Hate Speech And Shootings: Why Can’t The Right See The Connection?

A few months ago, just after September’s devastating anti-gay bulling suicides that took the lives of at least ten teens, the Public Religion Research Institute released an amazing study that showed sixty-five percent of Americans — a vast majority — blame churches for the “higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth,” and that seventy-two percent of Americans believe “messages 
about 
the 
issue 
of 
homosexuality
 coming 
from
 places
 of 
worship 
contribute
 to negative
 views 
of 
gay 
and 
lesbian
 people.” Additionally, forty-three percent of Americans, a plurality, “think 
messages
 on
 the 
issue 
of
 homosexuality 
coming 
from
 America’s
 places 
of 
worship 
are
 generally 

negative.”

Saturday’s unthinkable tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, which left six dead, including a nine-year old girl, three women in their seventies, and a federal judge, and a dozen or more wounded, including Gabby Giffords, the Democratic Congresswoman for that district, has sparked more conversation around the world about the connection between hate speech, virulent and violent rhetoric, and shootings than I could ever imagine.

From the Tea Party in Tucson, which refuses to tamp down its rhetoric even after Saturday’s massacre, to Fidel Castro in Cuba, to Sarah Palin’s aide’s lie that they never intended her crosshairs map to look like it had crosshairs, (rather, “surveyor’s symbols,”) and elsewhere around the world, people everywhere are talking about whether or not there is a connection between America’s climate of hate speech and the Tucson shootings.

Many on the Left immediately pointed fingers at the politicians and pundits on the Right: Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Sharon Angle, Michele Bachmann, the GOP in general, and others who have peddled their wares of hatred, hate speech, and division upon an all-to-eager to accept the politics of hate as acceptably American “free speech” public.

The Right fought back, just as virulently and hatefully as ever. In fact, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips falsely wrote, “We need to remind everyone, the shooter was a liberal lunatic.” Of course, this is a lie; Jared Lee Loughner, the man who shot nineteen people on Saturday in Tucson, including Congresswoman Giffords, is a registered Independent, showing no signs of being a liberal or a Democrat, or fitting into any reasonable political mold.)

The conversation America is pretending to have now is, sadly appropriately Fox News-inspired: pseudo-“fair and balanced.”

Those on the Right have ponied-up their encyclopedias of Left-inspired hate against Bush, Palin, et al. Those on the Left have ponied-up their encyclopedias of Right-inspired hate against, well, everyone. Gays, immigrants, Obama, Hispanics, Muslims, etc. (Here’s my contribution.)

But the debate we need to have is impossible, and that became crystal-clear to me yesterday when I hear Rachel Sklar debate conservative radio host Steve Malzberg on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

Malzberg was ranting about how Palin had nothing to do with the shooting and there was no way she should be held accountable, while Sklar said Palin’s crosshairs map, which targeted twenty Democratic Congressmen, including Giffords, contributed to the virulent climate and that it wasn’t a “stretch” to say that Palin’s map was “a bad idea.” Sklar met him half way; Malzberg couldn’t even make that connection.

The Right is so focused on protecting their way of life of regulation-free gun-carrying, regulation-free verbal assaults, regulation-free everything, that they have created an expensive climate for the rest of us. And sometimes, the cost of “regulation-free” is death.

But the real question here is, why can’t — or won’t — the Right accept the fact that their own hate speech contributed to the climate and environment of hate that led to Saturday’s killing of six people, and wounding of a dozen more?

And why can’t — or won’t — the Right accept the fact that phrases like, “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” or, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will,” invite and incite the very violence we saw Saturday.

The other important question is why won’t America accept the fact that guns kill, and guns need to be, yes, controlled.

According to Daniel Vice of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, “In a typical weekend in the United States, more people are shot and killed than in an average year in Australia; the same is true in Britain, and other countries that have tougher gun laws.”

Just look at these all-too-recent headlines from polling giant Gallup:

In U.S., Continuing Record-Low Support for Stricter Gun Control

Fewer Americans Want Stricter Gun Laws

In U.S., Record-Low Support for Stricter Gun Laws

Sadly, America is a very “gun-friendly” country, but not a very “gay-friendly” one.

But if our not very gay-friendly America can finally make the connection between churches and houses of worship contributing to the suicides among gay and lesbian youth, surely America can make the connection between the hate speech of rabid right wing politicians and pundits — the Sarah Palins and the Glenn Becks, the Michelle Malkins and the Michele Bachmanns, the Rush Limbaughs and the Sharron Angles — and the massacre in Tucson?