- The new House Speaker is an election denier who would criminalize homosexuality;
- How Christian conservatives are flatly wrong about homosexuality being “unnatural” or that “creed” is part of “what you are”; and the evolutionary reason why they resist homosexuality, cross-dressing, and so on;
- Conservative alternatives to Disney believe in a simplistic “basic reality”;
- Paul Krugman contrasts conservative beliefs about crime, with statistics that say otherwise.
More about Republicans being flatly wrong about things.
New Republic, 25 Oct 2023: Well, We Have a Speaker. He’s an Election Denier and an Extreme Christian Fundamentalist., subtitled “Meet Mike Johnson, Republicans’ new House speaker.”
Johnson previously worked as senior attorney and spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that pushes its far-right agenda through the courts. Johnson is also an evangelical Christian who has said, “My faith informs everything I do.”
That may include his history of using extreme, homophobic language. CNN uncovered some of his previous rhetoric, which includes calling homosexuality “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and could destroy “the entire democratic system.”
“Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in another 2004 column.
… He has also opposed LGBTQ rights at every other turn. He voted against bipartisan legislation to codify same-sex marriage, which President Biden signed into law earlier this year. In 2022, he introduced what advocates called a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The legislation would have banned classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation through the third grade. Johnson called the bill “common sense.”
Another example of Republicans being wrong. No, homosexuality is *not* “inherently unnatural”; it exists in hundreds of species, not just humans, and by definition is therefore not unnatural. And it has existed in human cultures throughout known history. It is not dangerous, nor will it bring down civilization. This is an example of the difference between people who believe things (that are not true), while ignoring all the people who know things (that are true).
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Another example.
CNN, 25 Oct 2023: New speaker of the House Mike Johnson once wrote in support of the criminalization of gay sex
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has a history of harsh anti-gay language from his time as an attorney for a socially conservative legal group in the mid-2000s.
In editorials that ran in his local Shreveport, Louisiana, paper, The Times, Johnson called homosexuality a “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and possibly even destroy “the entire democratic system.”And, in another editorial, he wrote, “Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do,” he wrote. “This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”
No: creed is not “what you are,” creed is something you are taught by your parents and community. (Richard Dawkins once wrote how it’s simply wrong to call a child a “Christian child” or a “Hindu child.” Religion, or creed, is not hereditary; it is taught.) Homosexuality is something you are — despite all the teaching and criminalizing by their parents and community. Take a child born of Christian parents in, say, Kentucky, transplant him to, say, India, and he will not grow up to be Christian; but if he were inclined to be gay, he would be gay anyway. You can’t teach that away.
Maybe it’s time to explain this once again. The reason conservatives (especially the religious) demonize homosexuality, and cross-dressing and so on, is because of their existential fear that their children might not reproduce, and pass along their genetic line. This is, ironically, a motive driven by evolution, a process they don’t “believe” in. Yet it’s perfectly understandable as a motivation that persists, because, in fact, people who do reproduce have more children, obviously. But humanity is more than animal urges and endless reproduction. As these conservatives do not understand.
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On a related note:
Slate, Dan Kois, 24 Oct 2023: I Watched All of the Daily Wire’s New Children’s Shows So You Don’t Have To, subtitled “The right-wing Disney+ comes complete with its own takes on Bluey and Mister Rogers. Also: trigger warnings?”
I only glanced at this — I don’t really care what Daily Wire is up to — but this first para is very interesting.
Are you the kind of parent who is afraid that Big Media is attempting to brainwash your child, or make him feel bad about slavery, or teach him that gay people are human beings? Conservative media organization the Daily Wire is here for you. Last week, the company launched Bentkey, a streaming network of children’s entertainment for, in the words of Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing, “Americans who believe in basic reality.”
“Basic reality“?? What is he talking about? Kois admits the Daily Wire content isn’t overtly political, but it is saturated with traditional values. He ends:
But I’ll be very curious to see if the children’s network founded for the express purpose of eschewing wokeness can survive the current right-wing vogue for seeing wokeness everywhere—even when what they’re seeing is really just simple human kindness.
“Basic reality” seems to be the simplistic, black-and-white reality of conservatives. Not the actual, more complex and nuanced reality that those not beholden to religious myth perceive and understand.
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Finally, another chapter in conservative beliefs vs. real-world evidence.
NY Times, Paul Krugman subscriber-only newsletter, 24 Oct 2023: This Is Your Brain on Crime
In 2022, according to F.B.I. numbers, there were 370 violent crimes reported for every 100,000 Americans. Even allowing for some underreporting, this likely means there was less than one violent crime for every 200 people. So the great majority of Americans haven’t been victims lately, or probably ever.
What this implies is that public views about crime needn’t have much to do with personal experience. They may instead be shaped by impressions people pick up from media, both news and social, and from politicians.
In other words, perceptions about crime are like perceptions about the economy — perhaps more so: They don’t necessarily bear much relationship to reality.
The impressions were correct in the 1970s and 1980s:
But dramatically fell in the 1990s.
Whatever the source of the good news, there were two remarkable things about this decline. First, it was truly epic; as someone who has lived in New York since 2015 but visited it many times over previous decades, I can attest that the city feels infinitely safer than it did in the bad old days. Second, most Americans didn’t notice.
Donald Trump devoted his 2017 inaugural address to the theme of “American carnage” — a supposed wave of violence sweeping our cities. At the time, actual urban violence was near a generational low point. But his rhetoric nonetheless resonated with many Americans. After all, throughout the epic decline in crime, voters kept telling pollsters that crime was rising nationally (although they were more sanguine about crime in their own areas, about which they may have had more personal knowledge):
And like views about the economy, perceptions about crime have a strong partisan element, with Republicans generally more likely to say that crime is rising, especially when a Democrat is president.
With more about conservative perceptions about big cities (again, being wrong).
I should acknowledge that while violent crime is clearly on the downswing, some forms of property crime are still running high. Many pharmacies in New York and other cities, concerned about theft, now keep their products locked behind glass, which isn’t scary but is annoying. Still, America is clearly getting safer again, and is much safer than it was two decades ago.
But if history is any guide, most voters won’t believe it. Politicians will run campaigns promising to defend Americans against a terrifying crime wave, even as crime is receding nationwide.
Wait, there’s more. In addition to having false beliefs about trends in crime over time, many Americans have false beliefs about the geography of crime. In particular, Republicans often treat it as an established fact that blue states, and especially cities run by Democrats, have higher crime rates than red states and cities, with New York singled out for special opprobrium. Back in April, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee held a “field hearing” on “victims of violent crime in Manhattan.”
And the reality:
But the reality is that red states have consistently higher homicide rates than blue states. Most big cities are run by Democrats, but those run by Republicans don’t have significantly lower crime. And New York City happens to have remarkably low crime, with a murder rate around half that of Republican-run cities like Miami and Fort Worth. (My guess is that part of the reason for low crime in New York is the city’s large immigrant population — because contrary to another myth, immigrants are relatively law-abiding.)
Again, however, it’s doubtful whether data, or even the lived experiences of those of us who reside in places many Americans believe to be hellscapes, will change many minds.
But you can’t confuse conservatives’ beliefs with facts. They know what they know. Or rather, believe what they believe. They live in their own evidence-free reality.
