What did Sally Kean say?
State Rep. Sally Kern's expressing her concern that “the homosexual agenda was destroying our nation and that young children were being indoctrinated into believing that the homosexual 'lifestyle' is normal” and then going on to say that “gays are a greater threat than terrorists” really caused quite a stir this week.
Politics in the 21st century
Thanks to youtube we’ve all heard them out of her own mouth so she can’t even say she never said it. Politics in the 21st century must be tough. She has been flooded with more than 30,000 e-mails, many of them vulgar, abusive and threatening since her views were made public.
My questions
Two questions come up when I hear all the hurrah over her statements. What drove her to this kind of slanderous talk and what possible good can attacking her with nasty email do?
Of course, when a person takes a strong defensive posture against something like this, declaring verbal war on someone’s sexual choices, you have to ask yourself, what is their agenda? I can’t help but think of Elliot Spitzer (among other fundamental Christians and right-wing political pundits) who was a strong moral advocate against prostitution and gays. The question then becomes, does “the lady protest too much”? When someone is holding their own secret shame, feelings they may even have denied to themselves, often they will loudly protest the wrongness of such feelings.
Where is this passion coming from?
Obviously not every right-wing, Christian fundamentalists fits into this description, but many do. Of course it works the other way too, white left-wing pundits who protest mistreatment of blacks who refuse to hire them themselves, for example.
But regardless, one has to look at the behavior that is being protested and question where the passion against is coming from. Remember the saying, “When you are pointing your finger there are three other fingers pointing back at you.”?
Self-protection at it’s height
My model proposes the idea that “Self-Protection” is the key to understanding this kind of defensive posture. Something is happening inside someone who has that kind of passion against someone else’s choices. They have to be feeling threatened themselves in some way. What is the threat for Senator Kern?
What is she afraid of?
Since, if she is not gay, there is no threat to her person. She simply has to choose to live the way she wants to live. Choosing to fight gays indicates there is something to fight doesn’t it? One can only guess the demons she is fighting inside herself. If she fears the gay tendency inside herself then there is a good chance she will be motivated to fight the outward expression of being gay if this is a shaddow part of herself. She must be very afraid of what is inside of her!
When you shift into thinking of our reactive behaviors as self-protective automatic responses it changes everything.
What do you think?
Is someone loudly protesting prostitution or a gay life style protesting their own tendencies to these behaviors? Or are they merely trying to protect the public from themselves? Perhaps just being Christian means you have to publicly defend (if you are in the public eye) the Christian ways of life as you see them? Let me know what you think. Comment below.