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“This from America in general: Because a great nation screens”:
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So, what this coalition of frayed remnants from the dying Radical Religious Right movement is really saying: In order to ensure the elimination of our rights, 1) they want their freedoms taken away, and 2) they want more government interference in their lives. There’s no other way to read it:
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Lawyer Steve Mayer has tracked down no less than ten amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs he says aren’t yet available on the California Supreme Court’s Web site, from the Beverly Hills Bar Association; “six Professors of Law in support of Prop. 8″; “various labor organizations against the measure”; “a group of Sacramento lawyers”; Equal Rights Advocates; the Family Research Council; Issues4Life Foundation; Archbishop Mark Steven Shirilau; League of Women Voters; and Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles. Hit Mayer’s blog for the links.
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Golly, Mormons, y’all were so eager to pile on in the comments before the election, and now, no matter what we say, you’ve all run off like bunnies with their little cottontails on fire. What, you don’t have anything to say to us anymore about your great and wonderful church? I know you’re reading — we get an awful lot of traffic from Utah every day (nah, I decided not to block Utah; let ‘em learn something).
Oh, well, I’ll just keep asking you to explain yourselves, and even if you don’t respond, I’ll be comforted by the knowledge that you have plenty to think about.
Like this question — one I find reason to ask you with monotonous regularity lately:
Are you still convinced the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wasn’t responsible for stripping me of my civil rights in California? If so, how do you explain this big, fat thank-you-for-screwing-the-gays petition sponsored by Maggie Gallagher’s brand-new anti-gay Web site, BelowThePondScum.com, a.k.a. AboveTheHate.com?
Online petition thanks LDS Church
for Prop. 8 supportMore than 3,000 people, including long-time Mormon critic James Dobson of Focus on the Family, have signed an online petition aimed at thanking the LDS Church for its efforts on behalf of California’s traditional marriage initiative known as Proposition 8.
“Anyone who participated in this process has come to admire the competence, diligence and moral courage that so many members of your faith community displayed as part of this coalition effort — as Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, and people of other faith communities all came together to fight this great battle for marriage,” says the petition, which is addressed to LDS President Thomas S. Monson.
The petition condemns recent protests against Mormon temples and members, saying, “it is deeply unfair, and contrary to the best American traditions, that any faith community, much less a minority one, should be singled out and attacked in this way by powerful, well-funded political forces determined to ‘make them pay’ for participating in the normal political processes of democracy.”
The online effort was created by the National Organization for Marriage, a non-profit group in Princeton, N.J., organized to lobby, organize and collect donations on behalf of ballot measures defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman.
Yeah, we know the NOM, the anti-gay hate group headed by Gallagher, whose real problem I’ve been meaning to detail in depth; in a nutshell, the root of “Christian” homophobia, as put forth by Gallagher and all her anti-equality pals, primarily the straight female ones, isn’t gays, per se, but straight men. Yes, you read that right: The whole problem with gay marriage is straight men. The real reason for Gallagher’s anti-gay hysteria would be just pathetic and somewhat amusing if our very quality of life weren’t at stake — which makes it all just plain pathetic. Rest assured that once you understand what “protect marriage” really means to these nutballs, you’ll see how all their arguments unravel, and how the entire crusade can be melted under the harsh light of day (and with the aid of a good magnifying glass) — and you’ll understand just what needs to be exposed, and to whom. But I digress, as usual. I’ll get into all that at a later date, and just let it lie there for now.
So, about that thank-you-for-screwing-the-gays petition: The signature list reads like a Who’s Who in Hate, including:
…Donald Wildmon, American Family Association, Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship, Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Paul Weyrich of Free Congress Foundation, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Gary Bauer of American Values.
Yeah, big surprises all — not. Me, I’m jonesin’ to start digging deep into the not-so-well known signatories, most of whom include their business names (heh!), which will be ever-so-helpful as a supplement to our new database of Prop 8 donors and associated warriors against freedom. (Yep, it’s getting closer to launch; I toldja much of the work I do is tedious grunt work, and there’s a lot of back-end stuff that needs to be locked down. Hang in there!)
Well, Mormons? If y’all weren’t responsible for murdering my civil rights in cold blood, how do you explain the Radical Righty petition thanking you for doing just that? Are Gallagher and Dobson and all the rest lying about your involvement? Could it be that they’re trying to shift blame onto you, making you the fall-guy (as I’ve said all along they would anyway)? Or could it be that, by golly, Mormons really are bad guys, just like Dobson and His Merry Band of Gay Slayers?
Well, which is it, Mormons?
And if you ever finally confess to your sins against gay and lesbian Americans, then where the hell is your apology? Or do we have to wait a hundred years or so, like African-Americans did, for some future “prophet and revelator” to have some holy “revelation” before the church says, “Gee, looks like we did screw you guys. Sorry about that!” - ?
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Proponents of Prop 8 are flooding leaders who stand with us with critical emails, urging them to oppose equality. It is up to each of us to make sure they get more emails from those who support equality than from those who continue to attack us. Send the Governor and our legislative leaders a message that out of state right wing special interest groups have no place in California and thank them for standing on the right side of history. 1. [If you are not registered with EQCA’s Action Center], register today at www.eqca.org/ActionCenter. 2. Ask your family and friends to email the Governor and our legislative leaders. 3. Help us get marriage back. Make a donation today. |
Our community and our supporters continue to be the victim of outrageous, relentless attacks by proponents of Prop 8.
Now they are claiming that Governor Schwarzenegger supports anarchy — anarchy — for saying that he hopes Prop 8 is overturned in court and for encouraging us to “never give up.”
In a recent email urging supporters to attack the Governor for his comments, Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council had this to say:
“Since Election Day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has made statements supporting demonstrations against Proposition 8, and urging California ’s Supreme Court to block the amendment’s enforcement…Condoning street protests and supporting judicial activist scams to overturn a popularly approved state constitutional amendment approaches advocacy of anarchy. Gov. Schwarzenegger is playing a dangerous game, and it needs to stop. Now.”
What needs to STOP NOW is the hateful rhetoric and continued assaults from the leadership of the Yes on 8 campaign who used lies and deceit to write discrimination into our constitution and eliminate our equality.
Email Governor Schwarzenegger, and the 44 members of the California Legislature who signed a friend of the court brief to overturn Prop 8. Encourage them to stand strong in the face of these outrageous attacks. …
Taking action is simple and free.
Prop 8 must be overturned and we need to let the leaders who are standing with us know how much we appreciate their support.
The other side is flooding them with critical emails. It is up to each of us to make sure they get more emails from those who support equality than from those who continue to attack us.
Please, email our elected leaders who are standing with us today. And urge everyone you know to do so as well.
In solidarity,
Geoff Kors
Executive Director
Equality California
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Excellent — and getting freeped at YouTube, so when you’re done watching, head over there and rate it UP!
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“Not everyone was as jubilant about the gains for marriage as (the) Family Research Council and our supporters. This morning, FOX News posted photo after photo of the anti-family rioting in Los Angeles…”
— Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, a powerful right-wing religious think tank that helped lead the campaign to pass Proposition 8
“Anti-family rioting.”
That is how the religious extremists behind Prop 8 are characterizing the protests that have spread across California in the aftermath of Tuesday’s passage of the ballot measure that eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry.
I was at the heart of one of these amazing marches in Los Angeles on Wednesday night. And it was anything but “anti-family rioting.”
It was history in the making — thousands of passionate Americans spontaneously speaking out against enshrining discrimination into the California state constitution.
We are witnessing the birth of a new Marriage Equality Movement — the civil rights movement of the 21st Century. Organized from the bottom-up by thousands of ordinary people just like you in the last 48 hours, this people-powered phenomenon is exponentially growing by the minute, online and offline.
You are at ground zero in this movement. And we need to take it to the next level — a new initiative campaign to repeal Prop 8 and restore marriage equality to California. Please pledge your support now to repeal Prop 8 — then forward this message to your friends:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealProp8
California had the chance to do what no other state has done and uphold equality for all. Instead, a slim majority decided to strip fundamental human rights from a minority. As Jonathan Stein writes at Mother Jones:
“The decision violates, violently, the image of my state that I have held with such pride my entire life. California is a wonderful place for a lot of reasons, but foremost among them is the way in which it welcomes people.”
Movements are visceral and popular, often borne of outrage and anger. What we are witnessing on the streets and online is a community of people who have come together to say: “These are our lives. This is our time. This is unacceptable.”
This is our moment to stand strong together — gay and straight — and say that we refuse to accept a California that enshrines bigotry into our state constitution. Please pledge your support now to repeal Prop 8 and restore marriage equality to California — then forward this message to your friends:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealProp8
Thank you for mobilizing your friends to fight the religious right and restore marriage equality to California.
Rick Jacobs
Chair
P.S. My friends Zach Shepard and Geoffrey Murry helped spark Wednesday and Thursday night’s marches in Los Angeles, activating their social networks via email and Facebook. These two young lawyers have never led a protest in their lives, but they decided to take matters into their own hands, along with thousands of other concerned citizens shocked at the passage of Prop 8.
Like Zach and Geoffrey, you can help build California’s new Marriage Equality Movement today by taking action in your own community. Will you start by pledging your support to repeal Prop 8 and then forward this message to your friends?
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealProp8
The Courage Campaign Issues Committee is part of the Courage Campaign’s online organizing network that empowers over 100,000 grassroots and netroots activists to bring progressive change to California.
To support this action, please contribute to the Courage Campaign today:
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Major barfage, but that’s why it’s funny. Best line: Tony Perkins of the Let’s Make Up Shit About Homosexuals to Scare Stupid People With “Research” Council saying that “many churches are afraid of offending people”:
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Do these “Christian” wingnuts have any clue how much they look like their second most hated enemy, Muslims, prostrating themselves toward Mecca at prayer?
Rex Wockner attended the Pray The Gays Away rally in San Diego this weekend — and has lots of stomach-turning photos:
Jesus v. the homosexuals It’s too strong to say that attending this national Christian event in support of Proposition 8 today at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium made me feel raped or like a Jew touring a camp.
Why would you say that’s “too strong,” Rex? I don’t see much difference between this…
…and this:
But I did have those thoughts. It was certainly painful. …TheCall’s PR guy told me there were 33,000 people there, counted by clickers utilized at the entrances. In journalism school, I took a module on how to estimate crowd sizes. I’d say 15,000. And another journalist and I never saw any clickers.
The stage featured James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, ex-homosexuals telling their odd stories, a really good Christian rock band, and a barrage of other opponents of same-sex marriage. The event lasted 12 hours.
The crowd prayed, sang, spoke in tongues, prostrated themselves, sobbed (for California, for marriage, for the homosexuals) and, on numerous occasions, whipped themselves into a true frenzy.
Lots of words came into my head during my hours there: Cultlike. Brainwashing. Frenzied. Frightening. Depressing. …
I really wonder what they think we gays are going to do to marriage. Nothing worse than usual has happened to marriage in the years Massachusetts has had same-sex marriage, and nothing worse than usual has happened to marriage in California in the 4 1/2 months we’ve had it here. They don’t ever actually say what they think will befall marriage as a result of same-sex couples marrying. …
Instead of explaining what it is that gays are going to do that will harm marriage, they talk about schools indoctrinating children and about churches losing their freedom-of-religion rights. …
More at the link.
By the way, do the “Christians” at Qualcomm Stadium realize that Qualcomm donated $5,000 to defeat Proposition 8?
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I hestitate to say, “Now I’ve heard it all,” because the equality-haters never fail to amaze me with their convoluted justifications for turning gay and lesbian Americans into permanent untouchables, nor with the blatant lies they use to do it, nor with their deliberate ignorance, which is so breathtakingly astounding one can only wonder if these people were all homeschooled* by Paul Cameron.
This next example of sheer idiocy does not come from the official anti-marriage campaign — but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this doozy ends up in their next attack ad.
On a blog promoting the elimination of our legal rights in California is a long essay by one “John A. Evans,” who asks if support for Proposition is “intolerant.” It begins, surprisingly enough, with this admission:
Probably the most relevant definition of “intolerant” is “an unwillingness to grant equal freedom” to others. Certainly married heterosexuals are granted a host of legal rights and obligations that would be denied to others if those in same sex relationships cannot be “married.” There is also a degree of legitimacy and respect, associated in our culture with the institution of marriage, that might be denied to same sex couples if they are denied “marriage.” Denying rights and legitimacy to some, while granting it to others, certainly appears “intolerant.”
Nothing wrong there — but the writer’s apparent sanity is an illusion; he quickly dissolves into a comparison of “tolerating” homosexuals and “tolerating” smokers. (That probably caught Frank Schubert’s attention.)
And here, dear reader, is where the writer makes his “point”: that it is right to be intolerant of things that kill, and smoking and homosexuality both kill.
Oh, but Evans doesn’t stop there — he posits that homosexuality also causes sterility
As you read, try to keep your eyes from rolling right out of their sockets:
… Now we have become so intolerant of smoking that smoking is illegal in public buildings and those who sponsored smoking—the tobacco companies—have been required to pay billions of dollars in damages to those they lured into the habit. Why is such pronounced intolerance for smoking so acceptable?The obvious answer is that smoking kills people—not immediately, and not everyone, but irrefutably. Health costs for everyone are increased by smokers. Even non-smokers are harmed by being in the presence of smokers. The first question in every medical check-up is “Do you smoke?” Some smokers excuse their smoking with the confession that it is a habit—a physical compulsion—that they are helpless to resist. It is part of their inherent nature, they claim, that cannot be denied. The fact that others have ceased smoking is irrelevant to those who remain smokers—they do not accept that it is possible for them to stop smoking. …
So the problem with smokers is their behavior, when they claim they were born smokers. Gee, what a clever way to equate an acquired addiction with an inherent trait.
Not.
Fail.
I’ll tell you what’s often inborn: stupid. But without access to the writer’s psych workup, it’s impossible to know whether he was born stupid, or chooses to be stupid.
Is this societal intolerance of smoking, now crystallized into law, intolerance of smokers? Generally speaking it is not. Most do not condemn smokers for smoking.
Oh, really now? Tell me more.
Most recognize they have challenges in their own lives that are as great for them as is smoking for smokers. Smokers are not denied the right to vote, or to eat where they want, or even to employment in almost any job because they smoke. …
Exsqueeze me? “Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit.”
But never mind all that — here’s the money quote:
How is this relevant to Proposition 8? Smoking may kill people eventually—usually decades after they become addicted and long after they have reached the age of reproduction. Smokers have had many children—many people alive in the world today are children of smokers. In contrast, homosexuality has an instant medical resul [sic] —it causes sterility. Which is more damaging to society—cancer and heart failure caused by smoking or sterility caused by homosexuality?
Paul Cameron, that is you, isn’t it?
And, gee, where have I heard something like that before? Not from Paul Cameron, I mean, but… Oh, yeah, I remember — it’s right out of the ol’ Reasons to Pull Out of Your Ass for Banning Interracial Marriage Handbook:
“It is stated as a well authenticated fact that if the [children] of a black man and white woman, and a white man and a black woman intermarry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid the intermarriage of blacks and whites.”
— Supreme Court of Missouri, 1869
If a population of animals, let us say frogs, were faced with two diseases—one that caused cancer late in the life cycle of the frog and one that caused immediate sterility—which one would be the focus of major research grants searching for a cure? The frogs will suffer from the cancer, but they will become extinct from sterility.
OK, Einstein, first explain how homosexuality causes sterility, and tell us where you got this whopper.
Second, explain why animals — all of them — aren’t extinct. “No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all, such as sea urchins and aphis.”
Tell me why the bonobo (or dwarf chimpanzee), especially, still exists, when the entire species is bisexual, and 95% of the population is just as happy to establish a primary relationship with a MOTSS as with a MOTOS.
Tell me how the Amazon dolphin ever managed to survive, when its males are such big, gay perverts, they’ll happily penetrate each other through the blowhole, making the Amazon “the only example of nasal sex we have in nature.”
Oh, I know the old “reasoning”:
You: “Homosexuality is unnatural!”
Me: “Homosexuality is perfectly natural throughout the animal kingdom.”
You: (sputtering) “People are not animals!”
Finally, if this “homosexuality = sterility” idiocy were true, tell us why you might want to “cure” sterility in a group of people you’d rather see extinct in the first place.
Here’s a little tip, Skip: If you want to “cure” (i.e., eradicate) homosexuality, you can’t do it through these bullshit “ex-gay” programs you’re thinking of. They don’t work. If you want to “cure” homosexuality, you’ll have to kill all the heterosexuals, ’cause, Baby John, heterosexuality causes homosexuality.
With all the Radical Right’s yammering on about how only a penis and a vagina make a family, they just can’t handle the truth — the undeniable, unimpeachable truth — that 100% of all homosexuals are the result of heterosexual breeding.
Suck on that, Johnny.
Does the government have a legitimate role in opposing, or at least not encouraging, sterility? Admittedly many in America today support the nihilistic doctrine that humans are an ecological disaster and that the fewer humans there are, the better off the earth would be. That is the official policy of the Chinese government. But should that be the policy of our government? …
Is there an equivalent to Godwin’s Law for trying to equate the Demon Homosexual with the Yellow Menace? If not, there should be.
Or should our government support policies conducive to child bearing by Americans? Certainly that is the original basis for the legal privileges granted to “married” couples. It was intended to create a legally protected environment most conducive to the physical and emotional security of children where they would be most likely to receive the constant and sensitive nurture that is so essential to infants and children.
Never mind the reams of evidence that queerspawn grow up just as nice and normal as (and often more caring and compassionate than) the children of heterosexuals — the Radical Wrongys never listen to that in the first place.
Instead, Mister Wizard, tell me where your “best for the children” spiel leaves couples like my wife and me, who aren’t going to have children (and, yes, we could if we wanted to).
Every time the gay-bashers scramble for justification, it always comes down to “what’s best for the children.” And they always conveniently ignore childless-by-choice couples like Buffy and me — and like every heterosexual couple who choose not to have children.
Ya think marriage, or the lack of it, is going to change our minds? Or the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Childless-By-Choice next door?
“Golly, honey! I know we said we didn’t want kids, and nothing changed in the 15 years we lived together without benefit of marriage, but now that we are married, I suddenly have this overwhelming urge to whelp out more little brooders than the Duggars! Gosh, I never realized how conducive to childbearing man-woman marriage really is!”
Proposition 8, in effect, is a refutation of the California court’s approval for, and condoning of, a particular life style.
Don’t you love the way they get it exactly backwards? Proposition 8 is not a “refutation of the California court’s approval for, and condoning of, a particular lifestyle”; it is the “approval for, and condoning of, a particular—” chosen “—lifestyle” above all others: the Christian lifestyle.
Homosexuality is not a lifestyle, nor is it a choice. Religion, however, is very much a lifestyle, and very much a choice.
Of course, these same homophobes also insist that since gay people aren’t born gay, we have to “recruit” new members all the time to keep our membership up — when in reality that’s what religions, not gay people, do.
‘Phobes do have a bit of a problem with projection, don’t they?
Anyway…
Proposition 8 does not take away the right of anyone to live with anyone they please nor does it limit their ability to have whatever type of sexual relationships they choose. It does not restrict anyone’s right to a job…
John A. Evans, if you’re not deliberately ignorant, you are deliberately lying.
“While states as diverse as Iowa and California already protect LGBT Americans from employment discrimination, 31 states still do not,” which means that “in most of the nation, it is still perfectly legal for an employer or landlord to say ‘lesbians need not apply,’ or for the manager of a movie theater to say, ‘We don’t sell tickets to gays like you.’”
…or to receive any particular level of benefits from that job, such as health care.
I can’t imagine the arrogance it must take to state such garbage as if it were fact. Try selling this bunk to people like Robert Ryan and Ralph Martinelli or Nickie Brazier and Heather Aurand, to name just two couples who have discovered the hard way that inferior, second-class civil unions and domestic partnerships do not afford the same benefits — especially healthcare — as marriage:
“The New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission … concluded that civil unions create a little-understood, separate category of citizens that is often more vulnerable to federal discrimination. …
“First, many employers are not recognizing civil union partners for spousal health benefits because they are governed by a federal law, not the state one that requires them to.
“The federal Employment Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, uses words like ’spouses,’ ‘husbands and wives,’ and ‘married couples’ in its benefits guidelines for self-insured employers.
“While such companies may also cover civil union partners, the law — coupled with the federal DOMA — gives them a loophole to avoid it without obviously discriminating.
“Companies in New Jersey and Vermont are doing this, while in Massachusetts, with marriage equality, employers don’t question their obligation to the couples. …”
To boot, since the federal government refuses to recognize same-sex marriages, or domestic partnerships, or civil unions, couples legally joined in their own states are learning that when one spouse can add the other to his/her employer’s health insurance plan, the value of the dependent spouse’s coverage is taxed as income by the IRS:
“As a growing number of employers offer domestic partner benefits, gays and lesbians are discovering a hitch — domestic partner benefits, unlike health benefits provided to married heterosexual couples, are taxed as income. As a result, gay and lesbian employees take home relatively less income than their married heterosexual co-workers who perform exactly the same job.
“For example, a gay or lesbian employee earning $40,000 a year and receiving domestic partner health insurance benefits toward which the employer contributes $250 a month would owe income and payroll taxes on a total of $43,000 in income at the end of the year.
“A married heterosexual employee earning the same salary and receiving the same health benefits for his or her spouse would owe income and payroll taxes on only $40,000.”
“As a result, married workers who get family health insurance benefits get a double benefit — they get health insurance coverage for their spouses and children and are not taxed on the value of that coverage.
“In sharp contrast, workers who have an unmarried domestic partner are doubly burdened: Their employers typically do not provide coverage for domestic partners; and even when partners are covered, the partner’s coverage is taxed as income to the employee.
“Employers who cover domestic partners are also penalized under current law, since employer payroll tax responsibilities increase along with employees’ income and Social Security taxes.
“As a result, the taxation of domestic partner health care benefits sets up a two-tiered tax policy that costs many American families and their employers millions of dollars each year. This report estimates the financial impact of this extra tax on employees and employers.”
Now, Johnny, you tell me: How are we treated “equally” again? And what entitles you and yours to such special rights?
Proposition 8 does not deny anyone life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Gosh, why does that sound so famil—? Oh, yeah! I remember now — that’s from the Handbook of Justifying Racism, Or: We Don’t Hate Colored People, But We Don’t Want Them Using Our Water Fountains or Touching Our Lily-White Daughters:
“[Negroes’] rights, social, civil, political and religious, will be jealously guarded; but they must not marry or be given in marriage with the sons and daughters of our people.”
— Lonas v. Tennessee, 1871
“All this is not to say that any race, creed, or caste should be denied any inalienable rights. But it is to say that Deity in his infinite wisdom, to carry out his inscrutable purposes, has a caste system of his own, a system of segregation of races and peoples.”
— Bruce R. McConkie
Mormon Doctrine: A Compendium of the Gospel, 1958
“Now we are generous with the Negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. But let them enjoy these things among themselves.”
— Elder Mark E. Peterson
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
August 27, 1954
But tolerance for individuals who choose same sex relationships does not require tolerance (or worse, encouragement)…
Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar too!
“We must not … feel so sorry for Negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them…”
— Elder Mark E. Peterson
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
August 27, 1954
It is legitimate—intolerant or not—to fund school programs warning of the evils of smoking and encouraging students not to begin smoking. It is also legitimate to encourage child bearing and rearing and to create a privileged legal environment—called “marriage”—for those who undertake that most essential responsibility. Granting the same legal protections to sterile relationships is bad policy.
“Sterile relationships.” The only thing “sterile” is this guy’s synapses.
Well, at least he agrees that he has access to a “privileged legal environment” denied us. Disgustingly, his whole point is that it’s perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people he doesn’t think are as good as he is.
To ask the obvious, who is going to pay the taxes necessary to fund the social security benefits of same sex couples?
To ask the obvious, who is paying the taxes necessary to send your children to public school — and to private religious schools, thanks to “faith-based funding”? Last time I checked, I didn’t get a tax break just because I don’t have kids — I’m paying for your rugrats’ education, Johnny B. Dumb, and don’t you forget it.
And I’m paying for your mother’s Social Security check every month — when, frankly, I’d rather use the money to buy a time machine so I could duct-tape her knees together in time to stop her from giving birth to such a delusional homophobe of son.
Everyone knows the answer—the children of heterosexuals, because only heterosexuals have children.
That’s going to come as quite a surprise to Mary Cheney, and Melissa Etheridge, and Clay Aiken, and…
John-Boy, you are without a doubt the most delusional case I’ve encountered this week. And that’s saying a lot.
If citizens choose not to have enough children, or are discouraged by culture, economic pressures, etc. from having then, then the economic vacuum of unfilled jobs will be filled by immigrants.
OMG, look at this! He’s rolling all his phobias into one! Now gays are to blame for the so-called “illegal immigrant” problem!
Nature hates a vacuum of population as much as it hates any other type of vacuum.
The only vacuum is the one between your ears, Johnny.
Same sex marriage is sterile.
Then why am I still getting my period at 47 years old?
Sterility has worse than cancer.
John A. Evans has worse stupid than Forrest Gump.
It is legitimate not to condone behavior that has such dire consequences for individuals, families, society and the entire human race.
Like denying civil rights to a class of people for no other reason than that you hate them and fear them?
It is acceptable and legitimate for individuals and government to refuse to grant the same rights and status to sterility in our culture that is granted to heterosexual relationships that can and do produce children.
You know what’s scary, folks? For every John A. Evans who spews such garbage, there are countless more who swallow it like it was ice cream.
What’s worse is that you can never tell whether asses like John A. Evans really believe their own lies, or are just clever con artists who know how to manipulate the truly stupid among us.
* Actually, I’m not kidding about the homeschooling thing. “Paula,” the blogger responsible to blame for propagating Evans’ lunacy, is indeed a homeschooler. What’s more, she follows the Charlotte Mason method, which eschews “dry, factual textbooks” in favor of “living books,” which are “usually written by one person who has a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style.”
In other words, who needs pesky facts when you can get yore larnin’ from a single “authority” who, gosh darnit, prolly talks all real folksy an’ everything, like that Sarah Palin gal?
Gee, I’ve got a “passion” for both psychology and genetics, and I always write in a conversational style — I guess that makes me qualified to write a “living book” on curing religious insanity through fetal brain surgery.
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WASHINGTON — September 10, 2008 — Religious Right leaders are so determined to forge conservative churches into a partisan political machine that they are even willing to break federal law to do it, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The so-called “Values Voter Summit” takes place this weekend in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by Family Research Council Action (FRCA) and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the two-day event is designed to mobilize evangelical churches and church-goers in advance of the November elections.
But the Summit comes less than a week after three top former Internal Revenue Service officials filed a complaint with the IRS alleging unethical conduct by the ADF.
The ADF, the nation’s largest Religious Right legal group, is asking pastors to endorse or oppose candidates from the pulpit on Sept. 28 in violation of federal tax law.
Prominent Washington tax attorneys and former IRS officials Marcus Owens, Mort Caplin and Cono Namorato told the IRS on Monday that the ADF is “coordinating mass violation of federal tax law.” The three say this clearly violates the ethics rules governing practice before the IRS, and they called for an IRS investigation and appropriate penalties.
“There seems to be a real values void at the Values Voter Summit,” remarked the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “I long for the days when conservatives urged respect for the law, not flagrant violation of it.
“More and more Americans are telling pollsters they are tired of the politicization of religion,” Lynn continued. “The sponsors of the Values Voter Summit have yet to get that message.
“Summit organizers are deeply partisan, and they want to enlist America’s churches in their electioneering efforts,” Lynn concluded. “I believe religious leaders will reject reckless schemes that undercut the rule of law and the integrity of our houses of worship.”
Lynn said Americans United is responding to the FRCA-ADF overture in several ways.
The church-state watchdog group has launched a new Web site, www.projectfairplay.org, to educate pastors, laypeople and others about the requirements of federal tax law. The site also urges citizens to report violations. When the facts warrant, Americans United files complaints with the IRS about flagrant violations of tax law by religious groups.
Americans United is also circulating a letter to churches advising religious leaders about the rules governing tax-exempt entities and politics.
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
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We think CNN should have tacked “…or else” onto the end of the headline; this is a not-so-veiled threat from the Radicals as I’ve ever heard:
McCain must embrace Palin’s beliefs,
evangelical leader saysEvangelicals are closely watching whether the McCain campaign embraces Palin’s religious views or shies away from them, Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, told CNN.
Perkins sat down with CNN’s John Roberts on Tuesday to discuss how the vice presidential pick’s faith could influence the presidential election. …
Perkins: Obviously people, the polling data would suggest people want a leader or leaders that believe in God [and] pray, and I think there’s some sense that there’s a greater accountability there. But I think the campaign, John, is at a critical point. John McCain made an incredible selection. He has turned around the campaign that I think was moving south, and there’s enthusiasm, excitement and hope among social conservative voters.
But … the next few days, next couple of weeks will be very critical because as you pointed out, her faith has become an issue. It’s being attacked, being used as a weapon against her. People are watching. It will be very important how the McCain campaign handles this. If they become defensive and run from it and try to hide the fact that there is this element of faith, then I think it’s going to turn off social conservatives, evangelicals, orthodox Christians.
If they say, “Hey, why should someone have to check their faith at the door and move towards the base,” I think it’s going to energize, you know, the socially conservative voters more. It’s very important how they deal with this in the next few days.
Roberts: … [Palin] talked about U.S. troops in Iraq, and she put it this way: “Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that’s from God.” Even some Pentecostals say that could mean that the U.S. is in a holy war with the Muslim world.
Perkins: I think it’s important that you see where these convictions lead her on policy issues, and I think that is part of the scrutiny that she will undergo from socially conservative voters. …
More sabre-rattling at the link.
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Remember David Benkof? If not (or just for a refresher course), read “David Benkof: The Mysterious Disappearance of the Tragic Anti-Gay Gay” before you continue reading here.
All done? OK…
So, David has a new op/ed out — and is he ever (still) pissed at the Radical Religious Righties behind California’s anti-marriage equality initiative, Proposition 8.
Has David awakened from his own anti-gay coma? Nahhhhh, no such luck. David still doesn’t believe that any gay person — including himself — deserves the same right to marriage as straight folks; he’s mad because he figured out that the Christian fundamentalists behind Prop 8 don’t think too highly of Jews, and were using him as merely a “useful idiot” in their war on LGBT equality. (David, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s my read.)
Still, David appears to be a lot less hostile toward the LGBT community as a whole, and even grants LGBT families and transgender people some recognition as actual human beings.
I’m not about to give David Benkof an inch until he really wakes up, but there are signs that something reached him enough to cause a restless stir from deep within his coma. And that’s great — even if that something came in a roundabout way.
Following are just the bits pertinent to LGBTs; hit the link to see David lambaste the Right on guns, medical marijuana, and ethanol:
Discrimination. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, so I supported the man-woman marriage Proposition 8 in California - until I discovered the Proposition 8 campaign tolerates discrimination against Jews. ProtectMarriage.com’s legal counsel, the Alliance Defense Fund, has in effect a “No Jews Need Apply” policy for legal and even secretarial positions. They say they’re not a law firm, they’re a “ministry” and thus have a right to discriminate against Jews and other non-Christians. But even if that’s true, Proposition 8 had hundreds of law firms to choose from. The fact they chose one that refuses to hire a Jew like me is very disturbing. Interestingly, Jesus himself was a Jew, so when a group has a policy that would lead them to refuse to hire their own Messiah, you know something’s seriously wrong. …Marriage. I have long opposed same-sex marriage. In fact, there are overwhelmingly good arguments for overturning same-sex marriage - based on the welfare of children, religious freedom, and preserving the monogamous ideal, for example. But the people defending man-woman marriage in California and elsewhere tend to use really dumb and sometimes offensive arguments. For example, the ProtectMarriage.com Web site, used to refer to a same-sex “family” (their quotes). Reasonable people can differ as to whether two men can form a “marriage,” but only a jerk would claim two lesbians and their baby are not a family. And do they really have to emphasize this attitude as part of their basic argument to fair-minded undecided voters? …
Transgender. I think it’s appropriate to treat transgender people as the sex they believe themselves to be - whether or not I believe that deep down they are really still their birth sex. I completely respect that some people disagree. But are these values more important than everything? For example, transgender women are at high risk for rape (and thus contracting HIV), because they are the only women in a violent, predatory, predominantly heterosexual male environment. Recently, I wrote the Family Research Council to encourage them to endorse my proposal to stop rapes and save lives by housing transgender women in women’s prisons. Their response? “To paraphrase our Policy team, housing ‘transgender women’ (that is, men) in a women’s prison would be conceding too much.” In Judaism, saving lives is more important than nearly everything. But apparently to the Family Research Council’s religio-political system, ideology is more important than preventing rape. Sigh.
You’re not quite there yet, David, but I have hope for you. 
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…and we were — Alvin asks:
Noting the FRC’s latest toxic missive claiming that “Homosexuals are less likely to enter long-term partnerships, less likely to be sexually faithful, and less likely to remain committed for a lifetime,” Alvin writes:
I have just emailed the Family Research Council asking where did they receive this information regarding gay marriage. …My guess is that they used a study completed in the Netherlands by one Dr. Maria Xiridou. If this is the case, they took the study out of context big time.
You see, the 2003 published study’s objective was “to access the relative contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual men in Amsterdam and to determine the effect of increasing sexually risky behaviours among both types of partnerships in the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).”
The study only looked at casual relationships amongst gay men and was completed before same-sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands.
Read more at the link.
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Surely (I know: Don’t call you “Shirley”), you’re more than aware of what the Family Research Council is: the biggest sack of lying gasbags in the entire anti-gay industry. (Sure it’s an industry; you think there’s not money to be made in promoting hate?)
But just in case you’re learning only now about the filthmongers who exist on this planet for no other purpose than to make our lives more difficult than necessary, here’s a crash course:
Right Wing Organizations: Family Research Council
People for the American Way
A Mighty Army
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Far Right in West Michigan: Family Research Council
Mediamouse.org
Family Research Council
RH Reality Check
Box Turtle Bulletin FRC archives
Paul Cameron
Gregory M. Herek, Ph.D.
Now, onto the upcoming hatefest, via a FRC press release:
FRC Action’s Values Voter Summit to Rally Activists Ahead of ‘08 Election Lou Dobbs, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Mitt Romney, Dr. Bill Bennett and others confirmed to speak
WASHINGTON — August 21 — Only 60 days before voters choose the next President, FRC Action, the legislative action arm of Family Research Council, will host the third annual Values Voter Summit along with co-sponsors Focus on the Family Action, American Values, Alliance Defense Fund and the Family Research Council. Last year’s event drew over 400 members of the media from every major media outlet in America and almost 2,600 people from 49 states and foreign nations.
Confirmed speakers include Newt Gingrich, Dr. Bill Bennett, Gov. Mitt Romney, Lou Dobbs, Lt. Gov Michael Steele, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Phyllis Schlafy, Star Parker, Michael Medved, and actor Stephen Baldwin. Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have been invited but have not confirmed.
“This event is a call to action for voter participation, education and training and a rallying event for patriotic Americans who want to transform the political landscape on issues such as the sanctity of life and marriage, illegal immigration, religious freedom, health care, radical Islam, judicial activism, Hollywood’s influence, the media and much more,” said FRC Action President Tony Perkins.
According to the Cox News Service, the Values Voter Summit is an “event that may alter the contest” and will provide “clues to the enthusiasm for the McCain-led GOP ticket among Republican-leaning evangelicals.”
The Values Voter Summit 2008 will be held September 12-14 at the Hilton Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. The first day will be capped off with a concert by renowned Christian rock group Sonicflood. On Saturday evening, Chuck Colson will be honored at a gala dinner featuring the Grammy-nominated group Avalon as entertainment. An exhibit hall, radio row, book signings, and much more will be packed into this three-day conference.
The line-up reads like a Who’s Who in Hate. Oh, wait — did I say “like”?
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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.
All of the following relates to the mass shooting Sunday at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, the speed (and relish) with which right-wingers jumped to the very wrong conclusion that the shooter was a Christian-hating atheist, and the revelation that the shooter’s real targets were liberals and gay people.
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…”)
I stayed out of the DU Falwell Wars, until I saw a post titled “Falwell hatred issue: It is about Civility. We need civility in a just society,” which contained this chiding admonition:
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” “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?
RJ Eskow
Monster: Who Really Killed the Knoxville Unitarians?
A Night Light, July 28, 2008
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?
RJ Eskow
A Murderer’s Bookshelf: Hannity, O’Reilly,
and Savage On Killer’s Reading List
A Night Light, July 28, 2008
“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 HannityDear 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. …
Candace Chellew-Hodge
RDEpistle: Open Letter to Sean Hannity
Religion Dispatches, July 29, 2008
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.
MRFred
Shooting The Messengers: Gunman Targets “Liberals”
The Young Turks, July 29, 2008
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.Lee Russ
See What Happens When You Portray
Liberals as Dangerous and Insane Vermin?
Watching the Watchers, July 29, 2008
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).
miscrms
Guns don’t kill people, talk radio does
PriusChat, July 28, 2008
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?
Steve Singiser
Molly Ivins Saw The Tennessee
Shooter Coming — 13 Years Ago.
DialyKos, July 28, 2008
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…
Joshua Holland
Tennessee Church Shooting an Inevitable
Consequence of Shock-Jocks’ Hateful Rhetoric
AlterNet, July 29, 2008
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
-Ann Coulter, August 26, 2002“I’d hang every lawyer that went down to Guantanamo”
-Michael Savage, June 19, 2008“In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he “did it,” even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate.”
-Ann Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, 1998The definitive list is here (Special thanks to David Neiwert, who has been shining a light on this kind of rhetoric for years)
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.
The Rev. Paperboy
Civil Cold War turning hot?
The Woodshed, July 29, 2008
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.
Tim A. Chávez
Hannity, O’Reilly, Savage and others should
address Knoxville church shooting with promise
to tone down rhetoric or face legal action
Political Salsa, July 29, 2008
What’s notable about this is the complete radio silence on the right.Almost exactly two years ago, there was another tragic shooting at a place of worship — and they were all over it. Just look at this breathless, obsessively updated Michelle Malkin post.
The difference? The shooter in 2006 was a Muslim.
Blue Texan
Right Wing Blogosphere Completely Ignores
Domestic Terrorism In Knoxville
Firedog Lake, July 28, 2008
As I’ve said before, and will no doubt say again, this shit doesn’t happen in a void.Melissa McEwan
More on Knoxville Church Shooting
Shakesville, July 28, 2008
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Hat tip to Stefano A, who left this illuminating link in a comment at Box Turtle Bulletin:
Reason.com Reader Mail, December 23, 2002 Tim Cavanaugh’s E Pluribus Umbrage (Dec. 2002) makes a gross error in characterization by stating that the Catholic Church is “unable to take a strong stand against raping children.” The pope has consistently called sexual abuse of minors an “abomination” and has only recently obtained the public support of American bishops to rid the church of homosexuals and pedophiles. I believe that Mr. Cavanaugh has made the popular media mistake of confusing official Church policy and teachings, which source solely from the pope, with the actions of certain renegade U.S. bishops.
In direct violation of Vatican policy, many U.S. bishops and religious orders have allowed seminaries to admit homosexuals and pedophiles over the past 40 years. In certain seminaries, professors openly dissent from Catholic teaching on homosexuality, and homosexual behavior has been protected while orthodox, morally-straight seminarians have been persecuted or forced out altogether.
Not surprisingly then, 90 to 98% of the publicized cases of priestly pedophilia committed by U.S. Catholic priests involve boys (whether prepubescent or postpubescent). Not all “gays” are pedophiles, but pedophilia - called “intergenerational love” by homosexuals - is part and parcel of the homosexual subculture, whose publications commonly carry themes of adult-child sex.
Apparently the U.S. bishops have now finally begun to take a strong stand against “sexual abuse of minors” and have begun to purge the Church of homosexual priests. While the Catholic Church very publicly and painfully begins to purge its ranks of sodomites and child abusers, one can only hope that other large organizations will follow suit.
There’s much work to be done. Here in Illinois, for example, the State Child Sex Abuse Hotline received over 10,000 calls for help this year with not one call involving a Catholic priest. Sadly, most of the calls involved abuse by close family members.
Robert Bland
Darien, IL
Why, Mr. Bland, your ignorance and homophobia are in full bloom.
Told ya you’d been busted, Mr. Bland.
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You know Godwin’s Law. You may have heard of Poe’s Law.
Now, there’s Buffy’s Law.
Learn it. Know it. Use it.
You’ll find many, many opportunities to cite it — trust me.
Like, f’rinstance, when the CEO of a Web portal providing insurance information insists on promoting the hateful lies of Paul Cameron, debunked, discredited, disgraced, and disgraceful “researcher,” as fact (and insisting he has no political agenda in mind, despite his far-right-wingnut
Like, f’rinstance, one Robert Bland, of Insure.com, Lifequotes.com, and Quotesmith.com, whose outing as the worst sort of religious
Insure.com’s Anti-Gay Propaganda
Timothy Kincaid, July 11, 2008
Insure.com’s CEO Bob Bland Responds
Timothy Kincaid, July 11, 2008
Insure.com CEO Defends Paul Cameron
Timothy Kincaid and Jim Burroway, July 14, 2008
Do be sure to read the comments on each article as well, in full. (Even Warren Throckmorton chimes in.)
But before you do, promise me you’ll learn Buffy’s Law first. Believe me, it will come in handy. (Oh, and Buffy will also give you a quick, painless refresher on Godwin’s Law and Poe’s Law, too.)
Further reading:
Dr. Paul Cameron and the Family Research Institute
Queer Resources Directory
Operation: Falafel
DailyKos, November 11, 2005
O’Reilly’s Advertiser: The CEO Responds
Ad Nausea, March 9, 2006
Insure.com, Inc. Inks Sponsorship Deal with Rush Limbaugh
January 10, 2007
Robert Bland’s Federal Campaign Contributions
1992-2007
* Serving on the board of Illinois Right to Life alone qualifies one as a far-right, radical-extremist, wingnut activist.
** The worst sort of religious extremist is the one who denies his bigotry, cloaks his radical activism in the name of Jesus, and then cries persecution by those he is persecuting. Frankly, we have more respect for Fred Phelps and Co.; Freddie and Shirley hate us with a passion &mash; but they’re honest about it. Phelps may be mean, hateful, and crazy as a loon, but Fred Phelps is not a hypocrite. Robert Bland, on the other hand…
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…but there are only 24 hours in a day, so…
Marriage News
I still haven’t told you all about our (very positive) marriage license adventure, or the most productive marriage equality meeting we attended Monday night. I’m bad. Well, maybe not so bad as just pushed. I’m still digging out from under a million years’ worth of family belongings so we can move households, and trying to fix wedding plans (July 26th is the tentative date), and it was Mom’s birthday yesterday, and there’s a family friend impatient for me to pick out a new computer for her (lifelong tech support comes with the territory of being/having been an I.T. professional), and… just and, and, and.
But I will get around to both. Fingers crossed.
Hateful Sow, Hateful Sow, Hateful Sow!
I watched the “gay parenting” episode of “30 Days” last night with my mom (on her 87th birthday), and all I can say is that I’m not sure which of us was more disgusted — only that she gasped a lot more, and I exhausted my lexicon of Profane Words I Can Use In Front of Mom. Since Buffy had to go to bed before the show, I taped it for her, and all three of us re-screened it this evening, with me exhorting Buffy throughout to blog the thing, and Buffy telling me I’m better at long, analytical take-downs than she is (which is totally wrong; she’s way smarter and more analytical than I am, which is one of the things I adore about her). I argued that if I blogged the show, I’d end up with thirty paragraphs consisting of nothing but what I snarled at the screen, over and over: “Hateful sow! Hateful sow!” — directed, of course, at the anti-gay, terminally cognitive-dissonant B-word, “Kati,” from Fullerton, California (Heart o’ the Hateland), who can’t break through her bubble of utter wrongness and dimwitted bigotry disguised as What God Says to admit that her stubborn, numbskulled, Dark-Ages christendom is absolute bullshit when confronted by two fantastic men raising four good boys who would otherwise be languishing in some crap-hole of a foster home.
Hear that, Kati Whateveryourlastnameis? You are a hateful sow, and you make me thank the god I don’t believe in that I spent mere months living in Orange County, California’s magnet for sickening bigots like you. (You also make me thankful I was raised Catholic — Catholics look positively bohemian next to Mormons. Of which Kati is one. Of the most hopelessly brainwashed variety.)
As I commented on the excerpt Joe.My.God put up on YouTube:
I can’t decide who the more hateful sow is — “Kati” or that pr*ck Sprigg. Or maybe it’s the screwed-up daughter compelled to wreak vengeance of on her father (for… whatever) by airing her own neuroses over her father’s gayness, and slamming all gay people in the process. Hateful, hateful, hateful, stupid, and mean-spirited.
Now, Kati, you hateful sow, go pull a Sally Kern or an Ann Barnett and tell us all how hurt and surprised and shocked you are when people call you on your most un-Jesus-like dogmatism. May your fragile bubble of cognitive dissonance blow up in your proud, ugly face. And let me know when you want me to call the waaahmbulance.
(See, Buffy? I told you I couldn’t blog that show without dissolving into “Hateful sow! Hateful sow!” 
)
And those lies presented by the Farcical Research Council that GLAAD is (and I am) pissed about? That was nothin’ compared to the screwed-up daughter of a gay man, who was given the stage to wreak vengeance on her old man by slamming the gay community at large. Another hateful sow. And FX didn’t have the decency to counter her obvious exercise in airing dirty laundry, ’cause, like, maybe, she’s just an astoundingly annoying attention-seeker no shrink in the world would put up with for five minutes, so she has to bash Daddy Dearest on national TV and make the whole gay world look like a bunch of freaks. (That’s what I think.)
Speaking of Mormons, a straight, married Mormon ally has this to say to the LDS church. If we believed in his god, we’d thank Him for him.
We Love Antonio Villaraigosa (and not just because he took his ex-wife’s name)
L.A. mayor solid on gay marriage: With the clink of champagne glasses, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday became the latest politician to preside over the marriage of a same-sex couple, uniting a Hollywood producer and his five-year companion in a short ceremony at City Hall. …
Click the link and read how some religious wingnut called the “Angel of the Trinity” disrupted the ceremony.
Today in Anti-Gay Violence
Four Arrested After Anti-Gay Assault at Flagstaff, Arizona Pride: Two men, one of whom was a worker for Equality Arizona, were assaulted outside a Pita Pit restaurant in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona following the city’s “Pride in the Pines” festival. The attackers preceded their attack with anti-gay slurs…
Second Man Guilty In Murder Of Gay Author: (West Palm Beach, Florida) The second of two men charged in the 2006 murder of Alan Shalleck, the collaborator of the “Curious George” books and TV series, has been found guilty by a West Palm Beach jury. …
Today’s Anti-Gay Creep Forced to Be Nice Story
SC School Begrudgingly Allows Gay Club: (Irmo, South Carolina) A high school whose principal announced he would resign rather than allow a gay student club to meet on campus will gets its club after all. …
LOL-A-Palooza of the Day
Limbaugh: ‘Democrats will bend over’ for blacks and gays: On Monday, radio talk host Rush Limbaugh opined that, while Republicans will abandon their conservative voter base, Democrats are willing to “bend over, grab their ankles, and say ‘Have your way with me’” for the “kook-fringe base” backed by billionaire George Soros. …
Wishful projection, Rush?
Why We Need Full, Federal Marriage Equality, Part 849,284,223,197
Hospital Sued After Dying Lesbian’s Partner Denied Access To Her: (Miami, Florida) A lawsuit will be filed in Miami Wednesday against a hospital that refused to allow the partner of a dying lesbian to see because they were not considered family. …
Don’t Let the Door Hit You in the Ass Dept.
Powerful Gay Marriage Opponent Bruno Won’t Seek Re-Election To NYS Senate: (Albany, New York) The top Republican in New York State and its most vocal opponent of LGBT civil rights, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, has confirmed he will not seek re-election. …
Behind the Iron Closet
Czech Government Bans Anti-Gay Protests: (Prague) Authorities have banned two anti-gay rallies that were to have taken place Saturday to coincide with an LGBT pride march in Brno, South Moravia. The parade is billed as the first gay pride march in Czech history. …
Yes to the Headline, No to the First Sentence
Are U.S. atheists from Venus and Mormons from Mars?: Is the Democratic Party really “Godless” and are Republicans really righteous? …
And finally…
Kirbyjon Caldwell Rears His Ugly Web Site (And Pretends He’s Not An Anti-Gay Crusader)
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New York, NY, June 23, 2008 — The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today urged community members to contact FX Networks to express their concerns about a defamatory claim by an anti-gay activist that will appear, unchallenged, in the June 24 episode of “30 Days.”
“30 Days,” FX Networks’ original series produced by Morgan Spurlock, “examines social issues in America by immersing individuals in a life that requires them to see the world through another’s eyes,’” according to the show’s Web site. In 2006, the series won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Reality Program for the “Gay/Straight” episode.
During the June 24 episode, entitled “Same Sex Parenting,” Kati, a woman who opposes gay and lesbian parents and their families, lives for 30 days with gay parents Dennis and Thomas and their four adopted sons. The episode includes the personal stories of kids raised by lesbian and gay parents.
Regrettably, the episode also features a defamatory statement by Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, an anti-gay activist organization, who claims:
“Homosexuality is associated with higher rates of sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse, and those are all reasons for us to be concerned about placing children into that kind of setting.”
While there is no credible scientific research that backs Sprigg’s claim — and much that disputes it — the episode presents his assertion as if it were fact and offers no credible social science experts or child health authorities to challenge Sprigg’s assertion. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the Child Welfare League of America, and many other child health and social services authorities who support parenting by qualified lesbian and gay parents dispute Sprigg’s claim.
After reviewing a screener supplied by FX Networks, GLAAD and the Family Equality Council, a national non-profit working to ensure equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families, contacted FX Networks last week, requesting that the inaccurate claim be removed from the episode or that a credible social science expert or child health authority be brought in to provide an on-air correction. FX Networks, however, refused to remove the defamatory content or, at minimum, address it during the course of the episode.
“This is an episode of ‘30 Days’ that GLAAD would have liked to support for its commendable effort to share the authentic story of everyday lesbian and gay parents and their families and the opposition they face in trying to provide a stable and nurturing home for their children,” said GLAAD Senior Director of Media Programs Rashad Robinson. “However, FX Networks’ insistence on airing — and refusal to correct the record on — this defamatory misrepresentation makes that impossible. It is unacceptable that FX Networks and its parent company 20th Century Fox would provide a platform for the inaccurate and dangerous claims of anti-gay activists — misinformation that can put gay and lesbian parents and their families in harm’s way.”
TAKE ACTION:
GLAAD, the Family Equality Council and Children Of Lesbians And Gays Everywhere (COLAGE) are urging their members and the community to contact FX Networks, and 20th Century Fox, to express their concerns over providing a platform for such an inaccurate, misleading claim by the Family Research Council. Community members should let FX Networks know that it is irresponsible and unacceptable to put forth such a damaging, defamatory assertion about lesbian and gay parents, and worse, refuse to include the voices of credible experts to dispute it. GLAAD, the Family Equality Council and COLAGE honor the gay and lesbian parents and their children who are featured in this episode for sharing the real stories of their lives, and especially Dennis and Thomas and their family for opening up their home and the hearts and minds of millions through their participation on “30 Days.”
20th Century Fox Television, Inc.:
Jeffrey Glaser
Senior Vice President, Current Programming
(310) 369-0211
jeffrey.glaser@fox.com
FX Networks:
Nick Grad
Executive Vice President of Original Programming
(310) 369-0949
ngrad@fxnetworks.com
Chuck Saftler
Executive Vice President of Programming
(310) 369-0949
csaftler@fxnetworks.com
Scott Seomin
Vice President of Public Relations
(310) 369-0938
scott.seomin@fxnetwork.com
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.
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This post is the result of my running across two seemingly unrelated stories today — one about the resounding defeat of a right-wing bid to overturn Wells Fargo’s anti-discrimination protections via a shareholder vote, and the other, “California Supreme Court to Hear Case of Lambda Legal Lesbian Client Denied Infertility Treatment by Christian Fundamentalist Doctors.”
Obviously, both are typical examples of the way radical right-wingers use their “deeply held religious beliefs” as an excuse to punish gay and lesbian people for daring to suggest that we’re anywhere as good as they are, by having (or demanding) — gasp! — the very same rights!
But there’s much more to it than that. There are four points to the core dump that follows:
1. While a woman’s right to choose has nothing whatsoever to do with LGBT equality on a practical level… actually, it does. The stakes (freedom over your own life, and protection against somebody else making life decisions for you) are the same. The tactics of the freedom-deniers (bullying, intimidation, and legislative action, by any means) are the same.
2. The anti-choice brigades and the anti-gay brigades are composed of the same people, with the same ties to the same convoluted network of radical right-wing religionists; they just operate under different front organizations as their hate-filled agenda requires. But it’s always the same agenda.
3. As large, widespread, and well-funded as the Radical Right may be, it’s not as big or scary when reduced to the sum of its parts. I’ll explain that at the end of this piece — just hang in there, because you’ll want to read it: The news is good. Very good.
4. The radical religionists are losing the culture wars — but they’re not through with us yet, and none of us can allow complacency. Just because they’re not trying to strip you of your rights today, don’t assume you’ll be safe from their attacks tomorrow. Never forget the words of Martin Niemoller.
That said…
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of investing your money in companies whose practices you agree with, and withholding your investments from companies with which you disagree. In fact, I encourage it. I practice it myself.
What’s wrong is attempting to force other people to do as you do.
But that’s what the Radical Religious Right is all about: forcing you to do as they do (or at least profess to do), instead of living their lives as they see fit, and leaving you alone to live your life as you see fit.
Their reasons are legion. Some of radical righties are trying to increase their scorecard of “souls saved” so they get a better spot in Heaven. Some claim “the Bible says” they’ve been charged with the mission to “witness” (read: annoy non-believers to pieces) for Jesus. Some of them are undoubtedly closet ‘mos who think they can repress their own true nature by repressing everybody else’s true nature.
Whatever. The reasons (and if you’re interested in the reasons, you couldn’t find a better explanation than Chris Hedges’ American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America) don’t really matter right now. In the end, it’s all — and only — about conversion through coercion. (Tip of the hat to Wayne Besen for inspiring that phrase.) They try to do it in many different ways, none of which is ever successful in the long run (and seldom in the short run, either), for the simple reason that the world (yes, even the puritan United States) has left them, and their Inquisition-era mindset, far behind.
The radical religionists are a dying breed, and they know it — which is why they’re getting more aggressive in their futile efforts to drag us all back into a Levitical lifestyle (which might not be such a bad thing, if they had to face stoning in the streets for patronizing Red Lobster, sticking a ham sandwich in their kid’s lunch bag, and wearing cotton-polyester blends — the last being, of course, a crime in any era).
If they’d just live their lives as they think their wrathful, jealous God wants them to, and leave the rest of us alone, we wouldn’t care how they expressed their fear-based worship (as long as no animals were sacrificed or otherwise harmed).
But that’s not good enough for them. In trying to force the secular, reality-based world to conform to their suffocating, restrictive ways, they are doing harm — a lot of harm — and in their twisted quest to create a “culture of life,” they are in fact propagating a culture of death.
I said just that on the occasion of the passing of Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who, among other atrocities, outright lied about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV. It’s an atrocity because that kind of radical, right-wing activism kills people. Literally.
The same is true of attempts to prevent the use of contraceptives, eliminate reproductive rights (can you say “back alley abortions”?), halt stem cell research (funny how righties like Arlen Specter and Nancy Reagan suddenly go all pro-stem cell when they’re the ones directly impacted by cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease), and even gay-straight student alliances and diversity programs. (You teach a gay kid to hate himself for who he is, and you may very well create a suicide victim; you teach a gay kid he’s as good and worthy as you are, and you’re helping to build a healthy, happy, productive citizen. You teach a straight — or questioning — kid that being gay is bad, and you’ve just increased the chances that your new little hater is going to go kick some gay ass in the playground — at best — or, at worst, murder the next Matthew Shepard, the next Sakia Gunn, the next Gwen Araujo.)
And, yes, that goes for same-sex marriage as well: If my relationship with my partner is not recognized outside our home state, and I get sick or injured away from home, it’s entirely possible that the one person I want making my medical decisions will not be allowed to. (Not that the anti-gay brigades would care if I died — I’m certain they would prefer I did.)
I always tell the righties that the solution is simple: If you’re against abortion, don’t have one. If you’re against gay marriage, don’t marry one of us.
But, of course, they refuse (no doubt deliberately, as reason would stand in the way of their singleminded goal to inflict their beliefs on your life and mine) to make the connection between their life-diminishing, often life-ending crusade.
Which brings us to this story from 365gay.com, and a right-wing outfit we’d never heard of before now, “Pro Vita Advisors” — “pro vita” being Latin for “pro-life,” which is, predictably, the antithesis of the anti-life, anti-freedom, anti-American agenda these radicals actually promote:
Shareholders Reject Bid To Strip Gay Protections At Wells Fargo(San Francisco, California) A motion by a Wells Fargo shareholder to remove protections for LGBT workers from the company’s non-discrimination policy was defeated this week at its annual meeting. …
The motion called for the company to “to formulate an equal employment policy …that does not make reference to any matters related to sexual interests, activities or orientation.”
It said that homosexuality has been “condemned by the major traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for a thousand years or more”.
The motion was crafted by Pro Vita Advisors, a group that helps promote conservative values.
The motion said that “While the legal institution of marriage between a man and a woman should be protected, the sexual interests of, inclinations and activities of all employees should be a private matter, not a corporate concern.”
The proposal was easily defeated. …
Conservative groups have attacked Wells Fargo for the past three years over its “pro-gay policies”.
In 2005 Focus on the Family withdrew its funds from Wells Fargo. …
Similar shareholder challenges to non-discrimination policies that include gays have been fought and lost at Ford Motor Company.
If you want a good laugh, read the anti-gay resolution proposed to Wells Fargo shareholders (which is the same in tone as most Pro-Vita proposals), “”to formulate an equal employment policy … that does not make reference to any matters related to sexual interests, activities or orientation.” Here are the biggest knee-slappers:
Whereas, our company seeks to hire the most qualified person and has never had a policy discriminating against any person, or groups of persons, for any reason.Whereas, it would be inappropriate and possibly illegal to ask a job applicant or employee about their sexual interests, inclinations and activities.
Whereas, it is similarly inappropriate and legally problematic for employees to discuss personal sexual matters while on the job.
Whereas, unlike the issues of race, age, gender and certain physical disabilities, it would be impossible to discern a person’s sexual orientation from their appearance.
Whereas, unless an employee chooses to talk about their sexual interests or activities while working, the issue of sexual orientation is, essentially, moot.
Whereas, domestic partner benefit policies pay employee benefits based on the employee engaging in unmarried, homosexual relations. These relations have been condemned by the major traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for a thousand years or more.
Whereas, the Armed Forces of the United States is one of the largest and most diverse organizations in the world. They protect the security of us all while adhering to a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” regarding sexual interests.
Whereas, marriage between heterosexuals has been protected and encouraged by a wide range of societies, cultures and faiths for ages.
Statement: While the legal institution of marriage between a man and a woman should be protected, the sexual interests of, inclinations and activities of all employees should be a private matter, not a corporate concern.
Pro Vita Advisors helped write and present this resolution. Contact: Thomas Strobhar, Pro Vita Advisors, 937-226-1337.
Asks Jason at Good As You:
And what exactly does the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have to do with Banking? I notice they don’t bring up Buddhism, Wicca, or Atheism. …[W]hat does the Armed Forces have to do with Banking? And how cute they, they re-wrote DADT, it’s just about keeping soldiers from talking about sexual interests. As if that were possible. …
“Statement: While the legal institution of marriage between a man and a woman should be protected, the sexual interests of, inclinations and activities of all employees should be a private matter, not a corporate concern.”
Oh, here they’re trying to divorce marriage and sex. As if marriage doesn’t have anything to do with sex, it’s just those nasty, pervy, homos that are trying to get recognition of their sexual interests. Yes, babies are just found under cabbage leaves. If, in fact, the sexual interests of, inclinations and activities of all employees should be a private matter, not a corporate concern, there’s no need to have any spousal benefits at all, as that has as much to do with “sexual interests” as DP.
Seriously, though, how stupid is this “Pro Vita Advisors” outfit, anyway, thinking they can suck Wells Fargo (a citadel of diversity which should be a model for every corporation in the world), headquartered in San Francisco (duh! I said San Francisco!) since 1852 back into the Dark Ages?
“How stupid” is up for debate; one thing’s for sure: “Pro Vita Advisors” is a nasty, tenacious little bunch. Over the past few years, they’ve attempted to strongarm AT&T, NCR (as Good As You correctly summarizes Pro Vita’s goal: “Pro Vita Advisors: Denying health care is our moral obligation”), and, of course, Ford Motor Company (a longtime target of the gay-hating American Family Association, whose top dog, Donald Wildmon, just plain lied when he announced in March that the AFA’s two-year boycott of Ford had come to a successful end; perhaps the AFA is still stinging after coming to grips with the fact that its nine-year Disney boycott was a resounding failure).
So, who are these life-denying whackjobs? Most visible, and vocal, is Pro Vita president Thomas C. Strobhar — who, unsurprisingly, is also the chairman, founder, and/or other executive of the following organizations:
Strobhar Financial: “Financial investing for people who put their morals first.”
National Association of Christian Financial Consultants, “a group of investment professionals committed to investment and financial planning disciplines centered upon biblical principles.”
Pro-Life Action League:
Chicago-based Joseph Scheidler founded the Pro-Life Action League in 1980 after being ousted from other pro-life groups for his resistance to compromise. A master of public relations and a former journalism professor, Scheidler knew how to draw mainstream media attention. In 1985, he published a provocative tract, Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion, in which he suggested that civil disobedience, harassment, and militant direct action were justified interventions where abortion was concerned. Scheidler argued that because the act of abortion was murder, it must be prevented at all costs.Perhaps more important, Scheidler influenced other confrontational pro-lifers like the founder of Operation Rescue, Randall Terry, and his successor, Flip Benham. …
Pam Chamberlain and Jean Hardisty
Reproducing Patriarchy: Reproductive Rights Under Siege
The Public Eye Magazine
[I]n Delaware, Joseph Scheidler and three other large men illegally entered a clinic, trapping the clinic administrator inside. The men put the phones on hold — effectively cutting her off from the outside world — and told her they were there to “case the place.” This was shortly after several clinics had been bombed. In another incident, Scheidler went to Pensacola and met with John Burt and Joan Andrews. Together, they discussed and planned an event to take place at the Ladies Center. The next day, while Scheidler was outside doing “P.R.” (he did not want to get arrested), Burt, Andrews and two others burst into the clinic, shoved the administrator to the floor and slammed an escort up against a wall. Then they went upstairs to wreck equipment. Still more evidence of force and violence came as the jury heard from a doctor who had been stalked, her house surrounded, and her life threatened. She was also physically assaulted by Monica Miller and Matt Trewhella. The jury also heard evidence of scores of blockades, which deprived people of access to the clinics, and where people were assaulted for daring to try to enter. One woman, who was going to see her doctor for postoperative surgery (surgery that in no way was related to abortion and that had been done to try and save her reproductive organs), was hit over the head with a picketer’s sign.
Sara Love, Esq.
Antiabortionists convicted in Chicago
Freedom Writer, May/June 1998
Life Decisions International:
LDI calls itself “a fully independent organization” (swearing it is “not allied with any political party”) that appears devoted solely to destroying Planned Parenthood (as witnessed by the organization’s Web URL alone: “fightpp.org”).
Dating to the 1980s — when it began with anti-abortion protests at women’s health care clinics — the campaign against Planned Parenthood is now waged on many other fronts as well: legislative attacks on government funding, organized boycotts of sponsors, challenges to corporate supporters and vocal opposition to sex-education programs. While dozens of groups spread and magnify opposition to the 84-year-old Planned Parenthood, two national organizations — Life Decisions International, and STOPP International — provide full-time leadership.With an annual budget of approximately $110,000, Douglas R. Scott, Life Decisions’ president, and his staff of three, research and publish “The Boycott List” of companies — usually about 50 or 60 in number — that donate to Planned Parenthood. Approximately 10,000 copies of the $15.75 list are distributed twice a year, including to 33 anti-abortion organizations that endorse it, ranging from Human Life International to Concerned Women for America, Christian Coalition, Family Research Council, American Family Association and Traditional Values Coalition. …
According to a March press release, current boycott targets include Adobe Systems, Bank of America, Johnson and Johnson, Kenneth Cole, Levi Strauss, Nationwide Insurance, Prudential, Unilever, Wachovia, Whole Foods and Walt Disney. Walt Disney is listed because its theme park gave a donation to Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando to prevent teen pregnancy, according to a Life Decisions newsletter.
Life Decisions — which Scott describes as being based in northern Virginia — also introduces resolutions at annual meetings of corporate shareholders designed to end corporate donations to Planned Parenthood. Thomas Strohbar, Life Decisions board chair and the head of Pro Vita Advisors, an anti-choice investment firm in Dayton, Ohio, spearheads this effort, which he claims is going well. …
Privately Scott says it’s more about rallying anti-abortion forces than the money. “Planned Parenthood has nearly $300 million dollars in savings in reserve, so they’re not lacking in money; they just don’t like a public black eye,” said Scott.
Some companies, instead of bowing to Life Decisions, buck the pressure. The March-April issue of Life Decisions’ bimonthly newsletter, “The Caleb Report,” contains the text of a phone message attributed to a Richmond, Va., businessman who apparently didn’t appreciate being warned that his company’s name will go on the boycott list. “I will not be threatened by scumbags like you. I will not stop supporting Planned Parenthood,” the message said.
Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York, confirms that some companies are resisting the Life Decisions pressure. “One corporation heard about another corporation turning us down and was so outraged that they, in turn, donated what we had asked the other corporation for,” Pearl said.
Nationally, Pearl says, Planned Parenthood retains a high level of public support. …
Cynthia L. Cooper
Family Planners Stand Up To Right-Wing Boycott
Women’s eNews, July 18, 2005
On its Web site (www.fightpp.org), LDI attempts — undoubtedly for the benefit of those of us who have dug beneath the surface to trace the organization’s violent anti-abortion roots — to pre-empt the question, “What Is LDI’s Policy On Violence?”
LDI leaders wholeheartedly embrace a policy that condemns the use of violence as a means of achieving their goals:
While LDI steadfastly upholds the free exercise of constitutional rights, its leaders unequivocally condemn acts of violence committed in the name of the Pro-Life Movement. Violence is morally reprehensible and contradicts the fundamental premise that every human life is precious and deserving of respect. In line with this policy, LDI will accept only those words and deeds that are life-affirming and God-honoring in dealing with the abortion holocaust and related evils. No amount of justification will change the truth; violence is wrong–in and out the womb. This policy is a deeply held conviction and will not be ignored, weakened or altered for any reason whatsoever.Any person who disagrees with this policy is invited to withhold financial support from LDI.
Predictably, however, LDI often wanders far afield from its stated goal, and plays the Christian-martyr card, apparently just for (eh-heh!) the hell of it. Chastising and attempting to smear celebrities seems to be a favorite pastime of LDI’s. For example:
Charlie Sheen denounced for obscene songActor Charlie Sheen gave a rendition of a traditional Christmas song that changed the lyrics to an affront to Christians, says head of Life Decisions International.
“CBS Television has crossed the line in a big way,” said Douglas R. Scott, Jr., president of Life Decisions International (LDI). “In an affront to all of Christendom, the network allowed actor Charlie Sheen to change the lyrics of ‘Joy to the World’ into a song that could be called ‘Joy to Fornication.’”
On December 11, 2006, the CBS program “Two and a Half Men” opened with Sheen lighting candles and singing a song to the tune of “Joy to the World”:
Joy to the world
I’m getting laid
I’m getting laid tonight. …“‘Joy to the World’ is a song about the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet CBS has allowed a song about the most precious, sacred and significant moment in history to be turned into a song about having sex outside of marriage,” Scott said. “Is there any line that anti-Christian people in the media will not cross? This is something one would expect from more well-known ungodly networks such as MTV.” …
Sheen is the son of actor Martin Sheen, a Catholic, whose name appears on LDI’s list of celebrities that support legal abortion. Charlie Sheen has a troubled history: he was once associated with the celebrated Heidi Fleiss, who ran a prostitution ring in Hollywood. He once accidentally shot an erstwhile girlfriend and later was rumored to have a cocaine addiction. However, Sheen announced in 1996 that he had become a born-again Christian.
Friendly Atheist recounts another example, from January, 2007:
Life Decisions International, a pro-life group that apparently enjoys sticking its head into events that have nothing to do with abortion whatsoever, is angry with Conan O’Brien. What has he done?The show airing Wednesday night featured Conan introducing “new characters” to the show (characters who never actually appear after the one episode).
One of the characters was a “homophobic country western singer.” He was introduced by Conan, who said, “Our last new character’s heart is in the right place, even if he’s a complete idiot.”
The man came on stage with a guitar and sang the following lyrics:
Oh I love you Jesus
But only as a friend.
You touched my heart but I hope
That’s where the touchin’ ends. …Here’s Douglas R. Scott, Jr., president of Life Decisions International, commenting on this sketch:
The idea that anyone would think about the Son of God in this way is simply appalling… The inferences that permeate the song are utterly disgusting… We wonder if O’Brien’s description of the character as a “complete idiot” is based on the man’s “homophobic” beliefs or if it is because of the inference that Jesus could be sexually interested in seeing the man naked… I don’t know if the man is a complete idiot, but I do suspect that the writer of the segment is a complete bigot.It’s obvious to anyone who saw the sketch that the singer was referred to as an idiot because he was purposely saying something offensive. It’s called a joke. …
Mind you, Conan himself is Roman Catholic. …
Citizen Action Now:
From the Citizen Action Now Web site (http://citizenactionnow.com/) — which, amazingly, admits its tactics are “designed to create havoc at corporations who openly support homosexual groups or policies”:
Today we are at grave risk. We have seen the introduction of homosexual marriages, homosexual civil unions, homosexual adoptions, homosexual domestic partner benefits and the persecution of those who oppose these new “rights.” Large organizations funded with millions of dollars have sprung up to promote the so called Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgenedered [sic] (GLBT) agenda. Tomorrow, there is the real possibility of criminalization of those who dare speak against these perverse changes.Citizen Action Now was created to challenge GLBT groups on all fronts, but will concentrate on areas currently being ignored by other pro-family groups, such as, corporations. The brainchild of the Alan Keyes organization, Declaration Alliance, Citizen Action Now will fight for an America free from the manipulation of homosexual groups. These groups have long realized that by changing the way America does business, they will eventually change America. Once they have instituted “domestic partner” benefits at most major American corporations, once they have included mandatory sensitivity training concerning the most bizarre sexual practices, once they have established “gay” sex clubs in the schools—
“Gay sex clubs”?
—the sooner they will be able to achieve their ultimate goal of complete acceptance of homosexual lifestyles. While we sympathize with individuals consumed with homosexual desires, we can not let our sympathy distract us from defending traditional standards of moral purity against an onslaught of “homosexual rights” shrilly demanded by groups brought together by their shared sexual interests. These “rights,” which include the right to marry, adopt and publicly act out strange sexual mental maladies threaten an America built on values cherished by Muslims, Christians and Jews.Citizen Action Now is headed by Thomas Strobhar who honed his skills in the pro-life movement successfully fighting corporations which gave money to Planned Parenthood. Thomas had a singular effect on such corporate giants as American Express, AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway, General Mills, Target Stores and many others. All told, over 115 companies have stopped contributing to Planned Parenthood, in part, because of Thomas’ efforts. …
Citizen Action Now, drawing on Thomas Strobhar’s business and financial background, is committed to minimizing cost and maximizing output. Already, on a minimal budget—
Remember that phrase, “on a minimal budget.” It’ll have more meaning later.
—Citizen Action Now, has lead petition drives confronting the pro-homosexual management of Allstate Insurance and Walgreens pharmacy. In just a short period of time shareholder resolutions confronting the homosexual agenda at American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, IBM, Merrill Lynch and others have been filed. All were done at little expense, but designed to create havoc at corporations who openly support homosexual groups or policies. …Citizen Action Now is committed to helping individuals and groups challenge the homosexual agenda in America through actions that work. We have been bequeathed cultural and religious values centuries old and now are at risk of seeing these values trashed and those who defend them silenced. That is why this organization was formed. We can wait no longer. We must act now. Any delay will require ten times the work just to return things to the status quo.
In other words, the usual hysterical rhetoric.
So, just how deep do Pro Vita’s right-wing roots go? Citizen Action Now alone is connected to:
• The AGN Financial Network (an “affiliate” of rabidly anti-gay Ken Hutcherson’s Antioch Bible Church, which shares its anti-gay “outreach” in Latvia with “Latvian megachurch preacher Alexey Ledyaev, who was at the Seattle homobigot’s side at the 2006 conference of the Watchmen on the Walls, along with Scott Lively, former director of the California tentacle of the American Family Association and the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA)” and pastor of Abiding Truth Ministries “[a.k.a. Defend the Family] … author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuals and the Nazi Party, and Holocaust revisionist”), on whose advisory board Strobhar sits, along with Wildmon, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land; Herb Lusk, anti-gay, anti-equality, Bush-loving pastor of Greater Exodus Baptist Church, who’s sucked up “more than $1 million in grants under the president’s faith-based initiative” and whom Bush appointed to the Presidential HIV/AIDS Advisory Council, and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, and whose supporters include Nixon’s “evil genius” and “hatchet man,” ex-con Chuck Colson (who was pardoned by Jeb Bush) and perennially purse-lipped Gary L. Bauer of the Family Research Council…
• Muslim-baiting, Clinton-hating, litigation-happy Ron Brown conspiracy theorist Larry Klayman (who in 1998 sued his own mother) formerly of the rabidly right-wing Judicial Watch (financed in part by Richard Mellon Scaife, and helped along by radical-righty mass-email mogul Richard Viguerie), which Klayman left (and then sued the organization he himself had founded). Klayman is (or was) a member of the secretive Council for National Policy, the organization (founded by Left Behind co-author and Moral Majority co-founder Tim LaHaye, who is married to Beverly Haye, founder of the “anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-feminism and anti-sex education” Concerned Women for America, of which Robert Knight’s Culture and Family Institute is a spin-off, and on whose board sits Matt Barber, of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, founded by Folsom Street Fair-obsessed ex-Family Research Council head Pete LaBarbera) that marries the Radical Religious Right to the Republican Party…
…and that’s just for starters.
“So,” asks Chris at Cynical-C Blog, “is the pro-life movement about saving unborn babies or about controlling people’s sex lives?”
The answer is: the latter, with a caveat. It’s always been about controlling people, period. They just make it sound like our lives revolve around sex. (”I love how they try to dumb it down to ‘homosexual relations,’” says Jason at Good As You, “attempting to suggest it’s just about sex.”)
And then there’s “Pharmacists For Life International,” founded by Pro Vita advisor Bogomir M. Kuhar, an Ohio pharmacist:
The founder of the group is Bogomir (M.) Kuhar, a pro-lifer so radical that he’s anti-birth control. Kuhar has calculated that many millions of lives are “terminated” each year by people who use contraceptives. …Kuhar appears to have been involved in pro-life Catholic movement since at least the late eighties. …
Pharmacists for Life
Riffle, April 4, 2005
But Bogomir Kuhar is nothing compared to Pharmacists for Life president Karen Brauer, who can only be described as a real piece of work. And not in a good way.
Brauer and Pharmacists for Life are at the forefront of a growing movement aimed at giving pharmacists the right to refuse to fill prescriptions if filling them would be inconsistent with their moral or ethical beliefs. Thus far, the fight has primarily revolved around birth control prescriptions.On February 10, the Associated Press reported:
Last year, Mississippi lawmakers passed a bill that allows all types of health care workers and facilities to refuse performing virtually any service they object to on moral or religious grounds. Anti-abortion organizations and a group called Pharmacists for Life are urging pharmacists to refuse to distribute emergency contraceptives.…A February 7, 2005, National Law Journal article illustrates that while the bulk of attention has been given to pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, the potential exists for pharmacists to refuse to dispense a wide range of essential, prescribed medicine if advocates of the so-called “conscience clause” for pharmacists are successful; the article noted that in 2004, “a Dallas pharmacist refused to fill a mother’s prescription for her son’s Ritalin.”
Though “conscience clause” advocates prefer to focus on birth control pills — and the media reports that cover the controversy do likewise — their position that pharmacists need not fill prescriptions they disagree with has far-reaching implications. By the same rationale, a pharmacist who believes, as the Rev. Jerry Falwell once claimed, that AIDS is “God’s punishment for homosexuals” could refuse to fill a prescription for an AIDS patient. Pharmacists could refuse to fill prescriptions for heart medicine for the elderly, antidepressants for a suicidal patient — anything. …
Pharmacists for Life president Karen Brauer was fired by a Kmart pharmacy in Ohio for refusing to fill birth control prescriptions. As Brauer acknowledged during an April 16, 2001, appearance on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Brauer didn’t merely refuse to fill a patient’s prescription, she lied to the patient, as well…
Presumably, the mere act of lying to a patient would have been reason enough for Brauer to be fired; at the least, it seems to be a direct violation of the American Pharmacists Association’s “Principles of Practice for Pharmaceutical Care,” which state: “Interaction between the pharmacist and the patient must occur to assure that a relationship based upon caring, trust, open communication, cooperation, and mutual decision making is established and maintained.” …
Pharmacists for Life’s web page contains numerous controversial statements that have thus far escaped the notice of the media outlets that have given the group attention. PFL’s “Frequently asked questions” section states “Pharmacists are under no obligation, even if written in the positive law, to violate the Divine Law.” This suggestion that pharmacists are not bound by the laws of the United States so long as they think God disagrees with those laws is but the tip of the iceberg. Other examples, taken from the group’s recent comments on the Terri Schiavo case…
Who are Karen Brauer and “Pharmacists for Life”?
Media Matters, March 30, 2005
Like Life Decisions International, Pharmacists for Life International reaches far beyond its stated goal (which is bad enough); PFLI is getting mixed up in every issue it deems “godless”:
While most of Pharmacists for Life and Brauer’s public comments relate to pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control medication, their efforts — and their effects — are not limited to issues of reproductive rights; Brauer said during her O’Reilly Factor appearance that she refused to fill prescriptions for diet pills “due to the abuse potential in the area in which I was working.”And a caption on a photo accompanying a February 2 Santa Fe New Mexican article suggests that Pharmacists for Life’s agenda may go well beyond pharmacies. The caption reads:
GRAPHIC: 1. Sen. Bill Sharer, left, R-Farmington, meets Tuesday with supporters of his bill defining marriage in New Mexico as only between a man and a woman. Meeting with Sharer are representatives of the Pharmacists for Life and Life League of New Mexico, Abran Gabaldon, former Sen. Tom Benavides of Albuquerque and Manuel Rodriguez.
The good news is that pharmacists who refuse to follow the law — secular law, that is, and not whatever “divine law” they’ve dreamed up out of their own bigoted little imaginations — have created an effective backlash, leading several states to take action:
In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) … issued an executive rule clarifying his view of state law: Any pharmacy that sells contraceptives must promptly fill a woman’s prescription for them.Four states, including California and New Jersey, are considering laws that would require pharmacists to fill prescriptions despite any religious or moral objections, unless they could find an alternative that doesn’t inconvenience the patient.
Culture war hits local pharmacy
Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 2005
Unfortunately, some radical rightists in elected office have often opted to side with pharmacists endangering the lives of their customers:
Thirteen states are considering giving pharmacists the kind of conscience-clause outs that doctors have, allowing them to refuse to fill some prescriptions that go against their personal beliefs. (Four already have such laws on the books.)In a related issue, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens (R) exercised a rare veto this week, for a bill that would have required all hospitals — including Catholic ones — to inform rape victims about the availability of emergency contraceptives. Among other concerns, he questioned the constitutionality of forcing religious institutions to engage in speech counter to their principles.
(Bill Owens? Oh, yeah, now there’s a real above-board, “family values” Christian. Not.)
Nevertheless:
Public opinion tends to come down in favor of the patient. In a November New York Times poll, just 16 percent of respondents said they believed a pharmacist should be able to refuse to dispense birth-control pills for religious reasons. Among white evangelical Christians, that number grew to just 24 percent.
But many of these “Christian” pharmacists don’t want to stop at merely refusing to fill a prescription:
“We intervene and stop prescriptions and make doctors change prescriptions,” says Karen Brauer, a pharmacist in Lawrenceburg, Ind.
By now, as DrugMonkey says at Your Pharmacist May Hate You, you might have thought…
…that this Pharmacists for Life outfit must be some big, powerful organization with a giant headquarters somewhere on K street, ready to deploy an army of lobbyists over to the halls of government power to get things done. Or you would think that they’d at least have an office. Think again. According to the group’s 2003 IRS filing (most recent available) they raised and spent less than $30,000 and had no paid employees. … Even though that’s not a lot of money as far as these advocacy groups go, I would think they would have at least been able to afford a copy of Microsoft Frontpage and/or someone who knows how to use the web-page building program to make a page that isn’t…um…hideously fucking ugly, but evidently not, as you can see here…
Adds Riffle:
The Pharmacists for Life group, though they claim to represent “over 1600+ pharmacists, and many hundreds of lay supporters, in the USA, Canada and worldwide,” seems to be run out Powell, Ohio, probably in the Kuhars’ home.The contact phone (740.881.5520) and post office box for PIL is the same as the vitamin-selling business that the Kuhar’s have at kuhar.com (known as Life Enterprises, though sometimes identified as Pro-Life Enterprises). Presumably the Marcia Kuhar listed there is Bogomir’s wife.
She’s also used the same PO Box and phone number as her contacts listed on the Central Ohio Association of Occupational Health Nurses, Inc., also known as COAOHN.
With this single phone number being used as Marcia’s contact number, PFL’s contact number, and the businesses’ contact number, PFL is probably running out of their house, which also houses their business. … [T]hey’re tiny and represent a very small number of religiously hyper=zealous pharmacists who do not want women to receive birth control.
Which leads me to the “good news” I promised you near the beginning of this post: There’s every reason to believe that the shakiness of Pharmacists for Life’s underpinning is not an anomaly — no matter how well-connected its adherents may be.
The regular bathroom-reading material in our house includes my better half’s subscription to Mother Jones. In a stroke of serendipity, while I was contemplating a way to tie everything I’d written above into the idea that maybe, just maybe, the Radical Religious Right wasn’t so big and powerful as it claimed, I noticed the current issue of MJ happened to be turned open to the feature, “The Myth of the Moral Majority” — which challenges the accepted notion that the American Radical Religious Right is, or ever was, as massive or as powerful as it makes itself out to be.
That article (which isn’t online yet) confirms exactly what I had been wondering, but for which I had no confirmation by way of hard facts.
What if, asks MJ, the numbers — “that nearly 80 percent of Americans are Christian, and 40 percent attend church weekly” — “and everything we’ve assumed they tell us about the power of the religious right — are wildly wrong?”
When newspaper reporter and author of The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church Christine Wicker…
…started looking into the numbers on church attendance, she found that researchers could vouch for only 18 percent of Americans being regular churchgoers — less than half the accepted figure. That led her to wonder about the already widely reported claim that 25 percent of Americans are evangelicals; could the real number also be less than half that? ……Wicker discovered that the numbers the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) releases for public consumption tell a much different story than the ones it uses internally. The organization claims 16 million members, but as one reverend cracks, “the FBI couldn’t find half of [them] if they had to.” A 2006 SBC report states that only 11 million of its members live in the same area as their home church anymore; that number includes those who have been double- or even triple-counted elsewhere. …
With more digging, Wicker came across a 2007 SBC report that found only 5.4 million adults attended services regularly enough to be considered church members. …
Factoring all this in, Wicker calculated that there are fewer than 4 million devoted Southern Baptists. Her math seems to be backed up by collection-plate totals: If the church truly has 16 million members, then they contributed a miserly $3.50 each to a nationwide fundraising campaign last year.
And it’s not just the Southern Baptists who appear to be playing number games. The National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that does not include the SBC, claimed 30 million members on its website. When Wicker contacted the association for comment, the figure changed to 4.5 million. No one there could — or would — explain the sudden 85 percent drop in believers. …
The emperor’s-new-clothes flimsiness of these widely accepted exaggerated numbers says much about the cold calculation of far-right religious leaders. … “The idea that evangelicals are taking over America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history,” Wicker concludes, “a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religous leaders, who understand media weaknesses and exploit them brilliantly.” …
Whether they viewed it as a new political reality, megatrend, or a bogeyman, the media embraced the idea of a reenergized, monolithic Christianity and faithfully chronicled something that didn’t exist. …
Could it be that the seeming, teeming legions of evangelicals hell bent on destroying our chances of equality really aren’t all that and a chalice-o’-wafers?
The further we pull back the curtain, the more clearly the shape behind it comes into focus. The Great and Powerful Oz is a fraud.
Not that we should ever underestimate the enemy; they’ve proven themselves quite brilliant frauds. But the more they are exposed, the weaker they become.
And that, my friends, for those of us who want to be left to live our lives in peace — and freedom — is very good news indeed.
Further reading::
NOW v. Scheidler Timeline: The Complete Story (1984-2002)
NOW
NOW v. Scheidler in the Courts
NOW
Giving Until It Hurts: Pampered chefs revolt against population control.
Thomas Strobhar masquerades as a mere “president of an investment firm” for this thinly-veiled victory dance over pushing around Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2003
Why does Alan Keyes hate his lesbian daughter?
John Aravosis publishes the text of a message from Larry Klayman touting his association with Alan Keyes to eliminating the “radical homosexual” threat.
AMERICAblog, December 19, 2004
The NAACP and the Virgin Mary
Strobhar’s blatant racism is on full display as he uses the Virgin Mary as an excuse to ridicule NAACP president Kwesei Mfume.
January 22, 2005
Charles C. Boycott and America’s Christian Right
Mel Seesholtz, Counterbias.com, June 6, 2005
Religious Right Discovers Investment Activism; Bible Thumpers Boycott “Cultural Polluters”
Cynthia L. Cooper, CorpWatch, August 3, 2005
Antigay Conservatives Threaten Major Corporations
GFN, December 7, 2005
Bigot Pastor: Pump-and-Dump Microsoft
“I think it would be a wonderful idea for Bigot Reverend Hutcherson to try this. I really hope he goes ahead with this plan… …because pump-and-dump is illegal.”
A Stitch in Haste, January 25, 2006
Concerned Women for America: A Case Study
Steven Gardiner, Coalition for Human Dignity, August 28, 2006
Abortion foes’ new rallying point: Conservatives take on contraception
Judith Graham, Chicago Tribune, September 24, 2006
Conservative pastor urges buying Microsoft stock to fight its gay rights efforts (Ken Hutcherson)
Andrea James, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 8, 2008
The Success of AFA’s Ford Boycott Is a Disney-esque Fairy Tale
PajamasMedia, February 1, 2008
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The purveyors of lies, intolerance and inequality have done it. From Equality California:
They claim they did the unconscionable.Extremist anti-LGBT organizations spent an unprecedented amount of money to pay people to collect signatures and are now saying that they succeeded in buying their way onto the November ballot.
The measure seeks to amend the California Constitution from being a document that protects all people to one that excludes us from equality.
. . .
EQCA is a leading partner in the Equality for All Campaign that is made up of leadership from LGBT and allied organizations fighting this dangerous initiative.
We estimate that the opposition spent well over $1.5 million to gather signatures. This means they’re serious about spending millions more to pass the amendment. We need to prepare for what will likely be the most expensive LGBT rights ballot measure in our nation’s history. Here’s what you can do:
* Make a donation to Equality California Issues PAC. We have to match them dollar for dollar. EQCA Issues PAC is committed to fighting this and every attack on our families and our community and every dollar raised will be spent to defeat this measure.
* Tell your friends and family. Tell them why you are giving and ask them to make a donation as well.
In the coming months our community is going to be tested in ways it has not been tested before. So much hangs in the balance.
Granted, Governor Schwarzenegger stated that he is against a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. But we need to fight this hateful initiative tooth and nail nonetheless.
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Republican (of course) Oklahoma state Representative Sally Kern — “representative” of no one but lying, delusional, gay-bashing bigots — got caught on tape bashing queers with her perverted brand of Christianity, repeating outright lies from the Paul Cameron School of Making Up Shit for Fun and Profit, and then claiming she’s not a lying, delusional, gay-bashing bigot.
Oh, and Muslims? She slammed you, too. Big-time.
Buffy’s got the audio, and Kern’s contact info should you care to share your reaction.
And here, out of Kern’s rambling style peppered with lots of “ums” and “ers” and “okays,” are the choicest bits of her vile spew:
The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation. ‘k? It’s just a fact. Not everybody’s lifestyle is equal, just like not all religions are equal. Y’know?. . .
I’m not gay-bashing, but according to God’s word that is not the right kind of lifestyle. It has deadly consequences for those people involved in it, they have more suicides, uh, and they’re more discouraged, there’s more illness, they’re have — lifespans are shorter.
. . .
It’s not a lifestyle that is good for this nation. As a matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it’s the death knell of this country.
. . .
I honestly think it’s the biggest threat … that our nation has, even more so than terrorism. Or Islam, which I think is a big threat.
. . .
What’s happening now, they’re going after … in schools, two year-olds! You know why they’re trying to get early childhood education? They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them.
. . .
They’re going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is the acceptable lifestyle.
. . .
Gays are infiltrating city councils. … Have you heard that the City Council of Eureka Springs is now controlled by gays? … There are some others … Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tacoma … in Vermont, Oregon, West Palm Beach, Florida…
. . .
One of the things I did with in our legislature … a bill last year, that would notify parents … what clubs their students were involved in. And the reason I did that bill, primarily, was this: we have the gay-straight alliance coming into our schools. Kids are getting involved in these groups, their lives are being ruined, their parents don’t know about it! So I introduced a bill that said, you have to notify all clubs and things. And one of my colleagues said, “Well, you know we don’t have a gay problem in my county. So that’s why I’m voting against that bill.” Well you know what? To me that is so dumb. If you’ve got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, “Well, I’m just gonna forget about it, ’cause the rest of you is fine”? It spreads! Okay? And this, this stuff is deadly and it’s spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.
What a hateful, mean, stupid human being.
We’ll follow up on the fallout (which has already begun) shortly.
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From 365Gay.com:
Gay rights advocates expect Congress will soon move closer to approving a federal ban on job discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
Rep. Barney Frank, a leading proponent, predicts the ban will win House approval in coming weeks.
But he and other gay rights supporters are less optimistic about the fight ahead in the narrowly divided Senate, where they would need 60 votes - rather than a simple majority - to overcome anticipated GOP stall tactics, such as a filibuster.
. . .
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would make it illegal for employers to make decisions about hiring, firing, promoting or paying an employee based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Churches and the military would be exempt.
. . .
Ban opponents say it could undermine the rights of people who oppose homosexuality for religious reasons.
“It would force Christian, Jewish, Muslim business owners to leave their faith at the workplace door,” Barber said.
Critics say gay rights advocates are exaggerating the extent of anti-gay discrimination in hopes of boosting their political agenda.
“It is affording extra protection to a group that has not been disadvantaged,” said Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the Family Research Council, a socially conservative group.
So, according to the FRC, preventing us from having the same protections as everybody else makes us “not disadvantaged.” 
Well, what kind of idiot “logic” do you expect from an organization that exists for no other reason than to marginalize queers — and uses the filthy lies of Paul Cameron to do it?
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