A funny thing happened recently: Ever since Mike Gravel jumped back into the race, I’m not paying a lot of attention to Barack Obama — other than to shake my head and cluck my tongue every time he says something stupid. (Did you hear what he said about a woman’s right to choose? I agree with the guy, on every word, but that “punished with a baby” line is red meat for the Right. Dumb, Barry, really dumb.)
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see Obama’s very real liabilities brought up in the MSM, as often as possible. I don’t hate Barack — I just don’t want him to be president, and to that end, I want all Americans who have yet to vote in a primary to understand that Barack Obama is not the Messiah he and his blindly adoring supporters want you to think he is.
To that end, I direct your attention to a long, detailed piece that gets into the specifics of Obama’s ties to some very unsavory characters (and Jeremiah Wright isn’t even one of “the four stumps”!) worth bookmarking:
As the high-water mark for Barack Obama recedes, his campaign must now confront several dangerous stumps that were once hidden below the surface. The problems began with Obama’s long attachment to Rev. Wright, Trinity United Church, and Black Liberation Theology, but they won’t end there.
So, what issues are now lurking for Obama?
The first is the volatile mix of race and religion, begun with the Rev. Wright controversy. Videos have now surfaced of virulent race-baiting by yet another Chicago preacher with ties to Obama, the Rev. James Meeks. Obama was not a member of Meeks’s church and their connection may be only a tactical alliance between prominent local figures. That’s the question: how close are those ties?
Meeks is no ordinary pastor. He is an important political and religious figure in African-American Chicago. He not only leads a mammoth congregation, he is an Illinois state senator and a key player in Jesse Jackson’s powerful local political organization, which is squarely behind Obama’s run for the Presidency. …
Obama’s second problem is his most important patron in Illinois politics: Emil Jones. Jones heads the Illinois State Senate and is one of the two most powerful legislators in Springfield. He played a vital role in Obama’s rise in state politics and, most significantly, he blessed Obama’s underdog candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
Now that Obama is playing on a national stage, his ties to Jones raise uncomfortable questions about his years in Illinois politics. …
The Rezko trial highlights another problem for Obama, potentially a devastating one, though it is unlikely to arise for several months or more. Antoin “Tony” Rezko is on trial for taking large bribes in return for political favors. …
…Rezko problems are bad news for Obama because the two have close, long-standing ties. Obama initially downplayed those ties and minimized the money Rezko had raised for him. When local reporters raised pointed questions, Obama declined to answer. He broke that silence at a strategic moment, just as the Rev. Wright story hit and the national media was focused on nothing else. That’s when Obama found time to give extensive interviews about Rezko to the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Predictably, the story got some play locally but was drowned out nationally. …
Where does Obama figure in all this, aside from being a recipient of Rezko’s campaign cash? No one knows for sure, but suspicion centers on one particular real estate deal. …
Obama’s final stump also lies in Kenwood, where he was friendly with the 1960s radicals, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Ayers and Dohrn, now married, were members of the Weather Underground, a group that killed police and tried to bomb the US Capitol. …
Obama served with Ayers on the board of a small, leftist foundation, the Woods Fund. Ayers later chaired the board and is still a member. Obama served from 1999 until 2002 and received several thousand dollars annually as compensation. According to the 2001 annual report, the fund made a $6000 discretionary grant to Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church “in recognition of Barack Obama’s contribution of services to the Woods Fund as a director.” Serving with Obama and Ayers was the prominent Palestinian activist, Rashid Khalidi, then a historian at the University of Chicago and now the Edward Said Professor at Columbia. (While they were all on the board, the Woods Fund gave a generous grant to the Arab American Action Network, headed by Khalidi’s wife, Mona.)…
Much, much more at the link, and all well worth reading.
What they didn’t know before moving to Idaho could fill a house, and in many ways it does.
The kitchen table holds stacks of legal papers. Medication bottles litter a nearby countertop. The two-story home Robert Ryan, 42, shares with his partner, Ralph Martinelli, 53, overlooks a quaint suburb west of Boise, a rural landscape of ruddy hills that doesn’t seem quite as welcoming as it once did.
A 2,400-mile move west once seemed like a chance at a fresh start, has instead it has delivered some hard lessons, especially about moving from a state that recognizes same-sex unions to one of the 21 states that don’t.
The couple was stunned when Ryan was dropped from the company insurance plan the two shared in New Jersey, where they were able to register as domestic partners. Idaho does not formally recognize same-sex couples.
“It didn’t even dawn on us that this would have an impact,” Ryan said. …
[Ryan] was dropped from the policy last October, shortly after the Konica Minolta company found the couple had moved to Idaho, where they couldn’t register as domestic partners. In 2006, 63 percent of Idaho voters approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of of a man and a woman, effectively outlawing same-sex unions.
Martinelli is still covered by a COBRA policy through the company. Ryan now pays $650 a month for a separate COBRA insurance policy that will expire in March 2009.
“It’s ridiculous,” Ryan said. “It’d be like a married couple being forced to get remarried every time they moved.” …
“We fell in love with the area, we love Idaho,” Martinelli said. “But here it is 2008 and people are still being discriminated against.”
FFS, what did you expect, guys? I’m sorry it didn’t “dawn on you” before you moved from the Near-Queer-Paradise of New Jersey to the most gay-hating state this side of Virginia, but, frankly, it’s your own darn fault you failed to inform yourselves of the repercussions first.
There’s something called the Internet, guys — and it would have taken you all of two seconds to Google gay + rights + idaho, and find out… Welll, let’s see what happens when we Google gay + rights + idaho:
Idaho Gay Rights - The Fight for Gay Rights in Idaho Idaho already bans gay marriage. What other restrictions is Idaho trying to pass against gays and lesbians? lesbianlife.about.com/od/lesbianactivism/a/IdahoGayRts.htm - 22k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
First hit. Gee, that was real hard to find.
Coldhearted? Nope. Just ticked off at yet another example of fellow gay people who don’t even know what rights they don’t have — and don’t care until they’re the ones smacked by the Big Anti-Gay Stick.
How do I know Ryan and Martinelli don’t care about LGBT equality (or didn’t, at least until now)? Because they were obviously unaware of the gaping chasm of inequality among states. Because they obviously never even paid attention to the freaking mainstream media for the past eight years, when state after state after state (what’s it up to now, 22 states? 26? 28?) caved in to the Radical Religious Right’s campaign of hate against us and banned marriage equality based on whether both partners had the same genitalia.
How can you even be gay without knowing this stuff?
In-your-face radio host Karel (with whom I agree about 50% of the time — but when I do agree with him, I agree 100%) summed it up best in his post-2004 election broadcast, when he slapped the entire gay “community” upside its collective head for letting our nonexistent rights slip away, because too many of us just don’t damn care:
Yesterday — November 2, 2004 — 11 states, almost one fifth of the electorate, voted on state constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. All received overwhelming approval. …
As I read the optimistic outlook of it all by Evan Woflson, executive director of Freedom to Marry posted on this Web site, I have to say, Are you serious? You sound like a gay party doll as much as Ann Coulter is a Republican party doll. Victory trumps loss, lose it forward, bring about generational change… Oh, it all sounds good on paper, but the fact is, we’re big losers, and [Matt] Foreman was right: Our side does not have the time, the resources, or the infrastructure to beat back the zealots.
And why don’t we? Because not enough of us care about it, because not enough of us want it, that’s why. Don’t give me all this disempowered, disenfranchised, battered, low-self-esteem don’t-blame-us psychobabble. If we all wanted same-sex marriage or federally recognized civil unions, we’d have them. Because trust me, as a collective, we’ve got nothing but time and more resources at our disposal than our nongay counterparts, and if we connected ourselves to something more than online meeting places, we’d have quite an infrastructure.
But we simply don’t want it. …
Most of you don’t even know what states voted yesterday to outlaw marriage equality (they were Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah) but can tell me when the next circuit party, fund-raiser, or group meeting is, or what’s in the deleted scene from Collin Farrell’s new bioflick, Alexander. Many of you may not even know what your workplace’s or state’s stance on domestic partnership is, what benefits may or may not be granted to you or your partner. Many more couples haven’t even filled out the agreements. Not surprising, since 50% of you don’t have wills and 100% of you are going to die.
I’m just as guilty. It took Andrew and me 10 years to fill ours out. Who knew he’d die a little over a year later — 10th anniversary present and all.
Yeah, I know: Not everybody can be clued in, up to the minute, on every twist and turn in the fight for LGBT equality — but you’d think two responsible, middle-aged gay men whose very survival depends on legal recognition of their relationship (Ryan, you’ll see if you read the article, was covered under Martinelli’s insurance “for medication to treat his depression, anxiety and the childhood asthma that resurfaced from severe smoke inhalation” in the 9/11 attacks) would have at least enough motivation to find out how the wave of anti-gay legislation in this puritan country affects them.
What is it going to take to force all LGBT Americans to start caring about their rights — before they find themselves utterly and totally screwed by their own ignorance?
Unfortunately we weren’t able to make it to the event due to financial constraints, but we’re excited nonetheless. About 400 people marched on Topeka to protest the nasty, homophobic Phelps clan and their practice of picketing funerals across America. The event was such a great success they hope to make it an annual event.
They came with signs of love, respect and tolerance in all different races, sexual orientations and age groups, to show members of the Westboro Baptist Church that they too have first amendment rights.
“Standing up is the right thing to do,” said JD Stottlemire, march participant. “I think it’s exciting it’s the million fag march today, not because it has anything to do with homosexuality but because it dis-empowers the Phelps.”
…..
Chris Love is the organizer of the march, but you didn’t have to be homosexual to participate.
So what’s behind the name?
Love said it has to do with the church’s use of the word.
“Generally it seems to be the case with them that anybody who’s not apart of their church gets called a fag, so in that situation everybody here is a fag,” Love said.
…..
The Phelps have been around for 17 years and have done more than 34,000 pickets.
They were invited to the march to express their views but didn’t show up.
…..
With police protection on the ground and in the air participants peacefully walked the streets of Topeka.
And though the demonstrators know they won’t change the minds of the Westboro members, Love had this to say.
“You can at least have your voice heard,” he said.
Topeka police say there were no problems with the march.
Because of the large turnout, organizers are planning to make the protest an annual event.
The DeFrank Center and Equality California need your urgent help to stop two bills in the Legislature that would take protections away from youth.
Anti-gay activists want to strip away safe schools protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth that we have worked long and hard to secure. The latest assault comes next week - when two anti-equality bills come before the Assembly Education Committee.
The DeFrank LGBT Community Center is joining Equality California in urging members of the California State Education Committee to stop these hateful attacks on LGBT students.
Stop Assembly Bill 2085 (Huff) AB 2085 would delete existing civil rights protections against discrimination in public school instruction based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and perceived gender (including gender identity) disability, nationality, race or ethnicity, and religion.
Stop Assembly Bill 2086 (Huff) This bill would discourage schools from offering diversity programs that discuss sexual orientation and gender identity issues. Programs like Coming Out Week and the Day of Silence, which could be affected by this bill, are critical for fighting intolerance that often leads to harassment and violence against LGBT youth.
All students need and deserve school settings that are free from hate and discrimination. These spiteful bills must be stopped to protect our youth. Take action today.
Thank you for helping the DeFrank LGBT Center and EQCA stop unfair attacks on our equality and our youth. Please forward this to everyone you know and ask them to supprt the equailty and safe of youth in school.
Name: ETSpoon email address: spoonreport@hotmail.com Message: Wow! Whodah guessed a queer’d be so racist!!
Just kidding.
Love Ann Coulter
But the rest… All I can say is: Thank you for your support, and for your courage to speak the truth, which means more to me than I can express:
From Tyler D:
No comment is really necessary except my complete and unequivocal support!
From Linda C:
I believe that Senator Obama should be expelled from the United States Senate. I believe that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a traitor to this beloved country of mine and that Senator Obama supports him. If you listened or followed the “rhetoric” of Obama’s speech, he admits he lied. I cannot respect Senator Obama or Reverend Wright.
From Karen M:
Sorry, not going to convince you…… Am going to AGREE with you! Wright is the Racist. And, Obama, appears to be one, too!
From coquettelovesjesus:
I’m sorry about his racist remarks. I’m also amazed at the people who cannot see through the bubble of Obama. If he can sit in a church and listen to this racist ranting and not make an appointment with the pastor and try to clear up these remarks and then leave because there is obviously no hope, well what kind of a commander in chief would he make? The truth will set you free but you need to read the truth for yourself. You need to let the Holy Spirit lead and guide you. When He does, there is a transformation that comes about in your life that leads you to repentance then a whole change in your life towards love and good. Anything different than that is not of God, there is none good but God.
From MoniQue:
Obama can kiss the Italian vote arrivederci !
The FACT is that Italians did not exist as a people until at least 500 years AFTER Jesus.* The “Romans” in Jesus’ day were actually of Greek origin. And Obama calls his pastor a “scholar?”
Just ask any animal. They will teach you they do not see a black person or a white person, they just see a HUMAN.
From MarieL:
So wrong, on so many levels! “Garlic Noses?” “Italian style lynching?”
Jeremiah Wright needs a lesson in true tolerance and history! If I’d used RevWrong’s reasoning on a logic exam in HS, I’d gotten a big “F” - Romans were Romans, not Italians, and the Roman empire was one of the most ethnically diverse (in urban areas) of any in history. The Pax Romana meant fairly open borders, safe passage and excellent trade. Guess “Pastor” Wright proves that we’re really all alike - even an Af-Am uber-theo-pseudo-lib can be a bigot.
Propaganda and Hate Groups like NARTH and Traditional Values Coalition are fond of throwing out statistics citing the fact that LGBT individuals tend to have a higher predisposition to substance abuse (as well as other mental health issues). What they don’t tell you is the reasons behind those problems, because then they’d be exposing their own guilt. Enter this new study:
The odds of substance use for lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) youth are on average 190 percent higher than for heterosexual youth, according to a study by University of Pittsburgh researchers published in the current issue of Addiction. What’s more, for some sub-populations of LGB youth, the odds were substantially higher, including 340 percent for bisexual youth and 400 percent for lesbians, researchers found.
Ok, nothing new there. But read on. It gets better.
“Homophobia, discrimination and victimization are largely what are responsible for these substance use disparities in young gay people,” said Michael P. Marshal, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, who led the study. “History shows that when marginalized groups are oppressed and do not have equal opportunities and equal rights, they suffer. Our results show that gay youth are clearly no exception.”
Interesting none of the “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” people can be moved to consider the LGBT children who are suffering as a result of their bigotry and oppression.
In a meta-analysis of 18 previous studies from 1994 to 2006, which tested the association between sexual orientation and teen substance use, Pitt researchers found that gay youth reported higher rates of cigarette, alcohol and marijuana use, as well as other illicit drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamines and injection drugs. Almost all of the studies in their review were cross-sectional, suggesting that very little is known about the long-term patterns or consequences of drug use in this vulnerable population. Furthermore, the authors conducted a systematic review of the prevention and intervention guidelines published by the American Medical Association, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism and the Institute of Medicine. They found that none of the institutions mentioned sexual orientation as a potential risk factor for substance use in teens, and did not provide information for researchers and health care professionals on how to prevent such problems.
“It is important to remember that the vast majority of gay youth are happy and healthy, despite the stressors of living in a violent, homophobic society,” noted Dr. Marshal. “More than anything, gay youth need love, support and acceptance from their family members and friends. It also is imperative that health care providers offer a safe, confidential environment to discuss health care needs with gay teens.”…
Though this is a significant study I doubt the people who need to heed it most will do so as it would require them to change their attitudes and behaviors. Accordingly we’ll continue to fight an uphill battle. Nonetheless we have another valuable weapon in our arsenal, for which I am very grateful.
About that “flat tax” — it’s not a flat tax at all. (Never take the word of staunch supporters of a different candidate!)
Here’s Mike’s fair tax plan:
Progressive Taxes - A fair Tax Senator Gravel’s Progressive Fair Tax proposal calls for eliminating the IRS and the income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax on new products and services. To compensate for the tax on necessities, such as food, lodging, transportation and clothing, there would be a “rebate” to reimburse taxpayers. This would be paid in a monthly check from the government to all citizens. The focus on taxing new goods would also help tackle the global climate change problem. For more information go here and here More information on what FairTax is and how it works can be found here, here, and here.
I like that. I like that, a lot.
That leaves only his Social Security plan that I might take issue with — but the jury’s still out on SS until I understand exactly what he intends to do.
This is getting dangerous, folks — not to you, or to me, but to the Democratic candidates: Mike Gravel is viable.
I wanted to update you on my latest plans before news gets out. Today, I am announcing my plan to join the Libertarian Party, because the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country. I wanted my supporters to get this news first, because you have been the ones who have kept my campaign alive since I first declared my candidacy on April 17, 2006.
Well, now, this changes things. Since I just found out about it — and since he doesn’t even have the Libertarian nomination yet — it’s far too early for me to make any immediate decisions.
I do, however, have a few thoughts:
1. If the Libertarian Party has half an ounce of sense, Mike Gravel will be its nominee, if on no other basis than Q factor + all those juicy crossover votes from Democrats who feel hung out to dry by being forced to choose between Obama and Clinton (and who are still pissed off that their first, or second, or even fifth choice dropped out before their state primary).
Now, hear tell there’s something like 15 other people competing for the Libertarian nod — which sounds like a lot of competition, until you realize you have absolutely no idea who any of these candidates are. (I certainly can’t name any without Googling, can you?)
In the early debates and who-knows-how-many interviews, Mike Gravel has done half the work for the Libs already. He won me over (after Kucinich, Gravel was neck-and-neck with Richardson as my number-two choice until Richardson made that lousy maricon remark).
2. Where the Libs will balk is on Gravel’s polar-opposite positions to some key issues, such as universal healthcare (Gravel supports it, the Libs don’t). In reality, Mike Gravel is the perfect Green Party candidate — but let’s face it, folks: the Greens just aren’t ready for prime time. (Hey, I’m a Greenie at heart, and even I can see that.) Moving into the Lib camp was a wise move for Gravel, financially and in terms of credibility.
3. The Obamacans are going to go insane. Yellow-dog Democrats won’t be too pleased, either, but the Obamacans are going to go absolutely insane when they realize how many votes from former Kucinich supporters, Edwards supporters, and newly-resurrected Gravel supporters will be siphoned off from their Heavenly Messiah Obama. And they will be siphoned off, big-time.
3. Of course Gravel won’t win the general election — and in truth, he will end up being a major spoiler to the “presumptive” nominee, Lord Barry Most High.
Will this result in President McCain? Frankly, I believe Candidate Obama will result in President McCain.
Of Obama and Clinton, I believe only Clinton stands a chance of beating McCain in the GE (and the latest Rasmussen poll agrees).
And I don’t believe Clinton is going to get the nomination.
4. I have problems with Gravel on two issues: the flat tax (in short, it really is unfair to the working poor) and Social Security (his plan for which sounds a little too close to privatization for my comfort — although on the surface I do rather like the idea of leaving surplus SSA funds to heirs, as long as he’s able to compensate for the loss).
Otherwise, I agree with Mike Gravel on every other issue. Everything. All of them.
5. One thing’s for sure: With Mike back in the race, it is not going to be politics as usual.
As a woman, I know how the c-word rings in my ear. As a lesbian, I know how “dyke” sounds when it’s thrown at me as a slur.
But I never thought, in this day and age, I would feel the sting of anti-Italian hate. That should have died out with my grandparents’ generation — but it appears that the Wrong Mr. Wright has been keeping that brand of discrimination alive and well, thankyouverymuch.
The following is all over the right-wing blogosphere this morning. Well, of course it is; do you think any Obama worshippers would dare touch it? And now that I’m bringing it up (and I suspect I will be the only left-wing blogger to dare mention it), I’m bracing myself for yet another round of hate mail.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to give Wright a pass on “garlic noses” — it isn’t the only time he’s let his animosity toward Italians come through, loud and clear:
Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been a member for two decades, slurred Italians in a piece published in the most recent issue of Trumpet Newsmagazine.
“(Jesus’) enemies had their opinion about Him,” Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue. “The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans.
“From the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth (in a barn in a township that was under the Apartheid Roman government that said his daddy had to be in), up to and including the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death on a cross, a Roman cross, public lynching Italian style. …” Wright wrote. “He refused to be defined by others and Dr. Asa Hilliard also refused to be defined by others.
“The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God,” said Wright.
Every issue of the magazine published last year included Wright’s column, “The Message,” in which he covered a range of subjects, including his views on other African-American churches as expressed in his April 2007 commentary “Facing the Rising Sun.” …
Trumpet Newsmagazine started publication in the 1980s in Chicago and distribution expanded in March 2006 to several other cities, with broader circulation through subscriptions. On the magazine’s masthead, Wright is named as the magazine’s CEO and Wright’s daughter, Jeri Wright, is the publisher.
Requests for comments from Jeri Wright, the magazine’s marketing staff, and the Obama campaign were not answered by press time. …
“Garlic noses”?
“Public lynching Italian style”?
Why doesn’t he just come out and call us greaseballs, wops, dagos, gumbas, mafiosi?
So, before you hit the comment link below and tell me what a racist I am (because… what? because I have the audacity to criticize a man who happens to be black?), consider how you’re going to convince me — a third-generation Italian-American extremely sensitive to cracks about her rich heritage — that Wright isn’t the bigot here.
Convince me that I don’t have the right to rip into anyone who calls Italians “garlic noses.”
(CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s aides blasted Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign Monday after a major Obama supporter referenced the blue dress at the heart of former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment scandal.
Gordon Fischer, a former chair of the Iowa Democratic Party and part of Obama’s Iowa support team, also compared Bill Clinton unfavorably to Joe McCarthy.
McCarthy was a senator who was known for leveling accusations that people were Communists or spying for the Russians in the 1950s.
“When Joe McCarthy questioned others’ patriotism, McCarthy (1) actually believed, at least aparently (sic), the questions were genuine, and (2) he did so in order to build up, not tear down, his own party, the GOP,” Fischer, wrote on his blog.
“Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping — instead he is hurting — his own party. B. [Bill] Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica’s blue dress.”
. . .
Fischer, who endorsed Obama last fall, later removed the post from his blog and replaced it with an apology.
“I sincerely apologize for a tasteless and gratituous [sic] comment I made here about President Clinton. It was unnecessary and wrong,” he wrote.
In a conference call with reporters Monday, Clinton aides said Fischer’s decision to attack the New York senator reflected “gutter tactics that [the Obama] campaign is now deploying.”
“This is now the Obama campaign’s primary message to the American people,” said spokesman Howard Wolfson. “Not to build him up, but to tear Sen. Clinton down.”
He also dismissed Fischer’s apology. “In my opinion the remarks of Gordon Fischer are very much in keeping with the campaign Sen. Obama is running. So I don’t know why he would apologize.”
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can cool it for a while with the hate mail, Obamaniacs — you know what I mean: the ones that go “You racist!” and “You quoted Fox News! That proves you’re a paid political operative for Hillary and/or the GOP!”
Here’s one you can’t lay at our doorstep, from Queerty.com — a news blog (one of our favorites, in fact) even queerer than the one you’re reading right now, and one that’s been extremely fair (often to a fault) to The Anointed One:
… First, we had Donnie McClurkin, the man who nearly derailed the Senator’s mega church campaign. Then came Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s preacher who damned the United States and spurred that revolutionary race speech.
And now Fox’s ire-inducing Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes have turned their attention to another Obama “spiritual counselor,” Reverend James Meeks, a state Senator who spends his free time blasting the bent boys and girls. Obama’s camp already denounced the remarks, saying:
Obama has appeared at hundreds of churches and served with scores of colleagues and can hardly be expected to be held responsible for all that they say.
While that may be true, Meeks’ history will certainly propel a few news stories this week. …
Meeks, who’s closely associated with anti-gay groups like Americans for Truth and Focus On The Family, told a reporter during his 2006 gubernatorial run that he’s the perfect candidate for conservative white voters: “Theologically, politically, for the white conservative voter, I’m their guy. I have their philosophy.” That philosophy became his common call during that year, when he was swiftly defeated:
Come on with me white churches … Call me and tell me to run for governor. White people who believe in Jesus, call me and tell me to run for governor”
…
If I do run and there are two people in the race who both are not standing for morality, if I don’t have every white Christian vote in the state of Illinois, I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of ya’ll racist.Just one year earlier Meeks railed against white Christians…
Meanwhile, like Wright, Meeks has come under fire for using the pulpit to dispense racialized opinions, even referring to mayors as “slave masters” and some unnamed politicians as “house n****rs…
Though he’s since apologized for those remarks — and, again, Obama himself has denounced them — we’ve got no doubt Meeks’ Obama connection will be making the rounds this week. Can we expect another speech or will Obama be able to shrug this one aside and start focusing on the task at hand: the campaign. We’re hoping the latter, because the Democrats need to make sure they’re strong enough to fight John McCain. And the past few weeks have not been helping their case.
More — including links, an embedded video of Meeks, and some spirited reader comments (”Obama describes Meeks as one of his ‘closest religious advisors’; Meeks appeared in TV ads for Obama’s US Senate campaign; When he ran for US Senate in 2004, Obama campaigned at Meeks’ Salem Baptist church; Meeks’ church was Obama’s last stop on the night he won that primary … Obama appointed Meeks to his exploratory committee for the Presidency; Meeks is listed on Obama’s campaign website of influential black supporters”…) — at the link.
High Court Refuses to Review Arizona Prison’s Abortion Policy
Lower Court’s Ruling Upholding Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Will Stand
WASHINGTON, DC - March 24 - The United States Supreme Court announced today that it would not review a lower court decision preventing prison officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, from interfering with women prisoners’ access to timely, safe, and legal abortion care.
“As we have shown throughout this case, a pregnant woman in prison does not lose her right to decide to have an abortion any more than she gives up her right to have a child,” said Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “It is not up to prison officials to decide whether a woman prisoner should carry a pregnancy to term or not.”
At issue in the case was an unwritten Maricopa County Jail policy preventing women in prison from obtaining abortion care. The policy prohibited jail officials from transporting a prisoner for an abortion unless she first obtained a court order. The jail transports prisoners without a court order for all other necessary medical care, including prenatal care and childbirth. The jail also regularly transports prisoners for various non-medical reasons, including visits with terminally ill family members or attendance at relatives’ funerals.
“Today’s announcement puts an end to Maricopa County prison officials’ blatant disregard of the law and failure to ensure that prisoners get the health care they need,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. “It’s the end of the road for Sheriff Arpaio’s campaign against reproductive freedom.”
After weeks of being denied access to abortion care, a pregnant prisoner, represented by the ACLU, sued in May 2004 on behalf of herself and future prisoners seeking abortions. In August 2005, the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, struck down the jail’s policy, holding that it violates women’s reproductive rights and serves “no legitimate penological purpose.” In January 2007, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld that decision, and in September of last year, the Arizona Supreme Court refused to review the case.
ACLU briefs note that Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in charge of Maricopa County Jail, has “maintained the Policy throughout his tenure, consistent with his well-publicized stance against abortion and his ‘America’s toughest sheriff’ persona.” Arpaio himself has admitted that under this policy, “The gal may have the baby by the time it gets through the court system.”
In a similar case brought by the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit earlier this year upheld a lower court ruling allowing women prisoners in Missouri to obtain timely, safe, and legal abortion care.
Today’s case is Arpaio v. Doe, 07-839. Lawyers on the case include Amiri, Talcott Camp, Louise Melling, and Steven R. Shapiro of the ACLU and Daniel Pochoda of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.
Before our very eyes, there is a new Religious Left coalescing out of the splintered remnants of the old Democratic coalition: the Obama movement, or, simply Obamania. Obama’s appeal to his supporters has much of the quality of religious hysteria and his oratory resembles that of a minister on a pulpit. His speeches allude sometimes to a coalition of faith and bipartisanship. If Barack Obama goes on to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency, it may very well signal a fundamental realignment of the political landscape in America. That realignment might be transient, as when the so-called Reagan Democrats shifted party allegiance for an election cycle or two, during the 1980’s. Or it could be something more lasting.
Polls, this year, indicate that Barack Obama has an unusual ability to attract Independent voters and even a few nominally identified as Republicans. On the other hand, somewhere between a quarter and one-half of the traditional Democrats currently supporting Senator Clinton indicate that they will cross party lines to vote for the Republican candidate if Senator Obama is the Democratic nominee. Race may be one factor in the impending realignment of voters, if Obama is a candidate, but there is another factor at work as well.
Obama is far stronger than Clinton in the Old South and in the Heartland, where religion plays a strong role in the daily lives of people. Obama does less well in California, the Northeast, and the Industrial portion of the Midwest, where wage-earners predominate and where religion, though still evident in the private lives of the populace, tends not to be intermingled with such secular activities as work, school, and play. These folks have a strong tradition of supporting separation of church and state and are less likely to join in with what is essentially a religious revival, even if it is arising from the left, this time, instead of the right side of the political spectrum. Organized labor, with its Marxist roots, will not comfortably embrace the new Religious Left, although it may be supported by some individual workers who are especially devout in their religious affiliation. There is evidence in current polls of a movement of white, male working class voters into the Clinton camp. For all too many leftists, Obama is a Pied Piper and the voter himself like the child who was too lame to follow the whole of the way. At first, he will stand aside and watch dumbfounded, but if the phenomenon is a lasting one, these voters will need to find a new home.
The last two elections, in 2000 and 2004 respectively, pitted a candidate from the Christian Right against candidates from the secular, pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts Democratic tradition. If Obama is nominated by the Democrats, the 2008 general election will pit a new kind of candidate from the Religious Left against a somewhat secular, pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts candidate from the right. Voters will align themselves, in part, based on whether they view the left/right or religious/secular dichotomy as the more important one. If the Obama phenomenon takes hold, in the Democratic Party, sooner or later there will be a contest between a candidate from the Religious Right and one from the Religious Left. That might create the kind of vacuum in which a genuine third party might emerge, with a secular and pragmatic orientation.
Religion, by its nature, is an inherently conservative phenomenon. Its epistemology is “revealed truth” and if God is all-knowing he can’t also be presented as “changing his mind.” No one likes a God who is a flip-flopper. By contrast, the secular domains occupied by science and reason are inherently revolutionary, constantly revising and up-dating their dogmas with each new experiment and discovery. So, it was a natural kind of alliance between two conservative traditions when the Religious Right emerged in the late seventies, spearheaded by Robert Grant, Jerry Falwell Ed McAteer, and Pat Robertson. It also dramatically changed the political landscape and led directly to the Reagan years.
The Obama phenomenon is a less likely kind of alliance and harder to comprehend. Obama presents himself as the “change” candidate and is widely perceived as such by his followers. Obama recognizes, however, an odd kind of paradox that his candidacy represents, when he describes the ethic of his Trinity Church of Christ community, with its emphasis on self-help, as a “quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion.” Religions have never been about change except in the sense of expanding the reach of their viewpoints into new communities.
Change can be good or it can be catastrophic. Many of us who have long advocated change in America do not welcome all of the kinds of change that Barack Obama represents. Certainly, we welcome inclusivity and the “new face on America” that Obama’s rise in prominence heralds, but do not welcome his emphasis on faith, overt Christianity in public life, and evangelical-style speeches delivered as though from a pulpit. Leadership by “inspiration” is a dangerous kind of leadership. Faith is diametrically opposed to critical thinking. Political prophets too often insulate themselves among their followings, leading to corruption, cronyism, and political sloth. It is only the willingness of voters to punish political parties for their corrupt tendencies that holds such problems in check. Loyalty in politics is an invitation to abuse of power.
America found itself knee-deep in an immoral and strategically unsound war in Iraq not merely because of George W. Bush and his neoconservative cronies. The other major contributing factor was the ignorance of the American people, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. The American public was too easily duped by spurious arguments and false information into supporting the administration’s preposterous position. Only those who took the time to read and critically evaluate the available information saw through the gambit, before it was too late. Without critical faculties to draw upon, the public will repeat such mistakes over and over again. America will not be a significantly better country until Americans learn to think critically and independently. What does it matter if we are led around by our collective nose-rings by a leader on the left or one on the right? Obama, with his appeals to faith, hope, inspiration, and zealotry, is inviting the public down a pathway that leads to clapping and singing, as well as conformity and acceptance, rather than thoughtful analysis of alternative viewpoints and policies.
Even more than George Bush, it is WE, the American people, who are the problem in America. WE need to think carefully and substantively about major issues and, collectively, to direct our government toward sensible courses of action, instead of allowing them to embark on unilateral, unprovoked wars or reelecting advocates of torture. WE will not be a better people because of a euphoria imparted by a charismatic speaker — or when a “forceful wind” and “voices from the rafters” overpower our capacities for reason and objectivity.
AP reminds us of Reason #8,492 We’re Glad We Never Hated Our Big Ol’ Homo Selves Enough to Hide Behind A Loveless Marriage to a MOTOS:
Gay ex-gov wins round in divorce court
Former Gov. Jim McGreevey didn’t plan to torment his wife while they were married, a judge in their divorce case ruled Thursday, while allowing her to continue with a claim of marriage fraud.
The judge dismissed Dina Matos McGreevey’s claim of emotional distress against her estranged gay husband.
“Mr. McGreevey was not out to destroy her emotionally,” Superior Court Judge Karen Cassidy said.
Cassidy said she would permit the fraud claim to continue for now, but warned, “That does not guarantee the defendant will be successful in trying her claim.”
Matos McGreevey claims she was duped into marrying a gay man who sought the cover of a wife to hide his homosexuality and further his political ambitions. He claims he provided companionship and a child, thus fulfilling his part of the marriage contract.
The pretrial hearing came less than a week after McGreevey, 50, said claims that he and his wife engaged in threesomes with a male aide were true; Matos McGreevey, 41, denied they happened.
Arriving with her attorney Thursday, Matos McGreevey said only “no comment” as she entered the courthouse. …
Words fail me — but in reality, you don’t need me to comment; if you can’t see Obama’s own racism in full bloom after reading this, then you’re blind in one eye, and can’t see out of the other.
I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
We thought we heard this, but we wanted to go back and listen to the clip of Sen. Barack Obama on 610 WIP this morning to be sure.
610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”
Gross doesn’t quote Obama 100% verbatim, so here’s my transcript (listen here, or here):
“The point I was making was not that my grandmother, uh, harbors any racial animosity — she doesn’t — but she is a typical white person who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into, uh, our experiences that— that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way.”
Continues Gross:
We doubt this story will have legs, but wonder if Hillary Clinton referred to a “typical black person,” would we ever hear the end of it?
UPDATE: We gave the Obama campaign a chance to respond to this post. “Barack Obama said specifically that he didn’t believe his grandmother harbored any racial animosity, but that her fears were understandable and typical of those often shared by her generation,” said Obama’s PA spokesman Sean Smith, who added that Grandma is 86-years-old. He might have meant that specifically, but that isn’t what he said, especially as he spoke of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in the present tense. The Clinton campaign has not yet returned our request for comment on Obama’s remarks. We aren’t holding our breath for a Clinton comment.
Again, words fail me — so I’ll let this emoticon say it all:
You really have it in for Obama; I’m not clear on why you think Clinton is a better pick (especially after your early faves in Demo-land were Kucinich and Edwards)
Don’t assume I made the leap from Kucinich to Edwards to Clinton without a lot of “help” from Obama.
Until the Donnie McClurkin fiasco last fall, Obama seemed a perfectly acceptable candidate to me. I was, frankly, ambivalent about him; I had planned on voting for Kucinich in the primary, and, knowing Dennis would never get the nomination, lining up to vote in the general for whichever Democrat did. I assumed that would be Edwards or Clinton or Obama, and I was fine with any of them (as fine as I could be, that is, since I know I’ll never really get the president I want).
But then came McClurkin, and— and, honestly, I’m so tired of writing about Obama and McClurkin (and at the moment, I can’t think of anything I want to say that I haven’t already), I strongly suggest you read all my entries on McClurkin, as well as Kirbyjon Caldwell (here and here).
Mind you, it was not solely the McClurkin issue that turned me off to Obama; it was (and is) a huge issue, yes, but it served more to open my eyes to everything else that is Barack Obama.
I discussed my revulsion at the way Obama mishandled the McClurkin flap with my better half. My question to her was: “Are his supporters right? Am I just piling on the guy because he used us to get the bigot vote in South Carolina, so I’ll never be able to see him in a positive light?”
The answer, we both decided, was no. The McClurkin issue forced me to take a harder look at Obama — his slim record, his flip-flopping (on issues having nothing to do with The Gay Thing), his convenient memory losses, his sucking up to the GOP, his whiney-ass schoolyard games, the vast emptiness of his rhetoric — and I didn’t like what I saw. And, as time went on, I began to see a very clear pattern in Obama: He was (and is) exposing his own feet of clay with each and every new incident.
You also need to understand that my support for Clinton is lukewarm, at best, and I’m not afraid to point out her missteps (although, in sharp contrast to Obama, has improved). Because Kucinich and Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday, the only choices left on my ballot were Clinton and Obama — and by the time the California primary rolled around, I knew far too much about Obama to even entertain the thought of voting for him.
I gather that Clinton is someone you trust more on gay issues in particular. No one in my family has flagged Obama as weaker on these issues than Clinton; Obama may in fact be, but it hadn’t been brought up as a concern before I read your pieces.
Let’s say I dis-trust Clinton less than I distrust Obama on gay issues. In reality, their positions are very similar; the difference (on the gay angle alone) is that Clinton didn’t exploit raging, religion-based homophobia to win votes at the expense of gay and lesbian Americans, and then pretend she didn’t do it, and didn’t do it deliberately.
I’m thinking no one’s brought it up because during her Senate run she said she opposed same-sex marriage and would have voted for DOMA and apparently she remains opposed to gay marriage.
As DOMA goes (and she didn’t vote for it, as she wasn’t a Senator at the time), Hillary was wrong to support it when it was passed, and she’s wrong not to support its complete repeal now. (There is a “but” in that, which I’ll get to in a second.)
If you wanted a fight out of me on that, you won’t get it; I’m well aware of Hillary’s flaw here (she wants to overturn only one part of DOMA), and Obama’s strength (he wants to repeal the whole thing). I also recognize that Clinton has attempted to compensate for her earlier support of DOMA by striking a middle ground: retaining the part of DOMA that continues to leave marriage equality to the states, while overturning the part that would prohibit federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
While that would leave the possibility of federal recognition open, that’s not good enough for me. But (and here’s the “but” I warned you about a moment ago) — as much as I rail about having to take “baby steps,” especially when it comes to issues of full equality — I’m pragmatic enough to understand that Clinton’s approach is more likely to succeed, thus staving off another attempt by the Hard Right to write a federal marriage ban into the U.S. Constitution.
Yes, I understand very well that a constitutional amendment is a massive undertaking than can span decades, even generations — I cheered and pumped my fist in the air at ERA rallies in the 1970s, you know — but I also know that a wholesale threat to strip individual states of their so-called “right” to deny us equality would result in a backlash that would plunge the fight for equality back into the Dark Ages.
As much as I want federal recognition, and as much as I detest the “states’ rights” argument, I’m not above setting my emotions aside long enough to consider — and admit — that perhaps the “baby steps” strategy really is the most workable plan. I could be wrong either way, but as I often say, if you keep doing something one way, and it’s not working, it’s time to think about doing something else. That “something else” in this case, as it is fomenting in my thoughts these days, is to take the same path as that of anti-miscegenation: Go ahead, leave it up to the states — and then challenge each state, through the court system, to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.
That’s a hard road, a longer road, and one that promises to clog our already-overburdened court system. But I think, at least today, that a constant chip-chip-chipping away, state by state, may be the only practical way of getting there. Plainly put, the bigger a headache it becomes — i.e., the more time, money, and resources that are wasted — for each state to defend its archaic anti-marriage laws, the more likely… How does that Confucian (or perhaps Zen) saying go? “Water continually dropping wears hard rocks hollow.”
Now, it’s fine, even commendable, that Obama intends to overturn all of DOMA — and if he can manage to do it, I’ll be the first to thank him, praise him, and re-evaluate everything I’ve ever said about his commitment to equality. (Re-evaluate, mind you, not retract; he’s got a lot to make up for, and I will never accept the rubbish that he is a true ally as long as he remains opposed to full marriage equality — and until he completely repudiates all his “love the sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric, and patently ignorant and offensive remarks about giving us a “set of basic rights,” to “allow” us to live our lives “in a way that doesn’t cause discrimination” — for starters.)
But can he do it? Will he do it? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume, generously, that he is sincere; after all, Bill Clinton was sincere about allowing gay people to serve openly in the military (he even made it his first priority, just days after taking the oath of office) — but look what that got us: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Bill, for all his good intentions, was forced into that compromise.
And that is how, in retrospect, I perceive DOMA: It was a rotten compromise. It sucked. It sucks now. I hate it. But it did serve one purpose: as a stop-gap measure to stave off a major backlash, and at least delay the push for a U.S. constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Bill handled both DOMA and DADT badly, due to his underestimation of the anti-gay forces against us, and we’re still suffering for his lack of judgment. I don’t want anything like DOMA or DADT (or something worse that I haven’t even imagined yet) to happen again. And yet I am told, repeatedly, by Obama supporters, that as a gay person I’m a fool not to support Obama on his promise to repeal DOMA alone — whereas I see Obama ignoring the outcome of Bill’s promise to us, and the resulting DADT policy. Obama is taking a gamble on our lives in a way that’s already been proven reckless. And that in itself is reckless.
Since that seems that’s largely the raison d’etre of your site…
It depends how you look at it. The raison d’etre is to point out injustices and hypocrisy (legal and otherwise), in the hope it will open a few eyes and effect change, through the “water continually dropping” effect.
Marriage equality, of course, is a huge issue, but if we were granted full federal recognition tomorrow, I wouldn’t go away. (Sorry! LOL) I want to reiterate something I don’t think I say enough: Marriage equality is not a single, narrow lens through which I view life; it is a wide-angle lens which offers a nearly 360-degree view of countless life issues lost on those lacking the same peripheral vision.
I suggest you read what my better half (who is far more direct and succinct than I could ever hope to be) had to say about it recently, from the perspective of LGBTs being thought of as “one-issue voters.” In short, we’re not just fighting for the right to say “I do”; we’re fighting for a plethora of rights and protections that we would have automatically through federally-recognized marriage. As it stands (and by leaving it all “to the states”), we have to fight for each of those rights and protections, one at a time.
So, yes, marriage equality is a major reason for this blog, but not the only one. Frankly, I wish I never had to write about marriage equality again; I’d rather concentrate on eradicating homophobia on a social (instead of legal) level, through education, interfaith networks, whatever works through peaceful, nonviolent means.
I’d also like to spend more time celebrating gay culture, art, film, literature, and recognizing people (especially young people) and programs making a positive difference in the world.
But until we do get those “I do’s” and everything that goes along with them, I can’t.
…I’m surprised by just how much the Church Lady you can sound on the topic “Obama does not make me happy.”
Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever sounded churchy to anyone. LOL
Monday’s guilt-by-association-with-Wright-rant was great. You slam Wright for brining up Lewinsky; you talk about how astonishing it is to see a Democrat mention that scandal…. and then you use Fox as one of your primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements?
I’m hard-pressed to find where I used Fox as one of my “primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements,” unless you mean the quote I cited from Fox recounting Wright’s Christmas and January 13th sermons from this article — in which case I don’t see a conflict; everything in that article appears to be factually correct, with little if any editorializing.
In the end, it was Fox that broke the story the MSM had been ignoring up to now; if you’d rather I’d quoted ABC or MSNBC (or even CNN, which came into the game last), well, I could, but as the other networks piggybacking on Fox have only supported Fox, why bother?
Following on that, your use of the term ‘heterosexual privilege’ in today’s leader was jolting.
One of the things you accuse Wright of is being racially divisive by pointing out the racism inherent in our culture; I have not heard him speak, but that sounds very much like a man pointing out white privilege to me.
I have no problem with pointing out white privilege — I’ve never once pretended I’m not automatically privileged by my white skin — but there’s a big difference between pointing out white privilege and 1) blasting all whites for black oppression in the 21st century, and 2) preaching a theology that seems to have no goal other than the endless perpetuation of anti-white hate.
The difference between Jeremiah Wright and me is this: I don’t blame all heterosexuals for my oppression.
And the difference between Barack Obama and me is this: If my “spiritual advisor” — since I don’t have one, let’s say Harvey Milk — had ever “preached” against straight society, and fired up the gay masses against straight society as a whole, I’d condemn Harvey faster than you could say “Anita Bryant.”
Pointing out white privilege can indeed make white folks very flinchy; we don’t like to admit how much of a pass we get.
Not this white woman. I do recognize my free pass, and I don’t like it one bit.
But I also don’t like being lumped in with every ignorant jackass who happens to share my skin tone. I don’t know how to make it clear to you, or to anyone else, that not all of us deserve to be the target of Wright’s harpoon, since all white people cry, “But I’m not a racist! Some of my best friends are…”
But I do recognize it, and I do fight racism, with the same angry passion as I fight homophobia. Without looking, I can tell you from memory that since I started blogging in 2003 (one of these days, I’ll have to move the old stuff over here, but if you want to find it, go Google the long-dormant “doublethink” blog at Salon.com; that was mine), I’ve blasted fark through George W. Bush for his Pickering nominating because I recognized the racism; I blasted some idiot Florida state rep (whose name escapes me) for making a joke about blacks and basketball because I recognized the racism; I’ve spilled tons of pixels attacking first-class jerks like Trent Lott and Ted Nugent and Toby Keith and that spawn of Satan Michael Savage because I recognized the racism.
I do see it, and I do scream about it. Loudly. Being white, it’s my responsibility to scream about it — precisely because I recognize how much more weight the words of heterosexual allies carry when speaking out about homophobia — and it is a responsibility I welcome.
It just pisses me off when everything I’ve tried to do is tossed aside because I’m white.
I guess some of us have never lived in a big city and seen a driving while black checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen an interracial couple getting harassed by local cops.
Wrong-O. I’ve seen it, and I’ve lived and worked amidst it. In my long entry about Michelle Obama, I mentioned that for a couple of years I worked as a photographer in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Who do you think attended those schools, the Waltons? Years before that, I lived near the corner of Wilshire and Crenshaw in L.A.; from the moment the news started covering the Rodney King riots live, I didn’t have to look at a map to see where Reginald Denny was getting his head bashed in — I could name every fast-food joint around the intersection of Florence and Normandie.
The only new thought that came to my mind was: “Denny is white… I am white… I would be killed without anyone stopping for one second to consider whether I was on their side or not.”
On the flip side, I could say: “I guess some of us have never lived in a big city” — or a small town — “and seen a driving while queer checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen a gay couple getting harrassed by local cops.” Or a straight person bashed because he was mistaken for being gay. Or a transgendered woman sentenced to a cruel death because of the paramedic who was supposed to be treating her after an auto wreck but wouldn’t touch the “chick with the dick,” the doctor who denied her treatment, and the host of other “care” givers who finally performed only the most perfunctory (read: half-assed) procedures after she lay unattended for half an hour, in a state of what was probably “sheer terror.”
As I wrote at Democratic Underground (ironically, regarding the way people gloss over homophobia yet go insane when it comes to racism, anti-semitism, etc.) nearly two years ago:
Now, listen: I am not playing the “my persecution is worse than yours” victim game. As far as I’m concerned, all persecution is equal; when you’re the one getting lynched, or burned at the stake, or herded into a gas chamber, your victimhood is 100%. And it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, or Jewish, or black, or even an Australian in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb goes off in an Indonesian pub. You’re just as dead as everyone else, and your family is just as destroyed as any other.
You could argue that Jewish persecution has occurred on a larger scale, and you’d be right; e.g., the Nazis gassed some 6 million Jews, and “only” about a million male homosexuals. But persecution is persecution, and dead is dead is dead.
Matt Shepard is just as dead as Anne Frank.
Anne Frank is just as dead as Emmett Till.
Emmett Till is just as dead as Brandon Teena.
And only by the grace of God (or providence) is that 17-year-old Texas boy not as dead as any of them.
Dead is dead is dead.
And hate is hate is hate. And while I can fathom the many reasons for it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept the fact that the general public just doesn’t care much (or at all) when it’s the queers who are being bashed, murdered, or verbally assaulted.
Don’t you see? I don’t see any difference between homophobia and racism. They both destroy lives — whether we’re talking about the life of the gay man or the black man, or about the pervasive hate and fear that drive homophobes and racists to oppress, and beat, and kill.
But okay, so that’s racially divisive, a rhetoric that aggregates all members of a group into a group eligible for privilege.
And then today, you’re using heterosexual privilge, which is an idea that derives directly from white privilege? And in the following sentence, you lump all of your opponents into kinky Jesoids who want piss on you?
If by “all my opponents,” you mean people who use their religion as an excuse to maintain both my second-class citizenship and their privilege, then yes, I do.
Yes, I do lump my “opponents” together — but only not only into one big “Jesoid,” because there are plenty of non-Christian religionists who oppose my equality, too. However, it is only those who base their anti-gay crusades on their “deeply held religious beliefs” who oppose me at all. I have never once heard a secular argument against same-sex equality. If you’ve ever heard one, please clue me in; I’d be fascinated to hear a compelling argument that has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
Randall Terry — founder of Operation Rescue and absolutely maniacal anti-gay crusader — unknowingly made this point crystal clear (in part 2 of an essay he wrote bemoaning his son Jamiel’s homosexuality); bold emphasis mine:
But more simply put: Homosexual behavior is wrong because it violates the way our Creator made the world, and the Laws He gave us. This brings me to the most important part of this article: The Name, the Person, and the Standards of God.
If you have followed the fight over homosexual marriage, there has been a steady drumbeat to keep the Name and the Standards of The Almighty out of the debate. This, of course, is not new. Whether it is the debate around abortion, or over prayer in schools, or the Pledge of Allegiance, or the posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, there is a blatant, unashamed effort to drive the Name and the Laws of our Maker from the public square.
Tragically, many well meaning people in our camp have decided to go along with these rules. I tell you plainly: If we surrender on this point, we will lose the war. We will not win. We cannot win.
Why? Because absent the Created order and standards of the Almighty, there is no reason to oppose same-sex-marriage. Why should we deny two consenting people who love each other the right to be married?
The arguments against homosexual marriage involving children (having or raising them) won’t hold up. Older couples who marry cannot have children. And children are raised in homes without two natural parents every day. Sometimes a grandparent raises a child. These scenarios might not be optimum, but it is done by millions every day.
Arguments over “traditional marriage” are also of little value. We’ve had a lot of traditions that needed changing. This could be another one. Traditions are important, unless they stand in the way of liberty. Moreover, who is to say which tradition is the best? America’s, or ancient Greece’s or ancient Rome’s, where they openly practiced homosexuality?
The reason we oppose homosexual marriage is because it violates the way God made the world — it attacks the institution He created; it betrays and defies the Laws He gave us.
If there is no God; if we are the chance arrangement of molecules that happened to evolve from some primal swamp; if we are merely animals and there is no such thing as moral absolutes, good and evil, right and wrong — defined by the Ultimate Lawgiver — then anything goes. Let the homosexuals do what they want. Who are we to impose our morality on them?
But if there is a God who makes the rules, then He has imposed His morals on all of us, and we are obliged to obey and defend those ethics in the public square.
Here, for comparison, is a short discussion of the same subject by two atheists; the argument is essentially the same as Randall Terry’s!
Bottom line: There is no compelling secular argument against same-sex equality. It is always based on religion. Always.
That’s not to say I lump all religious people in with the bigots. I have only one complaint about the religious left: They won’t take the religious right to task. But then, that is an integral part of being a Christian: not judging others, but simply emulating Christ, turning the other cheek, being meek, that sort of thing.
Still, even Jesus got angry enough to turn over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. I wish the meek-and-mild religious left would turn over a few more tables.
Ah well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, right?
Talk about damning with faint praise.
But you know what? I’ll take the faint praise; it’s one of the small benefits of refusing to march in lockstep with any group to which I belong, be it by default (women, gay people, Caucasians, Italian-Americans) or by choice (Democrats — and that’s subject to change at any moment).
The United States will be left in the dust by yet another country before long as Norway prepares to legalize same-sex marriage.
Norway already has a so-called “partnership law” that has allowed homosexuals to form legal domestic partnerships. Now they likely will be able to marry, with all the rights that entails, since the government has a majority in parliament and the law is expected to win approval.
The bill, called “felles ekteskapslov” in Norwegian, will also ensure that children of lesbian couples will have two legal parents from the beginning of life, and that married homosexuals will be evaluated as adoptive parents along the same lines as heterosexual couples.
The new government minister in charge of children’s and family issues, Anniken Huitfeldt of the Labour Party, called the proposed law “an historic step towards equality.” She said the goal of the law is to demonstrate that homosexual and heterosexual couples are equal under the law.
“The new law won’t weaken marriage as an institution,” Huitfeldt claimed. “Rather, it will strengthen it. Marriage won’t be worth less because more can take part in it.”
We should expect Norway to fall into the ocean within a decade or two, at least according to Sally Kern and Mary Frances Forrester. Of course I don’t put any credence in their insane homophobic rantings so I think Norway will be around for a great deal longer than a decade or two.
Good for Norway, and congratulations to all of the same-sex couples who will be able to take advantage of the new law when it becomes effective!
I just finished watching The Race Speech. It was a nice speech — but I don’t need a history lesson in race relations; I wanted Obama to address the specifics of the Jeremiah Wright issue, and then get very specific about the theology he’s pledged his loyalty to — and the church he’s pledged his money to — for the past twenty years.
At best, he dismissed Wright as a member of a dying generation, for whom “the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away,” and downplayed the constant, consistent message of his own brand of “liberation theology” as only “occasionally” finding “voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.”
It also irritated the hell out of me that he compared Wright’s long history of anti-white rhetoric to Geraldine Ferraro’s one-time gaffe:
We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
And, again, while Wright may sound like a crank to those of us to whom his brand of fire and brimstone are foreign, his divisive demagoguery is entirely consistent with the theology to which Obama subscribes.
That is worrisome.
In short, Obama really didn’t say anything new. It was the same “hate the sin, love the sinner” speech he’s been making since the Wright firestorm erupted, only padded with a lot of historical references.
Of course, I’m a hard sell — but that’s the point: I am the person very Obama had to convince. He didn’t — no matter how his followers praise this as the greatest speech since Lincoln’s “House Divided.”
So, mission not accomplished.
Now, there was something even more interesting to me, as a gay American, that jumped out near the very beginning of the speech:
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
There’s nothing remarkable about alluding to the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution when discussing slavery; it is, however, highly ironic that Barack Obama — staunch opponent of same-sex marriage equality — would invoke the Equal Protection Clause, on which the most elementary argument in favor of marriage equality is based.
I know his devout flock won’t see it, but Obama’s double standard on issues of equality becomes only more pronounced every time he speaks.
HARRISBURG [PA] — The Senate Judiciary Committee held round one yesterday on a controversial amendment to the state constitution intended to stop men from marrying other men and women from marrying other women in the Keystone State.
The judiciary panel is due to hold round two today, when it’s expected to vote on whether to send the so-called Pennsylvania Marriage Protection Act to the full Senate for action.
The measure, introduced by several conservative Republican senators, led by freshman Michael Brubaker of Lancaster, is intended to bolster a 1996 state law, the Defense of Marriage Act, which already outlaws marriage between people of the same sex.
Mr. Brubaker said merely having a law on the books isn’t enough, and he wants to amend the state constitution. Supporters say a future General Assembly could repeal the 1996 act, or a judge could throw it out should a gay couple bring a legal challenge to it.
Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and Janice Hollis, senior pastor of Progressive Believers Ministries in Philadelphia, supported the proposed constitutional amendment.
. . .
Ms. Gallagher said about two-thirds of Pennsylvanians support traditional marriage. “They are not hate-filled bigots,” she said. The vast majority of the standing room-only crowd of 125 people applauded her. …
Wrong-O, Maggie: Anyone so dead-set on preventing us from sharing in the joy of marrying the ones we love — in addition to the 1,100-plus rights and responsibilities of marriage — are indeed hate-filled bigots.
Prove me wrong. Show me where your Jesus told you to stand at the top of the heap and urinate all over the rest of us with your heterosexual privilege. Show me.
What accounts for this latest switch? His campaign says he didn’t understand what decriminalization meant.
And Obama was a lawyer?
And the editor of the Harvard Law Review?
And a former pot smoker whose freedom rested on knowing whether or not weed had been “decriminalized”?
Gee, maybe he can use that as an excuse for his pot-smoking — he didn’t know it was illegal!
Jeralyn adds:
I think it’s a fair question to ask if he’s being disingenous now, first about raising his hand by mistake and now saying he was confused about what decriminalization means, or whether in 2004 he was engaging in a campaign ploy to attract the youth vote.
Hit the TalkLeft link for more, with some spirited (and often amusing) reader comments!
We toldja the latest turn in the endless Jim and Dina Matos McGreevey saga would get dicey.
Take 1:Theodore Pedersen says he and the McGreeveys enjoyed weekly three-way sexual romps while the McGreeveys were married.
Take 2: Naturally, Dina says Teddy’s claims of “a routine ‘hard-core consensual sex orgy’” are “completely false,” and are the result of the publicity she’s received since Eliot Spitzer resigned.
Take 3:Jim says that “published reports by former campaign aide Teddy Pedersen are true.”
As a gay man I’m stunned at the childishness of your anti-Obama campaign. It’s quite clear that this is the influence of the gender identity politics and narrow world view of many in the Lesbian community. It’s sad and sickening.
No, JOhnny, what’s childish is your straw-man extrapolation characterizing my opposition to Barack Obama as having anything whatsoever to do with “gender identity politics” (a favorite phrase, incidentally, of right-wing blogs, news sources, and other rabidly anti-Clinton outlets).
What’s sad and sickening is your broadbrush smear of lesbians. If I were a man, would you smear the gay-male community for daring to shine so harsh a light on your precious Obama? No, you wouldn’t — you looked for the handiest weapon within reach, and brought sex (sex, JOhnny, not “gender”) into this; rather than debate my points, you took the lowest road and attempted to dismiss my opinion wholesale because I am a lesbian.
What’s especially sad and sickening is that slamming my femaleness is more important to you than the fact that I have been defending your dignity as a fellow gay American, from the moment Obama threw you under the bus, right along with the rest of us. (Sorry to break the news to you, JOhnny, but “us” includes lesbians, too.)
I thought the stereotype of the lesbian-hating male had gone the way of the dinosaur. Sadly, sexism is alive and well, at least in JOhnnyLand.
While Dina Matos McGreevey makes the rounds of the talk-show circuit — to “express sympathy” for Mrs. Elliot Spitzer (Hey, Dina, if it’s such “a very personal matter,” as you told Matt Lauer, then why are you airing every last sordid little detail all over the airwaves?), while ever-so-conveniently plugging her book, Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage — out comes one Theodore Pedersen, ex-aide to the down-low governor, to blow away Matos’ insistent claim that she was completely ignorant of Hubby Jim’s homosexuality:
A former aide to James E. McGreevey said today that he had three-way sexual trysts with the former governor and his wife before he took office, challenging Dina Matos McGreevey’s assertion that she was naive about her husband’s sexual exploits.
The aide, Theodore Pedersen, said he and the couple even had a nickname for the weekly romps, from 1999 to 2001, that typically began with dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s and ended with a threesome at McGreevey’s condo in Woodbridge.
They called them “Friday Night Specials,” according to Pedersen.
Pedersen described the encounters during an interview with The Star-Ledger. He said he wanted to refute the innocent image that Matos McGreevey has projected — both during the couple’s ongoing divorce battle and in interviews she gave after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned last week in a sex scandal. He said he was also incensed by her portrayal of herself as an unsuspecting wife in her book: “Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage.”
“I wanted to get this out now because it was so offensive to me that she goes on television playing the victim,” Pedersen said. “She’s trying to make this a payday for herself. She should have told the truth about the three of us.”
Pedersen did not say if he was gay or bisexual and only described having contact with Matos McGreevey during the trysts. He also said he never knew for sure if McGreevey was gay. …
. . .
Pedersen, 29, served as a driver and traveling aide for McGreevey during his gubernatorial campaign and after he won office in 2001. McGreevey attended Pedersen’s graduation from Rutgers University in 2003 and Pedersen accompanied the governor and others in a trip to China last year. ..
Stay tuned — this should get… well, if not good, at least dicey. (And, LittleLordFauntleroy knows, we could use some good, old-fashioned, tabloid-style sleaze around here!)
Developer Doug Manchester and other prominent San Diego County businessmen have given significant financial support to an initiative that would ban same-sex marriage targeted for the November statewide ballot.
Manchester’s $125,000 donation has prompted a gay-rights activist to urge a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the Manchester-owned San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.
In addition to Manchester, Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500; Robert Hoehn, owner of Hoehn Motors in Carlsbad, has given $25,000; and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, state records show.
. . .
Donations from San Diego residents make up a significant part of the $1 million raised for the initiative.
That has allowed the campaign to hire professional signature gatherers to help collect the 700,000 signatures needed to qualify the constitutional amendment for the ballot, said Andrew Pugno, an attorney for Protectmarriage.com, which is sponsoring the amendment.
. . .
Keith Gran, a gay-rights activist and global project manager for a medical device company, said he is outraged by Manchester’s donation.
“He’s paying people to add a bigoted, discriminatory amendment to the constitution,” Gran said. “I think that’s appalling. I think people ought to know that.”
. . .
Manchester said his hotels and restaurants welcome gays and lesbians as employees and as customers. “I don’t want to offend anybody,” he said.
. . .
News of Manchester’s contribution has been circulating throughout the gay and lesbian community for several weeks. State Sen. Christine Kehoe, a San Diego Democrat who is a lesbian, said she was disappointed by Manchester.
“I was surprised that Doug Manchester would make such an enormous contribution to try to deny a small group of Californians their civil rights,” Kehoe said.
Gran has contacted officials with the Hyatt Corp., which operates the Manchester Grand Hyatt, to discuss the issue.
Hyatt employees plan to meet next week with the Greater San Diego Business Association, which promotes businesses owned by gays and lesbians. …
Manchester said his hotels and restaurants welcome gays and lesbians as employees and as customers. “I don’t want to offend anybody,” he said.
Translation: “I don’t want to offend anybody who puts money in my pocket — especially homos blissfully unaware of how I use their money against them.”
Previous comments on this post:
It is time we all STAND UP and put an end to bigotry like this. The gay community (and our supporting friends and loved ones) should BOYCOTT any business that gets in the way of our right to marry…
Money talks…
Shawn Morgan | 07.08.08 - 5:59 pm
While Doug Manchester funds campaigns against equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens, the Bishop’s School in La Jolla is building a new library to honor him.
If this offends you, then let the Bishop’s School know.
Its site gives Headmaster Teitelman’s phone number as 858.459.7950 x 221 and his e-mail as miket@bishops.com
If you’re not a very careful reader, you might think that Ford Motor Co. has agreed to stop marketing its cars to gay consumers, and to generally cease and desist any activities meant to benefit or win favor with gay people.
That’s because the ferociously anti-gay American Family Association, which has been boycotting Ford for two years now, unilaterally declared victory on Monday.
“I have some good news for you!” wrote chairman Donald E. Wildmon in a message to members. “AFA is suspending its two year boycott of Ford Motor Company. The conditions of the original agreement presented in fall 2005 have been met.”
Those conditions, as laid out at the time by AFA, included demands that Ford stop advertising in gay-focused media outlets and stop donating to groups that support gay marriage or gay pride parades. Wildmon’s announcement was covered by dozens of media outlets including BusinessWeek, Brandweek and the Chicago Tribune.
But Ford spokesman Jim Cain insists the automaker had made no such promises. “I can tell you there was not a negotiated settlement to this boycott,” he says, sounding somewhat mystified by AFA’s triumphalism.
Ford, he continued is “committed to treating everyone fairly and with respect” and “will continue to market its products widely to attract as many customers as possible and make charitable contributions to strengthen communities to the extent business conditions allow. Difficult business conditions in recent years have reduced our overall spending across the board.”
In other words, Ford’s decision to cut back on spending in gay media reflects the company’s larger decision to cut back media spending in general. The company, like the rest of the U.S. automobile industry, has been hard hit by imports and the economic slowdown. Ford in particular has been playing musical chairs with upper management and is shaking up its product line in order to dig out of a significant fiscal deficit.
Ad-industry magazine Brandweek, however, estimates that Ford’s spending has remained stable at around $1.6 billion per year for the past three years. If that number doesn’t descend for ’08, it may be an indication that Ford did capitulate — at least tacitly — to Wildmon’s demands. Ford, incidentally, has a 100 percent rating Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Diversity Index and has been in the forefront of gay visibility for employees.
Mike Wilke, the founder and head of the Commercial Closet, told EDGE that this story is confusing on several levels. Wilke does believe that there was communication on some level between Ford and AFA at least toward the beginning of the boycott. “Ford didn’t the have immediate response the AFA wanted,” he said. “Ford then met with the gay community and continued advertising,” although only with generic corporate ads, not for specific brands, which include Range Rover and Jaguar as well as Volvo.
Wilke is sure of one thing: “Historically, there has never been an effective boycott against the gay community.” A case in point is the Southern Baptists, who noisily launched a boycott of the Walt Disney Co. because of a perceived pro-gay corporate stance. The boycott was called off after being widely perceived as a failure.
If Ford did anything wrong, Wilke believes it was agreeing to have any kind of discussion with Wildmon in the first place, which only gave legitimacy to his organization and cause. “It’s a case study in what not to do,” Wilke said, “to engage in conversation by having a meeting with the group back then. It creates a back-and-forth situation.”
Some gay-rights activists voiced suspicions that Ford was simply using its financial difficulties as an excuse to drop gay media, finding a face-saving way of meeting the AFA’s demands without appearing to cave. But an examination of the company’s ad spending, and its continuing support of some gay groups, suggests otherwise.
. . .
The company says it still supports organizations that campaign for gay marriage and civil unions, including the Human Rights Campaign — one of the main objects of the AFA’s ire. Volvo, a Ford company, is still listed by the HRC as a corporate donor in its “silver” category.
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The United States will be left in the dust by yet another country before long as Norway prepares to 
