Gays, Muslims, and Illegal Immigrants: The New Axis of Evil

It´s a strange coincidence that Prop 8 was overturned and landmark status was denied to the future site of a Muslim community center and mosque a few blocks away from Ground Zero in Manhattan on the same day. Both actions infuriated elements of the right wing and for the same reason--they demonstrate the legitimacy of the Other in America and that scares them.

By these decisions, gays and Muslims are deemed equal to straights and Christians in the eyes of American jurisprudence--not barely tolerated, marginal figures, but morally equal citizens, entitled to live openly and practise their religion anywhere.

The generation over 50 will be the last with white people in the majority and losing that status scares the hell out of them. During the 2008 election, NPR inerviewed an old white woman from Pennsylvania who was voting against Obama for admittedly racist reasons. She gave voice to her fears that black young man emboldened by an Obama victory would feel free to push her around on the street. I think she was projecting her own feelings of prejudice onto others. She was afraid she would suffer the same fate blacks had when they were in the minority, and probably she had feelings of white superiority and was now guilty about it.

Another image terrified me. There was a news photo on the Huffington Post of a woman protesting a mosque coming to her little town of East Podunk. She held a sign reading ¨IT´S NOT YOUR COUNTRY.¨ I wanted to say to that woman through my computer screen, Ÿes, it is the muslims´ country, just as much as it is the Christians´, the Jews´, the Buddhists´ and the nonbelievers.¨ BTW, the anti-Ground Zero mosque people have at least the slight justification of saying the proposed house of worship is too near the WTC site. Not that I agree with them at all. We are not at war with all of Islam, just its fanatic wing.

People angry over mosques in Anywhere, USA have no rational ground for their indignation. I don´t want to seem naive. There may be individual cases where mosques may be fronts for terrorism, but judging all mosques as dangerous and anti-American would be like the blacklist days judging of all left-wing organizations as fronts for Communism.

With the call for repeal of the 14th amendment and Arizona´s racial profiling legislation, illegal immigrants are added to this new Axis of evil for the far right. Yes, being here illegally is wrong, but there is a larger subtext of anger at immigrants--largely Hispanic--for not assimilating, retaining Spanish as their primary language, and maintaining their cultural identity. It´s rage that America is no longer the Leave it to Beaver fantasy of their youth with white, straight, Christian, English-speaking people as the only worthy images in their culture. The Tea Partiers want us back to that world where gays were only seen as hairdressers and interior decorators, black people were loyal maids like Hattie McDaniel with no lives of their own, Hispanics were gardners or entertainers like Ricky Ricardo or Carmen Miranda, and Muslims didn´t even exist except as mysterious espionage agents in movies like Casablanca.