the right of decent people to be treated decently. Homosexuality is not a crime, and if it were the 1960’s and gays were being arrested, I would be absolutely on their side, 100%. But this thing has gone too far. A little Amish couple not wanting to sell a cake they find offensive should not result in them losing their business or even going to jail. That is not what America was built on. That is not freedom.
There are no moral principles involved here for the Left. If there were, Apple would not have opened in Saudi Arabia (and I think Pakistan is even worse, certainly in terms of their treatment of women: do they give a shit? I very much doubt it. Again: no moral reasoning, no principles, no CARING.
That, in the end, is what we need more of: caring. Seeing the world, seeing the pain in the world, and feeling compassion, not hate. There is no compassion in this hate campaign against Indiana. There are creatures, and there are those who fear them.
Love is a verb which begins with understanding. Where there is no attempt at understanding, there is no love.
One last thing. Yes, I’m on my damn soapbox. The Civil Rights Movement was a failure. It cannot be viewed in any other way. EVERY concession that was won was a MEANS to the end of making blacks equal in every respect to whites, and that end has not only not been achieved, it has been made less likely.
True liberals negotiate difference. Interacting openly with people different than you breeds warmth and compassion. Truly liberal gays would reach out to Christians, and try to win them over through the power of love. They would win over one bakery at a time. They would get what they want, without all the vitriol, hurt feelings, and yet more increases in the power and intrusiveness of the State.
We all need to be concerned about the size and power of our government. Feeding it to serve some short term end is very much like Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of porridge. There may come a day when that story can’t be told in public.