Hatch’s Anti-Gay Remarks Exposes His Narrowness
Senator Orrin Hatch, after all these years, has not opened his eyes, his ears, his brain, or his heart to the issues surrounding homosexuality. He and most of his legion of Mormon gay bashing friends are just not going to change. They will pass through this life in the same cocoon in which they were born.
When they get together in small like minded groups it gives them a chance to elevate themselves in their own narrow minds by demeaning others. It gives them great joy to consider their heterosexuality a moral act, an act of their own choosing, and they enjoy the feeling of righteous superiority it gives them. It’s as if they have fought off natural and intense homosexual desires and demons by engaging in the unsatisfying act of heterosexual sex solely for the purpose of procreating the species as per their God’s command. Such tough duty! We should all be grateful for their nightly moral sacrifice.
(It should be noted that many Mormons have changed, and avoid and are even repelled by such gay bashing, and many are beginning to speak out in opposition to such negative talk.)
His gay bashing comments to his homogeneous political gathering (Mormon, white, Republican) made it to the Salt Lake Tribune and has generated many thoughtful responses from around the country. Some of them are printed below.
Hatch’s Religious Politics
Public Forum Letter
Talk about pot and kettle! Sen. Orrin Hatch says that “gays and lesbians don’t pay tithing” because “their religion is politics” (“Hatch hammers on spending,” Tribune , June 2). That from a six-term senator dashing to the radical religious right to keep his seat, a politician who sees every Democratic solution as an attack on God’s original intent in the Constitution. Hatch so blends religion and politics that for him there’s no difference.
Hatch said those words to please a mostly Mormon, gay-averse audience in St. George to get their votes — that’s politicizing religion. When campaigning for president, Hatch hinted to Mormon donors that he was part of God’s divine plan to save the Constitution. Religion is his politics, and vice versa.
Yes, Utah gays don’t “pay tithing” (code for Mormon), but that’s because Mormons exile their gays. When so many sanctimonious Mormons politically donate to keep gays from legally marrying in other churches , it’s chutzpah to then demean them for not donating to their persecutors and for donating instead to defend their rights to worship how, where or what they may. If equating the civil aspects of marriage with one’s personal religion isn’t making politics religion, what is?
Tim Vincent
Moab
Hatch Owes Apology
A native Utahn, I returned to the state for my mother’s 80th birthday and read that at a St. George town hall Sen. Orrin Hatch stated: “Gays and lesbians don’t pay tithing, politics is their religion” (“Hatch hammers on spending,” Tribune , June 2). I am saddened by Hatch’s offensive and irrational statement. While I may not believe in all the tenets of his religion, I still give it respect, and I give respect to my mother, who also espouses Hatch’s religious beliefs.
The religious beliefs of gays and lesbians are as diverse as they are in our American community. Politics is not a religion for anyone — and as a politician for 34 years, Hatch of all people should realize that. Utah gays and lesbians pay taxes, just like everyone else in Hatch’s constituency. To demean or categorize a group of people based upon their failure or declination to pay “tithing” is one of the most absurd things I’ve heard in my entire life.
Sen. Hatch owes an apology to the many gays and lesbians who love and support this country and their God.
Scott Monson
Hollywood
Gays More Spiritual, Not Less
Public Forum Letter
It is disappointing to read Sen. Orrin Hatch say that “Gays and lesbians don’t pay tithing, their religion is politics” (“Hatch hammers on spending,” Tribune , June 2).
For 41 years, I taught religion, history and political science at the Community of Christ’s Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa. For more than a decade, my wife and I have attended retreats by GALA: Gay and Lesbian Acceptance, an organization of church members. I know more than 100 gays and lesbians in the Community of Christ who are out of the closet. Many of them have publicly shared the agony they have experienced as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, often caused by churches and people whose ignorance of the subject parallels that of Hatch.
I suggest a counter hypothesis to that of the senator’s: GLBT people are, on average, more spiritual than heterosexual people. I can’t prove that, but I have more evidence for my hypothesis than Hatch has for his (that they’re political because they’re irreligious).
Religion often becomes very important for marginalized people. Given the persecution the Mormons have suffered in their history, Mormons like the senator should have more sympathy for oppressed minorities.
William D. Russell
Lamoni, Iowa