Photo credit, U.S. Embassy Berlin
Former Goldman Sachs Banker Phil Murphy took his campaign for governor into the gutter yesterday when he accused this Republican opponent, Kim Guadagno, of condoning racism and antisemitism.
“We are now seeing a disturbing trend emerge with Kim Guadagno and her campaign,” Murphy said in a statement, according to Politico. “Yesterday, she refused to criticize a sitting Assemblyman for posing with the Confederate flag, a symbol of bigotry and divisiveness. Today, we’ve learned that her choice for Lieutenant Governor, Woodcliff Lake Mayor Carlos Rendo, has been accused of systematic harassment and discrimination by the Chabad community in Woodcliff Lake. Yet, both times Lieutenant Governor Guadagno refused to criticize racist and anti-semitic speech despite the clear evidence.”
If Murphy believes that accusations in a lawsuit are “clear evidence” and that country singer Hank Williams Jr. and Assemblyman Parker Space are racists, maybe he is dumb enough to not have known that he was in charge of a $55 million investment in a Chinese shoe manufacturer that used slave labor while he was president of Goldman Sachs Asia. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 31st, 2017 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: 2017 Elections, 2017 NJ Gubernatorial Politics, Monmouth County, Monmouth County News, New Jersey, Opinion, Phil Murphy | Tags: 2017 Gubernatorial race, bigotry, District 4 Coalition for Change, Goldman Sachs, Hate speech, Jim Johnson, Kim Guadagno, New Jersey, Opinion, Phil Murphy, slave labor | 5 Comments »
In Note to Chick-fil-A Bigots: If You’re Going to Quote God, at Least Get Him Right at Politicususa.com Hrafnkell Haraldsson says bigotry, not theology, is what is behind fundamentalist Christian opposition to same sex marriage.
God is very precise about a great many things in the Old Testament including men not shaving, but he is troublingly vague about marriage.
Nowhere does he come out and say in those clear, precise tones adopted by today’s religious bigots, “biblical marriage is between one man and one woman.”
Nowhere.
Let’s do a quick run-down…we have man + woman where bride proves her virginity or is stoned to death (Genesis 2:24); we have man + woman + concubines (Judges 19:1-30); we have man + woman + woman (the most common form of biblical marriage – polygyny); we have rapist + victim (Deuteronomy 22:28-29); we have son-less widow + closest male relative (Gen. 38:6-10); we have male soldier + prisoner of war (Numbers 31:1-18, Dueteronomy 21:11-14; we even have male slave + female slave (Exodus 21:4) and man + woman + woman’s female slave (Gen. 16:1-6, Jacob Gen. 30:4-5) because of course, slavery is also permitted in the Bible – it is not condemned and forbidden, as some southern bigot wishful-thinkers have reminded us.
So admittedly, we don’t have examples of male + male or female + female marriage in the Bible, but we also don’t have any place that says that Biblical marriage is man + woman. Obviously, there are a great many variations. In a strict sense, all these examples above are of biblical marriage and fundamentalist Christians should be fighting for all of them, not only your basic man + woman marriage
Haraldsson declares himself a Heathen and a progressive liberal on his twitter site. His Politicususa profile dubs him a social liberal with centrist political leanings. He has degrees in history and philosophy.
Haraldsson weakens his argument with his own anti-Christian and anti-Republican bigotry: (emphasis added)
God helps those who help themselves is actually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and like loving the sinner but hating the sin, goes against biblical teachings. The whole self-reliance thing is very popular and chic among conservative Christian Republicans these days but the Old Testament teaches that when you harvest your crops you leave some “for the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:9-10). Can you imagine a Republican urging farmers to do this?
No, I can’t either. They won’t even help put out the flames when your house catches on fire. Can you imagine Jesus standing by and watching a house burn?
I know volunteer firefighters who happen to be Republicans. I’m offended for them by Haraldsson’s bigotry. Some of those Republican firefighters are also politicians who have run into burning homes before Newark’s Democratic Mayor, Cory Booker did that, tweeted about it and told the media it was a come to Jesus moment.
I also know quite a few Republicans who are very charitable, leaving large sums for the poor.
Let’s be charitable with Haraldsson and look beyond his bigorty. Are his biblical arguments valid? Is same sex marriage a violation of God’s Word?
Posted: August 6th, 2012 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: 2012 Presidential Politics, Chick-fil-A, Gay Marriage, Marriage Equality | Tags: bigotry, Chick-fil-A, Gay Marriage, Hrafnkel Haraldsson | 8 Comments »
