Did Tom Hanks say something wrong when he called Mormon Prop 8 supporters ‘un-American’? Hanks has released a statement apologising for the remark, and while at first I wished he hadn’t, I find myself agreeing with his reasoning.
“Last week, I labeled members of the Mormon church who supported California’s Proposition 8 as ‘un-American,'” the actor said in a statement through his publicist. “I believe Proposition 8 is counter to the promise of our Constitution; it is codified discrimination.”
“But everyone has a right to vote their conscience; nothing could be more American,” the statement continues. “To say members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who contributed to Proposition 8 are ‘un-American’ creates more division when the time calls for respectful disagreement. No one should use ‘un-American’ lightly or in haste. I did. I should not have.”
Hanks strikes a nice balance in his remark. He reaffirms the wrongness of writing bigotry into law, but takes care to focus on the offending word. Prop 8 represents a form of bigotry which is indeed counter to values Americans like to claim, like equality, fair play, and so on. But leave the word ‘un-American’ back in the McCarthy days, where it belongs.
So I’ll say that Mormon supporters of Prop 8 are hateful, intolerant, unfair, mean-spirited, bigoted, and pathologically ignorant. Not un-American.
PS: Did anyone near you donate? It’s a matter of public record. Check it out on Prop 8 Maps. Name and shame, people.
9 February 2009 at 2:20 am
I find the epithet “un-american” to be totally useless and mostly (though as we here see, not solely) an emotional distraction used by American right-wingers whose political philosophy (religion) dictates that “American” is defined as anti-liberal, fundamentalist Christian, so called “free market” ideas – and if you’re not all of those things, well then you can’t possibly be “American”.
I’m also glad that Hanks amended his argument to not include “anti-American”, even if Prop 8 (and Mormon involvement) was anti-constitutional, anti-freedom, and anti-individual rights – i.e. naught but sanctioned mob-rule.