True to form, Rep. Ronald Stephens (at left), a far right politician in Illinois - parroting the tired and false bullshit disseminated by the Christian Right - has claimed that the adoption of same sex civil unions has placed the State of Illinois and the nation as a whole on the road to collapse. The last time I looked at this issue was over a year and half ago when local loon, Pat Robertson spewed the same batshitery. Here's the statement by Stephens who obviously is out to further prove that he's an ignorant moron (Stephens was arrested on DUI earlier this year and nearly lost his pharmacist license):*
"If you look at the sociological history of societies that have failed," said Stephens (R-Greenville), "what are some of the commonalities- One of those is that open homosexuality becomes accepted."
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Never mind that the statement is utterly untrue from the prospective of all legitimate historians. Usually, the main stream media itself merely parrots the lies and untruths, but this time, Neil Steinberg, in a column in the Chicago Sun-Times has called Stephens out and, indeed, made a mockery of his bigotry and ignorance. Would that more in the MSN would do the same, but unfortunately, too many "TV journalist" are hired for their looks as opposed to whether or not they have a brain in their head or not. Here are highlights from Stienberg's column:
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Ignorance is the great engine of human misery, the fertile field where its fruit, hatred, grows in all its awful forms, from the first human, crouching on a dark savannah, screeching terrified defiance at a shape silhouetted on the horizon, to Rep. Ronald Stephens, rising to his feet in the Illinois House, blaming "open homosexuality" for the fall of Rome.
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Let us consult Edward Gibbon, whose classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire isn't read in high schools, at least not Downstate, apparently, the way it once was.
Gibbon puts the blame -- and this really is too delicious -- not on homosexuality, but on Christianity, which he says made the Roman population more worried about their place in heaven than about barbarians at the gate.
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None of this, of course, will matter to Stephens, or his constituents who let him run unopposed in the past two elections. For them, the glory of Rome is not a historical event studied by the great minds of Western civilization for the past 1500 years, but another talking point, and that, in invoking the fall as a cautionary tale relevant today, he is wrong in every particular won't influence him any more than the fact that he is wrong about the supposed pernicious influence of gay unions, or gays in the military, or any of the other alleged faults pinned on gays by an ever-shrinking band of zealots desperate to project their fear onto somebody.
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This inversion -- where gays are found culpable for something actually the fault of their oppressors -- is par for the course. Look at gay adoption, long opposed by the faithful on the premise that gays shouldn't be allowed around children, even their own.
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That Stephens, a pharmacist, would present the culture of Virgil, Ovid and Seneca solely as less strident gay bashers than ourselves who, thus weakened, fell to the barbarians, is sad but not extraordinary.
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For those interested in REAL HISTORY, here's a summary of some of the principal cause of Rome'sfall:
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Antagonism between the Senate and the Emperor
Political Corruption and the Praetorian Guard
Fast expansion of the Empire
Constant Wars and Heavy Military Spending
Barbarian Knowledge of Roman Military Tactics
Failing Economy
Unemployment of the Working Classes (The Plebs)
The 'Mob' and the cost of the 'Games'
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Note: No mention of homosexuality whatsoever. Indeed, if the USA should learn anything from Rome's fall, it ought to be the costs of military over extension, declining economy and the destruction of the middle class - all things that are principally caused by the GOP in this country. Perhaps Rep. Stephens needs to look in the mirror.
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