Oregon as a Microcosm of our Divided Nation

Beginning with a trip to Crater Lake in 2016, followed by our eclipse trip in 2017, and ending this spring with a road trip to Portland and Seattle, I have had a bit of the grand tour of the state of Oregon. The combination of the trips gave me an interesting view of a state which is deeply politically divided, and seems in some ways to be a microcosm of the nation as a whole. I actually wrote some of this back in 2017 after the eclipse trip, but put it aside. Our trip this year really brought home to me the contrast, and I decided to write a bit about it. 

Oregon has an...interesting history with race. To be blunt, Oregon has a long history of excluding African Americans. Way back to the 1840s, Oregon had laws which prohibited blacks from living there. Oregon entered the union as the only “no-blacks” state. This racism eventually became enshrined in the state constitution. While the 14th Amendment effectively overruled it, the clause remained on the books until 1926. Oregon didn’t acknowledge the right of blacks to vote until 1959. It didn’t ratify the freaking 14th Amendment until...wait for it...1973, nearlt a decade after desegregation. Furthermore, other racist language in the constitution was not removed until...wait for it...2002. This contributed to Oregon remaining a very lily-white state to this day. Only 2% of the population is black, and Oregon remained over 90% white well into the 1990s. (The last couple of decades, this has shifted quite a bit, which I suspect has made the eastern - whiter - part of the state very uncomfortable…) Portland is by a significant margin, the whitest large city in the US, although this too is changing. 

Once you get out of the major cities, though, Oregon is painfully white. On our eclipse trip, I was really struck by just how white it was. I think we saw a few latinos working at service jobs, but just a handful. And I saw one black person. One. At the eclipse viewing site. And he drove up from another state. 

During my childhood (and even my adulthood), I have known quite a few people who moved to Oregon, typically as part of “white flight.” These days, they tend to go to Idaho, which, outside of Boise, has kind of become THE destination for white nationalists. (It isn’t an accident that Mark Fuhrman ended up there. Or that Doug Wilson has his compound there.) But a few decades ago, Oregon was that destination for conservative whites fleeing diversity. 

I have come to realize that I just feel out of place a bit in an all-white society. I have never lived in an overwhelmingly homogenous place. The neighborhoods I grew up in were mostly minority, and Bakersfield is gloriously diverse, with vibrant hispanic, Filipino, Korean, Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim communities. I take for granted that I will come in contact with a wide range of people on any given day, and they aren’t segregated into categories like Latina maid, African American janitor, etc. I’ll sit next to a Muslim American watching a Mexican American woman sing a Joe Walsh tune while an older Filipino couple dances. That’s America as I know it. So eastern Oregon just felt, well, weird. And that is before you get to the other challenge, which is finding food. It is hard to quantify it, but the presence of legitimate “foreign” food makes everyone up their game. Los Angeles isn’t just a Mecca for foods from around the world; the genres cross pollinate and mix and everything is just to a higher standard. A certain political figure or two may not realize it, but a taco truck on every corner makes for a better world. 

Contrast this with Portland, which felt much more familiar. Although Portland is pretty white for a major city, it has growing minority and immigrant populations, and a gratifyingly broad range of culture - and food. We had an absolutely fantastic meal at a Lebanese restaurant, in addition to legit Banh Mi. Go to a park, and there are kids of all ethnicities, just like in CA. 

Portland is also loudly progressive. We took a walking tour of Bevery Cleary’s neighborhood (yes, I loved the books growing up), and literally every other house had a Pride flag (it was Pride Month), a Black Lives Matter sign, or other signal of pushback against the racism and hatred of Trump and the GOP. Most common, perhaps, is a Portland phenomenon that I love: the “In Our America” sign. I have one of these as a sticker on my trailer. 

One of the houses Beverly Clearly lived in as a kid. Note the sign...

Here is the sign. We have a sticker on our trailer. If you want one, you can get them at

Nasty Women Get Shit Done. And you should.

As a Californian, this level of political activity is a bit foreign. Certainly San Francisco is more liberal than Portland, but you don’t see the same quantity of signs. And certainly not in Los Angeles either. (For what it is worth, Seattle is also aggressively liberal. At least now that “opposing racism, xenophobia, and bigotry” has come to mean “liberal.”) 

As I was contemplating this, I started to think that maybe the open activism of Portland (and Seattle) has a bit to do with the way the rural parts of Oregon (and Washington) are. In contrast to the cities, rural Oregon has a lot in common with my part of California (Kern County is known as the “Texas of California” because of our oil and redneckery.) Except, because rural Oregon is blindingly white, there isn’t the counterweight. 

For example, certain wealthy farmers in my neck of the woods have giant shrines to Trump. I mean, huge - the size of a city lot. I use the word “shrine” intentionally, because this is very much idol worship. He is their god. 

Eastern Oregon has the same thing. We drove by shrine after shrine after shrine. But there was a difference. Because central CA has a large hispanic (and east and south Asian) population, there are counterweights. Pro-immigrant signs. Anti-hate signs. Billboards for Mexican and Indian and Thai restaurants. Spanish and Punjabi language advertisements. Everywhere you go in California, you will be rubbing shoulders with people of all colors and origins. It’s a beautiful thing.

Not so much in Eastern Oregon. Instead, I saw far too many aggressively racist and xenophobic signs to go with the Trump shrines. (This is not a coincidence.) Without the counterweight to lend some shame to open bigots, they get to be as loud as they want. 

In recent years, this division has become even more stark, and even troubling. At the same time that Portland (and Seattle - while I don’t know rural Washington well, I think there are similarities) has embraced social activism, neo-Nazi groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have chosen Oregon as a sort of headquarters. (Possibly because of the relaxed gun laws.) 

Of interest to me in this context is the fact that law enforcement seems increasingly sympathetic these days to openly white supremacist ideas and groups. In the case of Portland, there is solid evidence of completely inappropriate coordination between far right groups and the police. Because left-leaning groups doubt that they will be protected by police, some are arming themselves. I don’t feel particularly great about this development - it would be much better if the Proud Boys were treated like the terrorist group they are, rather than coddled by sympathetic cops. But if you don’t have that, well…I believe this state of affairs is unsustainable, and sooner or later, there will be substantial changes in Portland. There is already significant pushback. 

These are basically my impressions from our three trips to Oregon. Obviously, I don’t live there, and can’t have a truly complete knowledge of the local nuances. However, I can and have observed what Oregonians themselves choose to say about themselves. There does seem to be a deep divide, more exaggerated than elsewhere perhaps, but similar to the divide in our country. In my view, the divide is exacerbated by the long history of racial exclusion, leading to large portions of the state with few non-whites. In line with human nature, we fear and hate most those we do not know. The cosmopolitan and diverse cities increasingly embrace diversity - racial, ethnic, national origin, and sexual orientation and gender identity. The rural areas continue to lose their young people, alienate minorities, and become increasingly angry and bigoted. This is what we have seen across the country, as rural whites have taken their legitimate grievances, and turned them into vicious hatred directed at immigrants and non-whites. 

It was an interesting experience visiting. While most places in California (with the exception of a few rural counties in northeastern CA that are indistinguishable from eastern Oregon - or even rural Idaho) feel like home in some way, Oregon was different. I could absolutely enjoy living in Portland, with its diversity and multiculturalism. But even Eugene was disturbingly white, at least where we were. I mean, literally, all the people at a park concert were white - you would never see that in Bakersfield. And rural Oregon, for all its natural beauty (which is considerable!) and outdoor opportunities, made California’s more conservative cities (like Bakersfield) seem like beacons of progressivism and diversity. I mean, we have our racist asshats and horrible politicians (hello, Kevin McCarthy, hands down the absolute worst representative I have ever had), but there are competing voices too. We had an “unexpectedly large” protest over immigrant detentions, our women’s march was vibrant and large, and those of us marching have seen support from our local law enforcement. We may have more than our share of Confederate Battle Flags flown by redneck dude-bros. But the other voices are louder and more organized. And, um, “demographics” are changing. Because Bakersfield (and other cities in the central valley) are affordable by California standards, young people are moving in. And they aren’t just white either. It is easy to see Kern County go the way of Orange County - and turn blue. 

In the case of Oregon, one wonders what the future will hold. It seems like the cities will continue to grow, and grow more diverse. Will the rural areas wither? Or become more and more radicalized and racist as they lose influence and power? It will be interesting to see. It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the decline of rural America - and the ways that it is committing suicide - but I hope to make that a future post. 

Immigration Part 3: The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Racist History of Immigration Restrictions

This post is part of my Immigration Series. Please read the introduction, particularly the disclaimer.

***

In the first part, I introduced the topic.

In the second part, I looked at the (lack of) regulation of Immigration from the founding of our country and the easy path to citizenship for white immigrants.

***

The year 1882 was a watershed year in US immigration policy. It was birthed in vicious racism, and would set the stage for an expressly racist immigration policy from that point forward. The assumptions and arguments contained in that law are still used today whenever we discuss immigration policy. Nothing really has changed other than exactly which “shithole countries” we are determined to prevent immigration from.

However, 1882 was by no means the beginning of racial animus or racist rhetoric regarding immigration. Rather, every generation of immigrants has tried to exclude the next, and recycled the same tired tropes and slanders about the next wave.

Just for a taste, read my post from last St. Patrick’s Day about the anti-Irish rhetoric of the 1800s, which mirrors the anti-Latino and anti-Muslim rhetoric of our present day.

Still, 1882 is the year that the first restrictions on Immigration rather than just Naturalization were enacted. The title of the act is perfectly descriptive:

The Chinese Exclusion Act

Students of history (particularly here in California) are undoubtedly aware of the role that Chinese immigrants played in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. They, more than any other group, did the grueling labor of building a route over the rugged and dangerous Sierra Nevada Mountains here in California. However, despite their amazing accomplishments (among which are the various Chinatowns in cities across California, and the concept of “Chinese Take Out,” which we Californians take for granted), they were hated, slandered, and discriminated against viciously here and elsewhere. (One interesting book that I highly recommend is Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain, which recounts the story of her family from their immigration to the present day. It is inspiring, heartbreaking, and wonderfully human. On a related note, I had the privilege of playing chamber music with a descendent of the Transcontinental builders a number of years back. Her ancestors came to the US before mine did, and yet it took nearly a century before they were granted equal civil rights to those my ancestors enjoyed from the get-go.)

So, the Chinese Exclusion Act was just that. A ban on immigration from China. It was the first of its kind, but it would certainly not be the last.

In fact, every immigration law since that time has had as its express goal to limit or exclude immigrants deemed to come from “inferior races.” The exact countries which are deemed “shithole countries” has changed a good bit over time, obviously. The Irish, Greeks, and Italians are now considered “white,” which they definitely were not in the 1920s, for example. We don’t panic about Catholics like we used to: now Muslims are the bogeymen. And, for reasons which are probably reasonably obvious, certain countries have always been welcome: Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Scandinavians. Except during the world wars, Germans too. Hmm, the so-called “Aryan” nations. Blond hair, blue eyes...must be a coincidence, right?

I’ll just run quickly through the next period of history here.

The Chinese Exclusion Act wasn’t repealed until 1943 - as a result of the fact that China was considered an ally in our war against Japan.

In 1907, the US negotiated a “gentleman’s agreement” with the isolationist Japan that no immigrant visas would be issued from that country. (In an interesting development, Hawaii, which was then a territory, was exempt, so hundreds of thousands of Japanese immigrated to Hawaii. As a result, Japanese food and culture is endemic to Hawaii - along with Chinese and Polynesian food and culture. It’s a beautiful thing!)

Beginning in 1882, Congress also barred the entry of known criminals and “lunatics,” a restriction that continues today. Not controversial, exactly, but a major change from the previous lack of regulation.

The 1917 Immigration Act

This was the next step in restriction. It is often known as the “Literacy Act,” because of its ban on illiterate (meaning in practice “poor”) immigrants, but is also known as the “Asiatic Barred Zone Act” because of its ban on Asian immigrants.

But there is more to the story. This act set the stage for much of what we debate about immigration today. And it also sheds light on the racism which undergirds the exclusionary position, even as its proponents try to claim otherwise.

Let’s examine a few things about it.

Rooted in racism.

The 1917 Immigration Act was the brainchild of the Immigration Restriction League, an organization founded by a couple lawyers and a climatologist (!) who had some specific beliefs about immigration.

First, they believed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were genetically inferior to “Anglo-Saxons,” the term used before Hitler and others coined “Aryans.” Again, people from England, France, Germany, and Scandinavia - the blond haired, blue eyed “ubermensches” that were destined to rule the world.

But wait, there’s more!

The IRL also justified keeping non-Aryans out because of their “inferior culture” which threatened “the American way of life.” They claimed that immigrants (from Southern and Eastern Europe - and Asia) brought with them poverty, crime, and low wages. Does that sound at all familiar? (Tucker Carlson, anyone? Steve Bannon? Stephen Miller? Steve King? Donald Trump?)

The 1917 Immigration act took a couple decades to become a reality. Presidents Taft and Wilson vetoed it until 1917, when the combination of World War I and general “yellow menace” rhetoric combined to push public opinion in favor of restrictions.

It wasn’t just the racist rhetoric surrounding its passage that lingers today, however. Many of the provisions of our current laws reflect those in the 1917 act are now enshrined in some form or another in our current laws.

Quotas

The most notable of these are the quotas. The 1917 act, for the first time, set a limit on immigration by country (or region.) In this specific case, the limit for immigration from “Aryan” countries was set quite high, with those from Southern and Eastern European countries set far lower. (And for Asian countries, pretty much not at all.)

The intent was expressly to encourage immigration from the “desirable” countries, and drastically lower it from the “undesirable” countries. Hmm, sounds so very much like Le Toupee’s recent question about why we even allow people to come here from “shithole countries” like those in Africa, Haiti, and El Salvador rather than from (Aryan) countries like Norway. It’s really the same thing, isn’t it?

Unsurprisingly, just as Norwegians today aren’t exactly flocking to the US, despite the restrictions and encouragements, immigration from the Aryan nations remained relatively low, while immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe blew past the restrictions by an order of magnitude.

Apparently, immigration is a force that cannot be stopped easily…

The big difference was that now much of that immigration was, for the first time, “ILLEGAL.”

Still, however, at the time, enforcement was pretty spotty. A number of industries (tellingly, the agricultural industries in the Western US who depended on Mexican immigrants for labor) objected, leading to a bunch of exceptions carved out of the law. Mexicans in particular were officially excluded from the rules for many jobs, from mining to ag to railroads. And many more simply braved the prohibition and came here anyway, started families, and became part of the fabric of our nation despite the work of racist groups like the Immigration Restriction League, and later, the 2nd Ku Klux Klan, which made opposition to non-Aryan immigration a key component of their political platform.

Literacy/Poverty Tests

The 1917 act was also notable for having the first “literacy” test, designed and intended to keep impoverished, uneducated immigrants out of the country. This too haunts our discussion today, with the current administration openly calling for exclusion of all except for the most educated and wealthy of immigrants. It is the whole basis of a “merit” based policy. The intent now, as then, is to keep those who have the most to gain from immigration out. Completely. No more “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Now, just “winners” are welcome. Those who have already succeeded elsewhere. The oppressed masses, the poor and destitute...well… if they are going to die anyway, they had better do it quickly and reduce the surplus population.

I’ll for now gloss over a few horrific court cases which stripped certain non-whites of citizenship (including Native Americans and Asian Indians), plundering even more land from Native Americans, and generally appeasing White Nationalist groups driven by hatred and fear of non whites. It’s a sordid history, and if you have time, look it up…

I’ll also mention Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, where up to 2 million Mexican Americans - most of whom were American citizens - were forcibly deported to Mexico. You can read your children Esperanza Rising for a quick version, but it is worth reading in greater detail. Again, just like now, there was a strong push to ethnically cleanse the United States of non-whites. Another sordid episode in our history of racism.

There were a few good developments, however. In 1943, the Chinese Exclusion act was finally repealed - although quotas for Chinese immigrants remained shockingly low. In 1946, Asian Indians and Filipinos were finally allowed to immigrate again....well, at the low rate of 100 per year...

The next major act, the Immigration act of 1952 officially did away with racial prohibitions, but kept the national quotas in place. Again, most of the slots went to Aryan countries: England, Germany, and now (surprise!) Ireland. I guess the Irish finally got to be “white.” This act also added another modern feature: family-based immigration. (This idea, now ludicrously denigrated as “chain migration” simply gives preference to people who already have relatives here. There is nothing nefarious about it. People who have family here have support systems, and are thus less likely to need public assistance.)

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

This act serves as the basis of the laws we have now. While certain numbers have been tweaked, most of the backbone of the law remains in effect today. I’ll discuss current laws separately in another post, but I do want to mention some things that I believe are relevant.

Senator Ted Kennedy, who was at the time the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, said about the law, “[T[he bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." You can see the same concerns here as both in the past (the 1917 Act) and current rhetoric. The fear of a change to the ethnic balance of the US. (Hey there, Steve King!) The euphemism rejecting the idea of letting the poor in. The “immigrants lower our wages” rhetoric. Nothing has changed. In particular, the racially charged nature of the debate remains exactly the same. The anti-immigration crowd now, as it has always been throughout the history of our nation, is concerned about keeping the “inferior races” out of the United States, and keeping us a White Nation™. Every time we have a debate about immigration, the same issues come up over and over, and they can be distilled down to the same old beliefs about the inherent inferiority of some races. And the same belief by each group of immigrants that the next group is somehow different, inferior, and should be kept out.

You can see some other interesting threads here as well. The 1965 act gave priority to “family reunification,” aka “chain migration.” That emphasis has remained in the law - and indeed in the rhetoric on both sides - up until recently, when the GOP swung from a moderately pro-immigration position to full-on white nationalism with the rise of Le Toupee.

Since that time, you can see some minor tweaks. Some provisions for refugees. Some increases in quotas. More detailed exceptions for skilled workers with an employer sponsor. Different vetting for potential terrorists. And so on. But the major provisions of the law remain.

Again, this is a quick tour, not a detailed look at the exact details. Since 1965, however, most of the changes have been relatively minor, and many have been kludges - patches to cover over defects without actually starting fresh and fixing the problems. That has kind of been the American way the last few decades, as consensus on policy has been near-impossible to find. 

I’ll talk more about the current state of the law in a future post.

***

Let me summarize a bit here, before we move on.

If you were not Chinese, you could immigrate AND become a citizen virtually without restriction prior to 1917. So if your ancestors were white and came here before 1917, there is no way they could have immigrated “illegally” if they tried.

So saying that “my ancestors came here legally” is totally meaningless. Of course they did! There was no other way to come here!

Likewise, if your ancestors were from an “Aryan” nation, chances are that they came here legally without much in the way of restrictions anyway. Except for Germans during WWII, you could get in if you were Western European - and can today. Even today, as a white person, it isn’t that hard to get here legally. However, if you are from Latin America or Asia, and don’t have serious money, well, you don’t really have a line to get in. Might as well forget it…or take your chances coming here “illegally” and hope for the best.

Let’s also be sure we don’t forget this:

From the beginning, immigration restrictions were openly and explicitly based on a belief in racial superiority and inferiority. The laws were enacted as the result of the efforts of openly racist, nativist lobby groups, and were intended to exclude people deemed to be “inferior” due to their race and/or nation of origin. To deny this fact is to fail to understand our problems today.

***

Just an interesting bit on the history:

Kevin Jennings is the president of the Tenement Museum in New York City. The museum currently has an exhibit entitled “Under One Roof,” the story of the refugees and immigrants that came to New York in the aftermath of World War Two. In addition to the LA Times article I linked in the last installment, he recently did an interview on NPR about immigration. One of the things that really stuck with me from that interview is that he has had people walk out of his presentations at the museum and accused him of political propaganda simply for telling the truth that immigration restrictions of the past were motivated by racism. Really. In this age of “alternative facts,” the truth is now “political propaganda.” Good god, we are screwed.

Even in the last few days, discussing immigration with people I know, I have been disappointed by the amount of resistance people have to acknowledging that the current adminstration gives every evidence of being motivated by racism. Or that currently issues like DACA or TPS have become real problems because the current administration seems hell bent on finding ways to evict brown people from the US. Denial runs deep. Really deep.

Hate Groups and Why They Matter

Well, the Elected Narcissist Who Shall Not Be Named made a bit of dubious history this last weekend. For the first time in modern history, a sitting president has appeared at a conference of a hate group. Specifically the “Values Voter Summit,” hosted by the Family Research Council. That Steve Bannon was also was a featured speaker is key to understanding what happened here.

I decided to write about this, not primarily because of its political implications - it would be a full time job to write about politics - but because of a more personal connection here.

Regular readers of my blog will have noted that I have mentioned my own break with our longtime church, and also that I do not consider myself an Evangelical any longer. Mind you, I am someone who has been active in church life and ministry for more than 30 years. My children were raised in Evangelicalism, as was I. So this is no minor rupture. Evangelicalism has lost one of its most devoted members - and another generation besides. Why? Although any decision like this is complicated, one reason stands about above the others, and is the reason I didn’t just leave a particular church, but the entire tradition.

Our former church, and (white) Evangelicalism as a whole embraces - or at least tolerates - hate groups.

In the case of our former church, leadership went behind our backs to promote a hate group in my kids’ Sunday School (specifically the American Family Association - which I very much intend to write more about in the future). This was despite our clear objection.

The problem is, it isn’t just the one church. American (white) Evangelicalism is wedded to the politics of hate. No, not every Evangelical, obviously. There are good people in Evangelicalism, just as there are in Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam, and Atheism. But the overall system and tribe is wedded to a version of politics that places Republicanity (loyalty to the GOP) above the teachings of Christ.

So we left. We removed our children from this toxic environment.  And I personally am never going back. 

But what I want to specifically talk about in this post is what a hate group is, and why it matters. Let’s start with a definition.

Hate Speech: (n) speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability. (Dictionary.com)

In the laws of some countries (not the United States, which does not outlaw hate speech), such speech is defined as:

Speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which incites violence or prejudicial action against a protected group, or individual on the basis of their membership of the group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected group, or individual on the basis of their membership of the group.

Here is the FBI definition of “Hate Crime”:

[A] criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.

The reason I bring the definitions into this is that whenever you point out to a conservative (or particularly an Evangelical) that a particular group is a designated hate group, the defense is always something along the lines of “[group] is only considered a hate group because it believes gay sex is a sin.”

This is baloney.

Here in the US, the Southern Poverty Law Center is the best source for the list of hate groups, and it doesn’t consider mere differences in opinion about human sexuality to be sufficient to designate a group as a hate group. Rather, they use specific criteria.

The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as an organization that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

Let me put this together into my own summary of the issue. As I see it, hate groups do the following:

1. Tell lies about certain groups of people.
2. Stir up fear and hatred against those groups.
3. Advocate the use of political or economic power, or even violence against members of that group.

Or, to sum it up even more simply:

1. Lies
2. Fear/hatred
3. Harm

It’s that simple.

Now, let’s look at the claim. If the claim was true, then nearly every Evangelical church in the United States would be labeled a hate group. One estimate I was able to find on the number of churches in America was that there are nearly 400,000 churches in the US. (That’s about 1 for every 1000 people, incidentally.) The Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant denomination in the US) alone counts in excess of 47,000 churches. And yet, you won’t find them on the SBC hate list. (The SBC gets mentioned occasionally because it appoints people associated with hate groups to leadership positions, however. But despite its recent issues with sexual obsession and racism, it is NOT listed as a hate group.)

So, clearly, merely being a non-affirming church won’t get you labeled a hate group.

The key difference is what I noted above. Look for the three prongs: lies, hate, and harm.

Let me give you an example here. There was, not too long ago, a person I know very well, who believed homosexual acts were sinful. This person, however, knew that it was wrong to tell lies about LGBTQ people, or to try to get others to fear and hate them, and this person would never dream of trying to harm LGBTQ people by denying them employment, housing, health care - or by advocating for their prosecution, imprisonment, or (horrors!) execution. That person was me in my 20s. And there were - and are - many like that me in Evangelicalism. In fact, that was how I was raised!

However, that is not what these designated hate groups do. In fact, they clearly meet the three criteria:

1. They tell lies about LGBTQ people. Chief among them is the lie that LGBTQ people are a bunch of sexual predators, out to rape the children. Also, that there is a “gay agenda” to that effect. A few others would be the historically ludicrous one that the Nazis were a bunch of gays (actually, they murdered the gays along with the Jews and other ethnic minorities…), that being gay is bad for your health, and that being gay is contagious, like a virus. These lies have been disproved over and over. And that is even before one gets to the theological lies. Those are obviously beyond the scope of what the SPLC does - and the scope of this post. The lies are told for a particular reason:
2. These hate groups stir up fear of LGBTQ people. That is the whole point of the lies. Stir up fear, and then use that fear to raise money. This is the only reason organizations like the AFA exist. They prey on gullible and fearful parents (usually Baby Boomers) and then feed them a steady diet of conspiracy theories about all the nefarious liberals/atheists/gays/brown people out to destroy white America. And people send them money. And then they focus on:
3. Lobbying for laws to do harm to LGBTQ people. This can go all the way from using a fear of same-sex marriage to elect open white supremacists to the White House to pushing “religious freedom” laws making it legal to deny LGBTQ people the right to access to the basics of society - housing, employment, healthcare, government services, to calling for the criminalization of gay sex. And yes, some of the featured speakers at the “Values Voter Summit” have called for just that. (That includes the likely future senator from Alabama, Roy Moore, who has said that we should imprison or execute gays.) Heck, some of the speakers have openly called for the state-sponsored murder of gay people. (Hello, Kevin Swanson - no relation, thank God…)

I am not going to list all of the ways in which the various players in the Values Voter Summit qualify for hate group status. The SPLC website has information, or you can spend some quality time with Google. Probably the best site for primary sources is Right Wing Watch, which has painstakingly recorded and linked the actual audio, video, and text of the specific things these hate groups have said and written.

But I didn’t need to go look up audio for most of this. I lived it. During our time in the Bill Gothard cult, I heard ALL of this crap. And during my years as a homeschooler, this was in the background. Sure, my parents didn’t buy all - or even most - of it. But it was in the air we breathed. It has been pushed strongly for the last several decades.

And unfortunately, it has gone increasingly mainstream in American Evangelicalism.

Now, let’s talk a bit about an uncomfortable truth.

Hatred toward LGBTQ people goes hand in hand with racism and misogyny.

If you had told me this in my teens, I would have laughed.

After the last election, I was faced with the inescapable conclusion that the Left has been all too correct about this.

Hatred toward LGBTQ people does indeed come from the same dark place in the soul as racism and misogyny. And one tends to be associated with the other.

Here is where Steve Bannon comes in. Bannon has bragged about making Brietbart.com into a platform for the “alt right.” Which is a hip way of saying “white supremacy and misogyny.” He has praised the neo-Nazi novel The Camp of the Saints, which envisions the destruction of “white civilization” by immigrants and native brown and black people. I mean, this shouldn’t even be debatable. The guy is solidly and obviously a white supremacist with a political agenda that matches that of the KKK.

And here he is at a “moral values” conference. Apparently, one of those “values” is whiteness. (And don’t think those outside the Evangelical bubble haven’t noticed...this one - brought to my attention by an African American - and Christian - friend of mine -  is worth watching…)

For that matter, the AFA is deeply committed to a white supremacist worldview and political agenda. I hope to write about this in more detail in the future, but the AFA has always stood for hostility toward immigrants, denigration of African Americans, contempt for the poor, fear and hatred of Islam, religious supremacy, racial and cultural supremacy, opposition to feminism, and glorification of the middle class white culture of the past. Oh, and the AFA was a big supporter of Le Toupee. Big surprise! (Yes, that's Bryan Fischer, who was supposedly dismissed from the AFA for saying African Americans "rut like rabbits".. of COURSE he is still part of the organization.)  Again, I intend, when I have time, to write a fairly exhaustive post laying out (with links) all the appalling stuff the AFA and its personalities have said over the last couple of decades. They have thoroughly earned the designation as a hate group. (Let me be clear - I pointed this out to church leadership a few years ago - and apparently it was ignored.) 

 Ah, one of the gems from Bryan Fischer, STILL writing for the AFA...because one of the tenets of Christianity is CLEARLY to tell poor sick brown people to go someplace else and die, so that deserving rich white people don't have to pay for the undeserving poor...Christ would surely approve...

And here is another gem, a sentiment shared by Dominionists everywhere, including Roy Moore and (historical revisionist) David Barton. So nice to have lies like this taught to your children...see Thomas Jefferson...

Oh, and one more thing. About the time we left our church, several leaders were re-posting stuff from Milo Yiannopoulos. Yeah, the openly white supremacist and misogynist guy, who would end up excusing statutory rape (thus giving credence to the lie that gays are out to get the kiddies...yeah, good move there…) It has been rather like discovering the white robe and hood in people’s closets. Definitely enough for me to realize that someone like me would never be truly welcome in Evangelicalism - but the Steve Bannons of the world will be more than welcome - celebrated.

Again, to be clear, this isn’t everyone in Evangelicalism. There are so many great people there! But great people are in the Mormon church too - I know many of them - but that doesn’t mean that the system itself is okay. I have enough serious theological differences with the LDS faith that I would never consider converting. Likewise, I have enough moral and political differences (and yes, theological differences - I don’t believe Christ would be okay with either white supremacy or social darwinism) that I can not consider Evangelicalism to be a morally acceptable place to raise my kids. The good people are not enough to overcome the poisonous politics and unchristian theology.

This is why hate groups matter. They cannot be dismissed as a mere fringe, unfortunately. Lies, fear and hatred, and the intent to harm others have become endemic to our religious and political discussion here in the US. And they have become a key part of the indoctrination of our children within Evangelicalism, which is why I left.

Why do we even want to be associated with hate groups?

This is my question. I mean, I don’t see anything about even the most literalist and conservative approach to Christianity that should justify telling lies, stirring up hatred and fear against those outside the tribe, and trying to harm others. The whole idea just seems contrary to the spirit of Christianity and the teachings of Christ.

Furthermore, it seems rather risky to tie religious faith to a particular political party, or even a particular political point of view. Shouldn’t Christianity be bigger than politics? Shouldn’t the call to love our neighbor be paramount over party loyalty?

Do we really want to send the message that those who do not adhere to a particular political philosophy aren’t welcome?

Do we want to have the reputation as a bunch of racists, misogynists, and bigots?

Or, as much to the point, do we really think Christianity is for whites? Really?

A friend from law school sent me this article from Scot McKnight, which really resonates with me on why I cannot in good conscience call myself an “Evangelical” any longer, and why I cannot raise my kids in that tradition. The word “Evangelical” now means “Trump voter.” Or, more broadly: Evangelical = Republican = Trump supporter = White Nationalism = Affinity for hate groups. Sadly, this is pretty much diametrically opposed to the original meaning of Evangelicalism back in the early 1800s, which supported Feminism, opposed slavery, advocated for social justice, and generally went against the wealthy establishment. How things have changed…

Money quote from McKnight’s post:

“Then came Reagan and Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and James Kennedy and theology and sociology were usurped by politics. Evangelical meant Republican. What they didn’t recognize is that “evangelical” became “whiteness” and many Latin Americans and African Americans and Asian Americans were excluded. Then came 81% for Trump. Something’s very very wrong here.”

“Don’t call me ‘evangelical’ if you mean Republican!”

Theology has indeed been usurped by politics. And that is why Steve Bannon is a featured speaker at a “Values” conference, Milo Yiannopoulos and Ayn Rand are adored by church leaders, and the symbol of 1980s greed, sexual license, racism, and nativist demagoguery gets 81% of the white Evangelical vote.

And why a seemingly elementary moral question - should hate group propaganda be part of what we teach our children - is something the American Evangelicalism gets consistently wrong.

And why I am done. And why my children will not be raised in the Evangelical faith tradition.

Stop whistling past the graveyard on this. My family is just the tip of the iceberg. The younger generation is abandoning Evangelicalism in droves. Gee, I wonder why?

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Just an observation: this election and its aftermath has done more than all the Richard Dawkins of the world have ever done to convince people of the moral bankruptcy of American Christianity - particularly Evangelicalism. The very fact that Steve Bannon is welcome at a homophobic conference is the strongest possible argument that opposition to gay marriage is indistinguishable from vicious racism. And so many Evangelicals - including my former pastor - are so eager to excuse hate groups and their poisonous teachings rather than take a moral stand against lies, fear and hatred, and harm of other groups. I stand by my prediction on the morning after the election: 20 years from now, Evangelicals will be wondering why the young people have left, and why Evangelicalism is reduced to a bunch of old white people, it won’t be because they didn’t focus on apologetics, or because they didn’t spend enough time on systematic theology. It will be because they allowed politics - and hate - to take precedence over the teachings of Christ. “Evangelicalism” now - and in the future - will look an awful lot like Steve Bannon, Ayn Rand, and Donald Trump. And not the least bit like Jesus Christ. 

UPDATE 10-17-2017: Michael Gerson hits it out of the park.  Some of the best quotes:


"There is no group in the United States less attached to its own ideals or more eager for its own exploitation than religious conservatives."

"There is more at stake here than bad politics. When Christians ally their faith with bias and exclusion, they are influencing how the public views Christianity itself. They are associating the teachings of Jesus Christ — a globalist when it came to the Great Commission — with ethnonationalist ideology. This should be a sobering prospect for any Christian. But few seem sobered. Instead, the faithful give standing ovations to the purveyors of division and prejudice."

As Gerson points out, a belief in the Common Good was originally a religious idea, based on the inherent value of all human life. But this belief is nowhere to be found in Evangelicalism these days. It's Social Darwinism and Ethnonationalism all the way down...

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Just a reminder: I blogged about this before the election. Le Toupee managed to slander and show contempt for every single group in the hate speech list:

National origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability.

We aren’t even a full year into his term, and he has taken time to cause harm to EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THESE. GROUPS.

Ask yourself if this reflects the character and teachings of Christ...

And then, think of the deathly silence about all of this from the Evangelical church in the last few years. Um, yeah. I had to endure several screeds from the pulpit about homosexuality. And not one freaking word about racism or social darwinism. Or one freaking bit about, let’s see, sexual assault, or slander against immigrants. Or one rebuke against hate group affiliation, immersion in white supremacy, or contempt for the poor. Nope, it was too damn clear that it you could hold any political opinion - as long as it was Republican - and Trumpian - in every respect. Others need not bother. 

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Additional link 10-19-2017:

William Saletan reports from the Values Voter Conference on what some of the other speakers said.  

Interesting highlights: "Keep the refugees out." "No more civil rights protests." "We are at war with China." "Yay for Confederate Statues." Just saying. 

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Before commenting, please read my comment policy. In the context of this post, I don’t need an argument about why I am wrong and why Evangelicalism is right. I have left. I am not going back. And you have likely lost two generations - probably more - as a result. Maybe instead of arguing you need to look in the mirror. It isn’t me that has chosen hate groups over keeping the next generation. It isn’t me that has made Evangelicalism = Trump. Take a look in the mirror.