Every Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Supportive Ally needs to get accustommed to the level of hate and bile spewing forth from the social conservatives and far right fringe these days. By the level of uproar over the repeal of DADT, you would think that Congress pass gay marriage or something! But no, not at all. The only thing that happened was that a repeal was passed that would allow gay and lesbians to serve without having to lie about themselves. Lying- it was a sin last time I checked, so you would think that the far right crazy Christians would be all for an end to lying. Less sinning has to be a good thing, isn’t it? But not in their book, at least their political playbook.

Partly the level of backlash makes sense. Allowing gays and lesbians to be treated as equal and respected parts of the military is a huge step forward. If our young people who enlist go into the military and have positive experiences of gays and lesbians, they will come out of the armed forces less likely to believe that gays and lesbians should be demonized. The entire strategy of the far right crazies is to keep the LGBT community marginalized, and hidden, as if we aren’t real people, and to use misinformation and scare tactics rather than allow honesty and truth to be known. So, the far right? They are probably feeling pretty screwed right about now.

Even so, the insanity being spread is beyond belief. 2 Political Junkies has a good piece about Bryan Fischer and the AFA that is worth reading, and last week, the AFA was calling gay and lesbian soldiers, enemies. The hypocrisy is that all of these attacks are based on lies, misinformation and hyperbole. Not only do the far right groups want our soldiers to lie, they themselves use utter lies to make their case and spread their hatred. And they call themselves, Christian. So weird.

Citizen’s United, a far right political activist group is doing pretty well on the hate mongering too. They’ve released a new ad that uses LadyGaga to suggest that the US Military will have to re-institute the draft because of repealing DADT.  The ad is completely disgusting and contains few facts. For David Bossie, the group’s president and Chair, this repeal was all about the Democrats:

“After losing 63 seats and their majority in the House, and six seats in the U.S. Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid still can’t get their priorities straight. The passage of the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy could turn out to be a day of infamy for our military.”

To bad that the repeal was the work of neither Pelosi nor Reid. While Pelosi passed the releal earlier in the year as part of the Defense Authorization Act, Reid failed to do the same. It was Republican Collins and Independent Leiberman who made this bill happen and get it pushed through in both the House and the Senate.

This demonstrates how the GOP isn’t the Far Right, no matter how much the Far Right is trying to do to take over complete control of the GOP. Yet, the Far Right is going to mainly attack the Left, at least at the moment, and speak as if they speak for all of the conservatives.

So, my prediction is that we will see the rhetoric pick up, and be filled with more lies, misinformation and hyperbole. As Gay Civil Rights makes any stride forward, even small strides, the rhetoric will pick up and we will need to stay calm, keep pushing forward, and counter the lies with truth at each and every turn.