Does this qualify as hate speech?
The remaining members of the Iowa Supreme Court have proven they are immoral and “open enemies of God” by choosing Mark Cady as chief justice, and thus, all deserve to be impeached, according to conservative radio host Steve Deace and Republican Party of Iowa central committee member Wes Enos.
Note that these come from a member of the broadcast media and an official of the Iowa Republican Party. And skipping right by the question of who qualified them to assign team loyalty to the divine, does the rhetoric itself sound like rational political disagreement or something far worse? Because to those that consider themselves fighting on the side of the divine, hearing that public officials are "open enemies of God" might possibly be just a tad more inflammatory than hearing that they're wrong on an issue. And the right wing in Iowa is in a state of inflammation. And right wingers not from Iowa are in a state of inflammation about Iowa.
Three Republican state legislators have begun drafting articles of impeachment for the remaining four members of the Iowa Supreme Court because of its 2009 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. Even though Gov.-elect Terry Branstad and several Republican leaders have spoken out against the idea, social conservatives continue to push for the removal of the judges.
During his regular weekly segment on Deace’s drive-time program, Enos argued that while he agrees with the idea of impeachment, he fears if Senate Democrats hold the line and win a victory on the issue it will “give them the spine to fight a lot of the other things we want to get done,” such as a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
To those fine people in the traditional media who have been attempting to draw an equivalency between liberal and conservative political rhetoric, I offer a few simple questions: Can you identify any liberals in the broadcast media who are calling public officials "open enemies of God"? Can you identify any officials of the Democratic Party who are openly agreeing that public officials are "open enemies of God"? Is such an accusation but an acceptable and normal form of political discourse?
