Joe the Plumber is queer by his own definition. In the evangelical magazine Christianity Today he stated that "People don't understand the dictionary, it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual, it's not like a slur, like calling a White guy a honky or anything..." He went on to say that he had friends that were "actually gay" (which sent me laughing for hours, I mean, how gay do you have to be to be 'actually' gay, are there special display cases for those who are 'actually' gay?) but that they knew he wouldn't let them near his children. His opinion flies in the face of American values and any truly Godly ideology and is in a small but vocal minority. He's strange and unusual. He's queer.
The thinking is obtuse. It echoes what Evangelicals have been trying to codify for years, and what the Republican Party has become through it's use of these wedge issues. Evangelical Republicans or even good "Christian" Republican conservatives that claim to have the soul of the party are proving they are to American Christians and Republicans what the Wahhabi form of Islam is to the rest of the world. Right Wing Radicals like Joe and Rush and the rest have been waging the equivalent of a social jihad on any American not like them, that doesn't think like them, a patriarchal movement that is meant to keep women oppressed and second class citizens with no control over their own bodies and medical decisions and designed to keep any American that does not conform to their rigid and radical ideology away from the equality promised all by the Constitution.
Instead of roadside bombs they use surgical incursions in to policy carrying the force of millions of U.S. dollars raised to discriminate against other Americans, breaching the divide of Church and state and destroying national morale by dividing a nation's families making them choose between ideology or blood ties. They practice the politics of thinly veiled theocracy, perverting a Christian ideology, mixing it with a capitalist bend, a white somewhat fascist view that has all but destroyed our nation. The Republican Party is currently the party of War Criminals, like its former leader George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, co-conspirators Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales...on and on. This cabal of criminals bankrupted a nation, literally, through blatant disregard for the average American while protecting and rewarding the wealthy and ruined our standing in the world through unjust and illegal occupations. Republican senators and Congressional leaders for six years sat by and were duplicitous in these acts (as were many Democrats). This is a party of racists, war criminals, homophobes, xenophobes, and if you don't like that classification, too bad. The facts back me up. It's time for this party and people like Rush, Joe the Plumber, all of their mouthpieces to go, to fade away like the Whigs, to be seen as radicals and given no real political or social footing.
And why we never classify these attacks on Americans as such; or these people's statements as such plays to everyone's fear of calling a religious person crazy if they're speaking from a religious stand point. We have no problem calling a Muslim crazy in such case. I have no problem calling Christians crazy in this case. Joe the Plumber is the David Duke of every man. Gay and Lesbian youth commit more suicides than any other young Americans and these young Americans now get to hear how they are "strange or unusual" from this self-pontificating ignorant blind ideologue. His statements put Americans in danger, in danger of ending their own lives, and are not a credible side to an argument but the ramblings of a man that believes an omnipotent being on some throne thinks any one of its creations are defective, strange, unusual (by the way, I love being strange and unusual, just fyi). His sole basis for his un-American radical right wing statements are his religious convictions, which our founders felt were best kept in church and not in policy and certainly not be used to discriminate against other Americans.
Any radical offshoot of any ideology must be shunned and if their actions and rhetoric elevates, they should be treated accordingly so their extremism does not become detrimental to the common good. Denying Americans the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because this or that god doesn't approve of their actions is just as radical. It's social assassination and it's been condoned for far too long.
American values must stop being tied to a Christian ideology and must simply emerge as American. It is un-American to classify other Americans as strange and unusual based solely on your religious ideology. It is un-American to deny Americans equal rights under the law in all contracts, including marriage, based on God's specific plan for man and woman as the prolific Plumber put it. It is un-American to wage religious attacks, physically or socially, against other Americans that don't live or believe as you would like them to or subscribe to your ideology.
The time for tolerance of this party and these people is over. Conservative Republicans of "faith" that subscribe to the Joe, the Rush, the right of their party's ideals are a danger to America like any other group that wants to rule in order to codify their religious beliefs. As ex-convict Marion Barry screamed how "We may have a Civil War" after the DC council voted to accept marriage equality and then a Mormon member of Congress Jason Chaffetz from Utah pledges to block DC's move towards equality (Congress has to approve the District of Columbia's decisions), two outcries based solely in religion, one screaming of CIVIL WAR over equality and civil rights they should be denounced and removed from the public view as any Zealot would be. They are extremists screaming of civil war or Congressional leaders about to breach the sacred separation of church and state. They are, in fact, out to divide our people, to separate, they are seditionists, if you use the same dictionary to which that plumber refers. They want "incitement to rebel, subversion, troublemaking, provocation; rebellion, insurrection, mutiny, insurgence, civil disorder..." seditionists for their radical cause of inequality, division and hatred amongst the American people based solely in religious or capitalistic (capitalism being its own religion) ideals.
We silence people all the time in this country if what they are saying is so obtuse, so beyond the pale, that it violates the basic morality of our nation. The U.K. doesn't let people in their country if their beliefs are so radical and incongruous with those of the nation that they would be disruptive, like Michael Savage or Fred Phelps.
America, either you are a theocracy that embraces religious zealots and radicals who perform social jihad using weapons of highly funded faith or you are a land where everyone that contributes, doesn't hurt anyone and has a desire to help and support those in their community for the betterment of the nation are allowed to share equally in the benefits regardless of some religious viewpoint.
Time to evolve past Joe the Plumber, past Rush Limbaugh, past the politics and ideology that verge on those that launched the Spanish Inquisition and shun those that would tear down our country through radical ideologies caught in the 14th century.
Or the experiment fails and we split in to the Divided states of America an dissolve a union that exists in name only, certainly not a union that ties the hearts of each American together.