Gay Marriage Impedes So-Called Messiah Glenn Beck's "Honorable" Mission

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C. this weekend hopes to achieve two goals: "reclaim" the civil rights movement for the Tea Party set, and make him divine king of the nation's conservative set. He will fail on both fronts.

Regarding the civil rights angle: Beck and his followers can believe what they will, but their restrictive, exclusionary politics come nowhere near the progressive ideals set forth by civil rights movements, whether they be black, Latino, gay or otherwise. What was that phrase, so popular during the 2008 election: "Pig in lipstick?" Yeah, that's it.

As for Beck, Holy King of the Conservatives? He's riding high now, sure, but his lofty goal seems like a pipe dream. And we gays can take at least part of the credit.

The Fox News host shocked and awed the right wing earlier this month, when he admitted to Bill O'Reilly that he doesn't believe marriage equality should be considered a political issue. "Do you believe gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way," asked O'Reilly, to which Beck replied, "A threat to the country? No, I don't." Beck took a far more libertarian view of the matter than many had anticipated: "America, your country is burning down. I don’t think marriage, that the government actually has anything to do with what is a religious right." Social conservatives disagree.

Peter LaBarbera from the virulently anti-gay group Americans for "Truth" recently sent out a scathing missive in which he claimed Beck — and others, like Ann Coulter and Elisabeth Hasselbeck — had"caved in" to the gays, and put the country in jeopardy. "What confounds me are the 'conserv-a-libs' who so readily ditch five millennia of biblically-informed truth for the latest sexual/social fad," screeched Barber. "The libertarians appear to be winning the day on this issue, which is especially galling because the homosexualist agenda is a statist and anti-liberty agenda if there ever was one."

Beck may see no place for the marriage debate in his ideological mission, but that doesn't mean other seemingly natural allies don't: the Family Research Council, so long a cornerstone in the heterosexist conservative world, just released yet another statement urging members to fight the recent Proposition 8 ruling in California, where Judge Vaughn Walker's "poorly-developed ruling reflect[ed] his prejudice towards both religion and marriage."

It's no secret that the Tea Party and social conservatives have been facing a split: as economic issues dominate the national dialogue, groups like FRC are trying to reframe their moralistic debates in monetary terms. Sadly for them, they're not gaining much traction, and clearly prominent Tea Party leaders like Beck aren't on board with their obsolete worldview.

Even Beck's cohorts in the "Restoring Honor" rally aren't on board: his much lauded speaker, Dr. Alveda King, niece to MLK, has made it her mission to end gay rights, for she believes marriage equality would lead to "genocide." She's obviously not as eloquent as her late, great uncle.

GOP leader Ken Blackwell recently lamented that a GOP embrace of gay marriage would be a "disaster" that would split the party in two. Apparently it's not just the Republicans proper who are facing a homosexual schism. And, in terms of advancing equality, that's not a disaster: that's a blessing.

United the conservatives stand, divided they fall, and the United States can resume its eternal march toward fairness and achieving the liberal democracy for which so many have dreamed.

Photo credit: HA! Designs' Flickr. http://gayrights.change.org