NoisyRoom.net

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

As American conservatives contemplate the future of the Republican Party in the face of President Obama’s Marxist onslaught and reelection, the rapid deterioration of the British Conservative Party stands as proof that the situation could get far worse. British conservatives lead the British government as members of a coalition and are pushing legislation for what they euphemistically dub “Equal Civil Marriage”—gay marriage. They think this is the key to being politically relevant and winning elections.

Here in the U.S., former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal on November 21 to make the “conservative case” for backing gay marriage. But there can be no “conservative case” for gay marriage, unless the term “conservative” is redefined as the British Conservative leaders are trying to do.

Mehlman, a former lieutenant to Karl Rove, came out of the closet and announced that he was a homosexual in August of 2010. He has since launched a “Project Right Side” to make the “conservative” case for gay marriage. He points to Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger at The Washington Post, who has declared that social conservatives have “lost” the battle over gay marriage and should just “move on.” Rubin has also attacked conservative Senator Jim DeMint, who is resigning to take over the Heritage Foundation, in a column headlined, “Good riddance, Mr. DeMint.”

Another conservative in the liberal media, George Will, said on ABC’s “This Week” show, “the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s all old people.” He had previously endorsed gays in the military and had smeared supporters of the Pentagon’s homosexual exclusion policy as unintelligent.

The same “strategy” would also mandate that Republicans should “move on” by abandoning the pro-life cause and opposition to legalization of drugs. That would leave the GOP in the position of running purely on economic issues, in order to draw a contrast with the Democrats. Romney’s stunning defeat is an example of what happens when that strategy is followed.

The American conservative magazine The American Spectator, which is usually a reliable source of conservative opinion, has published an article suggesting that American conservatives should indeed follow the lead of the British Conservative Party leaders. The author, Robert Taylor, says the British Conservative Party has “stopped trying to turn the clock back to a supposedly golden age of God-fearing, two-parent families” and has become “open, diverse, accepting, individualistic, and multi-cultural.”

According to this logic, American conservatives should applaud the fact that, on December 1, the first same-sex couple was “married” in the West Point Cadet Chapel of our nation’s military academy. This is a consequence of Obama’s gays-in-the-military policy.

The real lesson from what is happening in Britain is that if the Republicans go down this road, conservatives will revolt and the GOP will suffer an even more significant decline than we saw on November 6, when a number of social conservatives sat out the election. Surrender could also lead to more persecution of social conservatives.

In Britain, The Sunday Telegraph reports that a survey of British Conservative Party local officials found that 71 percent think the proposal should be abandoned and that the party is losing members as result of the plan.

Christian Concern, a group dedicated to returning the United Kingdom to the Christian faith, says polling of the general population finds that 18 percent of adults are less likely to vote Conservative as a result of this policy, whereas only seven percent are more likely to do so.

“Why are they so committed to imposing same-sex marriage on us all?” the group asks, in an article about the push for homosexual marriage in Britain and the U.S. “Our leaders in the UK and the US share much in common—and this includes a 1960’s utopianism which assumes that the sexual rights agenda will make the world a better place…This great ‘sexual experiment’ has produced the most rotten fruit—an avalanche of divorces, fatherless families, sexually transmitted infections and infertility, unwanted pregnancies, abortions and post abortion traumas, the degrading of women, the breaking of social bonds, the stolen innocence of childhood, pornography addictions and the sex trade.”

The Coalition for Marriage in Britain is part of the opposition.

We have examined this problem in the past, in columns carrying the titles, “The Fake ‘Conservatives’ in Britain,” and “A ‘Gay’ Future for U.S. Conservatives?”

This British Conservative Party has watered down traditional conservatism to such an extent that some conservatives have formed an alternative, the English Defense League (EDL), which has spawned the British Freedom Party.

This group has been strongly attacked in the media, here and abroad, as “far-right” or worse. But I had the opportunity to meet their leaders, Kevin Carroll and Tommy Robinson, at the 9/11 conference in New York City sponsored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer which was designed in part to organize resistance to global Islam and safeguard our right of free speech against the advance of Sharia, or Islamic law. You can watch the speeches by Carroll and Robinson and draw your own conclusions. Carroll and Robinson want a patriotic alternative to the British Conservative Party that will promote traditional values.

American conservatives and their media should take a hard look at what is really happening in Britain. We had to turn to a relatively new conservative channel in Canada, Sun TV, for important news and information about how Carroll and Robinson and their supporters are being targeted by the “conservative” government there. Carroll was actually imprisoned for exercising his political rights. Robinson is still in prison on charges that he entered the United States illegally and has sent Pamela Geller a letter about his plight, which is published on her website.

While Robinson languishes in prison, Abu Qatada, a suspected terrorist who entered Britain on a forged passport and is wanted in Jordan on terrorism charges, has just been granted the right by an immigration judge to stay in the country. Robinson says that speaking out against Islamism is considered a bigger risk by the authorities in Britain than plotting mass murder.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.