Social conservatives creating storm in Montgomery County
If you're planning on touring places known for their open-mindedness and tolerance of diversity, you might want to take Montgomery County off your itinerary. Montgomery County's Republican Leadership Council, those guardians of all that is good and right and pure, seem hell-bent (an ironic choice of adjectives, no?) on turning their little corner of God's Country into something out of the set of "Pleasantville". Before you know it, the only music allowed will be Johnny Mathis, the only approved reading material will be the Bible, and all the men will be required to be clean-shaven. Didn't the Taliban try something like this not all that long ago??
"The clear and apparent effort that the Commissioners Court made over time in incremental steps has been to appease a very impassioned group of voters in hopes that each baby step would satisfy them and make them go away," said Democratic Chairman Raymond McNeel.
In listing what he considered his group's recent victories, Jenkins said the RLC also has persuaded commissioners to use an Internet filter to screen computers at the library for pornography and to put plaques reading "In God We Trust" in county libraries.
The group also supported recent efforts to add the touch of modesty to the statue, he said, and remove some art from an Italian restaurant.
But McNeel warned that if commissioners think they have satisfied the group, they may be in for a surprise.
"Clearly, with each incremental step, the (RLC) and its allies have seen each concession as an energizing, mobilizing rallying point, whetting its appetite for further gains," he said.
County Judge Alan B. Sadler denied that commissioners were catering to the group.
"This is being portrayed as if these were exclusively Republican Leadership Council extremist issues," Sadler said. "It was started by the Republican Leadership Council, but we are not reacting necessarily to the Republican Leadership Council."
He said the issues reflect mainstream opinion in the county.
Jenkins dislikes the terms "archconservative" and "far right," but county GOP Chairman Walter D. Wilkerson Jr., a target of the council's ire despite his success in switching the county from a Democratic to a Republican stronghold, has a different view.
"They are not mainstream on the political spectrum," he said. "They are out on the radical right, and no political organization or movement has ever succeeded in winning an election when they position themselves to the right or left of the spectrum." ....
The latest success, the new book review process, came after the council complained about two books that it considers unfit for county library shelves.
The council earlier had persuaded commissioners to yank It's Perfectly Normal, a widely distributed juvenile work about human sexuality, and It's so Amazing, both by Robie H. Harris, because of what critics charge is their pro-homosexual stance and explicit illustrations.
If the fine people of Montgomery County are content to live under the American Taliban regime of the RLC, then they will get exactly what they deserve. What I find so disturbing is the desire by the RLC and their ilk is their desire to essentially wall themselves off from the 21st century. Their "us (good) vs. them (bad)" worldview hardly lends itself to an open dialogue with members of the community who might think differently.
Hmm...fear, ignorance, and religious zealoutry in the service of intolerance and narrow-mindedness. Is this the America we want??
