According to Iowa’s Republican Rep. Steve King, not only does gay marriage threaten “opposite sex” marriage (copyright acknowledgment to Carrie “I would have been Miss Universe except that gays hate Christians” Prejean), but it is also part of the vast socialist conspiracy to take away your freedoms. No really, that is essentially what he said, although as with everything that comes out of King’s mouth the message got a little garbled in the transmission, shall we say:
Although his argument was not entirely clear, US House Representative Steve King, a Republican, seemingly told Radio America that, in order for a socialist agenda to be carried out, the “foundations” of marriage would have to be destroyed.
Rep. King said: “If there’s a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they’d have to go to, is same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal.”
King concluded: “Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept, in the final analysis.”
I’ve known a lot of gay people in my time here on earth. Some of them have been liberals and some of them have been Reds Republicans, usually of the economic, libertarian persuasion (though a few closeted cases clearly espoused family values with the best of them). I imagine some of them might even have belonged to the Communist Party, though I never heard one proclaim him or herself a Marxist to my face. But I have to give it to Rep. King. Only in America would expanding liberty, would giving the same rights to a minority population that the majority of us already enjoy, be called “a radical social idea” and a “purely socialist concept.”
Let’s check out the wayback machine shall we. Do you know what civil rights activists like Martin Luther King were accused of being back in the day? Being part of the vast international communist conspiracy that was seeking to destroy the American way of life.
That’s what FBI Dictator for life J. Edgar Hoover thought when he had King and his organization investigated for “communist infiltration.” Indeed, right after his famous March on Washington (where he gave his “I have a dream” speech) an official FBI memo described King as the “most dangerous Negro in America” because of the threat he and the civil right movement posed as a part of the international communist conspiracy. Here’s what that memo said about King:
(cont.)
Personally, I believe in the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech yesterday he stands head and shoulders over all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security….[I]t may be unrealistic to limit ourselves as we have been doing to legalistic proofs or definitely conclusive evidence that would stand up in testimony in court or before Congressional Committees that the Communist party, USA, does wield substantial influence over Negroes which one day could become decisive.
Later the FBI would start a disinformation campaign to have King branded as a communist, in which our old friend of Lady Liberty, Pat Buchanan, played a part. Even after his death, stalwart defenders of our freedoms like Jesse Helms, were still dragging King’s name through the “communist mud.”
King was repeatedly warned about his associations with known Communists by friendly elements in the Kennedy Administration and the Department of Justice (DO J) (including strong and explicit warning from President Kennedy himself). King took perfunctory and deceptive measures to separate himself from the Communists against whom he was warned. He continued to have close and secret contacts with at least some of them after being informed and warned of their background, and he violated a commitment to sever his relationships with identified Communists.
Throughout his career King, unlike many other civil rights leaders of his time, associated with the most extreme political elements in the United States. He addressed their organizations, signed their petitions, and invited them into his own organizational activities. Extremist elements played a significant role in promoting and influencing King’s opposition to the Vietnam war-an opposition that was not predicated on what King believed to be the best interests of the United States but on his sympathy for the North Vietnamese Communist regime and on an essentially Marxist and anti-American ideological view of U.S. foreign policy.
King’s patterns of associations and activities described in this report show that, at the least, he had no strong objection to Communism, that he appears to have welcomed collaboration with Communists, and that he and his principal vehicle, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), were subject to influence and manipulation by Communists. The conclusion must be that Martin Luther King, Jr. was either an irresponsible individual, careless of his own reputation and that of the civil rights movement for integrity and loyalty, or that he knowingly cooperated and sympathized with subversive and totalitarian elements under the control of a hostile foreign power.
So it isn’t uncommon for a minority group which is despised and hated by a certain segment of American conservatives to be linked to “socialism” or “communism” or “Marxism” or whatever -ism they feel will most resonate with the fears and bigotry of their base. So welcome to the socialist mud slinging party LGBT people. The socialist paradise of the Soviet Union may have condemned you as anti-social criminals worthy of imprisonment in its network of concentration camps known as the Gulag, but here in America you can proudly be labeled a Red by those who would shove you back into the closet (or worse) if they could.
