There is no question that newly-elected Todd Courser is going to provide endless fodder for this website for at least a couple of years. He hasn’t even taken office yet but Courser is already acting as if he owns the place and has a lock on what it means to be conservative and Republican.
Courser seems fixated on ensuring that the LGBT community does not enjoy civil rights protections. If that happens, in Courser’s convoluted worldview, his religious freedom is abridged. Nothing says “Christian” in Courser’s mind quite like exuding pure hatred on people he doesn’t like. It’s people like Todd Courser that Mahatma Gandhi was referring to when he said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Since I last wrote about Courser’s desire to show his “relevant anatomical parts” to House Speaker Jase Bolger, he has penned two new missives on his webpage. One was a beautiful essay on the virtues of hating our fellow citizens on Thanksgiving titled “Thankful for Religious Liberty” and the other, published yesterday, warns that “It Could All End Tomorrow” (i.e., today.)
Both of these hate-filled diatribes against the LGBT community and not-conservative-enough Republicans assert that granting civil rights to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender folks will deny Courser and his band of Christian hatemongers their religious freedom. When Jesus gave his followers a new commandment in John 13:33-35, this is what said:
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Here are a few examples from his past two emails of how Courser professes his love for others:
First, he talks about the training that he is going through to become a state legislator. In his mind, it’s not so much training as brainwashing:
Much of this email is to provide an education window into what is happening in the background of the process. I have made a commitment to explain the process and to be open and honest about the real back-story on the issues we face as a nation. So, as I go through all of these indoctrination steps of working my way into the State House and become ever so mesmerized by the sparkly shiny trinkets the progressive political machine hangs in front of elected officials, I just want to share a little window into what it is like. I do this sort of email to give you an understanding of what we as a country are up against. Read it a couple times through to thoroughly understand it.
I’ll confess that I read it more than a couple of times and still can’t wrap my head around his twisted view of the world. It’s also astonishing to have a legislator in this large of a need for an editor.
Now, on to the meaning of Thanksgiving:
Thanksgiving is about the impossible journey of a small group of worshipers who took flight from oppression to have the freedom to practice their religion without the interference of government; we are now, if this expansion to Elliott Larsen passes at the hands of my own party, at the point where the group that will be discriminated against is Christians and any other faith that chooses to stand against the LGBT activists – we will no longer have the freedom to practice our religion or have freedom of speech that our Founders personally sacrificed to give us.
Actually, Thanksgiving is the story of how an indigenous people showed compassion to a starving bunch of white invaders who eventually took over their land, spread disease, and murdered them. When you think about it, the pilgrims had about as much compassion for the native Americans who they drove from their land as Courser does for the LGBT community.
Republican Speaker…has been paid a small fortune and is partnering with the LGBT activists to destroy religious liberty and freedom of speech! […]Please do not lose sight of this; it is the Republican Leadership actively moving the Democrat’s agenda, having partnered with the LGBT community to move this liberty killing legislation forward. […]
Right now, it is the Republican, not the Democrat, leadership who is moving to grant protected class status to the LGBT community and in so doing destroy freedoms of religion and speech for our children and their children.
This is a recurrent theme with Courser: Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger is a homosexual-loving liberal taking his marching order from the Gay Agendaists.
Here he is talking about the End Times that will happen at today’s hearing on the expansion of the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA):
If we don’t stand up, tomorrow will be the day that your 1st Amendment rights will be infringed upon by our Republican State Legislators. Our nation was founded on religious freedom and now our own GOP is turning it’s [sic] back on one of the most fundamental, God-given rights. This is the moment of truth: tomorrow, a vote on the expansion of the Elliott-Larsen [Civil Rights Act] that will grant protected class status to certain groups is scheduled to happen. Tomorrow at 10:30 am the commerce committee will begin hearings on this bill, and a vote by the committee could send it to the house floor for a full vote.This expansion is a grave usurpation of our constitutionally and divinely protected freedoms to practice our religious beliefs. The proposed expansion will give special rights to the LGBT community, while placing the rights of religious groups and individuals in peril.
The expansion of the ELCRA is designed to make sure that protections given to women, people of color, and other protected classes are expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. What Courser means when he complains his religious freedoms are being trampled by this is that he wants the ability to hide behind his Christianity in order to discriminate against LGBT people by firing them from their jobs, refusing to rent or sell them homes, and a wide array of other things. Specifically it is:
AN ACT to define civil rights; to prohibit discriminatory practices, policies, and customs in the exercise of those rights based upon religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status; to preserve the confidentiality of records regarding arrest, detention, or other disposition in which a conviction does not result; to prescribe the powers and duties of the civil rights commission and the department of civil rights; to provide remedies and penalties; to provide for fees; and to repeal certain acts and parts of acts.
According to Courser and his ilk, if these civil rights are extended to the LGBT community, he won’t be able to pratice the loving religion of Christianity by firing gay employees, refusing to allow them to rent or sell homes to them, refusing to serve them at his “place of public accommodation”, or refusing to let them attend schools over which he has control.
As Gandhi put it so well, Courser is “so unlike [his] Christ”.
Courser promises that he has a forthcoming “gas tax email” that will be “worth the wait”. My money is that he’ll claim his Constitutionally-protected rights will be shredded if gas taxes are raised to fix our roads. Stay tuned. It’s sure to be worth the wait.
[Jesus Facepalm photo credit: jc-pics | Flickr]
