What if Kenneth Gladney Were Selling Rainbow Flags?

Imagine, if you will, that in the wake of the passage last fall of Proposition 8 in California, a group of social conservatives thought it was time to reintroduce the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) in Congress.  As they did, they announced a national media campaign to promote the measure, encouraging supportive Senators and Representatives to return to their state and districts and hold townhalls to promote the proposed constitutional amendment.

As one particularly strong supporter of the amendment scheduled just such a meeting in his Missouri district, gay activists got wind of the meeting and starting rallying their supporters from the area to participate and ask tough questions.  Well, the Congressman’s supporters found out about these plans.  And to prevent them from “disrupting” the event, they called a local Christian mega-church, asking its powerful pastor to help out.  Specifically, they wanted him to dispatch his vaunted security team to the event and to alert his congregation to pack the auditorium.

Well, he did as he was asked.  On the day of the meeting, the security force stood at the main entrance, making sure no one got in that way until just before the program started.  The larger-than expected crowd milled about restlessly outside.  Meanwhile, churchgoers were quietly entering the hall through a side door.

Film crews arrive and start filming the largely gay crowd.  They have come prepared and are brandishing a great variety of signage promoting gay marriage and denouncing the proposed amendment.  Concerned now that while they have won the battle of the auditorium, they may lose the battle of the “narrative,” the evangelical security force tries to wrest some of the signs from the protesters.  An enterprising gay man walks down the line, selling rainbow flags.  He’s doing a brisk business.  Fearful that these flags will dominate the camera shot, a few of the burly evangelicals try to prevent him from distributing his wares to the growing multitude.

Defiantly, he continues to sell.  This upsets the evangelical thugs;  they rip the flags out of his hand and wrestle him to the ground, kicking him repeatedly.  Another activist captures this on his cell phone.  Soon, police arrive, pushing the Christian crusaders off the slight young man and helping him into an ambulance which whisks him away to a nearby hospital.

In such a scenario, don’t you think the media would have a field day, making a martyr of the slight young man and demanding swift justice for the burly evangelicals?  (They’d probably also demand an investigation and call on the Congressman to resign.)

Now that you’ve answered that question, ask yourselves why the MSM has, by and large, ignored Kenneth Gladney while St. Louis authorities have been slow to investigate and prosecute the union thugs who beat him.

Had Kenneth Gladney been supporting gay protesters at a townhall meeting of a Congressman opposing gay marriage, there would be demands for a federal investigation.  Instead, because  he was selling “Don’t Tread on Me” flags to Tea Party protesters, St. Louis County prosecutors didn’t even check Gladney’s hospital records; the charges brought against the union thugs who beat him were watered down.

And while most mainstream media organizations remain oblivious (or indifferent) to his beating, various new media sources have been investigation how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Organizing for America (the Democratic Party outfit that grew out of the Obama campaign) contributed to the atmosphere outside Congressman Carnahan’s St. Louis townhall.  In a three–part series, the folks at Big Government have detailed just who’s behind the efforts to undermine the grassroots protests against Obamacare (and other big government endeavors) and how Gladney’s beatings was a direct result of their efforts.

So, check out their posts (here, here and here) and ask yourself this:  if the facts were as described in the first two-thirds of this post, don’t you think these reports would find themselves on the front pages of the New York Times, excerpted on the evening news and used as the basis for segments on the news “magazines” on the major networks?