It’s almost shirt sleeve weather in the evenings now. A light jacket is enough to keep me comfortable when I take a casual stroll through the neighborhood. I’ve been a walker ever since I can remember, always taking long meandering strolls through my territory whenever I had something on my mind, or, as mom used to say, I got "ants in my pants". Four feet of snow or a torrent of rain are about the only things that’ll keep me from taking my walks, and even then it’s a near thing. I do my best thinking while walking. I devise software algorithms, write lines of code, compose cartoons, stories, email, blog posts (like this one), and ponder over various household chores and the Big Questions in life. Sometimes the only way I can get a clear head about something is to take a walk and think it over. I really look forward as winter recedes, to not having to bundle up whenever I get the urge to get out of the house and walk about for a bit.
My neighborhood has several corner gas stations scattered around, and nowadays more then ever I’m always taking note of the price whenever I walk by one. Regrettably it always seems to start rising again, whenever I start thinking about a road trip. Tonight I noticed that the price had gone up ten cents a gallon in just the last few days.
Well my retirement fund isn’t giving me returns like that. Maybe instead of buying savings bonds, I should just buy myself a gallon of gasoline and put it in a safety deposit vault somewhere. By the time I’m old and gray I might be able to retire on that gallon of gasoline.
I would not go so far as to say that Bush wanted war from Day One in the White House, but there was plenty of evidence he had Saddam on his mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have it from Richard Clarke, formerly the White House’s chief anti-terrorism official, that within a day of the attacks Bush was inquiring if Saddam might have had a hand in them. When told no — "But, Mr. President, al-Qaeda did this," Clarke told him — it became instantly clear that this was not the answer Bush wanted. "’Look into Iraq, Saddam,’ the president said testily," Clarke writes in his book, "Against All Enemies."
Well thank you for stating what’s been staringly obvious for, oh, about a couple years Richard. Only…what’s missing from this picture…
If there was an “I’m sorry for being so stupid” embedded in Cohen’s column I didn’t spot it.
This is the man who, on Feb. 6, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deeply-flawed testimony in New York, wrote: “The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”
In France right now they’re probably raising a toast now to the fact that Richard Cohen isn’t one of them.
Hey…Richard… The next time some serious threat to world peace raises its head, and I mean a Real threat, not a let’s go start a splendid little war to prove we have bigger balls then everyone else and demagogue the democrats into political submission threat…and the U.S. needs to prove its case to the rest of the world…before you get that urge to tell the world it had better listen to us…Just Shut The Fuck Up! k?
Walking to work in shirt sleeve weather, and watching your neighborhood wake up around you as you go.
Sitting on the front porch with a glass of ice tea, reading or drawing, in the weeks before the mosquitoes take it over (swear to God I’m gonna screen it in one of these years…).
Being able to keep all the windows in the house open because its nether too cold nor to hot outside.
You can stand still at night without freezing while looking up at the stars
That far-right Catholic web site that theocrat Richard Neuhaus leaned on for his claim that 50 or 60 percent of children raised by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual, and suffer many times the norm in incidence of child sexual abuse, has taken its own a peek at Michael Calace’s "Rape Of The Soul. Unaccountably, they seem somewhat appalled…
"The Rape of the Soul" is a fear-mongering, small-minded, and pathetically smutty polemic about art and the Roman Catholic Church. Presented as a documentary by filmmaker and self-described devout Catholic Michael A. Calace, the film seeks to discredit "predatory artists" from da Vinci and Botticelli to anonymous designers of contemporary greeting cards.
Ooooh. Self described devout Catholic is it? But look on the bright side. He doesn’t described himself as a recovering Catholic. Or an Ex-Catholic.
Kinda gets your goat when people read all kinds of filth into even the simplest expressions of beauty and joy in your world, let alone satanic influences, does it? Kinda pisses you off when people ascribe sinister motives to even the smallest commonplaces of your everyday life does it? "Predatory artists", did they say? Why…how unfair…how terribly, terribly unfair it must seem. But what Calace does he does out of love for the church…not hate. I’m sure many who are Catholic may view exposing the disordered subliminal sex messages and satanism in everything from Catholic art to Catholic children’s song books as a personal attack but it is not…any more then saying cancer or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder.
Or…not. After Andrew Sullivan posted about the gutter Neuhaus gets his facts on homosexuality from, the gutter replied that Paul Cameron is being smeared by the "gay lobby", Neuhaus only said it was a claim, Cameron isn’t his only source, and in any case homosexuals just don’t want to address the fact that they are "psychologically malformed". But it would "keep trying to find ways to say so in as charitable manner as possible." Or at any rate, as charitable a manner as possible while spitting in people’s faces and simultaneously twisting a knife in their heart. And you best believe charity like that doesn’t come along every day.
Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of SSA as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “gay” issue.
Charity starts with the standard issue comparison of homosexuals to pedophiles. "SSA" in case you’re wondering, is Same Sex Attraction, "MSM" is Main Stream Media, and "gay" is always in quotes because it’s always better to invent acronyms that dehumanize people, then allow them to speak for themselves. Charity. I wonder if Calace invented any good acronyms for all the penises and satanism he found in Catholic art? And in children’s song books no less…
Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of Catholicism as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “left-footers” issue.
Yeah…something like that. With lots of references to how they put pictures of cocks into school children’s books. And remember, it’s a devout Catholic saying so.
Or perhaps my own charity is a tad lacking. But I tried…I swear I tried…and it’s just too goddamn hard to extend the benefit of good faith to the braying jackass who wrote this, right before he compared gay people to child molesters:
The response to the statements that ’same sex attraction is a disorder’ is never an argument for why it is clearly a part of human nature (I suppose because there is none). Rather, the responses include the accusations of bigotry, “homophobia” (I’ve never figured this out, is that the fear of sameness or the fear of human beings???)…
Get me started… You know David, you’re right. You’re Absolutely Right. The word "phobia" means "an intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing". It doesn’t mean "hate". It doesn’t mean "avoidance". It doesn’t mean "prejudiced". You’re Absolutely Right David. The word "phobia" does not have that meaning. But The Suffix Can!Look Up The Motherfucking Suffix!
Tell your chemistry teacher that the word "hydrophobe" is something you can’t figure out (Is that fearful water? How can water be afraid?). Then tell your biology teacher that "photosynthesis" is something you can’t figure out, because plants don’t synthesize light, they synthesize sugars. It’ll be fun.
Many who are personally affected by SSA might see this as a personal attack. It is not. In fact, the very reason for this series is to show why calling SSA a disorder cannot be viewed as a personal attack any more than is saying cancer, or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder. Let me know what you think…
What I think: Jack Chick is worse then you deserve. "Rape of the Soul" on the other hand, is about right. Charity.
AOPA has prompted the FAA to keep an unregulated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operation out of navigable airspace above one North Carolina community.
"Safety is paramount, and current airspace users must be assured that a reasonable level of safety can be maintained," said Melissa Rudinger, AOPA vice president of regulatory affairs. "The prospect of small UAVs flitting around in the same airspace we use is frightening. We know what kind of damage a 5-pound bird can do to a GA aircraft. Imagine what would happen if you hit a 14-pound UAV?"
The issue came to head when AOPA learned that the Gaston County Police Department in North Carolina had bought a "CyberBUG" UAV from Cyber Defense Systems. The company sells the small radio-controlled drones as cheap helicopter substitutes for police, military, and news gathering uses.
The company says the 14-pound UAV cruises at 29 mph at 1,300 feet agl, which puts it easily into navigable airspace and creates a potential midair collision hazard.
"What do you think your chances are of seeing this thing before you hit it?" said Rudinger. "And it can’t sense you or get out of the way."
Oh tut, tut… Your local police department has better things to worry about. Like…unruly behavior…
This isn’t the first time law enforcement has flown the CyberBUG. The company claims it was used to watch for "unruly behavior" and "alert authorities about accidents" during the 12th Annual Southern Maryland "Blessing of the Bikes" in La Plata. And the company also sells a much larger 70-pound, turbine-powered drone that cruises at 250 knots.
Maryland. Great. Just great. Next time I’m out enjoying myself at an outdoor gathering I’ll be keeping an eye on the sky like I’m a damn rabbit looking out for hawks. All together now…My country ’tis, of thee…
Well Maybe I’ll Stop Again In Kanab Again After All
Looks like the decent folk in town aren’t taking that "Natural Family" resolution laying down…
(Kanab, Utah) Signs began popping up in store windows this week in Kanab, Utah proclaiming ”Everyone welcome here!” in a desperate move to avoid a threatened gay boycott. Some businesses went so far as putting small rainbow flag stickers on their front doors.
Dozens of business owners in the small southern Utah community are trying all they can to distance themselves from a proclamation by the city council that Kanab supports the "natural family" consisting of a working husband, a stay-at-home wife and a "full quiver of children."
…
The signs and stickers are being distributed by the Kanab Boosters, a business owners group. The Boosters are selling the signs and small stickers for cars for between $2.50 and $4.50.
The group hopes to raise enough money to take out newspaper ads throughout the state to promote the town as a diverse place to vacation.
…
Kanab is the only Utah governmental entity to pass the resolution, which was sent to cities all over Utah by the Salt Lake City-based Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank.
Earlier this week Sutherland President Paul Mero told the AP that studies show community problems such as crime, violence and poverty increase when family structures break down.
I question (as in ironically) the importance Mero places on intact families, so long as he’s busy teaching families to hate their gay and lesbian sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. But anyway…
That view was supported by Councilor Terril Honey who voted for the measure. Honey, who also is a local businessman, said it isn’t the council that is discriminatory, its the boosters.
He says that the poster and sticker campaign is likely to drive away families.
You gotta love how the bigot mind works. Gay people have families too of course, and families have gay people in them. And that never occurs to a jackass like Honey. But…never mind… The Everyone Welcome Here signs are discriminatory, because they will drive away people won’t go anywhere everyone is welcome.
TUESDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) — Loneliness has now joined obesity and lack of exercise as a potential risk factor for hypertension.
New research shows that loneliness can add 30 points to a blood pressure reading for adults over the age of 50.
The study’s results have surprised everyone involved.
"The take-home message is that feelings of loneliness are a health risk, in that the lonelier you are, the higher your blood pressure. And we know that high blood pressure has all kinds of negative consequences," said lead researcher Louise Hawkley, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.
Her team published its findings in the April issue of Psychology and Aging.
Thing is…my blood pressure is just fine. If anything it’s on the low side of just fine. But then, they always take my blood pressure reading after I’ve spent about a half hour to an hour quietly zoning out in the waiting room. I hate sitting around waiting, and when it’s an inevitable thing I’ll just stare off into space and zone out. It’s either that or climb the walls. When I finally get called in to see the doctor I’m actually in a very mellow state. But that’s not typically me.
I had a long AIM conversation with a certain someone a few weeks ago…that might have been a good time to take my blood pressure reading…
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I’m glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)
-Tom Lehrer, "Smut"
Okay…these people are nuts. All this time I thought they were just a bunch of uptight prudes who think people shouldn’t actually enjoy sex because people shouldn’t actually enjoy anything. But…no. (Warning…link goes to WorldNetDaily) They really are crazy…
‘Satanic’ art in Catholic Church exposed
Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery
Could the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis be tied to embedded Satanic and occultic imagery in its artwork – some of it hundreds of years old?
That is the seemingly incredible thesis of a new documentary, "Rape of the Soul," made not by anti-Catholic bigots, but by devout followers of the Church.
According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin ", producing an addictive "drug cocktail " of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.
Erototoxins. Erototoxins. Well…somebody’s got brain damage that’s for sure…
The film, which is being released by Silver Sword International, contends a major cause of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could be due to prolonged exposure to sexual and satanic images being incorporated into the religious art.
EEEK!
Experts are featured in the film to offer detailed accounts of the subconscious programming effects of the sex and occult images on the human brain and how it promotes sex, Satanism and the occult. Religious education materials, songbooks, children’s story books, devotionals and the Sunday Missals all have been found to contain embedded imagery.
EEEK!
"These images, unrecognized by the untrained eye, can be a ticking time-bomb to an individual who is unaware of their presence, especially someone who is already predisposed to deviant sexual behavior," said Reisman.
EEEK! EEEK!!
"Artists from DaVinci to Botticelli have embedded subliminal images into their art for centuries," said Calace. "In this case we found penises on crucifixes, anarchy symbols, swastikas, demonic faces and in modern works even the word ‘sex’ encrypted into the images. The works in question include modern artists’ work currently on the covers of missalettes and hymnals that at this very moment sit in the pews of churches throughout the U.S. and on children’s religious teaching aids."
EEEK! EEEK!! EEEK!!!
Calace said, "’Rape of the Soul’ was created to heal the many that have suffered from these uninvited violations."
Therapy for victims of art museums, and grocery store fruit and vegitable counters will be forthcoming in a later program.
Sex addiction. Man…that’s some powerful stuff isn’t it? Penises on crucifixes. Demonic faces. Anarchy symbols! Ms. Reisman and Mr. Calace should get help. How addicted to sex do you have to be to look at a crucifix and see a dick?
My last apartment in Cockeysville had a real nice balcony, with an amazing view looking out over Hunt Valley. I loved sitting out on it. But since it was a second floor apartment, and the balcony right beside the entrance to the building, it didn’t have as much privacy as I’d have liked. So one year I planted marigold and moon flower vines along the rails, which produced a lot of screening, but not quite enough, particularly in the fall and winter. So I bought a big tacky plastic office plant, I think at Staples (yeah…they had that) and put it on the side of the balcony by the entrance. It came in its own fake pot, with a little Spanish moss around the base of the plant to hide the fact that its trunk was nailed and hot glued to a piece of plywood.
The following spring, I noticed that the Spanish moss was disappearing. At first I thought it was the march winds blowing some of it away. But one morning I spied a little tufted titmouse struggling to free a piece of it and then I knew what was going on. It was nest building time. For the rest of that spring I watched while a variety of small birds methodically removed every last bit of Spanish moss from the pot of my plastic office plant. The stuff doesn’t grow up here in Maryland, and the local birds seemed to think it was a rare find. They got every last shred of it, like a bunch of wood workers picking over a stack of mahogany. I watched tiny little birds ferociously struggling with the last few threads of it that were held fast by the hot glue at the base. Finally I took a pair of scissors and cut the last bits of it free and within an hour it was gone.
I was dating Keith then, and the next time I went to visit him on Hilton Head I brought back a trash bag full of Spanish moss. The next spring I kept my office plant stocked with it and the birds took every last bit of it I had. Now I knew another way to attract birds to my front windows.
It’s that time of year again, and nowadays I not only have front windows, I have a front yard, and I can be a bit more creative about attracting birds. One of the pure joys of owning a house is how much more connected to the nature around me I feel. In most apartments I’ve lived in, bird feeding was just not allowed. They do make a mess and you do have to stay on top of it or things will start looking trashy pretty quickly. But it’s no chore to those of us who just like watching birds.
Nowadays I buy a bag of Spanish moss from a local craft shop. I put it out in a couple of old vases in my front yard by the tree. The city birds aren’t quite as impressed by it, but it gets pretty well picked over by the time summer comes along. And last year I added another product to my shelves. My Japanese maple drops tons of little dead twigs every fall, which I’ve just bagged and put out with the leafs. But last year I kept a few and when spring came around, broke them into slightly smaller twigs, about three to four inches, and put them into another vase beside the Spanish moss. It got a little attention last year, but not as much as I’d hoped. But it takes time to build a business.
I’ve had more activity from my feeders this winter then usual so maybe this nesting season my building supplies offering will get picked over a bit more. I’m thinking about buying a nice hanging bird bath for the Spanish moss, and maybe the twigs.
A teenager has been murdered in Florida, apparently because he was mistaken by the killer for his gay friend, who was the real target…
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla., March 24 — In what the authorities described as a possible Nazi hate crime, a man wearing a gas mask broke into a woman’s mobile home in this Tampa suburb early Thursday morning, slashed her face and arms, and fatally wounded a friend of her son by stabbing him in the neck.
The 45-year-old woman, Patricia Wells, who is white, told officers that she had been attacked because she dates a black man, the police said. A small compound occupied by neo-Nazis is next door to Ms. Wells’s home, and she said members of the group had previously threatened to kill her and her boyfriend.
A former member of the group, David Dirolf, 21, said in an interview that he had heard members threaten Ms. Wells and her son on several occasions. Ms. Wells’s son was a target because he is gay, Mr. Dirolf said, adding that he thought the 17-year-old boy who was stabbed had been mistaken for the son, who was not home.
Just got it into his mind one sunny day to go kill himself a gay teenager. So he puts on his gas mask and breaks into the home where the kid lives, slashes his mother’s face and then stabs the kid he finds inside. Only it was the wrong one. Somehow, I doubt he’s loosing any sleep over that fact. Just where do these guys get this notion that gay people are easy and fair game? It wouldn’t be from crap like this by any chance would it…
GOP warned Welker in ’03
A Loveland lawmaker under fire for sending a racially charged e-mail about black Hurricane Katrina victims was warned in 2003 by his own party about forwarding offensive material.
The admonition from the House speaker came after Rep. Jim Welker, R-Loveland, sent an e-mail quoting a conservative study that discussed lifestyles of gays and lesbians.
The article Welker forwarded claimed that gay men regularly ingest the urine and feces of their partners, leading to massive outbreaks of various diseases. It questioned why gays and lesbians were allowed to work with children, the elderly and in the food industry.
"The homosexual and lesbian behavior is not a healthy lifestyle and can even result in early death," Welker wrote after quoting the study.
"Our society worries about people wearing seat belts, losing weight, smoking, taking drugs and abusing alcohol. Where is our consistency?"
Welker said Friday that the e-mail the public received in November 2003 was not the one he wrote.
"Somebody changed it," he said, but added he could provide no details as it happened nearly three years ago.
However, the e-mail is nearly identical to a column Welker published in the Northern Colorado Courier two weeks later.
Homosexuals regularly ingest urine and feces, cause massive outbreaks of all kinds of diseases, and probably shoudn’t be allowed to work with children and old people, or in the food industry. But y’all don’t go killing any of ’em now…ya hear?
When you’ve just about begun to think you’ve finally plumbed the bottom of the hate barrel, something like this comes along to remind you that it has no bottom. Just as the Soulforce Equality Ride was about to leave Oklahoma, the state school board reacted to their presence by removing the protections gay school kids had from being harrassed by their teachers. One state representative, a (surprise) republican, said the change was necessary to protect students from gay militant activists. If you’re a little fuzzy about how letting teachers abuse gay students protects the rest of the student body then you’re probably some kind of godless heathen pagan yourself.
If you’re not a married heterosexual, a male who regards himself as having a natural right to dominate women, or a women who understands that her place is to passively obey her man and spit a quiver of children out of her vagina like a machine gun, then the little middle of nowhere town in Utah named Kanab would like you to know that you’re not welcome there…
KANAB – After unanimously endorsing a conservative think tank’s resolution supporting the "natural family," Kanab’s City Council is coming under fire – naturally.
Gay-rights advocates and even some residents are scolding city leaders for embracing a nonbinding proposal that:
* Labels marriage between a man and a woman as "ordained of God."
* Sees homes as "open to a full quiver of children."
* Envisions young women "growing into wives, homemakers and mothers and . . . young men growing into husbands, home builders and fathers."
Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Utah in Salt Lake City, finds such language archaic and offensive.
"It doesn’t address what the landscape of the American family looks like today," she said Tuesday.
She said the concept of family "has evolved in a lot of different ways, and it is sad when government discriminates against the rights of families."
Kanab waitress Marina Johnson, a single mother of three, agrees, arguing that the resolution stigmatizes those who fall outside its limiting language.
"It should not matter if a couple is gay or single or what their religious affiliation is or whether they believe in God," she said. "It is not right that [someone’s partner] be denied medical benefits just because they are not married in the traditional way."
Instead, she says, "people should be allowed to do the right thing and take care of the people they love."
But Kanab Councilman Anthony Chatterley backs the measure "wholeheartedly."
"I support the values, hopes and goals stated in the resolution," he said. Kanab "is a strong, family-oriented community. It always has been, and we would like to see this continue."
Carol Sullivan voted for the resolution – pitched by the conservative Sutherland Institute – last week when it was introduced by Mayor Kim Lawson. But the council’s sole woman did so with some reservations.
"I saw no reason to vote against it because it is nonbinding," she said, noting that no one spoke out against it. "But I did wonder why it should be a government issue."
Okay…let me get this straight lady…you’re a conservative and you voted for a resolution even though you weren’t sure it was something government should be involved in? Digby’s Right, conservativism doesn’t mean anything anymore other then pure unadulterated right wing tribalism.
Kanab’s problem however, is that it fancies itself a tourist destination. And now, some of the tourists, and the people who make their living on the tourist trade, are a tad pissed…
"Recently read about your vote to censure anyone other than . . . heterosexual, childbearing couples. Even though I fit that bill, I am so disturbed by your actions that I am rescheduling my travel plans to avoid Kanab completely," reads one e-mail sent to the city.
"Y’all are silly," reads another e-mail, obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through the Government Records Access and Management Act.
And a northern Utah woman vows to stop visiting Kanab because the resolution supports "prejudice, discrimination and subtle social cruelties."
Such responses from potential hotel-staying, souvenir-buying, restaurant-dining visitors worry Hallisey, executive director of the Kane County Office of Tourism and Film Commission.
"With 700 of 1,000 [hotel] rooms in the county here in Kanab, it’s a viable tourist location," he says.
No, it isn’t. I’ve driven through Kanab several times, and the operative word there is through. I stopped for the night there once and swore afterwords I’d never do that again. There’s nothing there worth seeing, and the accommodations there are pitiful for the price they expect you to pay. Kane county is about as empty as a patch of Utah gets. Bryce Canyon is in Garfield county, Zion National Park is almost entirely in Washington county, and the various locations of Dixie National Forest (I think it’s some kind of franchise) are scattered in the surrounding counties.
Just about all Kanab has going for it are those motel rooms, none of which get better then three diamonds in my Triple-A guidebooks. Oh, and its own little Hollywood Walk Of Fame, which is basically nothing but a series of placards erected on the sidewalk of the main drag, that breathlessly tell you about any Hollywood western that might have been filmed anywhere within miles of the place. As I read those things I was actually embarrassed for the people of that town, but it’s on that basis that Kanab likes to call itself "little Hollywood". When all the good sightseeing is somewhere else, you go with what you’ve got.
The evening I was there, after I settled into my motel room, I took my camera and strolled the main drag, looking in the little tourist shops, scouting for anything worth bringing back home. I struck up a brief conversation with a young high school aged girl working the cash register alone in one of them. The common conversational theme you get from most people that age, living in towns like that, is their almost panic stricken need to get the hell out of there by any means necessary. No prisoner walking a cell in San Quenton is as determined to find a way to escape as these kids are. We’d not exchanged two sentences I think, before she was telling me about her plans to go live somewhere else. That particular girl’s ticket out, she was convinced, was to go to California and appear on American Idol. As we talked I swear every time I tried to turn the conversation to what life in the area was like, she would always yank it right back to her upcoming appearance on American Idol and how that would be the thing that would get her out of that there and to some better place. By the time I’d walked out of her store, I was gripped by a need to get the hell out of Kanab too. But I’d already paid for my room.
Kanab is a place highway travelers stop on the way to someplace else. If it has any other source of income besides those 700 motel rooms and the few eateries and curio shops along it’s main drag I’d like to know what it is. So you’d expect that they’d at least not give anyone a reason to keep on driving.
But no…
The resolution is a "slam to everybody, including those who fit their definition of a natural family," Brunner says. "We’re becoming a diverse community so there are more who feel comfortable about speaking out."
That includes those who support the resolution.
"I salute Mayor Kim Lawson and the council," writes Katie Thomas, who noted she came to the area 32 years ago from California seeking a quieter way of life. "Many of those who are offended and opposed to the proclamation…may have an agenda that would bring the kind of changes that could redefine all that we came for."
The Rev. Doug Hounshell says he "thanks God for a community that doesn’t think it has to be ‘gay-friendly.’ "
"We don’t mean to be mean-spirited," says Hounshell, pastor of Cliffview Chapel Baptist Church in Kanab. "But the message to a homosexual might be that this is probably not the friendliest town for that type of thing."
No Doug…it isn’t that you don’t mean to be mean spirited. It’s that you are and you just want everyone to politely ignore that fact while you’re busy cutting your town’s throat to satisfy your cheapshit prejudices.
What’s interesting here is that for all this moral posturing going on, the actual resolution that the Kanab city council passed is hard to locate. It’s modeled on a boilerplate Natural Family Resolution that the theocratic Sutherland Institute came up with, and has been pushing in Utah. But it’s hard to find a copy of this resolution, even on Sutherland’s own website. It took a little digging, but here it is:
Resolution 1-1-06R The Natural Family: A Vision the City of Kanab
Whereas, the natural family is the fundamental unit of society and is entitled to protection in Utah by local and state governments; and
Whereas, the natural family is the locus of the true common good and that citizens of the City of Kanab, Utah help ourselves when we help our families; and
Whereas, the natural family results in healthier, happier, more productive, and more civically-engaged adults as well as healthier, happier, safer, and better educated children; and
Whereas, most serious public pathologies – including crime, delinquency, illegal drug use, domestic violence, long-term poverty, and low educational achievement – are closely associated with family breakdown and disorder; then,
Be it resolved, that the City of Kanab, Utah adopts the following vision as a guide to policy formation and public action:
We envision a local culture that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as ordained of God. This culture affirms marriage as the best path to health, security, fulfillment, and joy. It casts the home built on marriage as the source of true political sovereignty and ordered liberty. It also holds the household framed by marriage to be the primary economic unit, a place marked by rich activity, material abundance, and broad self-reliance. This culture treasures private property in family hands as the rampart of independence and liberty. It celebrates the marital sexual union as the unique source of new human life. We see our homes as open to a full quiver of children, the source of family continuity and social growth. We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers; and we see young men growing into husbands, home-builders, and fathers.
We see true happiness as the product of persons enmeshed in vital bonds with spouses, children, parents, and extended family. We look to a landscape of family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children. We envision parents as the first educators of their children. We see homes that also embrace extended family members who need special care due to age or infirmity. We view local neighborhoods and communities as the second locus of political sovereignty. We envision a freedom of commerce that respects and serves family integrity. And we look to local government that holds the protection of the natural family to be their first responsibility.
NOW THEREFORE, it is hereby resolved by the City of Kanab, Utah, that the Natural Family: A Vision for the City of Kanab shall be in effect until further resolution.
Dated this 10 day of January, 2006.
A full quiver of children. You’d have had to see it with your own eyes to appreciate the desperation I saw in one young girl’s face one evening in Kanab, which by the way is not all that far from Colorado City, where the men of the Lee’s Ferry polygamists are apparently having their way with teenaged girls. Do you folks out there have any clue what happens to a lot of teenage kids who go to Hollywood looking for a way out of the suffocating woman hating mind numbing hopelessly bigoted and going nowhere fast hell holes you’ve made of your communities? There’s your Vision for the future. Right there.
The Church says it has ‘rules’ that preclude the gay placements. What has not appeared anywhere is a reasoned case that such placements are bad for the children, and it is the interest of the children that must come first. (For a critical survey of the studies and arguments relative to placing children with homosexual couples, see cosmos-liturgy-sex.) The claim that 50 or 60 percent of children reared by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual doesn’t cut any ice in some quarters. So what’s wrong with being homosexual or bisexual? And, if the incidence of sexual abuse of children in such settings is many times the norm, well, isn’t it time we reconsider the legitimacy of intergenerational love?
Sweet. The reason Pope Benedict is waging jihad on gay households isn’t because he’s a raving medieval lunatic, but out of alarm and concern for the welfare of children at the hands of predatory homosexuals. Only…just where is he getting his facts here? Sullivan does a little digging, and comes up with a familiar name…
So where does Neuhaus get his inflammatory claims? The only link Neuhaus provides is to a far-right Catholic website which in turn relies on a separate review published by Pat Robertson’s "Regent University" of 36 studies of gay parenting. 35 of the 36 "concluded that children from same-sex parents were not adversely affected," which is what the consensus largely is. One study alone provided the statistics Neuhaus relies on. That study is by our old friend, Paul Cameron…
Bingo. It almost always comes back to Cameron. But now they’ve nested his lies three layers deep…a right wing Catholic website, to a review by Pat Roberston’s Regent University to Cameron.
Why doesn’t Neuhaus simply say he’s relying on Paul Cameron for his facts about the dangers homosexuals represent to children? Well…isn’t that obvious? What’s interesting is that Cameron has become so toxic to the right, that they have to bury his name even deeper now. When William Bennett was arguing that homosexuals only live an average of 46 years, he only had to bury Cameron’s name one level deep, referring simply to another study that, as it turned out, cited Cameron for the figure. Now they’re burying his name three levels deep. They’ll be burying it three hundred layers deep one of these days, and it still won’t occur to them to just fucking stop spreading his lies.
What ninth commandment? I repeat, what ninth commandment?
Compassionate conservativism is that you don’t have to walk to the homeless shelter when you’re thrown out of the hospital, because you can’t pay your bills. A taxi will take you to one. Preferably in some other city…
For many months, Los Angeles city officials have complained that regional hospitals are dropping off their indigent patients in the city’s tough Skid Row area. On Wednesday, officials at a homeless shelter released a videotape that allegedly catches one hospital in the act. The incident has become part of an ongoing investigation that could result in criminal or civil penalties.
Here’s the pictures of how it went down…
City Council member Jan Perry, whose district includes L.A.’s Skid Row, says hospitals may be dumping their homeless patients in downtown Los Angeles because the cities hosting the hospitals don’t want to deal with their homeless problem.
"We have a very high concentration of services in a small geographic area," Perry says. "And for municipalities who don’t want to… extend themselves to the homeless, it’s an easy excuse to just bring them over here and leave them here."
Easy. I’ll bet it is. How much you want to bet that the hospital board of directors and the voters and city officials of Bellflower, California are part of the block of ‘values’ voters that helped president I’m A Uniter Not A Divider to two terms in office? I have a question for the religious right. If this is a Christian Nation, as you folks keep yap, yap, yapping that it is…then why is this happening? In particular, why are the poor and homeless hurting so much in territory you control?
I know…I know…the vastly more important war on homosexuality is taking up all your valuable time and money. You people have been spending millions to deny us the right to marry, haven’t you? In the name of Jesus and all that is righteous in the eyes of God, haven’t you? And you couldn’t even put shoes on her feet before you dumped her out on the street.
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
