We don’t believe religious rights and LGBTQ+ rights have to be in conflict
As citizens and leaders in the state of Florida, we are extremely concerned that the ongoing conflicts between religious rights and LGBTQ rights are poisoning our civil discourse, eroding the free exercise of religion and preventing diverse people of good will from living together in peace and mutual respect.
It is time to assert clearly that we believe in the values of freedom, equality and fairness for all. We join a growing number of faith and community leaders from around the country in support of nondiscrimination legislation that protects all people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, while also protecting important religious rights.
No one should be denied these protections based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, and likewise religious persons and institutions should be protected in practicing their faith.
Those of us from faith traditions believe that we are all created by a loving God who has commanded us to love each other. We are all also Americans with a long tradition of figuring out how to get along despite deep differences.
LGBTQ rights and religious rights do not have to be in conflict. In fact, many LGBTQ people are themselves people of deep faith. Now is the time to set aside political motives, malice and misrepresentations ,and commit to respectful dialogue and good-faith engagement.
We believe that the state of Florida is uniquely positioned to come together to protect all people, unify our communities and help bring healing to our nation on what for too long has been a divisive issue.
That may not be easy in this time of polarization, and it will certainly require good will and mutual accommodation. But it can, and must, be done.
We respectfully urge all Floridians and leaders at every level of government to join in support of these common values and core principles in a balanced approach to provide protections for LGBTQ persons as well as people and institutions of faith.
Victor P. Patrick is elder of Area Seventy, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nadine Smith is executive director of Equality Florida. They have co-written this letter on behalf of 44 other signatories. The complete list of names can be found online.
I’ve been meaning to write this one for years. It was the potato chips that finally made me do it.
Not just any old Lay’s or Ruffles, mind you. No, I’m talking about a newto-me brand of chips (on its website, the Miamibased company says it has actually been around for 25 years) I recently saw at a checkout counter. Rap Snacks, they were called, available in such flavors as: Notorious B.I.G. Honey Jalapeño, Snoop Dogg O.G. Bar-BQue Cheddar and Rick Ross Sweet Chili Lemon Pepper, each packaged with the rapper in question on the bag.
Which inspires me to finally ask a question I’ve been meaning to ask for a long time. Don’t you feel kind of silly now?
Meaning, all you folks who, 30 years ago, give or take, thought rap music was the end of the world. We’re talking about a furor unlike anything we’d seen since men with sledgehammers were smashing jukeboxes, trying to kill rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s. Rap, to hear some of you tell it, was a cultural apocalypse, and rappers, the most frightening men in America.
Snoop Dogg, then billed as Snoop Doggy Dogg, was on the cover of Newsweek giving the camera maximum attitude. The headline: “When is Rap 2 Violent?” These days, Martha Stewart’s best friend is to be seen walking a mythic beach in TV commercials, handing out beer.
Then there’s Ice Cube, who, as a member of NWA, drew a menacing rebuke from the FBI for a certain song that sharply critiqued policing in African-American neighborhoods. He has since become a movie star, playing a dad, a soldier and a barber shop owner, among many others.
Ice-T was boycotted and reviled over a speedmetal song called “Cop Killer.” He now shills for a breakfast cereal, an automobile warranty company and a laundry detergent, and has spent the last 22 years playing — wait for it — a cop on NBC.
So yes, the arc of their careers, the then-andnow snapshots, would seem to suggest some feeling silly is in order.
People tend to forget the power of American marketing to absorb and commodify that which once frightened and appalled. That amnesia notwithstanding, the process is not new. To the contrary, it’s one we saw with Elvis in the ‘50s, the Rolling Stones in the ‘60s, Alice Cooper in the ‘70s, Prince in the ‘80s. They were all scary once upon a time, all threatened the status quo. Now they don’t. Now they are the stuff of nostalgia, museums and, in some cases, even scholarship.
The point is not that popular music ought not be criticized when it is violent, racist, misogynistic or otherwise troublesome. Rather, it’s that when said criticism takes on the tenor of fire alarms and air-raid sirens, when there is panic in the streets and a general sense that this song, this artist, this genre, represents a cultural Armageddon, a mortal threat requiring scary headlines or government intervention, it suggests the critics have forgotten how many times we’ve traveled this road and that a little perspective might be in order. Not to mention a little healthy respect for tomorrow’s ability to render today’s fears silly and shrill.
It is, after all, each generation’s solemn duty to outrage the one that came before. And if you are a member of the one that came before, you would do well to recall how it was when you were the one doing the outraging. And to take solace in the fact that controversy inevitably becomes commodity.
Exhibit A: Snoop Dogg O.G. Bar-B-Que Cheddar. Because time happens to us all, nobody stays dangerous forever.
And marketing always has the last laugh.