More on the situation in Memphis, from someone who has looked it in the face…

Once again, a teenager who was taken into the Love In Action/Refuge program in Raleigh is speaking out against the self-proclaimed "ministry" as teaching a lesson of conditional self-love. The condition is simple: don’t be gay and you can love yourself.

E.J. Friedman asks how throwing a child of 15 or 16 into a place where people are discussing, among other things bestiality, is supposed to help them cope with themselves…

Are they supposed to equate their same-sex desires with fucking a dog or turning a trick?

And what is profoundly disturbing here is that E.J. needs to reassure his readers that he is not slandering LIA’s methods. Yes…that is Exactly what John Smid does to gay teenagers. He throws them into discussion groups with adults who have engaged in sexually ugly and extreme behaviors…this has been verified again and again. And make no mistake, what he is trying to do is tear down that kid’s sense of self esteem, make them come to understand their sexual nature as something horribly and irreconcilably perverse and disgusting, so that they will as adults, be utterly incapable of forming a lasting intimate bond with another person of the same sex. They are not a soul saved, so much as a soul annihilated. In the name of Christ. And for money.

This is child sexual abuse, or the term simply has no meaning. I’ll say this again: John Smid belongs behind bars with all the other child molesters. Just because he doesn’t physically abuse them, does not make it any less a case of child sexual abuse. He is doing to them emotionally, exactly what child molesters do, and he needs to be held accountable for it.

E.J, and the folks at QAC, say they have no problem with LIA treating gay adults who voluntarily seek their help. This is where I part company with them. If LIA were a simple ministry or prayer group I would agree it’s a matter of religious freedom. But they claim to be more then that, at the same time they claim religious freedom as their shield from laws that otherwise protect people from medical quacks. They are doing things to people that science and medicine regard as hazardous to people’s emotional well being, serene in the religious zealot’s confidence that whatever harm they wreak on people’s lives just isn’t their fault, because god gave them permission. If people feel they need counseling for issues of sexual orientation they need to go to professional counselors. If they want spiritual guidance they can find a church or church group, where they can work out their own way to God. LIA acts as if they are both, and thereby announce that they are neither. They are taking people’s money and fiddling around with their deepest emotional and spiritual selves, with no more understanding of what they are doing, let alone regard for the damage they cause, then if they were chicken pluckers posing as brain surgeons. That place needs to be shut down, and the people in it who dragged helpless gay teenagers into a world of mistrust, fear and self loathing, need to be locked up.

Net chatter is that a 17 year old kid who was forced into Love In Action will be speaking out to the media, possibly today. What I’m hearing is that he fled to Georgia and had an emacipation hearing. I don’t know any more then this, however it comes from sources close to the Memphis Love In Action protests.

Stay tuned…

So a guy walks into a bar, and he asks the bartender (stop me if you’ve heard this one) if it’s a gay bar…

At least three people were injured in an apparent hate crime in a New Bedford bar last night, according to broadcast reports.

WHDH-TV, quoting an employee of Puzzles Lounge on North Front Street, said a man went into the bar around midnight, ordered a drink, then asked if it was a gay bar.

He then pulled out a machete and a hatchet and began attacking some of the 18 people inside. When patrons tried to restrain him, he pulled a gun and fired at least five shots.

Three patrons were shot, two in the face and one at the chest. They were being treated at Boston hospitals this morning.

Police are searching for the shooter.

The usual denials of responsibility for the climate of hate toward gay people will be forthcoming momentarily, from the usual suspects…

[Update…] They have a suspect in the shooting that they’re actively looking for:

He is an 18 year old named Jacob D. Robida, of New Bedford, Mass. Police said Robida has dark hair, is about 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs about 200 pounds. He is believed to be driving a 1999 green Pontiac Grand Am with Massachusetts plate number 85EC58.

Consider him armed and dangerous. If you see him, call the police.

Yes…this week’s cartoon is…uhm…a tad late, isn’t it? Sorry…but my paying job took precidence this weekend. It’s been a hectic rush to get stuff done before our mid February deadline, but it looks like we’ll be fine. I have the cartoon for the week nearly done, it just needs the charcoaling, and a bit of ink wash.

Perhaps in the meantime, can I bribe you with something from my sketchbook…?

The graying out in the lower left hand corner is from the way my sketch book bulged out from the scanner plate. I’m using a thread bound sketch book lately, instead of wire bound and it won’t lay flat on the scanner. The smudges are because it’s a pencil sketch, and I like to work in a very soft lead. I used a .5mm technical pencil and a wad of kneaded rubber for this one, which is the same as I use for the roughs of my political cartoons.

I wish I could draw more from life. I’m at that point now where I know I can improve vastly if I could do that on a regular basis. But for now I have to make do with photos, and a little imagination. This one came from a photo that I found in some forgotten corner of the internet, that I printed out and tacked to the wall in front of my drafting table as an exercise. I adjusted the body proportions and hair style to taste, and made the guy’s jeans resemble something more like I was used to seeing, back in the 1970s, when guys, even straight guys were allowed to be sexy below the waist. I don’t think anybody, anybody male that is, wears hip huggers and flared jeans anymore. Or wide belts. That’s all strictly 70s stuff. As a nod to the present, I resisted the temptation to make his hair longer. Actually, not every guy wore his hair long back when I was a twenty-something either, and some of them still managed to look sexy.

I need to do this sort of thing more often. Just sketch for the sake of it, instead of to produce anything specific. And I need to practice from life, instead of from pictures, and my anatomy books. But I haven’t the nerve to actually ask someone to pose. So I reckon I’ll just have to make due with magazine clippings and the random internet photo.

From Pam’s House Blend:

The vote was 58 to 42. Enough to have sustained a filibuster even without Chafee if 16 Senators believed in more than empty gestures. And Olympia Snowe voted for Alito. There is no middle in the Republican Party. There is only Democratic capitulation masking as moderation.

Dig it. If every senator who voted against confirmation had voted to sustain the filibuster, Alito would not now be a supreme court justice. But you can count on the fact that they’ll try to use their ‘no’ vote on confirmation as proof they’re willing to take a stand for the rights of women and minorities. It’s an empty stand though, as befitting an empty party.

So I got an email from Howard Dean this morning. Well…it said it was from Howard Dean. It may well have even been from Howard Dean. But it wasn’t to me, it was to the DNC mailing list I happened to be on. And so I logged on to the DNC website and I fired back some feedback, basically telling them how I felt like I’d been slapped in the face after they choose a gutter crawling bigot to give the democratic party response to Bush’s state of the union speech.

I got Mr. Dean’s email this morning. The subject line was "What we didn’t hear tonight". But it isn’t what I didn’t hear, it’s what I did. Specifically, I heard homophobic bigot Tim Kaine give the democratic party’s response to Bush’s state of the union. I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face.

I don’t know why you think that gay and lesbian Americans should keep giving you money and support if you’re going to keep kicking us around to try and peel off a little the bigot vote from the republicans. I’m sick of being treated like radioactive material by democrats. I’m an American. Kaine not only wants to ban same sex marriage, he wants to ban even the second class civil unions. The amendment to Virginia’s constitution that he signed off on, is a sweeping attack on our households, on our families, on us. It is breathtaking how broad the attack on us by him is. And there he was last night on my TV screen…speaking for the democratic party.

I can’t begin to tell you how angry I am. Just a few weeks ago I watched sickened while a New Jersey policewoman, Laural Hestor, dying of cancer, begged her local government to do for her life partner upon death, what it would have routinely done for any married couple…extend her pension to her, so she could keep their house. Finally, it was republicans who pressured the Ocean County freeholders to reverse themselves and grant the benefit. Tim Kaine would have taken even that small measure of hope away from Hestor and her partner. Why are gay and lesbian Americans still having to beg to be treated fairly and decently by our government? I can’t begin to tell you how angry I am.

…and so on and so forth. Yes…I know… As if they care…