Liberal Christians, I’m not talking to you here. You’re welcome to read along, but if you feel your hackles rising, remember that I’m speaking directly to the Radical Religious Right. Granted, I’m a little irked that you’re not taking them to task as loudly and frequently as we godless heathens do (and if you are, I can’t hear you above the din, so speak up!), but I understand your belief that emulating Jesus means you’re not supposed to judge anyone else. Well, as I just said in a comment (to a post you really should read) on my better half’s blog: Even The Ultimate Pacifist overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple.
They attacked liberalism because it seemed to them the principal premise of modern society; everything they dreaded seemed to spring from it: the bourgeois life, Manchesterism, materialism, parliament and the parties, the lack of political leadership. Even more, they sensed in liberalism the source of all their inner sufferings. Theirs was a resentment of loneliness; their one desire was for a new faith, a new community of believers, a world with fixed standards and no doubts, a new national religion that would bind all Germans together. All this, liberalism denied. Hence, they hated liberalism, blamed it for making outcasts of them, for uprooting them from their imaginary past, and from their faith.
Fritz Stern The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology
About that Jim Adkisson shooting up the Unitarian church: Seems y’all are having a bit of a struggle with cognitive dissonance lately, and I’m going to set you straight (so to speak).
First, let’s see what you righties have been saying about the tragedy over the past few days. I’ve touched on the initial wrong-o reaction (“An atheist did it! An atheist did it! An evil atheist attacked a Christian church!”) already, here. Of course, you changed your tune as soon as you learned that the shooter was raised in one of your hardcore-fundy, Christian churches; only then did you start crying that Unitarian Universalism isn’t a “real church” — as if you have the right to decide what is a “real church” and what isn’t, and as if that had anything whatsoever to with Adkisson’s actions.
“Now,” muses Fannie, “am I the only one having trouble connecting the dots between how noting this ‘fact’ is in any way relevant to noting that the shooting was heinous?
“But alas, this odd juxtaposition goes along the lines of ‘Now, I don’t condone this killer’s actions, but can I just say that Unitarians are NOT real Christians!’ Okay, neat-o. Like, you just had to throw that passive-aggressive little FYI in there for shits and giggles?”
Lori Heine manages to sort it all out, and then asks the obvious question: “Which is it, dimwits? Is it a hate crime because Christians have been brutalized and murdered, or is it not a crime at all because they weren’t ‘real’ Christians?”
I’ve even seen some of you zero in on the fact that a (gasp!) secular children’s musical was being performed inside a church (never mind that you don’t think TVUU is a “real” church), and on a Sunday, no less…!
Good God, you righties are just scrambling for any reason to escape accountability, aren’t you?
Next, you turned to attacking liberals for pointing out that Adkisson is a soldier in the Culture Wars your leaders invented, and which you perpetuate, that led him to this monstrous act of violence — and, frankly, you lied, to yourselves and to everyone within earshot, to find a little shaky comfort through the most convoluted hoop-jumping ever: You say liberals are happy to see human beings dead or traumatized for life (gee, that sounds familiar), because it gives us the opportunity to demonize you, which, among other things, is completely unfair, since this was an isolated incident of a single, whacked-out right-winger attacking liberals and gays.
First of all, boys and girls, nobody on the left is politicizing it; we’ve been warning you since the rise of your Limbaughs and your Coulters and your Savages that words have consequences — and now we’re saying, “We told you so,” and demanding you face the truth, and do something to stop it, damn it!
Metaphors of war and sex saturate the readings. [D. James] Kennedy says that the primary task of Christians is to recruit “soldiers in the army of Jesus Christ who are absent without official leave (AWOL).” He speaks of himself and other pastors as generals or admirals and of evangelists as soldiers. And he warns that it is Satan who convinces believers not to take part in the battle.
You, O Martyrs of the Faith, gnash your teeth and rend your garments as you wail about the shocking displays of homosexual behavior in the streets (uh, yeah, we’re all just having sex on the streets, everywhere) influencing your precious children. You’re terrified that seeing two men holding hands is going to turn little Junior into a flaming fruitcake — which you know, damned well, is nothing but empty fearmongering (and so what if Junior were gay? which he could very well be already, with no “help” from us) — yet you won’t take responsibility for the consequences of the 24/7 hate-a-thon that rains down from your pulpits and from your airwaves. If you didn’t think — know — the power, the influence, you hold over your frightened sheep, you’d shut down your cable stations, cancel your book tours, and go find another way to bilk the gullible.
How is it we queers, just by being who we are and minding our own business, have the power to bring down all of civilization, yet you insist that your deliberate liberal- and gay-bashing has no influence whatsoever on your target audience?
What I find hypocritical is that the Religious Right will take any image it deems gay and claim it “promotes homosexuality.” This even extends to fictional characters such as Tinky Winky and Sponge Bob Square Pants. Yet, these same oversensitive preachers refuse to acknowledge that their mean-spirited sermons might lead to violence.
The extreme right fuels anti-gay ugliness, but it is pervasive all around us. …
We live in a society filled with violently homophobic messages and images, yet the perpetrators — both religious and secular — feign innocence and say they can’t imagine how anti-gay hate crimes occur.
Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission — both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state — especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.
You, O Most Holy and Self-Righteous Righties, have been screaming nonstop, for decades, about the negative effect of violent movies and TV shows and video games, and heavy metal music, on young people — while glorifying “Christian” gorefests like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (a.k.a. Good Friday the 13th, a.k.a. The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre), in which the sadomasochistic, pornified depiction of your savior being lashed into bloody, ground hamburger for two hours had you shuddering in orgasmic ecstasy, and remaining conspicuously silent about such “Christian” video games as Left Behind: Eternal Forces (whose end-message — convert or die — appears little different from the Global Islamic Media Front’s Quest for Bush) and Catechumen, and pseudo-religious games as Halo.
According to you, secular video games caused the Columbine massacre, but your kill-the-godless-heathens games couldn’t possibly inspire violence, because, well, gee, they’re Christian!
“[Left Behind: Eternal Forces] represents faith-based killing. It’s a manual for religious violence that’s being given to children.”
Rev. Tim Simpson Christian Alliance for Progress
“In the war of good versus evil, based loosely on the biblical book of Revelation, a player tries to recruit others in order to fight the enemy of non-believers. Prayer after killing the opposition will essentially redeem you.”
This kind of “entertainment” is only a natural outgrowth of a mindset based on four factors:
1. A crevice of utter despair and hopelessness that makes one susceptible to “rescue” by an institution that promises redemption;
2. Group identity that ceases to exist without a clearly defined enemy;
3. Perpetual self-victimization and pride in suffering;
4. Glorification of war-as-religion (i.e., “Christian warriors,” the “battle” for souls).
Next, keep repeating the lie that the United States is a “Christian nation”:
“It is my firm belief,” writes some anonymous believer, echoing the oft-repeated sentiment of the Dobsons and the Robertsons and the Falwells, “that The United States Of America is in fact a Christian nation. By the term ‘a Christian nation’ I do not mean that this is a nations of only Christians or that everything about this nation is Christian. It is a nation specifically created by God to declare Christ to the world. The only other nation created for this purpose is the nation of Israel.”
“I know,” proclaimeth ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay earlier this month, “that America was created by God and it was created by God, not for wealth, personal wealth. It wasn’t created by God so that we would have the resources that we now have. It wasn’t even created by God to have the freedom that we have now. America was created by God to spread the Gospel; to spread the word of Jesus Christ and to propagate Christianity. And the reason I know that is because my entire political career is exhibited by that. The Lord walked with me … I came to Christ in the first year in Congress and now I’ve been walking with the Lord [and] he has trained me and showed me why he created this nation: to spread the Gospel.”
Next, morph patriotism into nationalism (”The difference between patriotism and nationalism,” wrote Sydney J. Harris, “is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war”), and now “defending” one’s country against an imagined enemy within is indistinguishable from “defending” the Kingdom of God itself.
Finally, throw into the mix a bunch of media whores who have figured out that capitalizing on this victim-turned-warrior mindset provides a very good living, unleash the whole putrid mess on the malleable brain of a man wrought by despair, and you’ve got all the makings of one Jim David Adkisson.
The right has already begun and will continue to claim that Adkisson is just a crazy nut, is not really a conservative (or is actually a liberal), that his stated motive of carrying out right-wing ideology means nothing, and that it is “inappropriate” to discuss politics in relation to such a heinous crime. But they are wrong on all counts. While Adkisson’s money problems surely caused him to snap, it was the words of the right’s loudest voices and brightest stars that gave him the justification for his rampage. Some quick Google searches turned up these quotes from prominent right-wingers:
“I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo — every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress.” — Sean Hannity
“To fight only the al-Qaeda scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders… Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that’s who.” — Michael Savage
“Liberalism is the greatest threat this country faces.” — Rush Limbaugh
“It is not a stretch to say that MoveOn is the new Klan.” — Bill O’Reilly
“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could.” — Glenn Beck
“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too.” — Ann Coulter
“I don’t see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis.” — Bill O’Reilly
“The Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats. Islamofascists from Ahmadinejad to al-Zawahiri, Oba — Osama bin Laden, whoever, are constantly issuing Democrat talking points.” — Rush Limbaugh
“There are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the [House] speaker.” — Sean Hannity
Obviously, this merely scratches the surface of what issues daily from the mouths and keyboards of right-wing pundits. …
Let’s just call this what it is: the right wing openly, proudly, loudly, and repeatedly advocates violence against liberals and Democrats. In fact, they are paid millions to do it and are given national platforms to spread their message. You cannot say that liberals and Democrats actively and purposefully want to destroy the United States and equate them with Nazis, Al-Qaeda, and the Ku Klux Klan, then claim that you don’t want them to get hurt.
Now the right will claim that it is the left that is hateful and violent and that the left is “just as bad” or worse. To that I say: Prove It.
“Demagoging has consequences,” writes Myca. “Appealing to hate and bigotry creates more hate and bigotry. It creates riots. It creates vandalism. It creates murder.
“We have a president who campaigned for governor on the promise that in his administration, consensual sex between adult males would be considered a crime. We have an entire political party that sees nothing wrong with the idea that in the year 2008, gay people in most states still aren’t allowed to marry the people they love. We have respected (well, Jonah Goldberg, so maybe not respected, but tolerated) conservative pundits who apparently in all seriousness believe that Adolf Hitler was a liberal.
“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals.
“Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for.”
Rush Limbaugh Denver Post December 29, 1995
“Do I think that they actually believe this? Sometimes, sure. Sometimes not. It doesn’t matter.
“As surely as I lay the Little Rock riots at the feet of Orval Faubus, I lay the assault on this church at the feet of those who have claimed that gay marriage would destroy western civilization and those who equate liberals with Nazis.
“See, it turns out that when you said all that shit … people were listening. Jim D. Adkisson was listening.”
That’s not so hard to understand. It is tough to admit it, I’m sure — but that’s just too bad. You have to face it, and you have to stop the spread of this poison that created the cancer in Jim David Adkisson — or by your silence, and your shirking of responsibility like a scared child, you will only be condoning Adkisson’s actions, and confirming that all conservatives really are like that.
No, not all conservatives are really like that. But this one, this Adkisson, this Frankenstein’s monster of the Far Right movement — he’s yours, righties. You own what he did. You own him. He is your baby.
Now, let’s turn to this blatant lie of yours that the Tennessee church shooting was an isolated incident.
As I wrote two days ago, if there’s ever been an atheist who ran around shooting at Christians, I can’t name him.
But I cannot begin to count the number of religion-”inspired” killers who’ve taken out scads of gay people and liberals — and African-Americans (Sara Whitman can think of no better parallel than the 16th Street Baptist Street Bombing, and neither can I), whether they were liberal or conservative (the AA’s crime being, of course, that they were “different” from the killer[s]).
I’ve already read down a very abbreviated laundry list of killers “inspired” by the words of religious leaders and pop pundits, but some of you righties keep inisting that Adkisson was an isolated lunatic, that “real Christians” and “real conservatives” don’t do such things, that you would never “blame the innocent for the actions of one man” (yes, I’m talking to you, Russ Knight) — and that liberals and queers aren’t targeted one-bazillionth as often as you poor, little persecuted martyrs for Jesus.
Jim Wallis proffers: “While many evangelicals celebrated Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott as martyrs who died for their Christian convictions at Columbine High School, I wonder if we will extend the same heroism to the victims in Tennessee?”
I doubt it.*
Let me tell you another story. As with the Unitarian tragedy, there was no outcry from conservative Christians — even those these victims were, without a doubt, Christians themselves.
I wrote this post for the now-gone Lavender Liberal Forums in the wake of the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech Massacre:
If all the victims had been gay, nobody would care.
No, I am not being facetious.
I am deeply disturbed by any loss of life. The number of dead doesn’t matter; 2,800-plus dead on 9/11 is no greater a loss than 32 dead at Virginia Tech, which is no greater a loss than even a single, nameless corpse dumped in an alley. The "death rate" is 100% in all cases.
I’ve had some time to react to yesterday’s shootings. I’m in flashback mode, to the 101 California Street massacre, and even all the way back to Charles Whitman. There is no question that my mood is more than somber tonight.
Oddly, I almost, somehow, feel worse that this happened in Virginia. Oh, I hate the Commonwealth of Virginia with a passion that nearly matches the hate the Commonwealth of Virginia has for me. But there’s a difference between hating a government and hating a people. I’ve been to Virginia. I have friends in Virginia. Hell, [X] is in Virginia. And my dear, sweet, dead Scottie was in Virginia — until Virginia killed him.
But I almost feel like… Everybody expects this sort of shit to go down in California — or Texas. We have the greatest number of psychos simply because we have the greatest number of everybody, and everything. We’ll never grow accustomed to our mass murderers (and serial killers), but it always seemed that’s just the way it was. (One thing we are used to — most of us, anyway, even if we do a slow burn over it — is the ridicule we get from the rest of the country. But I always figured that was just another price to pay for living in near-paradise.)
There’s no question I’m grieving for the families of the dead tonight. You pay a big price for being empathic — and I mean empathic to the point that, when somebody tells you their ulcer is bothering them, your solar plexis starts to ache. So I’m feeling like I just lost somebody close to me, regardless of who any of these people were, or how they died. Neither "who" nor "how" seems to matter, outside the sudden-shock factor; dead is dead.
That said, there’s something else that’s troubling me deeply tonight: The sure knowledge that if 32 queers had been massacred yesterday, it would have made the news — but hardly anybody would have given a damn. Not like they’re doing now. You wouldn’t see the outpouring of sympathy, and horror, you are seeing everywhere right now.
How can I say such a thing? Am I playing victim here? Have I descended into the very stereotype of the self-centered queer who doesn’t give a fuck about anything unless it affects me directly?
Those of you who have known me for more than five minutes know better than that.
No, what bothers me so is this: They’re calling it the worst massacre in U.S. history.
It’s not. Unless the fatality count rises to 33, it’s a tie.
And I’ll bet no one reading this can tell me, without some Googling, what yesterday’s death toll ties with.
So I’ll tell you.
In 1973, the New Orleans-based "Mother Church" of the then-fledgling Metropolitan Community Church, without a facility of its own, held regular, Sunday-evening services in an upstairs lounge — a space called, as you might expect, the "Upstairs Lounge" — on the floor above the Jimani Lounge, a French-Quarter bar at 141 Chartres Street.
On the evening of June 24, 1973, the pastor, Rev. William Lawson, had just finished his sermon, when someone entered the building at street level and lobbed a Molotov cocktail into the stairway leading to the Upstairs Lounge. The perp ran off — but not before making sure to shut the street-level door… and padlock it shut.
The flames were contained to the stairwell until someone leaving the MCC service (perhaps just leaving to go home, perhaps alarmed by a noise — no one will ever know) opened the door to the Upstairs Lounge where the church service had just ended.
Do you know what a flash fire is?
Some twenty people escaped via the rooftop — how they did, I don’t know. The rest tried to make it out the second-floor windows, but were trapped; the windows were barred.
Reverend Lawson died that way, his body wedged half-in and half-out of the building, screaming as he burned to death.
It took just 16 minutes — although, I expect that, if those who died in the World Trade Center could talk, they would tell you even 30 seconds is an eternity in hell when faced with burning to death — for the fire to envelope and roast alive the remaining worshippers.
The bitter irony? Yesterday marked the "worst massacre in U.S. history," with 32 people dead at the hands of one assassin.
How many people do you think burned to death that evening in 1973 at the hands of a single assassin?
Thirty-two.
The Virginia Tech massacre was not the worst in U.S. history. It only tied the previous record.
But nobody knows about what happened one sultry summer evening in New Orleans.
What’s worse, I suspect nobody but us gives a goddamn.
Epilogue
Of course, MCC founder Rev. Troy Perry went to NOLA immediately. Every other Christian church in New Orleans — save only two — refused to allow Troy to conduct memorial services for the dead believers.
And all but the same two refused to take in — much less comfort — the 20 or so MCC survivors who desperately needed a place to congregate, and worship together, and search for a reason this happened.
And several (I do not know how many, but "several") families of the dead refused to claim the bodies of their relatives, as "exposure" was a far more horrifying thought than the visual of their "loved ones" burning alive.
That’s how ashamed they were of their filthy, disgusting, faggot sons and brothers, and dyke daughters and sisters.
In the years following the Upstairs Lounge fire, some 17 more MCC churches were set ablaze, including the church in San Francisco (on Guerrero Street, for my neighbors).
The only thought that crosses my mind tonight is:
Why didn’t anyone care then?
Because they weren’t your people, that’s why.
As for the question of who did it — who knows?
You can bet that silver crucifix around your neck it wasn’t somebody who loved his gay neighbors as himself — but the real point is: What happened on Sunday was not an isolated incident. What happened 35 years ago in New Orleans was the worst massacre of gay people in modern times, but it was not an isolated incident. You didn’t know about it because you just don’t care when the victims aren’t your people.
And some of you are downright delighted when we get beaten or murdered.
And you can take the shameful rejection of the bodies — and the survivors — by the “traditional” churches in New Orleans as evidence of just how far your “Christian love” extends.
Reagan had learned that political activists had reportedly been sending letters and DVDs to troops in Iraq, advancing the theory that the U.S. government had carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks. For promoting this unpopular view, the talkshow host advocated that these activists should be killed as “traitors”:
“We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.”
Even more troubling was the call for violence against a specific individual:
“How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”
I certainly remember what Gingrich said at the time of the Smith child murders: “I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. … The only way to change is to vote Republican.”
The highest irony of all was that Susan Smith’s stepfather, Beverly Russell — who carried on a nine-year “consensual” sexual relationship with Smith — was a prominent South Carolina Republican Party leader, and Christian Coalition coordinator.
WASHINGTON — July 30 — HRC — The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, today called on the Department of Health and Human Services to update its regulations following the President’s signing of legislation to reauthorize PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Included in this measure was a provision to repeal our nation’s discriminatory law barring HIV-positive visitors and immigrants. The PEPFAR bill passed the Senate on July 16 and the U.S. House passed the bill last week.
“We appreciate the President signing the repeal of this unjust and sweeping policy that deems HIV-positive individuals inadmissible to the United States,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “The HIV travel and immigration ban performs no public health service, is unnecessary and ineffective. We thank our allies on the Hill who fought to end this injustice and now call on Secretary of Health and Human Services Leavitt to remove the remaining regulatory barriers to HIV-positive visitors and immigrants.”
HRC has been a lead organization lobbying on Capitol Hill for the repeal and will continue to work to ensure that Department of Health and Human Services’ regulations are changed. The Human Rights Campaign has worked closely with the offices of Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), as well as Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), the sponsor of an effort to repeal the ban in the House of Representatives. Both Sen. Kerry and Rep. Lee participated in a national media conference call held by HRC in March. In addition to action alerts urging members to contact their Senators, HRC and Immigration Equality drafted a coalition letter on behalf of more than 165 organizations in support of the Kerry-Smith provision in the PEPFAR bill, and directly lobbied numerous Senate offices on the repeal measure.
In December of 2007, Senators Kerry and Smith introduced legislation, the HIV Non-Discrimination in Travel and Immigration Act (S. 2486), to repeal the ban. In the House, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced similar the legislation, H.R. 3337, in August 2007. The travel and immigration ban prohibits HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering the U.S. unless they obtain a special waiver, which is difficult to obtain and can only allow for short-term travel. Current policy also prevents the vast majority of foreign nationals with HIV from obtaining legal permanent residency in the United States.
The ban originated in 1987, and explicitly codified by Congress in 1993, despite efforts in the public health community to remove the ban when Congress reformed U.S. immigration law in the early 1990s. While immigration law currently excludes foreigners with any “communicable disease of public health significance” from entering the U.S., only HIV is explicitly named in the statute. For all other illnesses, the Secretary of Health and Human Services retains the ability, with the medical expertise of his department, to determine which illnesses truly pose a risk to public health.
I am sure you are are ready to start working to defeat Proposition 8 in Santa Clara Valley. OUR NEXT MEETING IS THURSDAY, July 31 AT 6:30 AT THE DEFRANK CENTER.
Please join us for a meeting to talk about messages for the campaign with Sarah reece for the Equality for All campaign.
Campaign goodies
You know your car is missing that Prop 8 bumper sticker and so is your front window. Show your colors soon with bumper stickers yard signs and rally signs. We are expecting a shipment of all those campaign goodies this week.
We will send out an email letting you know when you can pick up signs and sign up for campaign work at the DeFrank Center. Expect to hear from us soon!
We can win in Santa Clara County with your help and support. Please join is in the battle for equality for all.
Sincerely,
Aejaie Sellers The Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center
So much for the “citizens” with this year’s batch of citizens initiatives.
For most of the nine initiatives planned for the November ballot, financial backing from individual donors has been scarce. The money has flowed almost exclusively from corporations, political committees and a relative handful of wealthy individuals. …
Initiative representatives counter that the disparity in campaign donations among business interests, political committees and regular Arizonans is nothing new.
But the divide is so pronounced this election cycle that it raises the question of whether Arizona’s direct democracy has become little more than a legislative vehicle for wealthy special interests. …
Bonita Burks had hoped to qualify for the ballot new state restrictions on motorists’ use of mobile phones while driving. But despite a series of high-profile accidents that focused public awareness on the issue, her petition drive stalled long before it collected the 153,000 valid signatures it needed. Some of that she attributes to a lack of campaign funding that forced her to rely on volunteer, rather than paid, signature gatherers.
“It made it difficult,” said Burks, whose Safer Road Arizona campaign reported just $1,050 in total donations. “Although it is a very important issue and I’m very passionate about it, we just didn’t have the dollars to make it happen this year.”
Even with a throng of volunteer signature gatherers, border-security activist Don Goldwater, too, failed to make the ballot with either of his immigration proposals.
“In the history of the state of Arizona, no citizens initiative has ever been done without paid signature gatherers,” Goldwater said. “If you’ve got the bucks, you can get the initiative on the ballot.” …
Stan Barnes isn’t too worried about where the money comes from for his Payday Loan Reform Act. The key is that it’s there. And it’s big.
“We’re not even trying to collect money from Arizonans who are not connected in some way to the payday-lending industry,” said Barnes, a lobbyist representing the campaign. …
I know money is power in this country, but that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Currently in the midst of untangling the vast web of connections among the big-money donors — most of whom are out-of-state special interest groups with deep pockets — behind Proposition 8, California’s anti-marriage initiative, it’s clear to me that as soon as we win this battle, we need to work on stricter regulations regarding ballot initiatives in the initiative-crazy Golden State: who can donate, and how much — as well as additional reporting from 501c(3) organizations which take full advantage of their non-profit status to escape scrutiny.
We also need to make the names of all petition signers public — not for any nefarious means, such as harrassment, but to guard against fraud. It was only after KnowThyNeighbor.org published, online, the names on the 2005 anti-gay marriage petition in Massachusetts did some “signers” learn that they were victims of fraud.*
How many of the million-plus “signers” to the Proposition 8 petition were tricked into thinking they were signing an entirely different petition? How many signatures were forged? We’ll never know, as long as the State of California does not release this information to the public.
Finally, we need to put an end to what can only be called frivolous ballot measures. Did you know that Californians are being forced to vote on the same “parental notification” issue for the third time in two years — after sending the previous two propositions to resounding defeat?
As Proposition 8 itself goes, it will go down in flames — but you can bet that it will resurface in a new form every election cycle, for as long as the Radical Right has the money to keep putting it back on the ballot.
Voter initiatives in California have become a joke — and are in no way voter initiatives; as in Arizona, our “direct democracy” has indeed become nothing more than “a legislative vehicle for wealthy special interests.”
* Just a few examples of Massachusetts voters surprised — and outraged — to find their names on the anti-marriage petition:
Petition signer was misled Last week my son told me that he’d just seen a list of those who’d signed the anti-gay marriage petition … I was surprised that my name was on the list. My daughter and her girlfriend, of 22 years, married in June of 2004. My family is 100 percent pro gay marriage. … The Web site states that thousands of signers may have been duped into signing, as I was. …
Residents charge petition fraud Beverly resident Leslie Leathersich never signs petitions as a matter of personal principle, so imagine her surprise when a friend asked why she had signed a petition to change the state Constitution and ban same-sex marriage. … Leathersich joins five other Beverly residents who have filed affidavits saying their signatures were obtained fraudulently on the petition to change the state Constitution and ban same-sex marriage. …
Official denies signing petition NORTHAMPTON - After a fruitless attempt to locate a petition that supposedly bears his signature supporting a ballot question to bar gay marriage, At-Large City Councilor James M. Dostal said yesterday he will concentrate his efforts on having his name removed from that list. …
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has told close associates that he has had “very serious” conversations with Sen. Barack Obama about joining the Democratic presidential ticket and has provided documents to the campaign as it combs through his background, according to several sources close to Kaine. …
(Richmond) — Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine made the following statement today regarding the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling about same sex marriages:
“Marriage between a man and a woman is the building block of the family and a keystone of our civil society. It has been so for centuries in societies around the world. I cannot agree with a court decision suddenly declaring that marriage must now be redefined to include unions between people of the same gender.
“Virginia defines marriage as being between a man and a woman and I strongly support that law. Regardless of the court ruling today in another state, I am confident that there is nothing in the Virginia or federal constitutions that would require Virginia to alter its longstanding policy about marriage.”
“I do not support any change in the institution of marriage. I do not support the creation of civil unions, but I do believe that gays and lesbians should be able to contract with one another, and we should respect those contracts in Virginia law, just as we respect any contracts.
“And finally in the area of adoption. Virginia has adoption laws right now that I agree with. The adoption laws say the only couple that is allowed to adopt is a married couple.”
I’m going to do something out of character: post a number of items without comment (don’t faint!), save for a brief explanation to put in context a piece I wrote more than a year ago.
First up: For several days in May of 2007, DemocraticUnderground.com was ablaze over the news of the death of Jerry Falwell. As you might expect, there was some unabashed celebration here and there, but far more expressions of sheer relief, as well as complete ambivalence.
There was an equal (if not greater) number of pleas to stop what was perceived as “grave dancing.” Many such pleas were fraught with hyperbole, and yours truly finally got sick of being told how the only appropriate reaction was faux grief — and if that wasn’t possible, then we should all simply refrain from speaking ill of the dead (or: “If you don’t have anything nice to say…”)
If we are going to build a better society, WE MUST HAVE A PLACE FOR CIVILITY. Destructive anger, which is basically what I think we are allowing to get the better of us, is not something that is consistant with making a Just and Progressive society. Destructive anger derails Democracy. It inflates and kills communication. It is human and happens, but it is a root of violence and is not healthy.
My response (which other DUers encouraged me to post in its own thread):
“Destructive anger” is shooting two men to death as they sleep in their bed, and saying the only thing you’re sorry for is that you didn’t inspire more people to emulate you — since, after all, you’re not guilty of a crime, but only of “obeying the laws of the Creator.” (1)
“Destructive anger” is killing three people and injuring 150 more by bombing abortion clinics, lesbian bars, and the Olympics, because Jesus would condone “militant action in defense of the innocent.” (2)
“Destructive anger” is murdering at least 11 people, most of them gay, because “According to the Bible, homosexuals must die because they will never enter the kingdom of God.” (3)
Where do you think people get such ideas? Who do you think “inspires” them?
Preachers who teach that satanism, Nazism, and homosexuality all go together? (4)
Preachers who teach that “God hates fags,” and that God is killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq because America tolerates homosexuals (oh, and by the way, “Thank God for IEDs!”)? (5)
Preachers who teach that killing abortion providers is “justifiable homicide,” and that “sodomy is a graver sin than murder”? (6)
Preachers who teach that gays, lesbians, abortionists and other “sinners” were personally responsible for 9/11? Or that AIDS is not God’s punishment for homosexuals, but “for the society that tolerates homosexuals”? Or who warns that “If we do not act now, homosexuals will own America”? (7)
“Pro-family,” “pro-life” organizations (8) that continue to perpetuate the ravings of a universally-discredited psychologist (9) who advocates castration for all gay men? And tattooing, forced quarantine, and banishment to Molokai for all AIDS patients? And who once opined: “‘Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals”?
Religious leaders who call gay people “objectively disordered” and “intrinsically evil”? (10)
Preachers, syndicated columnists, and TV and radio commentators who insist that there is no such thing as a “hate crime,” and that it is in fact the Christians who are being persecuted… by “the gays”? (11) That “homosexual activists” are doing to “people of faith” the very same thing “Hitler began to build against the Jews”? (12)
The day Ellen DeGeneres brainwashes millions of gay people to into believing that heterosexuals are an immoral, degenerate, biologically-inferior subspecies whose very existence is a threat to the salvation of our souls — and when heterosexuals start losing their jobs, their homes, their civil rights, and their lives because of it — then you can lecture me about “destructive anger.”
Nobody killed Jerry Falwell. But Jerry Falwell killed millions of us — without spilling a single drop of blood on his own hands. His legacy is not one of faith, but of “destructive anger” and death — and it is a legacy which will last long after my bones, and yours, and the bones of your grandchildren, have turned to dust.
Until you understand that, you will never understand why many of us were relieved upon awakening two mornings ago to discover a world we were no longer forced to share with the one man responsible for coalescing such a diverse group of hysterical haters into a vast, indomitable force, for giving them an unassailable excuse for hating us, and for inspiring so many to dominate us, persecute us, beat us, murder us, drive us out of our homes, and attempt to legislate us out of existence.
Until you understand that, you understand nothing about “destructive anger.”
1 ) Benjamin Williams 2 ) Eric Rudolph 3 ) “Railway Killer” Angel Maturino Resendiz 4 ) Pat Robertson 5 ) Fred Phelps 6 ) Fr. David Trosch 7 ) Jerry Falwell 8 ) Family Research Council, American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, NARTH, Claremont Institute, Colorado for Family Values, Traditional Values Coalition, and many others 9 ) Dr. Paul Cameron 10 ) Pope Benedict XVI 11 ) Far too many to list 12 ) Rev. Lou Sheldon
With that, I’ll leave you to these writers, all of whom have something important to say. I encourage you to click every link, and read every word.
Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls them “traitors” and suggests you speak to them “with a baseball bat”? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkinson until they snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular humanists?
If you ask me, it was all of the above.
You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.
The shooting began while the children of the church were putting on a musical based on “Annie.” One broad-shouldered church member blocked the bullets from hitting other people, and died. You don’t need to believe in dogma to be a hero. Remember that song from “Annie”? It probably got on your nerves like it got on mine. “The sun’ll come out tomorrow.”
The sun coming out. That’s natural. It’s one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. But a man driven insane, then programmed by society to kill people just because they’re loving and tolerant?
This morning I wrote (in “Monster”) that Sean Hannity et al. might bear some share of moral responsibility for the killings in Knoxville. Sadly for everyone concerned, that may be true.
This evening we learn from the Knoxville News that officers entering the home of murder Jim Adkisson “found Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor, by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.”
The presence of somebody’s books in a mentally disturbed person’s home does not make them accessories to a killing. But right-wing rhetoric toward liberals and humanists like those who attended the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church has been exceptionally violent for years. Liberal groups are often called “Nazi” or “Nazi-like” by O’Reilly (he even said that about our own Arianna Huffington). Savage says he’d “hang every lawyer” who tried to establish constitutional rights for Guantanamo prisoners, describes Obama as an “Afro-Leninist,” and said the folks at Media Matters were “brownshirts.” He describes Rep. Wexler as a “Nazi” and calls Nancy Pelosi a “Mussolini.”
As for Hannity, he said that “there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosidoesn’t become the speaker (of the House).” Think about it: “worth fighting and dying for.”
And that’s just a sampler.
Ann Coulter says liberals should be beaten with baseball bats and tried for treason (she’s not clear about the order in which these events are to take place.) Dick Morris says they’re “traitors” who should be decapitated.
I had a friend at Clear Channel (yes, I have a broad group of friends) who described some of these people as “entertainers.” Don’t you get it, guys? You use inflammatory images that equates your fellow Americans with violent enemies of the nation. Then you act surprised when a mentally ill person believes you and kills. You use the language of war and then say you’re not to blame when somebody enlists in your imaginary struggle.
Their next step will be outrage — outrage! — at the idea that they may be morally accountable for this action, the possible fruit of their rhetoric. …
If they found something I wrote in a killer’s home, I’d stop what I was doing and begin some serious self-reflection. I’d write about it, consider my errors, and try to make amends. Wouldn’t you?
“If the Left succeeds in gaining and retaining more power, the well-being of future generations will be at greater peril. I fear (our children) will inherit a nation that is less free and less secure than the nation we inherited from the last generation. It is therefore our job to stop them. Not just debate them, but defeat them.” — Sean Hannity
Dear Sean:
I found these words on page 11 of your book Let Freedom Ring. This book, and similar ones from your conservative colleagues Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage, was found in the home of a man who read those words, internalized those words, and then loaded his shotgun. He took 76 rounds of ammunition with him to a place of worship — a place where he knew he could do his job to stop and defeat some liberals. At the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, Jim Adkisson, a fan of yours, killed two people, wounded five others, and left an entire congregation and country shaken by his actions. Actions prompted, as he testified in his own written notes, by the ideas contained in your words.
I don’t know if you remember me, Sean, but I worked with you in Atlanta in the early 1990s, right as you got your big break with FOX News. I was an anchor and reporter (under the air name Candace Petersen) at WGST, your last low level stop before hitting the big time. I remember your last night on the air before you left for the big leagues. I approached you in your office, a cramped back room that I’m sure resembles a hovel compared to your FOX digs. I asked if you, during your last show, would tone down your rhetoric against gays and lesbians — stop demonizing our community for just one night. You refused. You explained to me, as if I were a child, that to do so would be to let your audience down. They expected you to go on the air and rant about how liberals, minorities, women and especially gays and lesbians were ruining our country. You simply had to oblige.
Even though you explained it simply, I still didn’t understand. Your Girl Friday — your most trusted assistant on your show was a young lesbian. She admired you, for some strange reason, and you two were close friends, lunching together, spending time together outside of work. You didn’t seem to have a problem with this particular lesbian. She wasn’t the one you kept blaming on the air for the downfall of democracy. No, you had two different lives then — one on the air, where you performed your outraged conservative act and one in real life, where you enjoyed your lesbian friend and seemed like a decent, sane fellow. …
I hope you are not too far gone, your conscience too eaten away with greed, to understand the violent and vile object lesson that Mr. Adkisson has provided for us in Tennessee, because it’s a lesson you need to learn: Our words matter. Our words have power. …
Your book is rife with paragraphs bashing “the Left” — an enigmatic group of “liberals” painted so broadly that your label for them must be capitalized. These are the people to blame if anything goes wrong in the world. Terrorism? “The Left” didn’t hunt down the terrorists before they struck. War? “The Left” didn’t do enough to protect us from our enemies and have opposed our military readiness. Job losses? “The Left” taxed the corporations so much they moved overseas.
In your world, and the world you convinced Adkisson of, “the Left” is the bogeyman under the bed. … You have done this with your words, Sean — words of division, words of hate, words of war, and words of greed. …
Adkisson acted on what the conservative talk radio has been advocating for years.
There is no dissent if you kill the dissenters.
Figuratively, by character assassination, misinformation and outright lies and now…literally. We’ve all heard it. Coulter’s “satire” about murdering liberals, G Gordon Liddys “head shot” show, Limbaugh’s disinformation and veiled threats and invocations of political violence against all those who disagree with him, O Reilly, Savage, the list goes on.
Even on these pages we have “conservatives” who relish violence against any diversity of opinion, in all its forms. We have all read the misogynistic hate and misguided machismo of these posts. One even advocated the “hanging” of Cenk , myself and others who opposed the Iraq war. Other “conservatives” have advocated violence in various forms against, among others, homeless, gays and the poor. Consider this gem of tolerence from conservative “pastor” Jerry Falwell:
But these things speak evil of those things, verse 10 [reading from Jude] which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches. Almost, the vote was against them. But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote. Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy. But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there’ll be a celebration in heaven.
I used to electronically converse with a born again Christian who used a retrospective definition of “Christian.” In his view, people who did bad things could never be Christians, because Christians don’t do bad things. That little loop of illogic seems to run deep through right wingers, whether they be Christian or other. So let’s talk about good old Mr. Adkisson, who just went berserk in that Unitarian Universalist (UU) church in Tennessee. …
Let’s talk about the hatred of liberals. And let’s talk about the fact that Mr. Adkisson’s personal library included The O’Reilly Factor, by the one and only Shilll O’Reilly; Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, by Michael (what gay pictures?) Savage; and Let Freedom Ring, by Sean Vannity. And let’s freely acknowledge that Mr. Adkisson appears to have been pretty deeply disturbed, and to have been deeply disturbed long before he ever encountered the literary talents of those three authors.
If you feed a disturbed person a distorted and angry view of a specific group like, oh, let’s say liberals, if you pound away day after day and hour after radio broadcast hour that this group is vermin, slime, devious, destructive of all that is good and pure, that they are, in fact, either destructively insane or the very embodiment of evil, do you not bear some speck of the responsibility for a madman violently attacking this group? Not even a smidgen of responsibility?
The endless portrayal of liberals as the root of all American evil serves the same purpose that portraying Jews in the same light served in Nazi circles. Dehumanize. Desensitize. Rev up the rage then rev it up some more until a good portion of the populace considers this scapegoat to be the source of not only all their own problems, of all the evil in the entire world. …
But you know that The Right is Never Wrong. Just ask them. Better yet, listen to the silence. Think that any of the rabble rousers are going to be up in arms about this demonization of liberals that played a role in directing the insane Mr. Adkisson’s rage in a specific direction, in a specific manner?
Think Fox News is all atwitter with outraged discussion of the fact that Mr. Vannity once said “I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo — every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress.” (6/15/05 Hannity & Colmes). Is the Free Republic world aghast that Mister (I use the term loosely) Savage actually titled his poison-pen tome “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder?” …
No, I’m sure the Always Right will examine themselves thoroughly and pronounce themselves innocent once again.
After all, you don’t have to look too hard on the web to find Christians who are aghast that journalists keep portraying people like Eric Rudolph as “Christians.” As one blogger puts it (emphasis added):
Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian. Neither is Eric Rudolph. No, it is the media and left wing types who do all they can to make you THINK that they are Christians. … Eric Rudolph also rejected the Bible, and freely admitted that his decision to become a terrorist was influenced by anti - God philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche (of the “God is dead” fame)!
Except that Eric Rudolph’s own written statement clearly and unequivocally states:
I was born a Catholic, and with forgiveness I hope to die one.
How is it that the same right-wing nuts that are championing the war on terror, you know the fight against the use of intimidation and violence to promote ignorance, intolerance, and hate, are at the same time filling people so full of ignorance, intolerance and hate that they are inspired to go out and commit violent acts against liberals? Apparently once we murder all the peace loving, gay protecting do-gooders the world will be a safer place for freedom and justice and flag pins for all.
And what about the lefties part of the blame? We have become so complacent in our comfy middle class consumerist lifestyles that we sit by and let this whole thing happen. We have turned acceptance and tolerance mixed with laziness into tacit approval of the preaching of hate and violence.
… This guy wrote in his suicide note exactly what he expected to happen. He planned to wander into this liberal church with a semi-automatic shotgun & 76 rounds, and mow down mamby pamby lefties cowering in their pews until the cops showed up and finished him off. In reality he got three shots off, including one into a man who moved in front of him to shield others, before members of the congregation wrestled him to the floor, disarmed and restrained him until police arrived and took him away.
I can’t even begin to fathom the irony here. This man’s motivation seems to have been frustration over being out of work and having his food stamps expire. Add to that minimal education, questionable mental stability, previous military service, and massive doses of talk radio brain washing. Who the hell does he think fought for social programs such as food stamps in the first place? UUs have been on the forefront of progressive social issues for hundreds of years, including the American Revolution, abolitionism, worker rights, womens suffrage, humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill, civil rights, womens rights, pacifism, social welfare, education, and more recently gay rights, immigrant rights, and environmental issues. …
Apparently thats whats really wrong with this country. To much trying to help each other out and being nice to one another. Once we kill off all the limp wristed liberals, life will be much better for armed, mentally unstable, ex-military out of work truck driver/mechanics everywhere. Then maybe we can all go out and tailgate Priuses in our jacked up SUVs, and with any luck we’ll take a few of them out too. …
Free speech is great and all, but why do we allow deranged lunatics to spew hate filled lies in a publicly funded forum? Let them stand in some park and rant on with the rest of the loonies. The last thing we need to do is broadcast it across the country just because it makes someone money (which lets face it is the only reason talk radio exists).
The shooting in Knoxville has made me both sad…and angry. Sad because it is a natural reaction to such a horrific and tragic event. Angry because of the motive of the shooter, and the fact that the media (at least on websites, I have to confess I have not watched TV today) seems eager to bury that motive. The cynic in me believes that if this were an avowed atheist shooting up some fundamentalist megachurch, we’d see wall-to-wall coverage of the “religious hatred” in America, or some such nonsense.
Given that the shooting occurred in a church known for its progressive and tolerant worldview, many of us suspected a shooter with political motivations. We were right. But it is worth noting that the beloved late journalist Molly Ivins had us beat to the story, by a bit over thirteen years.
From her book, Who Let The Dogs In??, on pages 285 and 286 (truncated excerpt, so as not to violate copyright):
A large segment of (Rush) Limbaugh’s audience consists of white males, eighteen to thirty-four years old, without college education. Basically, a guy I know and grew up with named Bubba.
Advance the age a little bit, and you have our shooter. Now, listen as Ivins explains the appeal of Limbaugh and the rest of the angry right (side note: why do we hear endlessly about the angry left in the traditional media, but so little about the angry right?) on Bubba:
Bubba listens to Limbaugh because Limbaugh gives him someone to blame for the fact that Bubba is getting screwed…Because Bubba understands he’s being shafted, even if he doesn’t know why or by whom, he listens to Limbaugh. Limbaugh offers him scapegoats. It’s the “feminazis”. It’s the minorities. It’s the limousine liberals. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims.
Sound familiar, given the events of the last two days?
Conservatism used to be an ideology — conservatives believed in getting government off of people’s backs, they believed in fiscal restraint and small central government, they believed we should have a humble foreign policy focused on watching out for ourselves and not trying to rule the world and they detested experiments in social engineering.
In the post-World War II era, it was a widely-loathed ideology and liberalism was dominant. Democrats were proud liberals who wanted to build a more just society and most Republicans were liberals who believed we should do so much more gradually and carefully than their opponents.
Beginning in the middle of the last century, conservatives abandoned any semblance of ideological coherence — when in power, they spend more on pet projects than liberals, are more interventionist in their foreign policy than their liberal counterparts and are all-too-happy to meddle in the most private affairs of the citizenry (think: opposition to birth control; Terri Schiavo). Conservatism gave way to “backlash” conservatism, which is, in practice, little more than an ideology of resentment. Thomas Frank, in a less tragic context, coined the phrase “conservative plenty-plaint” to describe it — a list of grievances, great and small, that are all somehow attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the supposed evils of liberalism.
It was a strategic choice, one that may be attributed to Joe McCarthy or Spiro Agnew or Richard Nixon, and it has consequences. As villifying the left became incredibly lucrative — Rush Limbaugh has a contract worth $400 million, Ann Coulter makes a fortune on her pabulum — the competition became fierce, and the charges against liberalism went further and further over the top.
David Neiwert calls it “eliminationist” rhetoric — putting forth the idea that one’s opponents are not simply in disagreement, do not simply have a different and competing political philosophy, do not just believe that their approach to solving problems is superior but are bent on destroying the country, the culture, even the family unit from within. And, more importantly, that they must be destroyed or exiled.
Consider the narratives we hear so frequently, from right-wing talk radio, to the right-blogs to Fox News. Liberals are traitors. Liberals hate the troops, stab them in the back, hate America. They are “anti-family”, they hate God. They want America to be destroyed by its enemies, whether Soviet shock troops or “Islamofascist” terrorists. …
[What went down in Tennessee is] certainly not isolated — just last week, a group of teens beat a Latino migrant to death. And why not? People like Michelle Malkin don’t make arguments about the costs and benefits of immigration; they paint a picture of an invading army bent on our destruction. They say that illegal immigration is part of a plot to “reconquer” parts of America — literally to annex the SouthWest. Abortion clinics are bombed, and providers are assassinated, and the bombers and assassins inevitably see the procedure as “killing babies” — who wouldn’t act to stop actual babies from being killed?
When people view themselves as facing an existential threat to their nation, to their very way of life, they defend themselves — it’s a natural reaction. It appears that Jim David Adkisson, unemployed, no doubt mentally disturbed, believed he was taking action to defend his country, his community. He did it because of “his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.” A picture-perfect summary of the back-lash conservative message. …
Of course, when one points this out one is immediately derided as an enemy of free speech, even if one never even suggests that this kind of speech should be regulated in any way. …
I’m not advocating censorship here, but at the same time, I think it’s important to note that inciting people to violence is not a protected form of speech. In Rwanda, the genocide of 800,000 people was spurred on by extremists on the radio — Rwanda’s Shock-Jocks…
I’m not saying that everyone who reads a book by Sean Hannity is a potential mass murderer or that watching Bill O’Reilly leads ignorant alcoholics to try to gun down liberals any more than video games cause school shootings. What I am saying is that the constant eliminationist rhetoric of the right does push some people in that direction. I’m not advocating censorship, I’m advocating responsible speech. I love passionate invective as much as the next guy, but when you start seriously advocating killing people on a radio broadcast or a television show, you’ve crossed a very serious threshold and ought to be held responsible in a court of law.
It is my hope that members of talk radio and their “Bash-’Em-in-the-Head Book Club” of authors are targeted in a massive lawsuit by wounded victims and families of the dead in the shooting. Talk radio and extreme right wing conservative authors certainly can be cited for shouting “fire” in a crowded building, which does not come under the protection of the First Amendment. In considering Second Amendment rights, which I support, legal restrictions concerning gun licenses for the mentally ill have been unpheld.
The beating death of a 25-year-old Hispanic man by three white teens in Shenandoah, PA., earlier this month also can be connected to the right-wing hate speech. The teens have been charged with homicide.
I know that conservatives I’ve formed friendships with and respect across Tennessee do not solely rely on talk show hosts and authors to form their opinions. And there are left-wing pundits who spew an assortment of derogatory messages.
But this shooting case in particular may indeed point to a unique characteristic in the extreme right-wing message that puts a sense of mission into the minds of some to wipe out those who believe differently.
If and when we come across people on either ideologocial side who are taking matters too far in their thinking, then we must correct them and demand of them some sense of mitigation in their anger. That’s our responsibility in the marketplace of ideas.
The Bigot Brigades behind Proposition 8 take the usual tack of labeling their anti-equality efforts as “pro-marriage,” and “protecting marriage” — when, in fact, they are attempting to destroy marriage, and strip marriage protection.
Last week, the title and wording of Proposition 8 were corrected to accurately reflect its purpose:
And now, to no one’s surprise, the whiny babies are going to court in an attempt to mask the truth:
Supporters of Proposition 8, the proposed state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, said they would file suit today to block a change made by California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to the language of the measure’s ballot title and summary.
Petitions circulated to qualify the initiative for the ballot said the measure would amend the state Constitution “to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
In a move made public last week and applauded by same-sex marriage proponents, the attorney general’s office changed the language to say that Proposition 8 seeks to “eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.”
Jennifer Kerns, spokeswoman for the Protect Marriage coalition, called the new language “inherently argumentative” and said it could “prejudice voters against the initiative.”
That’s rich, Kerns! The new language is “inherently argumentative” only when it reflects your anti-marriage agenda! No doubt you’d be happiest if Prop 8 was titled: “Protect the Assault on Good, Patriotic Christians from the Radical Homosexual Agenda to Recruit Your Tiny Children, Brainwash Your Wife into Leaving You for a Lesbian Witch, and Destroy Your Manhood by Sneaking into Your Bedroom and Raping You in Your Sleep, Just Like Popo Bawa.”
Proponents of the measure said they want voters to see ballot language similar to what was on the petitions that began circulating last fall. …
You mean, so the summary is nothing more than “Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” period, and doesn’t mention the part about taking eliminating a right that’s already been established?
Yeah, I figured that’s what you meant.
On the other side, Steve Smith, campaign manager for No on Proposition 8, applauded the language change.
“What Proposition 8 would do is eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, which is exactly what the attorney general put in the title of the measure,” he said. “It will be very difficult for them to win the case.”
Political analysts on both sides suggest that the language change will make passage of the initiative more difficult, noting that voters might be more reluctant to pass a measure that makes clear it is taking away existing rights.
But that is exactly what Prop 8 would do: take away existing rights.
The dust-up … has raised suspicion in some circles that Brown, a possible candidate for governor in 2010, was influenced by politics. …
Gareth Lacy, a spokesman for the attorney general, denied that there was any political motivation for the move.
Instead, he said, the change was necessary because of the dramatic turn of events that have taken place since the petitions were circulated: namely that the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage and thousands of gay couples have since wed.
“The title and summary accurately reflect the measure,” Lacy said.
He noted that language in titles and summaries often changes between the time a measure is circulated for signatures and when it appears on the ballot.
In another change, the revised language predicts a loss to state and local governments of tens of millions of dollars in sales tax revenues over the next few years if the measure passes. …
So? In my nearly 30 years of voting in California, I can’t remember one, single, solitary ballot measure that didn’t summarize the fiscal impact on the state. Not a one.
NO on 8–Equality California received a significant contribution of $250,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Company to help secure the freedom to marry for all Californians. PG&E is partnering with EQCA and the NO on 8 campaign to defeat Proposition 8, the November statewide ballot initiative that aims to treat same-gender couples differently by excluding them from marriage. PG&E’s contribution is the largest corporate and only utility-made donation received by the NO on 8 campaign.
“We are thrilled to partner with PG&E to ensure that the laws of our state are not used to treat people unfairly,” said EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors, a member of the NO on 8 Executive Committee. “Across California, individuals and businesses like PG&E are pledging to vote no on Proposition 8 because they know it’s wrong to single out one group of people to be treated differently.”
In addition to the $250,000 shareholder contribution, PG&E today announced it will become a founding member of the Equality Business Advisory Council, an organization that will challenge other businesses to join NO on 8 in supporting fairness and equality for all people.
“We are proud to join NO on 8 and Equality California to protect the freedom to marry for all Californians,” said PG&E Senior Vice President of Public Affairs Nancy McFadden. “For years, PG&E has advocated for equality and fairness in the workplace, and across California. In that same spirit, PG&E is honored to be a founding member of the Equality Business Advisory Council and urge our business colleagues to join us as we work to guarantee the same rights and freedoms for every Californian.”
A recent Field Poll of likely voters showed that a majority of Californians oppose Proposition 8 and would vote against it in November.
“It’s clear that Proposition 8 is wrong for California,” said NO on 8 Senior Strategist Steve Smith. “We are happy PG&E and other business leaders are joining the millions of Californians who recognize that our constitution guarantees the same freedoms and rights to everyone. Regardless of how anyone feels about marriage for same-gender couples, it’s wrong to deny a person’s fundamental rights and freedoms.”
BRAVO!
Heh… Here’s a thought: I wonder if the anti-gay crusaders will launch a boycott on PG&E over this? Let ‘em try — they’d then be forced to generate their own energy for their homes and offices, thereby taking some of the load off the already-overstretched power grid, and helping the environment.
SAN DIEGO — July 29, 2008 — Today Californians Against Hate officially kicks off its next awareness campaign in its endeavor to let America know where the money is coming from to take away the recently attained freedom to marry in California.
Terry Caster owns A-1 Self Storage Company of San Diego. A-1 Self Storage has 40 locations throughout California with over 4 million square feet of storage. Mr. Caster and his family have contributed nearly $300,000.00 to the Protect Marriage campaign. That makes the Caster family the biggest contributors from San Diego County where 35% of the money came from to qualify Proposition 8 for the November 4th ballot. “This guy must really not like same-sex marriage,” said Fred Karger, Campaign Manager of Californians Against Hate in his recently published blog in the Huffington Post:
“Mr. Caster and many of his eight sons and daughters and their spouses have given a combined total of $293,000.00 to the Protect Marriage campaign between January and July of 2008.” We are very curious as to why Mr. Caster saw fit to contribute so much money to their campaign of fear and hate.
So effective today, we are asking our millions of friends and supporters all over the United States to help us by Calling Terry Caster and asking him why he and his family are so strongly against marriage equality. Call Terry Caster at A-1 Self Storage Toll Free Corporate Office Number: 800-219-4854 ext. 106; Customer Service Number: 800-210-8979.
When you call, please be respectful and courteous to Mr. Caster and his associates. It is a free country and Terry Caster and his family have every right to contribute as much money as they want to this effort. Lots of people just want to know why. We have launched a brand new web site with more information on our latest undertaking: www.CallTerryCaster.com.
Californians Against Hate officially kicked off its campaign to identify the major donor funders of Proposition 8 on Friday, July 18, 2008, in San Diego with a lunchtime demonstration and rally against hate. We announced our first action against one of the largest donors to qualify this Amendment, Doug Manchester, CEO of the Manchester Financial Group (www.dougmanchester.com). Mr. Manchester contributed $125,000.00 this year to take away marriage equality in California and owns three hotels. Californians Against Hate called for a boycott of all three of Doug Manchester’s Hotels (www.boycottmanchesterhotels.com). They are the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel and the Grand del Mar Resort both in San Diego and the Whitetail Club and Resort in McCall, Idaho. Californians Against Hate will act as a truth squad during the next 3-1/2 months. With this information about where the money came from to support Proposition 8, people can chose whether or not they want to patronize the businesses owned by these major donors. We believe that the truth should be known about who is funding their campaign of hate.
We would have experienced more Schadenfreude if Ted Stevens (RRR-Alaska) had been indicted on charges of sheer stupidity (LISTEN), but we’re still pretty satisfied that his indictment on seven counts of corruption will probably end his long career as professional homophobe, enemy of the environment, and all-around laughingstock. (After all, Al Capone got away with murder, but spent the last eight years of his life in prison anyway, so it all evens out.)
Now, Alaskans, use this opportunity to elect somebody with at least half a brain next time, will you?
Mere moments after the story broke of hate-filled whackjob Jim David Adkisson barging into a children’s production of Annie inside Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opening fire on the crowd, CINO (Christian-In-Name-Only) fundamentalists (emphasis on “mental”) everywhere pounced:
Atheist attacks church! See how Christians are persecuted, and murdered by godless heathens! The atheist movement is on the march! It’s the end of the world! …
What, you don’t believe me? Here, see for yourself just a few of the delirious reactions:
A delusional dissonant (notice the anti-humanist, anti-science bent of the recent posts) at something called Recrudescent Religion titles his (her? its?) blog post, “When Atheists Attack,” reasoning (for lack of a better word) that this Adkisson fella couldn’t be a lib’rul-hatin’ right-winger, ‘cuz the paper says he wuz a real nice guy who just turned bad, ‘cuz… well, ‘cuz he was a God-hater, just all the rest of them atheists, like he musta been, dawgawnit:
If you’ve been following the news, you are surely aware of the recent mass-shooting attack at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennesee. If not, then click here to find out. The news media at this stage appear to be trying to spin it as “a right winger attacks a liberal church”, or some such rubbish. However, this is not supported by the actual evidence. …
So, you have a guy who is bitter that his parents “made him go to church all his life”, who rants and raves about the “Bible contradicting itself”, and who becomes inexplicably angry when a neighbour tells him that her daughter just graduated from a Bible college. This sounds suspiciously like the formula we see with so many of the so-called “New Atheists”. Even the fact that he attacked an Unitarian Universalist assembly doesn’t necessarily argue against the notion that he was an angry God-hater. Most God-haters out there are so mixed up they can’t (or simply won’t) make a distinction between far-left groups like the UUs and fundamentalists - anyone smacking of religion draws their ire.
We can probably expect to see more of this sort of thing in this country for as long as the secularist worldview continues to advance in this country. Let’s face it - secularism is no more “rational” than anything else, despite its pretentions. Just as there are always some Muslims who will cross the line into violence because of their religious beliefs, there are secular fundamentalists who will also.
Ignoring the idiotic oxymoron “secular fundamentalist,” if there’s ever been an atheist who ran around shooting at Christians, I can’t name him. Even apart from institutionalized, societally-sanctioned, mass hate crimes instigated and carried out by sworn Christians (e.g., the Salem witch trials, the European Inquisitions, the Holocaust), more murders in which the victim represented a targeted group have been executed by the devoutly religious than by atheists.
Prove me wrong, Tighty Righties. I dare you.
Next, here’s some real Red-under-every-bed lunacy from something called The Delete France News Blog (which was cross-posted on several other right-wing-lunatic blogs, but for reasons not too hard to fathom, has since been scrubbed):
The police are being very quiet about this shooting and the suspect that was caught. I wonder why? Is this due to all of the anti-Religion hate speech coming from “the left” these days? I am not sure if you people noticed that there is a huge atheist movement going on right now. Christianity is being bashed from all angles and it is interesting that this shooter was a stranger to the church, nobody recognized him.
Religion is the thorn in the side to all Marxists that have a Global communism agenda. They feel it must be discredited and destroyed to allow their evil ideology take over.
When a commenter points out that the target was “a left wing, pro-gay Unitarian Church,” the blogger responds:
Well he was obviously further left then the commies running the church
…and later remarks:
13 people were just killed in Turkey, I am sure leftists were behind that one too….I will check that out later
And a hotbed of ignorance (and racism) that calls itself Serr8d’s Cutting Edge concludes, under the title, “Atheist madman kills two in Knoxville Church“:
The FBI was investigating, in case this was a ‘hate crime’. Funny that; all murder is hate. And, Christians aren’t on the leftist’s ‘protected’ list.
In other words, there’s no such thing as a hate crime, unless Christians are the target. Got it.
On a highly reactionary, end-of-times fundy forum called TheologyOnline.com, where the story is posted under the subject line, “Loving Atheist Enters Church and Opens Fire…,” brave dissidents who dared challenge the inevitable conclusion that Adkisson was a Christian-killing atheist were promptly shouted down, and in at least one case, banned.
Of course, posters toeing the poor-little-persecuted-Christians/it’s a sign of the end times! line (while backhanding the UU church) are still active and in good standing; e.g.:
Something tells me that if a man walks into a church and shouts “hateful things” as reported by congregation members before opening fire, he isn’t a Christian. Or it could have been a religious fanatic. It was a Unitarian church after all.
In a back-and-forth between the OP and the banned poster, the OP reacts to the reminder of Killer Christians (by way of witch hunts, the Inquisitions, and anti-Semitism) with nothing more or less than because-I-say-so insistence:
You will know them by their fruits. If anyone does these things, they are not Christian, though they may claim to be.
Finally backed into a corner, the OP blows off the issue with:
So I assumed a religion-hater did it. Is something bad going to happen now?
Hm, let me see… Assigning blame to a member of a specific minority group for a heinous crime, refusing to correct the ASS-umption, and finally equating atheists with “religion-haters”… Yeah, I’d say something bad happened: The OP just spread more lies about atheists and propagated more hatred against atheists.
Some “Christian.”
No matter — that Adkisson sure sounds like a real Christian-hater, doesn’t he?
Uh, no, he doesn’t. Apart from the idea that Unitarian Universalism isn’t your traditional Christian church (I’ll leave it up to UU’s to explain what it is), Jim David Adkisson was no atheist targeting the Lord’s People.
A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson’s small SUV indicated he intentionally targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because, the police chief said, “he hated the liberal movement” and was upset with “liberals in general as well as gays.” …
Adkisson was a loner who hates “blacks, gays and anyone different from him,” longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
So now we know his motive. And the reason he picked TVUU as his target? It’s not lost on anyone that the church (which is welcoming and affirming), had recently erected a sign: “Gays Welcome.”
Bizarrely, Adkisson is “a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps” — “It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement,” said the chief of police — and he blames liberals for his predicament? Liberals, the unyielding promoters and defenders of labor and social welfare programs that made it possible for him to get those food stamps in the first place?
And, as far as Adkisson’s unemployment goes, he can thank the Bush administration and the rest of the “Let them eat… nothing!” Republicans for the abysmal economic climate that’s killing blue-collars joes like himself.
But it sounds like Adkisson drank the Blame-the-Liberals-and-Gays Kool-Aid — gallons of it — and it’s no secret who spiked his glass. Just as Timothy McVeigh was “inspired” to blow up 168 people inside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by the neo-Nazi bible The Turner Diaries, Adkisson appears to have been “inspired” by the non-stop hate speech of such rabid liberal-haters as Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity:
Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals “who are ruining the country,” court records show. …
Adkisson targeted the church, [Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still] wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”
Adkisson told Still that “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.” …
Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly. …
Owen said Adkisson specifically targeted the church for its beliefs, rather than a particular member of the congregation.
“It appears that church had received some publicity regarding its liberal stance,” the chief said. The church has a “gays welcome” sign and regularly runs announcements in the News Sentinel about meetings of the Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays meetings at the church.
Owen said Adkisson’s stated hatred of the liberal movement was not necessarily connected to any hostility toward Christianity or religion per say, but rather the political advocacy of the church.
The church’s Web site states that it has worked for “desegregation, racial harmony, fair wages, women’s rights and gay rights” since the 1950s. Current ministries involve emergency aid for the needy, school tutoring and support for the homeless, as well as a cafe that provides a gathering place for gay and lesbian high-schoolers. …
What’s more, Dark Christianity — in a well-thought-out post full of excellent research — is mulling over Adkisson’s possible far-right/dominionist links:
There’s been speculation on anti-dominionist forums on LJ that a recent church shooting (at a Unitarian church) may have been the work of a dominionist — unfortunately, this is not unlikely, as UU churches have been explicitly targeted for protests by dominionist groups and the incident occured in Knoxville, located in a part of Tennessee that is a wee bit of a dominionist hotbed. …
I will note at present, as a caveat, that we do *not yet know* what dominionist groups — if any — he was a member of; it should be noted that “Christian Patriot” militia groups and “Joel’s Army” groups *are* rather popular in eastern TN — and this is also an area of the country where there is more overt “Joel’s Army” influence over the Southern Baptist Convention than is apparent in much of the country. Eastern TN, including Knoxville itself, also has one of the decidedly larger concentrations of active Klan groups and Christian Identity groups in the US. There *is* some indication, per articles in Knoxville media (below), that the shooter did tend to have similar viewpoints to Christian Identity and Klan groups — especially in regards to anti-African American and anti-LGBT sentiments. It should also be noted, however, that there are also plenty of *non-dominionist* racist groups; western North Carolina in particular has been noted as a hotbed of not just dominionist-linked racist groups but also groups like neo-Nazis and “Confederate Skins”.
A neighbor told 10News Adkisson described himself as a “Confederate” and a “believer in the old South.” She says Adkisson self-identified in this way to her on more than one occasion, but that she didn’t know what he meant by it.
There is also evidence that the assailant has a long history of violence and threatened violence. At one point this resulted in filing of an EPO by his ex-wife due to threats to shoot himself and his wife; the same ex-spouse has reported he was heavily into conspiracy theories re the government and hated “”blacks, gays, anyone who was a different color or just different from him”. Again, evidence points to complex PTSD as a potential factor. …
Among other things, writings by several neoconservative authors that have expressed sympathy with dominionist viewpoints (including Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly) have been found; among other groups, Media Matters for America has reported on inflammatory speech by these authors. Shows by these writers also tend to get play on dominionist networks, often as the only secular material (for instance, Fox News is the sole secular news provider on the dominionist DSS service Sky Angel). …
Reader dogemperor adds:
[Adkisson] being “force-fed the Bible” has been confirmed per the Knoxville News-Sentinel:
According to Massey, Adkisson talked frequently about his parents, who “made him go to church all his life. … He acted like he was forced to do that.”
(I’ve noted the church does appear to have strong dominionist links, and it does appear he was adopted in what may be a private adoption; this is, unfortunately, quite common among dominionist adoptions.)
Fascinating — especially if you’re familiar with “independent fundamentalist” churches in general (Baptist or otherwise).
Finally — although we disagree, vehemently, on the need for hate-crimes legislation (sorry, but not all violent crimes are hate crimes) — Miscellanea Agnostica sums up the Rabid Righties’ cognitive dissonance best:
Early reports had pointed out that Adkisson complained about Christians, for instance railing against a woman who told him his daughter had attended a Bible college. This fits, of course, with most Christians’ inherent compulsion to feel persecuted, and the story was told according to this angle — until Adkisson’s letter surfaced, showing his motivation to be much more personal and not a philosophically-driven effort to wipe out Christians just because they’re Christians.
So it turns out this was not a “hate crime” against Christians … it was against people of two classes that Adkisson had a personal grudge against.
Folks on the Right were — and possibly still are — railing about this being a “hate crime” because largely they despise the very notion of “hate crime.” They fear that any crime by a Christian against, say, a gay person — regardless of whether or not religion or sexual orientation played a part in the particular event — would have “hate crime” charges tacked on for added measure. Some go further, claiming that all “hate crime” legislation is, by definition, an attempt to “silence” all Christians everywhere. This sort of paranoia is, of course, yet another example of the Christian Martyr Complex, which I already mentioned. While I consider “hate crime” laws to be dubious at best — after all, aren’t all violent crimes “hate” crimes? — this fear is completely irrational.
At any rate, hopefully the Right will stop claiming this crime is an anti-Christian massacre, because truthfully, it wasn’t — and they know it.
But, of course, the professional haters out there will still try to spin it to suit their twisted agenda — like our little leather-obsessed friend, Pete LaBarbera, of Christofascists for Slander and Libel (a.k.a. Americans for Truth) — Petey’s found a way to use this tragedy to 1) denounce hate-crimes legislation, 2) satisfy his lust for the death penalty, 3) slam Out & About as “anti-family,” and 4) accuse “pro-homosexual activists” of doing exactly what he’s doing: politicizing the tragedy.
And all in just two short paragraphs.
(Petey, I think you’ve outdone yourself this time. Whatsamatter, run out of Folsom Street Fair pictures to gaze at?)
Amnesty International Website Blocked at Olympic Venue
July 28, 2008 — Foreign journalists working from the Olympics press center in Beijing are unable to access amnesty.org — the Amnesty International website. A number of other websites are also reported to have been blocked.
As Amnesty International prepares to launch a new report evaluating the Chinese authorities’ human rights performance in the run-up to the Olympics, this flies in the face of official promises to ensure “complete media freedom” for the Games.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has on many occasions highlighted the loosening of restrictions on foreign media in China as an example of an improvement in human rights brought about by the hosting of the Olympics. On 17 July Jaques Rogge, IOC President, went as far as to claim that ‘there will be no censorship on the internet.’
The Olympics Countdown: Broken Promises is to be published online today at 21:00 GMT, Tuesday, July 29, 05:00am Hong Kong time.
The follow-up to China: The Olympics Countdown: Crackdown on Activists Threatens Olympic Legacy which was released in April this year, the new report shows that there has still been little progress towards fulfilling the Chinese authorities’ promise to improve human rights, but rather continued deterioration in key areas.
Blocking Amnesty International’s website, along with a number of others, is a clear example of the Chinese authorities’ broken promises.
On Tuesday, April 1, 2008, Kevin Gosper, Vice Chair of the IOC co-ordinating commission, was at a meeting in Beijing where he urged the Chinese government to honour the commitment in the host city contract to allow free internet access to the media attending the Games.
Gosper said that the continued blocking of some websites would “reflect very poorly” on the hosts. “This morning we insisted again,” Gosper added. “Our concern is that the press is able to operate as it has at previous Games — at Games time. I’m satisfied that the Chinese understand the need for this and they will do it.
Have your say on censorship and other human rights issues in China on Amnesty International’s The China Debate Web site.
Bruce Wayne Bastian (born March 23, 1948) is a computer programmer, businessman, philanthropist and social activist. He co-founded the WordPerfect Software Company with Dr. Alan Ashton in 1978 (originally known as Satellite Software International (SSI) and then changed to WordPerfect Corporation in 1982). …
For years Bastian quietly bankrolled Utah’s cultural arts, until somewhere along the way, “philanthropy transitioned to activism”. Bastian reduced his donations to the arts to dedicate more resources to what he considers a battle over fundamental human rights. “Where he sees injustice, he devotes himself to reversing it.” Bastian contributed half of the Don’t Amend Alliance’s budget for fighting Utah’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as between only a man and a woman. A native of Twin Falls, Idaho, he went on an LDS mission to Italy, and married in the LDS temple and had a family prior to coming to terms with his homosexuality and later becoming a social activist for gay rights.
He is a member of the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the U.S.’s largest Gay and Lesbian political action committee, and was grand marshal of the Utah Pride Festival’s parade in 2004.
On July 26th, 2008 at the San Francisco Human Rights Campaign dinner, Bastian announced he was donating $1 million dollars to HRC, designated to fight California Prop. 8 on the November 2008 ballot, which would eliminate same-sex marriage in California.
When Bruce Bastian of Utah stood up Saturday night at a San Francisco dinner and wrote a $1 million check for the campaign against Proposition 8, he made it clearer than ever that November’s ballot fight over a ban on same-sex marriage won’t be a California-only affair.
Supporters of the effort to ban same-sex marriage already have taken in more than $1.2 million from out-of-state contributors for the fall campaign. And even before Bastian, a co-founder of the WordPerfect software company, opened his checkbook, gay and lesbian rights groups and their supporters from around the country had put more than $1.3 million into the fight against the ballot initiative.
“This is a campaign that’s important to the entire country, not just California,” said Brad Luna, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, sponsor of the fundraising dinner that brought more than 750 people to the St. Francis Hotel on Saturday. “The result will have effects across the United States.” …
The outside money is arriving in supersized chunks. Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs group headed by James Dobson, has given more than $400,000 to the Prop. 8 campaign. The American Family Association, out of Tupelo, Miss., has contributed $500,000. The Knights of Columbus, a national Catholic men’s organization headquartered in New Haven, Conn., has put $250,000 into the campaign. …
With more than three months to go before election day, the outside money on both sides of the ballot battle will just keep coming.
Concerns about that money is what persuaded Bastian to get involved. …
“One thing I learned as a Mormon was that preaching costs money,” Bastian said. “The Mormons will raise a lot of money to support Proposition 8 in November.”
Bastian, who lives in Orem, Utah, felt he had to level the financial playing field. …
He decided to make his $1 million contribution in the middle of the campaign dinner as a none-too-subtle challenge to others to step up and contribute to the anti-Prop. 8 effort.
“I know there are people waiting in the wings and I wanted to nudge them, to inspire them,” he said. …
…here’s something I wrote more than a year ago. Not a word has been changed — nor, tragically, has the desperate need for hate-crimes legislation:
May 7, 2007
Bold emphasis mine:
Foes of Hate Crime Bill Prove It’s Needed
…The proposed Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday despite the accompanying White House veto threat, includes provisions that would make it possible for federal investigation and prosecution of any hate crime, as well as a more-publicized tenet that expands the definition of hate crimes to include attacks based on sexual orientation, transgender identity, gender and disability. …
<snip>
Most media and public attention is focused on the clause that offers greater protection for sexual minorities. But it shouldn’t even be news. …
<snip>
According to FBI reports, 14 percent of 2005 hate crimes were motivated by sexual orientation, which is just slightly less than the percent of attacks based on religion and greater than the percent of attacks based on ethnicity, two groups that are currently protected under the law. Those in the sexual minority deserve the same protection as other minorities because they are just as abused and just as worthy of it. But not only is this protection not afforded them, but arguments against the proposed revisions to hate crime laws are based on prejudices that should be a mere memory in the year 2007. …
<snip>
Second, while every American citizen has a Constitutional right to protection, those in minority groups are in a unique situation. Simply being who they are inspires people to commit violence against them. Additionally, if we were all to have the equal protection Rep. Smith suggests, we would have to eliminate all hate crime laws covering race, religion and national origin. Doing away with hate crime laws altogether would be an injustice, and members of both parties would likely oppose it. So these groups are and will continue to rightfully be protected, but the still-unaccepted sexual minorities are not.
Perhaps the weakest argument against the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act is the one put forth by the religious right — that this act would take away their right to free speech and hold them accountable for speaking out against homosexuality. … What’s important is the fact that the proposed act would in no way take away their right to free speech, as it covers only physical acts against these groups. Perhaps the religious right should also consider that they, under current hate crime laws, are protected against hate-related attacks, and reflect on what it might be like if that were to be taken away from them.
Simply put, the people who are currently protected are the ones enjoying “special” rights — or, as I like to think of them: privileges.
But, hey, I’m willing to give up equal protection under the law if you are too.
Now, if you’re against all hate-crime laws, then I’ll give you credit for being consistent. If you’re really being consistent.
I hope you realize that by railing against hate-crime laws, you’re on quite a slippery slope. If you believe that there should be no protections in place for minorities against crimes committed on the sole basis of who we are, then be prepared to explain why we shouldn’t eliminate all “special rights” laws, such as protection in housing and employment.
And don’t give me any of that “thought crime” malarkey. If you really believe that there’s no way to determine that a gay — or black, or Muslim — person was beaten or murdered on the basis of who they are, then how can there be any way to determine that the reason a person was fired, or evicted, for the same “thought crime”?
In which case, I expect everyone against hate-crime laws must want to see both the Fair Housing Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act repealed immediately. There’s no way to justify support for either if you oppose the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act.
Heck, you may as well overturn the Americans with Disabilities Act. After all, don’t all those wheelchair ramps and court sign-language interpreters represent “special” rights?
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision striking down amendments that added sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, gender, and mental and physical disability to the state hate crime law.
The law, known as the Ethnic Intimidation and Institutional Vandalism Act, was amended in 2002 to include protections for these groups by a two-thirds majority of the state legislature. Then-governor Mark Schweiker signed it into law.
The lower court ruled last November that the law was invalid because it had been tacked onto another, nonrelated bill. The ruling did not criticize the content of the law, only the way in which it had been passed. …
Well, isn’t that fascinating? “Nonrelated” riders are the only way plenty of bills manage to get passed by the U.S. Congress (I’m thinking, oh, the REAL ID Act, for one), and hardly anybody challenges those, do they?
Stephen Glassman, chairman of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, said that the court ruling will make it more difficult to fight hate crimes. …
Disgusting.
Also disgusting, but not at all surprising:
The challenge to the law came from a conservative, Christian group, Repent America.
Hate crimes in Los Angeles County rose to their highest level in five years last year, led by attacks between Latinos and blacks, officials said Thursday.
The annual report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission showed hate crimes rose by 28%, to 763, with vandalism and assault leading the way.
In what commission Executive Director Robin Toma called an alarming trend, hate crimes based on race, religion and sexual orientation all rose, increasing against nearly all groups — including blacks, gays, Jews, Mexicans, whites and Asians — even as crime in general declined.
The largest number of racial hate crimes involved Latino suspects against black victims, followed by black suspects against Latino victims. Latinos also made up the largest number of suspects in hate crimes based on sexual orientation. Whites were the leading suspects in religion-based incidents. Overall, blacks made up nearly half the hate crime victims, totaling 310.
“What we’re seeing is the democratization of hate crimes,” said Brian Levin, who directs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. “We’re not only seeing a diversification of victims but also increased diversification of offenders.”
Police agencies report hate crimes to the county, but because departments vary on when they pursue hate-crime charges, variations in hate-crime numbers can stem from an actual increase in crimes or from changes in reporting. In this case, experts said they believed that hate crimes themselves, not just the reporting of them, are rising.
Levin said other areas of the country have reported similar increases, including a 30% increase in New York last year; a 10-year study published last fall found that hate crimes in New York began to increase two years ago after declining over several years.
Levin said several factors may be driving the rise, including deepening economic distress, growing ethnic diversity and population density in neighborhoods and what he called “increasingly inflammatory rhetoric” over illegal immigration. …
One of the most worrisome findings, commissioners said, was the rising number of hate crimes between Latinos and blacks — many of them driven by gang hostility. …
Asked what can prevent hate crimes, the Rev. Eric P. Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles offered another answer.
“Pray,” he said. “How else do you change someone’s heart? Hatred is a spiritual wickedness.”
Hate crimes are a daily reality across the European continent. Recent, credible reports show that people suffer violence because they are black, Jewish, Roma or Muslim, or because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
They give examples of how individuals have been physically attacked in the street, had their windows broken or homes set on fire. Government authorities have a responsibility to put an end to these shameful and serious crimes. …
One country where several incidents have been reported is Ukraine. Last year, Nigerian medical student George Itoro Ebong was smashed over the head with a bottle while waiting for a bus in Kiev. The three attackers shouted at the bleeding victim, “Go back to Africa; you are a monkey!” This was not a unique case — there have been a number of other racist crimes in Ukraine in recent years, some of them with fatal outcomes. …
In the Russian Federation, extreme right-wing groups have committed a series of hate crimes, in some cases even murders, against members of ethnic, religious and national minorities. …
In Italy there have been serious violent actions against Roma people during the past year, including physical attacks and arson following prejudiced speeches by some politicians and xenophobic reporting in some media outlets. The whole Roma community has been made a scapegoat for crimes committed by only a very few, and politicians have demonstrated little moral leadership in trying to stem this wave of anti-Gypsyism.* …
Gay pride events have been attacked in several European cities, including Bucharest, Budapest and Moscow. In Riga, extremists hurled feces and eggs at gay activists and their supporters when they were seen were leaving a church service. Some years ago, a Swedish hockey player was stabbed to death in Vasteras after he had made known that he was homosexual. In Oporto, Portugal, a group of boys attacked and killed a homeless Brazilian transgender woman and left the body in a water-filled pit. These incidents are only the tip of the iceberg.
Some of these assaults may have been committed by distorted individual minds, but many of them bear the imprints of neo-Nazi groups or other organized, extremist gangs who tend to be at the same time racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Roma, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and homophobic. They may also target foreigners and persons with disabilities. …
So what ought to be done in concrete terms to prevent and react to cases of hate crime? …
* The apparent anti-Roma (Gypsy) attitude in Italy is illustrated in this very disturbing story that made headlines around the world a few days ago:
Questions about the attitude of Italians to their Roma minority were again being asked yesterday after photographs were published of sunbathers continuing as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of two Gypsy girls who had drowned being laid out on the sand nearby. …
The incident took place outside Naples, where a Roma encampment was burned to the ground this year after its inhabitants had been evacuated for their own safety.
Accounts given by Italian media varied, but according to the news agency Ansa, the victims — aged 14 and 16 — and two other young Gypsies had been begging from daytrippers on the beach at Torregaveta, west of Naples, on Saturday. …
At about 1pm, the four girls decided to go into the water even though none of them, it seems, knew how to swim. …
Their corpses were dragged ashore and laid out on the sand under beach towels.
“But the knot of curious onlookers that formed around the girls’ bodies dissolved as [swiftly] as it had formed,” the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. “Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing. When the police from the mortuary arrived an hour later with coffins, the two girls were carried away on the shoulders [of the officers] between bathers stretched out in the sun.”
La Repubblica also expressed astonishment at the behaviour of those present. “While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few metres away,” it reported.
Corriere recalled that this was not the first time people had decided a death was no reason to give up their day at the beach. …
But the fact that the two victims on this occasion were Roma added an extra twist to the affair.
Italy is gripped by anti-Gypsy feeling. Since coming to office in May, Silvio Berlusconi’s rightwing government has appointed three special commissioners to deal with the Roma in each of Italy’s three biggest cities — Naples, Milan and Rome. It has also ordered the fingerprinting of the country’s Gypsy population, including minors, who make up more than half of the estimated 150,000 Roma in Italy. …
The civil liberties group EveryOne said it was unconvinced by reports of the incident at Torregaveta and asked whether there might be something more sinister behind it. …
Kamal was just 16 when gunmen snatched him off the streets of Baghdad, stuffed him in the trunk of a car and whisked him away to a house. But the real terror was about to begin.
The men realized he was gay, Kamal said, when he took his shirt off and they saw that his chest was shaved.
“They told me to take off my clothes to rape me or they would kill me immediately. This moment was the worst moment in my life,” he said, weeping as he spoke of the 2005 ordeal.
“I was watching them taking off their clothes, preparing to rape me. I did not know what to do, so I started shouting loudly, ‘Please do not do that! I will ask my family to give you whatever you want.’”
His pleas went unheeded. “The other two kidnappers took off my clothes by force, and, at that time, I saw them as three dirty animals trying to tear my body apart.”
He was held for 15 days, released only after his family paid a $1,500 ransom. He was raped every day. Only once, he said, was he allowed to talk to his family during captivity. “I told my family that I was beaten by them, but I did not dare to tell my family that I was raped by them. I could not say it, it’s too much shame.”
CNN spoke with Kamal, now 18, and his 21-year-old friend Rami about what it’s like to be gay in Iraq. Coming out as gay is not easy in any country, but to do so in Iraq could mean a death sentence or torture. …
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the situation for gays and lesbians in Iraq has deteriorated. …
It’s unknown how many homosexuals have been killed by militias in the lawless streets of Iraq’s cities, but some Web sites post pictures of Iraqis they say were killed for being gay. …
Task Force Action Fund Applauds US House Vote to Repeal HIV Travel Ban, Calls on President Bush to Sign Swiftly
WASHINGTON — July 25 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund applauds the U.S. House’s vote late yesterday to repeal the HIV travel ban. The Senate voted July 16 to repeal the prohibition, which was codified by Congress in 1993. While immigration law currently excludes foreigners with any “communicable disease of public health significance” from entering the country, only HIV is explicitly named in the statute.
Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund:
“For far too long, people with HIV have been inhumanely blocked from entering the United States due to profound ignorance, fear and misinformation. It’s time to abolish this arcane and unjust law once and for all. We applaud the House and Senate for acting to do just that, and we urge President Bush to move swiftly to sign the repeal.”
We have no words for this, except to say that, no, this is not from FakeGayNews.com (which doesn’t exist anymore anyway) — and, as far as we know, Richard Simmons is still not gay:
And here’s his typically, uh, impassioned plea in front of the Committee on Education and Labor earlier today (hang with it — he gets agitated and tearful right around the 5:00 mark):
I’m mesmerized by this video — I keep wondering if I’m seeing hair plugs, or the result of too much Just for Men that’s seeped into his scalp.
You know, I met Richard Simmons once. Well, actually, I just bumped into him — literally — in Chicago some years ago at a publishing convention. He’s little, all right, and he sweats a lot.
Oh, and somebody also captured Simmons’ rally today, here and here.
As mentioned last week (”Republican Party: Hands Off the Elephant; GOP’s Trademark Claims Stifle Political Speech“), the Republican National Committee had a hissyfit over the use of its elephant logo on third-party-created designs for T-shirts and stickers and the like — even when the use represented the Republican Party in a good light. (I know, it’s hard to believe, but some people actually want to display their ignorance by sporting the Pubbies’ pachyderm on their pecs.)
TZone has been following the story more closely than we have, and brings us up to date:
The Elephant Lives! RNC Backs Down on Cease and Desist order to Cafepress: “RNC Crumbles under pressure and agrees to allow Cafepress shopkeepers to use the GOP acronym and elephant logo on T-shirts, stickers and other merchandise. Sort of. The exception being any designs that are only the acronym ‘GOP’ or stylized Elephant which the RNC is demanding Cafepress shop owners secure a license…”
Zazzle Falls to GOP Logo Threats from the RNC: “Here we go again folks- the RNC got nowhere with threatening Cafepress with a cease and desist order on the GOP Logo and Red White and Blue stylized elephant, so now it’s onto the competitor, Zazzle. Sadly it appears that Zazzle has crunched under pressure as Zazzler’s are getting this email from the company on the current GOP Tees in the Zazzle galleries. …”
TZone also found this excellent protest from Irregular Times:
So, the House Armed Services Committee has finally gotten around to reviewing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and yesterday, the Military Personnel Subcommittee heard testimony from Teh Gays (and Teh Allies) and Teh Anti-Gays. Most visible among the latter was Elaine Donnelly, founder and president of the Center for Military Readiness, whom we’ve referred to here in the past as One Nasty, Anti-Gay, Misogynistic Piece of Work.
Well, we take it back. Elaine Donnelly is not one nasty, anti-gay, misogynistic piece of work.
Elaine Donnelly is one nasty, crazy, anti-gay, misogynistic, living, breathing personification of hatred and stupidity — whom we appreciate, in the same way we appreciate Freddie “God Hates Fags” Phelps: Such outspoken representatives of the Anti-Gay Crusade do far more damage to their own twisted agenda of hate just by opening their mouths and letting the poison drip off their forked tongues, than any rational, reasoned argument from our side could ever accomplish.
You can read Donnelly’s prepared statement in a PDF file — but it’s much more fun to watch the craziness in action. You can watch a half-hour video from the House Armed Services Committee — or just four minutes’ worth of jaw-dropping lunacy, courtesy of the HRC:
“When did you decide you were heterosexual? Do you think you are just what you are?”
— Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) to Elaine Donnelly
Dana Milbank sums up yesterday’s freak show, starring Donnelly as the Head Freak:
Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of “transgenders in the military.” She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading “HIV positivity” through the ranks.
“We’re talking about real consequences for real people,” Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about “inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community,” the prospects of “forcible sodomy” and “exotic forms of sexual expression,” and the case of “a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault” a fellow soldier.
At the witness table with Donnelly, retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, looked as if he would explode.
Inadvertently, Donnelly achieved the opposite of her intended effect. Though there’s no expectation that Congress will repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow gays to serve openly in the military, the display had the effect of increasing bipartisan sympathy for the cause.
Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) labeled her statement “just bonkers” and “dumb,” and he called her claims about an HIV menace “inappropriate.” Said Snyder: “By this analysis … we ought to recruit only lesbians for the military, because they have the lowest incidence of HIV in the country.” …
Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) pointed a finger at Darrah and glared at Donnelly. “Would you please tell me, Miss Donnelly, why I should give one twit about this woman’s sexual orientation, when it didn’t interfere one bit with her service?”
Donnelly said something about “forced intimacy.”
Shays cut her off. “You’re saying she has no right to serve her country because she happens to have a different sexual orientation than you.” …
It was tempting to think that Donnelly had been chosen by Democrats to sabotage the case against open military service for homosexuals. But Republicans had consented to the witness panel…
…Donnelly, severe in a black jacket with a flag pin on her lapel as she attacked the “San Francisco left who want to impose their agenda on the military.” She spoke of the “devastating” effect gay soldiers would have on the military and said “people who do have religious convictions” would be driven out of the military by the “sexualized atmosphere.” …
Snyder asked Darrah about Donnelly’s reference to “passive-aggressive actions common in the homosexual community,” saying, “I’m almost tempted to ask you to demonstrate.” …
“Like a woman who is stared at, her breasts are stared at,” Donnelly explained. She further explained the “absolutely devastating” effect of homosexuals “introducing erotic factors” and made a comparison to Sen. Larry Craig’s adventure at the Minneapolis airport. She said admitting gays to the military would be “forced cohabitation” and a policy of “relax and enjoy it.” …
Shays, his voice rising with Yankee indignation, continued to lecture Donnelly: “I think the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy is unpatriotic. I think it’s counterproductive. In fact, I think it is absolutely cruel.”
Donnelly said something about her respect for the service of gay veterans. “How do you respect their service?” Shays demanded. “You want them out.”
Donnelly seemed to have unified the lawmakers — against her. …
In the end, even Donnelly — clad in her trademark bulging pearls, ankle-length skirt and unflappable hair — seemed flapped by the experience. The long-time opponent of both women and gays in the military was forced to acknowledge that, in fact, prejudice isn’t good for the military. And her co-witness, a retired Army Ranger from Florida, said that he, too, may come around to a different view given a little more time.
Indeed, it may have been Donnelly who changed more minds than anyone at the hearing … just not in the direction she would have preferred. But even she, at the end of the debate, seemed to have silently recognized something she would also have not preferred. Donnelly’s long, dark skirt seemed appropriate for her mourning; the law she had fought to defend was one giant leap closer to withering away.
Elaine Donnelly, today we salute you — for making our case for us, and for exposing the boil-infested ass of anti-gay hate (and putting a face on it: yours) to a much wider audience than you ever had in the past. Enjoy the publicity, toots — we’re lovin’ it.
And just who is Donnelly attempting to demonize?
Here, courtesy of Nancy Pelosi (who has her own YouTube channel), is the statement of USMC Staff Sergeant Eric Alva, the first soldier wounded in Iraq — in fact, as he explains, he lost a leg for his country, defending for others the rights that he himself does not have:
One in a series of videos illustrating the crap women had to put up with before those pushy Women’s Libber types came along, especially for those who missed it the first time around.
I hate that California is so initiative-crazy — but I love one thing about the thick (sometimes, as in 1984, phonebook-thick) voter guide every registered California voter gets before an election: For each measure, the fiscal impact is summarized — and, for many Californians, the bottom line has always been the bottom line: “Will voting for or against this initiative bring more money into the state coffers?” — the reasoning being: “More money in the state coffers means less of a threat of increased taxes to me.”
Not that Californians are driven solely by their pocketbooks — we are generally a peaceful and equality-loving people — but times is tough, baby.
With that in mind, it’s good news that the fiscal impact of Proposition 8, the anti-marriage-equality amendment, has been released, and the bottom line is this:
Fiscal Impact: Over the next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact to state and local governments.
It’s the “short-run” impact that will make the far bigger impression. Believe it. We’re hurtin’ out here for money, big-time — and in serious crisis (since Ah-nold took over the governor’s mansion) trying to find a way to remain business-friendly.
United Nations: Defeat for Discrimination, Victory for Inclusion
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Groups Gain Consultative Status
NEW YORK — July 23 — HRW — The decision by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granting consultative status to two groups that work on sexual orientation and gender identity is a victory in the ongoing struggle for inclusion at the UN, a coalition of six human rights organizations said today. The two groups approved on July 21 and 22, 2008 are COC Netherlands and the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Spain (FELGTB), national organizations representing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Netherlands and Spain.
“COC Netherlands is delighted about obtaining consultative status with the UN,” said Björn van Roozendaal, COC international advocacy officer. “It means we can join the efforts at the UN to address human rights violations against people with an alternative sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Spanish-speaking LGBT voices will be heard in UN meetings where human rights questions are debated,” said David Montero, FELGTB Spain’s officer for international issues and human rights. “We thank all who have contributed to this exciting outcome, and especially Spain’s UN mission for their support.”
Consultative status is a key means for civil society to access the UN system. It allows non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to deliver oral and written reports at UN meetings, and to organize events on UN premises. With it, these groups can share their information and analysis of the abuses and discrimination LGBT people confront around the world.
ECOSOC, consisting of 54 member states of the UN, grants consultative status to NGOs after reviewing recommendations made by its subsidiary body — the NGO Committee — which screens the applications.
COC Netherlands and FELGTB Spain join approximately 3,000 other NGOs with consultative status at the UN. However, only a handful of LGBT groups have received the status. In recent years, some states have treated LGBT groups’ applications with intense hostility, and ECOSOC has only granted such groups consultative status after first overturning negative recommendations from its NGO Committee. ECOSOC approved the Danish National Association for Gay and Lesbians, the European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA-Europe), and the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany in December 2006. The Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Québec and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights gained consultative status in July 2007.
The US-based International Wages Due Lesbians and Australian-based Coalition of Activist Lesbians have had consultative status at the UN for more than a decade.
At its January session, the committee tied 7-7 on consultative status for FELGTB Spain, meaning the motion to recommend it failed, but at the following session in June it voted 7-6 to grant the status for COC Netherlands. At the July session in New York, ECOSOC adopted by consensus the recommendation on COC Netherlands and voted to overturn the recommendation not to grant status to FELGTB Spain.
“ECOSOC has recognized the place of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the work of the United Nations,” said John Fisher from ARC International, which supported the groups’ advocacy efforts. “In this 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is particularly important to affirm the core principle that all human beings are entitled to the full enjoyment of all human rights, without discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Yesterday’s vote sends a clear message that discrimination has no place in the UN system, and that sexual orientation and gender identity issues can, and must, be addressed.”
“Many states that harass or persecute LGBT people at home also try to shut down scrutiny of their records internationally,” said Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Program at Human Rights Watch. “This vote ensures that two more voices will be raised to defend basic human rights at the UN.”
“States from all five regions voted to overturn the negative recommendation from the NGO Committee in regards to FELGTB Spain,” said Philipp Braun, co-secretary general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA). “We would like the committee to acknowledge the repeated message sent by ECOSOC that it should recommend LGBT groups. We also congratulate our members COC and FELGTB on their victory.”
“Many states claim that ECOSOC’s votes need to follow the recommendations of its NGO Committee; the view of those who voted in favor of the LGBT groups, however, is that this cannot be done at the price of discriminating against anyone, including LGBT voices,” noted Adrian Coman from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), who participated in monitoring the ECOSOC and NGO Committee meetings.
The NGO Committee is due to review a number of additional applications from LGBT groups at its next two sessions in January and May 2009.
WASHINGTON — July 23 — Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) denounced the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision to lift a preliminary injunction against requiring physicians to recite a script to patients before performing an abortion procedure in South Dakota.
“This Court’s ruling is outrageous in its demand that doctors recite an “Orwellian” script designed to intimidate and humiliate women exercising their reproductive rights. This obtuse ruling is an indication of this Court’s ignorance of, and insensitivity to, both the fundamental right to an abortion, as well as the process whereby a woman arrives at such a personal decision,” Ellison stated.
According to the Court’s decision, doctors are now required to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the procedure “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.” Doctors must further state that the woman has “an existing relationship” with the fetus that is protected by the United States Constitution and that “her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.” Doctors must go on to state that “abortion increases the risk of suicide ideation and suicide.” The message must be delivered no earlier than two hours before the procedure, and the woman must state in writing that she understands the statement.
Another South Dakota law that already took effect July 1, 2008 requires doctors to ask a woman seeking an abortion if she wishes to see a sonogram of the fetus.
The South Dakota ruling is seen as a test case for the ultimate overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized a woman’s right to choose.
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The Bigot Brigades behind Proposition 8 take the usual tack of labeling their anti-equality efforts as “pro-marriage,” and “protecting marriage” — when, in fact, they are attempting to destroy marriage, and strip marriage protection.
