It will surprise no one that U.S. Rep. Steve King, (R-IA) told a local Des Moines station, WHO-TV, that he was unhappy with Republican Jan Brewer’s decision to veto Arizona hate law. But that’s not really news. We knew that like we knew the sun was coming up this morning. In these economically uncertain times, Steve King’s relentless bigotry is something you can take to the bank.
What is more newsworthy is that King has moved on from an obsession for big-thighed Latino men lugging marijuana across the burning sands, and segued to a related topic, and one he may very well qualify as expert on: “self-professed behavior.”
Take a listen courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
Here’s the thing, according to King:
When you’re in the private sector and you’re an individual entrepreneur with God-given rights that our founding fathers defined in the Declaration, you should be able to make your own decisions on what you do in that private business. And I’m always uneasy about the idea of the philosophy that you’re a private-slash-public business, because you have a door that’s open that anybody can walk in. That doesn’t mean that you have to perform any kind of service that they demand.
What is this self-professed behavior that has King in such a tizzy? You have to admit that it sounds a little nonsensical. But according to King, an obsession for big-thighed Latino men would qualify as “self-professed behavior” because it cannot be “independently verified.” In other words, “We don’t know whether it’s a choice or not.” Attraction to big-thighed Latino men, to pursue our example, must be “legally verified.”
If it cannot be, look out, self-professed gay people!
If it’s not specifically protected in the Constitution,” he said of civil rights protections, “then it’s got to be an immutable characteristic, that being a characteristic that can be independently verified and cannot be willfully changed.
Oh dear.
How do you independently verify whether or not somebody is attracted to big-thighed Latino men? We could hook them up an measure their responses but how many shopkeepers have access to such equipment?
Or access to a big-thighed Latino men, for that matter? I suppose in Arizona, if you’re along the border, there are big-thighed Latino men coming in off the sands every day hauling their marijuana, but what about folks in rural Minnesota?
This brings up the question of choice: Does Steve King have the ability to choose to be attracted to sweat-sheened, sand-sprinkled muscular men’s thighs? We could ask, is he really gay, or is this just an example of self-professed behavior?
Naturally, King is not going to say he thinks gays are born that way:
I think it exists across the continuum in some type of a curve, and I don’t know what that curve actually looks like,” he said. “I think some’s nature and some’s nurture. Some might be purely each. But I think a lot of it is a combination of nature and nurture.
If it’s not specifically protected in the Constitution,” he said of civil rights protections, “then it’s got to be an immutable characteristic, that being a characteristic that can be independently verified and cannot be willfully changed.
If you’re wondering why this all matters, King points out that the Civil Rights Act says nothing about protecting self-professed behavior. This is a problem, according to King, because while discrimination is prohibited based on “race, creed, religion, color of skin, there’s nothing mentioned in there on self-professed behavior, and that’s what they’re trying to protect: Special rights for self-professed behavior.”
What’s to stop people from saying they’re gay, just so they can be discriminated against?
The one thing that I reference when I say ‘self-professed’ is how do you know who to discriminate against? They have to tell you. And are they then setting up a case? Is this about bringing a grievance or is it actually about a service that they’d like to have?
What I want to know is why would you want to discriminate against anyone? Hey, I have an idea: don’t discriminate against anybody and your problem will go away!
And trying to get discriminated against? That’s probably as big a problem as voter fraud, which is to say, it isn’t.
But it looks like King has invented a term to differentiate the LGBT community from every other group and justification for discriminating against it. This is great news for bigots because, as King says, “I think it’s difficult for us to define a law that would protect self-professed behavior.”
The truly terrific thing about all this for King is that in his own mind he has rationalized violence against people who “profess” behavior he doesn’t approve of. This is especially handy since he doesn’t like hate crimes laws:
[A]nd when we get into the area of even hate crimes legislation, I’ve opposed that, because you’re punishing people for what you think went on in their head at the time they perpetuated their crime. And it’s a murky area of the law. We’ve not gone that way until the modern era, and I think it’s very messy.
Yes, hate is a messy business. Especially for the victims.
The problem for Steve King is that heterosexuality is also “professed behavior.” How do we know, for example, if King really likes girls and not big-thighed Latino men? Or, looked at another way, how do we know his obsession for big-thighed Latino men is genuine?
King himself says we can never really know what’s going on inside somebody’s head, so when it has to do with hating somebody, assume the worst; let your basest instincts take over.
This approach really sucks, but there is an upside: If you run a shop and Steve King walks in, you should feel free to refuse him service. After all, bigotry, too, is self professed behavior, and bigots are not specifically protected by the Constitution or the Civil Rights Act. Kick him out on the street. He should love you for having taken his lesson to heart.
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