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November 15, 2012 10:17 PM UTC

Radio host doesn't ask State Senator for the names of legislators who "just don't like Christians"

  • 24 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(The “War on Christmas” starts earlier each year – promoted by Colorado Pols)

On the radio Monday, State Sen. Greg Brophy said there’s an “element” of  “folks who just don’t like Christians” in Colorado, and “they are well represented at the State Capital right now.”

Citing Obama’s victory, as well as the passage of a measure legalizing and taxing marijuana, Brophy said on the radio:

BROPHY: “That’s what leads me to say that we’re kind of a Libertarian/Left state.  You know, and geez, I hate to say this, but it sure seems like there is an element of an anti-Christian bent in Colorado which probably does also play into that Libertarian/Left side of things…and they’re well represented at the State Capital right now.”

KFKA radio’s guest host Krista Kafer didn’t ask Brophy to reveal his list of anti-Christian folk up at the State Capitol. So I called him to find out whom he was thinking of.

Brophy referred me to an opinion piece he wrote arguing that Senate Democrats were attacking hospitals for their religious convictions. They passed a bill, which did not clear the House, that would have required hospitals to post services that they elect not to provide due to religious, not medical considerations (e.g., abortion and some contraception services), but Senate Democrats rejected an amendment requiring all hospitals to list services they don’t provide, Brophy wrote.

“If you remember,” Brophy told me, “when I was [on the radio], I said I don’t want to say this because it’s kind of a harsh thing to say, but I think it’s an accurate observation.

So it’s based on that? Or are there other things?

“That’s a very public observation that’s been out there,” Brophy said. “Other stuff is certainly more subtle. You never can tell for sure, Jason, what someone’s thinking or what motivates them. You can only tell what they do. And when I wrote that op-ed I specifically went into what they did.”

I thought it was ironic that Brophy was raising the specter of anti-Christian bigotry at the State Capitol, given his comments about gays in the same KFKA interview Monday.

Brophy said he believes civil unions are one thing, but it would go too far to require an adoption agency, for example, to award a child to a traditional couple over gay couple based on the adoption agency’s alleged religious beliefs about the morality of homosexuality.

BROPHY: “But isn’t there a happy medium here where you can also have an adoption agency that says, “All things being equal, we would prefer to have a male-female married couple work with our adopted children – all things being equal.”  I mean, I think most people believe that too, and I would hope that we could find a happy medium.  I suspect that we will end up settling this question at a U.S. Supreme Court level within just a couple of years, because there are some cases that are testing this.  For instance, say, if you run a Bed and Breakfast and want to cater to folks who are on, you know, bible study-based family vacations, and you refuse to rent a room to somebody who isn’t married, or who is in a same-sex marriage, you can be sued for discrimination.  And your- that’s a direct contradiction between the civil rights protection and the religious liberty protection.

We heard a lot about religious liberty during the election, as Republicans argued that restrictions on abortion and women’s health should be accepted as religious freedoms instead of as a war on women.

Brophy’s comments, about gays and Christian haters, leave me thinking that he’s not going to back away from the election rhetoric. He didn’t talk about Republicans working with each other or with Democrats, but instead about Republicans picking sides within their own party and fighting, building a movement of social conservatives prior to the next primary.

BROPHY: “And there’s an element, there’s a leg, or an element of the Republican Party that has always been rather embarrassed by the Christian conservative component of the Republican Party.  I don’t know what to do with them. I mean, you know, we form our coalitions in U.S. politics before the primary and so, pick your side.  And as for me, I’m going to be on the side that argues for fiscal restraint, and that argues for religious liberty and individual liberty, limited government and less spending by the government, but either people buy that argument or they don’t.”

If I’m a reporter, and I hear Brophy, I’d be watching to see if the election collapse had any impact at all on him and like-minded Republicans. It appears it did not.

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24 thoughts on “Radio host doesn’t ask State Senator for the names of legislators who “just don’t like Christians””

  1. you have to get to understand their need to project their flaws onto their opponents. In this case, they’re anti-NONchristian, and have been for decades; so now they project that in inverse form upon progressives.

    That said, the reporter missed his opportunity. It’s going to take a while for the cowed media to remember that the “liberal media” dog is all bark and no bite.

  3. no Colorado Christians are being forced to depend on kindly brave non-Christian neighbors to hide them from murderous Christian haters.  There are no roving gangs pushing them around or throwing things at them for being dirty Jesus lovers. So I suggest they stop carrying on hysterically about nothing. What a bunch of drama queens.

    1. that once a year they are forced to wear ashes on their forehead to mark them as Catholics, like the Jews were forced to wear the Star of David.  Pretty ominous, if you ask me!

    2. Some Christian conservatives that I know are upset because they can’t share their religious beliefs publicly without someone on the left acting exaggeratedly offended.

      You don’t think abortion should be legal? YOU HATE WOMEN!

      You don’t think birth control should be legal? YOU WANT TO DECLARE WAR ON WOMEN!

      Pols recently posted a diary (http://www.coloradopols.com/diary/18834/robert-ramirez-shakes-the-etchasketch) about a Robert Ramirez mailer, in which Ramirez said that he supports health care and equal payscales for men and women. They said that it’s disingenuous for Ramirez to make such a claim because of his support for the Personhood amendment. The implication is that you can’t support women and also support Personhood – the two are, in some way, mutually exclusive.

      That‘s the kind of stuff that drives Christian conservatives to adopt the self-righteous attitude that Brophy displays here: they feel that they can’t share their views without being called warmongers (how on earth does banning abortion promote violence????). They’re right.

      I’m a liberal who believes that abortion should be legal (though I also think it’s immoral and wrong), and I’m bothered by the way members of my party talk about Christian conservatives sometimes. In the comments on that Ramirez diary, the first words are “Lying piece of shit.” We’re just a really welcoming, big-tent group of people, aren’t we? Ugh.

      1. “I’m a liberal”. I certainly never got that  impression from any of your comments. And spare me. The whole War on Christmas and/or Christians is ridiculous on its face, something any Christian would understand immediately if he or she ever woke up one day in the body of a nice Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist American.  

        1. Which comments have I made that give you the impression that I’m not a liberal? In politicians, I prefer diplomatic pragmatism to uncompromising principle, so I like “moderates” like John Hickenlooper and Joe Rice. My own political views are probably best described as “socialist,” but I also love democracy and wouldn’t want to see a socialist government put in place when my country(wo)men clearly don’t approve of such a system.

          And you’re absolutely correct – there is no War on Christmas/Christians, just like there’s no “War on Women.” But Christians do (sometimes justifiably) feel alienated by the rhetoric of some Democrats, just as many women (sometimes justifiably) feel alienated by the rhetoric of Republicans like Todd Akin.

          1. but GOP legislatures across the country have been busy passing legislation to force women to undergo all kinds of humiliations, including physically invasive ones, if they insist on exercising their right to a perfectly legal medical procedure. They have been trying to take away women’s rights to reproductive choice altogether. They have been de-funding the major provider of routine healthcare and cancer screenings to millions of hard working women. They oppose equal pay for equal work.

            This is not “rhetoric”.  These are concrete, devastating acts of aggression against women. Do you have any idea how insulting equating the very real GOP onslaught of legislative attacks on women with the totally manufactured War on Christmas is?  A liberal would.

            Whatever you choose to call yourself, you’re just another one of our nitwits. As a real liberal, thanks but no thanks for claiming political kinship.

            1. as many Christians do, then you’d understand exactly why “GOP legislatures across the country” are “forc[ing] women to undergo all kinds of humiliations.” I still haven’t seen any evidence that any of those humiliations are violent, and so I’m not willing to see the “War on Women” as anything more than overblown rhetoric (and admittedly clever marketing).

              I understand that you don’t share that belief. While it is a belief I hold, I don’t believe that my faith requires me to convince you that I’m right – I may not be, and as I said to DaftPunk, it’s a really, really imprecise questions with lots and lots of staggeringly important moral implications.

              But if you’re telling me that one cannot believe that life begins at conception and, at the same time, call him/herself a liberal, then you’re telling me that there isn’t a place for most Christians in contemporary American liberalism (while acting baffled that some Christians feel shut out by the left).

      2. You’ll have to do better with this try.

        Ramirez claimed he wanted women to have “access to the healthcare they need… including contraceptives” which would have been outlawed by personhood, so yes they are mutually exclusive.

        If “Christian” politicians weren’t so willing to repress other people’s rights in their zeal to prove their own faith, they’d get more respect.

        1. Yes, some would have been – those that stop a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall. But the most common forms of contraception, like condoms, would absolutely be legal after Personhood. I imagine that’s what Ramirez was referring to in his mailer (though I obviously don’t speak for him).

          I’d imagine that the Christian politicians supporting Personhood would balk at the notion that someone has a right to something like the morning-after pill. You criticize those people for “repressing other people’s rights,” but isn’t it just a question of where the rights of one person (the mother) end and where the rights of another person (the child) begin? That’s a really complicated question. Surely it’s worth discussing without resorting to terms like “rights repression” and “the war on women”?

            1. I identify as a liberal. You can’t take that away from me, any more than James Dobson can take away my Christianity when he tells me that a “true Christian” wouldn’t agree with me about gay marriage. You identify as a liberal – that’s great! But you can’t boil that identity down to someone who agrees with you on every subject. I’m sure you and I agree on most things – this just isn’t one of them. That’s fine with me.

  4. we’re kind of a Libertarian/Left state.  You know, and geez, I hate to say this, but it sure seems like there is an element of an anti-Christian bent in Colorado

    “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”.

  6. If you don’t like Colorado then move across the border to Kansas.  It’s only 20 miles.  And by the way, I don’t wish anyone to go to hell, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if you did.

  7. Some of my best friends are Christians. But there are some that rub me the wrong way. I don’t think I have to expound here on who they may be.

    I’ll let a statement from a conservative in Senator Brophy’s party say it for me:

    “Every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the ass.”   Barry Goldwater

  8. “It sure seems like there is an element of a pro-pedophilia bent in Colorado which probably does also play into that Libertarian/Republican side of things…and they’re well represented at the State Capital right now.”

    Names? I don’t need to give you any stinkin’ names.

  9. Because they’re well aware of how they treat people from minority religious groups, and assume the same will be done to them if they don’t maintain a permanent Christian majority.  

    1. kicked out of England came here because, among other things, they hated the Christmas holiday.  (They were “right” it’s not in the Bible.)

      They would reject what passes for “Christian” today in America.

      True, they were here long before there was any such thing as the USA but  then their descendants did all sorts of stuff to fight for independence, expand the borders, free the slaves,  win WWI, survive the first Great Depression (I’m still working on this one), win WWII and so on.   To Senator Brophy I paraphrase  a distant cousin’s  Christmas season greeting to some German in 1944 – nuts.

  10. I know the Religious Right think that the ONLY way to be Christian and the ONLY way to be American is to agree with them and it just further proves how fucking stupid they are.

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