Rusty Kennedy
(He's the one in the blue shirt and crooked tie.)
"In war, the vilification of the enemy is the first step in dehumanizing the “other” so troops can feel justified in killing them. It is with this knowledge that we can look to the systematic vilification of the LGBT community as one of the precursors to this type of hate crime. This informs our programming and how we teach people about the differences among us, in order to prevent dehumanization and thereby reduce the likelihood of violence."
Rusty (of Sunnybrook Farm) Kennedy is the CEO of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, a giant white elephant that sucks some 250,000 dollars out of the country treasury every year and accomplishes nothing. Kennedy is a politically-correct liberal who has used his position over the past quarter century to attend the Durban Conference on Racism in South Africa back in 2001 (that focused on condemning Israel) and to make grand pronouncements every time something bad happens.
So now in the wake of Orlando, Rusty darkens the pages of the Orange County Register to chime in with his politically correct statement on the massacre. By cleverly twisting his words, he leaves the impression that the murder of 49 gays was the work of You and Me, the gay bashers of an intolerant, racist, and homophobic America while shifting blame away from the ideology that believes that gays should be put to death.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/people-719781-everyone-violence.html
Of course, Kennedy's outrage is always selective. Several years ago, based on the advice of someone whose name I have long since forgotten, I wrote to Rusty complaining about anti-Semitism at the UC Irvine campus, a subject that always seems to elude his attention. All I got back was a nasty gram from Rusty because I had dared to criticize the UCI administration for their inaction.
Contrary to Kennedy's implication quoted above, America has passed from the time when gays had no choice but to live in the closet lest they be tormented and made fun of. We are a more accepting place now, thankfully. Not so in the Islamic world, however, where sharia law mandates the death penalty for gays, a sentence carried out all too often either by courts, local village mullahs, or by simple mobs. Rusty omits any mention of that, however. It is true that the killer was born in the US, but he still subscribed to an ideology that does not share our tolerance-contrary to this misstatement:
"The blame for this mass murder is not with Muslims. Such an atrocity is strictly forbidden in the Islamic faith,...."
While blame should not be ascribed to all Muslims, the fact is that under hudud sharia law, homosexuality is categorized as a "crime against God", which many fundamental Christians also believe, but which is punishable by death under Islamic law. Kennedy's statement is misleading at best.
"Some of these advances have been met with violent rhetoric and fear mongering. Irrational concerns about how marriage equality will undermine the institution and misplaced fears of transgender individuals disrupting bathrooms in our schools are common. These fears can be exploited for political purposes only when the truth is obscured."
Talk about obscuring the truth! There is a huge difference between opposing gay marriage and single sex rest rooms and slaughtering gays in a night club.
The fact remains that these 49 victims were not killed by a bunch of right-wing, Christian skin heads, but by a Muslim representing himself as an ISIS warrior. Does that make all American Muslims guilty? Of course not, and I agree with Kennedy that an entire community should not be blamed or punished. He should not, however, twist the facts and his words to insinuate that others were to blame for this atrocity.
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