I read this weekend that many young conservatives are very unhappy that their peers (18-39) support Marriage Equality in numbers nearing 80%.
Eric Teetsel is the 29-year-old executive director of the Manhattan Declaration, an organization founded in 2009 by conservative activist Chuck Colson to tackle the issues of "life, marriage and religious freedom." He told NPR:
"Those of us who understand the meaning of marriage and why it matters simply have to do a better job of educating everyone ... on these issues," Teetsel says.
Oh how I love being lectured to by a 29 year old man about life, marriage and "freedom".
And worse than that - his organization is founded and run by one of the most amoral men in our county's history!!
Chuck Colson, known as President Nixon's "hatchet man," gained notoriety during the Watergate scandal and was named as one of the Watergate Seven. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for attempting to defame Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg. In 1974, he served seven months in the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama. Recently released tapes feature Colson and Nixon discussing the efforts to cover up their crimes - so he got off easy.
He was also quoted as saying he would run over his own grandmother to get Nixon elected. A really good guy.
In prison, Colson became a Christian. That didn't stop him from continuing to stick his nose into politics - it just became his new weapon.
On October 3, 2002, Colson was one of the co-signers of the Land letter sent to President George W. Bush. The letter was written by Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and co-signed by four prominent American evangelical Christian leaders with Colson among them. The letter outlined their theological support for a just war in the form of a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.
Colson is a member of the Family (also known as the Fellowship), described by prominent evangelical Christians as one of the most politically well-connected fundamentalist organizations in the US. It is his position that a society without a basis of "moral absolutes" cannot survive. And which morals are those? And why do these people think they get to define them?
I would not deny anyone their second chance or the opportunity to improve themselves. But it looks like Colson has simply switched hats and has continued down the road, running over grandmothers and families and whole countries full of people who are in his way.
3 comments:
Its funny, a few people with money keep trying to drag this country backward, but hopefully the rest of us keep trying to move it FORWARD :)
The problem is that most young people have no idea about Colson's past. He was infamous before they were born. We went to hear Rachel Maddow speak last weekend. She said everyone should think about who their "birth president" was. A lot of today's young people were not born or were not old enough to know anything about RONALD REAGAN, who is, of course, the end-all and be-all to so many Republicans today. They just believe that they need to revere him and his policies.
Scary, really.
I'd never heard of The Fellowship/Family before, although I do know of Colson's life before and after prison.
Sometimes I worry about my kids being susceptible to political rhetoric because we are decidedly non-political around home much of the time. I've tried to teach them to vote their conscience and not a party ticket. There are definitely people in politics who who think they need to "teach us the truth" because we are too dumb to figure it out ourselves.
I happen to love a quote from Anne Lamott: "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
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