When you donate $1500 to a political campaign to strip other people—people who are not your co-religionists—of their civil rights. Richard Raddon is, or was, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival. All hell broke loose after it emerged that Raddon, who is Mormon, had donated $1500 to the “Yes on 8” campaign. The LA Times:

After Raddon’s contribution was made public online, Film Independent was swamped with criticism from “No on 8” supporters both inside and outside the organization. Within days, Raddon offered to step down as festival director, but the board, which includes Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Lionsgate President Tom Ortenberg and Fox Searchlight President Peter Rice, gave him a unanimous vote of confidence.

Yet, the anti-Raddon bile continued to bubble in the blogosphere, and according to one Film Independent board member, “No on 8” supporters also berated Raddon personally via phone calls and e-mails. The recriminations ultimately proved too much, and when Raddon offered to resign again, this time the board accepted.

Raddon released a statement that said, in part, “I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion or sexual orientation, are entitled to equal rights.” Except for when they’re not—and Raddon also believes that the religious should wield a veto over other peoples’ civil rights. He goes on to whine about being a “devout and faithful Mormon,” and about how his contribution to “Yes on 8” was a “private matter.” Uh… no. A donation to a political campaign is a public matter; and civil marriage rights for same-sex couples did not infringe upon the religious freedom of Mormons, devout or otherwise.

Bill Condon, the gay guy who directed of Dreamgirls, attempted to get Raddon’s back: “Someone has lost his job and possibly his livelihood because of privately held religious beliefs.”

No. No. No. Raddon lost his job due to criticism of his public political actions, not his private religious beliefs, and his public political actions were a part of the public record. If Raddon wanted to go to church and pray his little heart out against same-sex marriage, or proselytize on street corners against gay marriage, or counsel gay men to leave their husbands and marry nice Mormon girls instead, that could be viewed as an expression of his “privately held religious beliefs.” Instead he helped fund a political campaign to strip a vulnerable minority group of its civil rights.

“Millions of Californians definitely lost their civil rights,” says John Aravosis. “But I’m not hearing a lot of concern about any of those victims, only sympathy for their attacker. When you use the power of the state to rip away my civil rights, and force me to live by your ‘values,’ you are no longer practicing your religion. You’re practicing politics.”

In the wake of Prop 8 millions of gays and lesbians all over the country have decided that we’re no longer going to play by the old rules. We’re not going to let people kick our teeth down our throats and then run and hide behind “Nothing personal—just my private religious beliefs!” That game’s over.

137 replies on “When Are Your “Privately Held Religious Beliefs” Not So Private Anymore?”

  1. Just a guess here, but I bet the moronic Jordan, of the multiple posts above decrying McCarthyism among those smart enough to know the difference between public and private convictions, is actually Lori Jean trying to draw fire in a different direction after having run so ineptly the No-on-8 campaign. Why do we always let the lesbians run these things. Takes me back to the absurdly ridiculous old days of “Hands off Washington.” Those were the days.

  3. Savage is so right on. Look how things have changed since Ronald Wilson Reagan (666) and the political emergence of the Religious Right. People’s religious views used to be shown much more respect and deference in the public sphere. You just didn’t question or criticize their views. But the Falwells and the Robertsons and Anita Bryants started hammering gay rights and abortion rights, etc. As they gained political power they used the AIDS epidemic as a political tool. It was perfectly acceptable to slam gays publicly from the political pulpits. But gays dared not criticize their religious views.

    But look how much that has changed, especially during the Bush years. As he started turning our tax money over to the churches that work against us, we dropped the patina of deference to their “privately held religious beliefs.” Now Prop H8 has made it official. People’s religious beliefs are fair game when they are used to take away civil rights. Mormons and Catholics are now openly ridiculed. And after all the hypocrisy and scandals and abuse, they richly deserve it. One of the backlashes to their involvement in politics is that they have given up the right to expect respect. They’ll never get it back now… not in the American political sphere. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

  4. Slavery and Jim Crow partially grew out of Biblical doctrine said blacks were cursed by God. I mean- has anyone heard of Bob Jones University? The KKK uses religious doctrine to justify its belief that blacks are inferior. The Mormon Church up until the late 70s thought that people of color were the descendants of demons. That’s the eveil we are discussing here. Its changed groups, yet again, but the behavior remains the same.

    This is the history that repeats: Some disfavored group is seen as an afront to God, and therefore it’s okay to use the power of the state to discriminate against them in some way. The character of the dicrimination varies, but never the use of state power or justification for the behavior under religious doctrine. This is why Mr. Raddon’s behavior was so dangerous.

    A great and sad book on the subject of the use of the Bible to justify discrimination is The Good Book by Rev. Gomes- a preacher and theologian at Harvard.

    I think Dan is a nice guy, but we really need to start to bring in people who get how the doctrine works, and how its being used.

    This debate is a difficult one, but it must happen. here’s a Baptist preacher who tried to deal with this a couple of years ago because of his concern over how faith was once again behind the curveball of history. He was attacked by his fellow Christians, but his point is even more true right now- that Christianity lags behind human rights, rather than leads and comes to terms with it.

    http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/w…

    Let me cite a quote from it:

    “The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you’re powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it’s likely to be.”

  5. The “yes” vote on Proposition 8 will probably go down in American history as being on the same level of historical significance as the Stonewall riots.

    The gays are now mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.

    Think of their reaction as being equivalent to the Boston Tea party.

  6. “Privately Held” means personal, not non-public. “Privately Held” companies are owned by a limited number of individuals (who are frequently publicly known via Sec. or State listings), whereas “Publicly Held” or more commonly called “Publicly Traded” means ownership is open to the public, i.e. any person with the ability to acquire shares of corporate stock.

    I thought the title of the opinion piece was a clever play on words, but it seems the author actually believes people hold these beliefs in secret, and want to keep them that way. I believe most of us just want to handle matters in the least confrontational way, or at least that’s my preference.

    Religious beliefs are generally public knowledge. It is common knowledge that a vast number of Christians, probably a majority, including the President-Elect, do not support marriage for Gays. Certainly those supporting Prop 8 weren’t trying to hide it.

    Obviously, the majority of the citizens of CA, as in the prior vote a few years ago, still believe that marriage is rooted in a religious rite, not a civil right.

    And that explains Raddon’s statement that “I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion or sexual orientation, are entitled to equal rights.”

    You may or may not understand that, perhaps you can’t even conceive of it, but that is the the general perspective of those who oppose marriage for Gays.

  7. MORE PROOF THAT RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES! ITS TOTAL HOKUS/POKUS 24/7 A HOMOPHOBIC MONEYMAKING SCAM! 10% OR YOU’R OUT!

  8. My continued and experienced take on Mormons:

    Howard Hughes thought Mormons were trustworthy, They doped him up on Morphine Sulfate for years, fed him exclusively Hershey bars until he croaked. A skeleton of a man who gave the appearance of a homelessness with broken off needles still in him. They cashed out with millions.

    The previous very Mormon Las Vegas County commissioners are now in Federal prisons for a variety of charges including bribery which they called Donations. They all claim they are directed by god.

    Mormon missionaries frequently get public assistance and food stamps while they are on their missions as they have Mormon contacts that approve them in most states. Except for San Francisco where Mormon missionary work was suspended at least for young male Mormons because they never returned to their Mormon prisons.

    Mormon Central hired a Jewish PR firm to negate the general hate for Mormons by the public and it was recommended to change their name to The Church of Jesus Christ and hide. Since then Mormon Central issued a recommendation to compare Mormons to Holocaust Jews whenever possible to gain comparative sympathy and the first usage was from their number one idiot Orin Hatch.

  9. @106

    Doesn’t know the difference between a real person and a fictitious person (a corporation)! Heheh!

    Probably doesn’t know the difference between a civil marriage and a religious marriage, either.

  10. This Mormon movie man ought to be careful. Is he aware that according to many Christians, he’s not even saved? That’s right, because he doesn’t believe in a core tenant of Biblical Christianity, which is that Jesus Christ is God, and that salvation is by faith in Christ alone, and that there is nothing that anyone can do, no religious piety that can bring a man or woman safely to God in Heaven. So, if you’re trying to work your way to Heaven by being a good person or a religious person, you’re missing the boat. Mormons don’t believe that. So, how would this Morman feel if a Christian who held to the above-mentioned belief system were to make donations to a political activist group whose sole purpose were to deny Mormans their civil rights because Mormans don’t believe the correct tenants? No such activist group exists, that I know of, but the point is clear, and I agree with the writer of the protest article. This Morman is politicizing his faith, trying to re-make the United States in this one way, so that his Morman beliefs about homosexuality help drive the way the country operates. They may drive the way the Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints operates, but they shouldn’t drive the way Washington operates, or the way a state government operates. People are free top believe what they want about homosexuality, in their hearts, in their minds, in their faith communities. They are not free to force the gay community to adhere to those beliefs.

  11. People are free to believe what they want about homosexuality, in their hearts, in their minds, in their faith communities.
    However they are not free to force the strait community to adhere to those beliefs.
    They are not free to force their definition of ‘marriage’ on society.

  12. It is HOMOSEXUALS who are trying to re-make the United States, so that their beliefs about homosexuality drive the way the country operates.
    Their opponents are trying to keep marriage the way it has been for 10,000 years.

  13. 112
    the definition and meaning of marriage has wiggled all over the place in the last 10,000 years. i’m sure you could find countless versions of marriage in that time span. marriage is not a consistent ideology.

    and by no means has it consistently been between “one man and one woman.”

  19. Actually, civil marriage (secular marriage recognized by a government without a religious requirement) has only existed for 400 years. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_marri…

    I would venture to say that there is one other very old tradition that this nation overturned once before. In both the Old and New testament, in the Koran, in the Torah, are clear passages stating that women should not hold authority over men and were to be ‘ruled’ by husbands.

    And it wasn’t just a religious tradition. It was a cultural tradition as well. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Europeans, the dynastic Chinese, the Aztecs, the Incas….in every civilization in every inhabited continent for all of known human history, women existed without the same rights as men – sometimes with no rights. There were very few exceptions.

    Finally, in 1898 in New Zeland (and 1920 in the US) women were given the right to vote. How dare we? Where did we get the right to defy thousands of years of religious, scriptural, and cultural tradition?

    It’s simple: as much as we owe the ancients, we are better than they were. It’s our world now. Civilization is not about stasis – it is about change.

  20. Civilization is first about preserving and passing itself on.
    The ‘family’ (man-woman and kids; for the clueless) is the best (and only dependable) way to do that.
    Homosexuality is a dead-end indulgence that prosperous societies can survive in small doses.
    The more extensively it infests a society the weaker that civilization becomes, and proliferation of homosexuality is a hallmark of civilizations on the brink of extinction.
    Our society probably will legalize homosexual marriage in the near future, Mormons and Prop 8 not withstanding.
    Our society is also just a couple more swirls around the bowl from the bottom of the crapper.
    eat, drink and be merry

  21. Homosexuality is a dead-end indulgence that prosperous societies can survive in small doses. The more extensively it infests a society the weaker that civilization becomes, and proliferation of homosexuality is a hallmark of civilizations on the brink of extinction.

    Oh, brother. Look, a student of pretend history! Kindly offer some counterexamples, of civilizations that didn’t tolerate homosexuality and continued forever.

  23. @121
    Ah- a jackass that types!

    Kindly offer some examples of any civilizations that continued forever.
    Better yet, kindly offer examples of any civilization based on homosexuality…..none?
    Perhaps because homosexuality is a dead-end indulgence that already prosperous societies can only endure in small doses. A parasitic fungus that saps vitality (in the literal sense of the word) and eventually kills if it grows large enough.
    The basic requirement for a society (or species) to survive is the ability to reproduce, to produce competent functional adults. Homosexuals by definition would not participate in that vital function. A society might tolerate 2% homosexuals, start to show strain at 10%. Could a society maintain itself if 50% were homosexual? Demographers will tell you it could not. If it grows large enough it kills the host organism.

  28. Mormonism as well as all the other Cults are Flat Earthers.
    Heaven’s above and hell’ below except Mormons that can buy their way into a better heaven.
    Mormons are indoctrinated that If they are really good Mormons and gives lots of money to Mormon Central they will get to be the Jesus, the Emperor, the Dictator of another planet.
    Mormons as well as all other Cults including their beloved GOP are Biochemical Misfits, these Psychotics think in terms of one dimensional cognition and as a result their Bipolar Affective Disorder has turned this world into a Cesspool. All to satisfy their Schizophrenic Delusions.
    All Your Cult Dogma is an Oxymoron, Get Help!

  30. @126:

    do you mean produce like a production line? like humans are machines who churn babies out? or do you mean like raising, nuturing, etc? the concept of parenthood may not be so black and white anymore. allow me to add a heterosexual anecdote to throw a wrench in your arguement: a man and a woman have sex, yet the woman is married to another man. shw gives birth to a child that is not her husband’s, but they continue to raise the child as if they were his own. it doesn’t matter if the husband knows or not, the world keeps on turning, the child has a set of parents, despite not having been produced by both of them.

    now let’s turn to the fact that lesbian couples have done in-vitro fertilization, while gay men occasionally use surrogates, not to mention both parties do adopt where it’s legal to do so. in that case, yeah I’ve seen a homosexual couple produce a child. while that may defy natural law, so do boob jobs, the internet and life support.

    I see what you’re trying to do here. you are making attempting to make a rational arguement against homosexuality using “science” and “history” instead of religious malarkey to show that there are reasons to oppose gay marriage that are secular too. the problem is that you are wrong. and the best part is that you know you are wrong, which is why you have to use language coding homosexuality as some kind of plague.

    you say that embracing the gay population is the downfall of our society, that it has led to the ruin of other past civilizations, but that ignores the myraid other factors that contribute to such an end. in our society, we’ve also gone to great lenghts to make equal opportunities for women, to destigmatize racial intermixing. those are also factors you could just as easily point to. but since you are focusing on homosexuals, let me just say, right know, we should be thanking the gays, not blaming them.

    you are partially correct about an increased gay population being a dead-end. usually it comes hand in hand when a general population grows too large, and in this case it could not be more true, seeing how by the end of this decade there will almost 7 billion people on the planet. natural resources are getting tighter, the environment has hit critical mass, and to top it off, people are living longer. now a group of people are growing in numbers and in voice who do not procreate, but can do one thing that we need: give a home to all the children who do not have them. and it’d be a damn cynical thing to deny them the opportunity to do so, simply because nature designated their genes for a protection against overpopulation. likewise, it’d be cynical to argue that if the planet is in such dire need, fuck the kids who don’t have homes or families. you should be arguing in favor of a wider euthanasia then.

    in one of your posts, you already resigned to the idea that gays will most likely achieve the right to marry soon. maybe now that you admit it, you should stop seeing it as a defeat and get over yourself. on a long enough time line we’re all doomed, the question is, where are you going to stand when history looks back at you? are you going to say “I kept telling people no, no, no and I lived a life of little joy” or are you going to shrug your shoulders saying “ehh, I wonder how bad this week’s episode of Heroes is going to suck”. it’s not apathy, it’s just knowing when to shut up.

  32. @130

    Actually Biology is the stake in the heart of homosexuality.
    In order to exist an organism must reproduce itself.
    Were there in fact a ‘homosexual’ condition the defining characteristic of it would be inability to reproduce.
    Fatal flaw, dead-end genetic DEFECT.
    Darwin would be displeased.
    There is no homosexual condition; it is a behavior choice.
    ‘Homosexuals’ can reproduce as well as anyone else.
    Homosexuality is something people do, not what they are.

    It is a behavior choice with social consequences.
    Successful child rearing is tough under the best of conditions and far too little of it happens in our society.
    The ‘family’ needs all the help it can get.
    Why give legal sanction and equality to a competing social model?
    It is a fatuous indulgence we can not afford.
    Commit those resources to more responsible parenting so there are not so many kids in need of parents.

    Sure, homosexuals can get and raise kids, but to do so they must imitate heterosexual institutions and practices- why should society subsidize cheap second rate knock-offs?
    Turning kids who have no vote in the matter over to be raised by homosexuals just so they can feel better about their lifestyle choices is cruelly unfair.
    Get a puppy if you want something to raise.

    You may say the world is going to hell anyway so societal suicide by homosexuality is not a big deal
    but if that is the homosexual communities position
    truth in advertising would suggest we discuss it openly the next time there is a referendum.

  33. @128 & 131
    Does spewing on about Mormons make you feel better?
    Is the issue homosexual marriage or have you given up on that.
    You are taking your eye off the ball.
    If everything you say about Mormons is true is doesn’t change anything.
    No one said “Vote yes for Prop 8 because the Mormon Church is true”
    Mormons are a tiny (1-2%) piece of California and you have lost twice there (as well as everywhere else, where btw there were no Mormons)
    Energy spent hating Mormons is wasted energy.
    Effort spent demonizing Mormons is wasted effort.
    Get a clue.
    Don’t be a loser forever.

  34. Good reference article:

    http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2008…

    Sociopaths use all manner of rhetoric to divert attention from their operations.
    Mormons really hate that a spotlight has been focused on their Occult rituals and practices. Even those that voted for Prop 8 now comprehend that they sided with sleaze because Mormonism is being exposed.

    You don’t object to putting a little Light on your “secret rituals and occultism, Do you?

    The Boycott Utah, Idaho and Mormon Businesses stands!

  35. SPOTLIGHT
    Bring it on.
    As long as you spell the name right.
    (which, admittedly,
    is sometimes a challenge for your typical
    foaming at the corners of the mouth
    ranting Mormon hater)

  37. The media is also quick to adopt the pro-hate side’s portrayal of a handful of isolated incidents, like white powder being sent to a temple, as deliberate tactics of the gay equality movement.

    I say fine: If absolutely everything is fair game attributable, then by their own logic the “traditional marriage” folks put a 50-year-old gay Salt Lake City man in the hospital this morning with critical head wounds.

    Who again is running the campaign of intimidation and violence?

Comments are closed.