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Archive for April, 2007

April 30th, 2007

E. coli Conservatives

Rick Perlstein has a good blog going at Campaign For America’s Future that you should check out .  For some help loosing your appitite, read some of his posts on what he’s calling, E. coli Conservatives:

(Click here to learn why we call them "E. coli conservatives.")

I wrote here about how we found out how Peter Pan peter butter got poisoned: the company, months after the event, did a belated inspection that blamed a leaky roof. The FDA hadn’t been able to find that same leaky roof when it inspected fact two months earlier.

Neither the company nor the FDA, we know now, managed to notice what it took those evil "trial lawyers" conservative Republicans so love to hate to discover some three months after the fact: a dead rat, rat traps, and roaches, and more. Conditions worthy of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

"Attorney Randall Hood of Rock Hill and 15 other attorneys were inspecting a ConAgra foods plant in Slyvaester, Ga., in April when they found the dead rat, bird fathers inside the plant, roaches on raw peanuts and other things ‘consistent with salmonella contamination,’ according to a court document."

Ask your Aunt Millie to stop voting for Republicans. If she won’t, at least tell her to skip the Skippy.

Now go back and read that post I put up a few days ago, where David Broder waxes happily about the times he spent eating quail with Karl Rove.

[Update…] Fixed the link to the Broder post.  Sorry…

by Bruce | Link | React!


Like The Tobacco Companies Repudiating Nicotine…

Via Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, comes the news that Exodus has repudiated, at least in part, the work of Paul Cameron…

This article has been removed due to the inaccuracies surrounding the research of Paul Cameron.

This statement from the web page of Exodus International was the result of intense work of the web page www.exgaywatch.com

The web masters of the site noticed that Exodus International was using Cameron’s work, so they made it known.

Exodus International removed the information and the head of the group, Alan Chambers, also said:

I appreciate EGW’s tremendous research skills. I saw your post on Exodus using Paul Cameron’s research and was embarrassed. We do not support the work of Paul Cameron nor desire to use flawed research. A member of my staff will remove these articles today and post a retraction. In the coming months we will be doing a survey of the content on our site to determine what if there are other articles or links that need to be removed.

Forgive me for being cynical, but I am not sold.

I can’t imagine why not.  A. McEwen goes on in his post to list the various folks in the ex-gay/anti-gay movement who use, and keep on using, Cameron’s junk science, and who have helped its zombie lies (because they seemingly cannot be killed no matter how many times they are refuted) become part of the political discourse surrounding homosexuality and the rights of gay people.  He ends the post with this:

In using Paul Cameron’s work, Exodus International helped to create a monster; a cottage industry of groups and spokespersons who used his studies to stroke the egos and prejudices of people against the gay and lesbian community and hinder the passage of pro-gay laws.

Exodus International owes the gay and lesbian community big time. And if it is serious about its repudiation, then Exodus International should take more of a key role in killing the monster it helped to create.

Meanwhile, over at Ex-Gay Watch, they’ve just posted several examples of NARTH’s use Cameron’s junk science.  NARTH, some of you may recall, positions itself as a purely secular organization of mental health professionals in opposition to the APA on the issue of homosexuality.  But they can’t claim the mantle of science for their work, and willingly and deliberately make use of the work of a fabulist like Cameron.  When you see crap like this, you have to know they know full well that they are spreading lies…

For our first example, NARTH member Ross Olson sent a letter to the Pediatric Annals, a letter that was published on NARTH’s web site (I don’t know if that letter was ever published by Pediatric Annals). In that letter, Olson criticizes an article that described a thirteen-year-old transgender MTF. Because the original article described the teen’s sexual activities, Olson jumped to the conclusion that the teen was being sexually abused, and that allowed him to bring up the familiar charge that ties homosexuality to pedophilia. For support, he cited Cameron’s “research” as though it has been presented in a professional journal. Here’s the screen-shot of that paragraph:

olsenletter.png

This citation is one of the more amazing ones I’ve ever seen. The Journal of the Family Research Institute? It doesn’t exist, at least not as Olsen implies. The link actually goes to a quasi-monthly newsletter that Cameron published for several years called the Family Research Report (hence the “FRR” in the URL). It’s not a journal by any stretch of the term, let alone a peer-reviewed one. Maybe Dr. Olson aspires to be the Dr. Cameron of pediatrics.

But NARTH, claiming its opposition to homosexuality is not religious, but only based on the science, would find it far more difficult to walk away from Cameron then Exodus could.  Exodus at least, can at least plausibly stand pat on its religious fundamentalism.  NARTH insists it is only following the science.  But ever since the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, NARTH has been nothing more then a refuge for reactionary anti-gay gasbags, who keep insisting that homosexuality must be harmful, because their bar stool prejudices keep telling them it must be.  They can’t repudiate Cameron, because without his junk science, all they have left is their animus and contempt.  At least Exodus has its religion.

by Bruce | Link | React!

April 29th, 2007

Thank You

Walking though my Baltimore neighborhood
high as a kite on Galliano and Bahia Gold cigar
walking, dancing, strolling
seeing
my cameras safely tucked away at home
only my eyes to see tonight
the images beckon
everywhere I look
everywhere
everywhere
Here.  Here.  And…Here!
Look!  Look!  See!

but it’s for my eyes only
tonight
you can be the guidebook
soul set free to fly
tonight
Alive
the little rowhouses
brick walls stare silently back indifferent
lights in the windows
stars above
the moon shines
shadows and light
the images, everywhere
everywhere
just for me
I see it all
constant craving
but just for my eyes only
tonight
just for me
just for my eyes
tonight
thank you, whatever you are
ominpotent indifferent creator
or nature itself
that brought me into the world this way
the way I am
with these eyes
thank you thank you thank you thank you!
for these eyes
for these visions
for this need
am I mad?  No.  Just…blessed.

by Bruce | Link | React!


Working On A New Photo Gallery

The Rehoboth Beach one has been up almost five months now and my goal since starting to work in Apple’s Aperture software was to have a new one up every quarter or so.  But what really motivated me was a conversation I had with my Friday happy hour pals in D.C. 

Jon Larimore, a dear old friend and former sysop of the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau BBS once upon a time, had weeks earlier paid me some of the best complements I’ve ever had on my photography and my photographic eye, when he viewed the Rehoboth Beach gallery.  What made his complements especially delightful for me is that he once worked for the National Geographic Society, and all his working life there he was swimming in some of this world’s absolutely first rate photography.  He knows good photography when he sees it.  Well…last Friday some friends who’d been with us to Rehoboth Beach came to the roving happy hour and I finally had a chance to ask them about the Rehoboth gallery.  One of them took me aside during the evening, asked some questions and made some observations that really convinced me he was getting what I do, at the level of someone who is really into photography.  He saw it.  And what was more, he really liked what I was up to.  Not everyone who appreciates photography is going to like my photographic voice.  They’re just not.

Well…Jon later told me that the guy works for the Smithsonian Institute, and he knows from good photography too.  So I told them before the evening ended that I’d be putting up a new gallery soon.  This is what I’ve been working on, between weekend household chores, here at Casa del Garrett yesterday and today.

This next one is from a book I tried to do back in the mid 70s.  Back then the options for self publishing photography books were limited and you really needed money to pull it off, which I didn’t have much of.  So I devised a scheme for hand binding a book of photos that consisted basically of pages of silver paper photos (we didn’t have PCs back then. let alone photo quality ink jet printers) dry mounted on archival board.  I hand made every one, and I think I sold like about a dozen of them before giving up.  Nowadays I could use any of dozens of Internet companies that let amateur photographers create their own photo books on a limited production basis.  Even my photographer’s software, Apple’s Aperture, now has a built-in system to let you create and publish your own photo books.

But I was really proud of that first effort, vanishingly small as its print run was, and my basic style and the themes in my photography have not changed much over the years.  I called that first book, Shadows and Light.  If you saw the first gallery I put up here, the one of Philadelphia images, you saw my pure photographic voice there, as it’s matured over the years.  You can see the distance from the twenty-something photographer who did Shadows and Light back in 1975 to the Philadelphia gallery in late 2004 in the sure footed way I do it now.  I know what I’m doing.  I still don’t have words for it, but I’ve learned that a graphic artist doesn’t need words to understand themselves.  That’s why we’re graphic artists as opposed to writers or poets.  We deal in imagery.  And looking back on those early images, which is what I’ve been doing lately for my Big Scan project, I’m really pleased with how well most of them hold up.  I sure can’t say the same for my early efforts and painting and cartooning.  Those embarrass me.  But the photography I did as a young man still holds up, at least to my eye.  I know what I’m doing.  I’ve been doing it for decades now.  Mostly.

So the next gallery is going to be from the Shadows and Light sessions, circa 1973-75, when I can finish scanning enough of it in to make a decent gallery out of.  Expect it sometime this coming week.  It’s a younger me.  But the voice is there, sure and certain.  That really amazes me in retrospect.  I went through a period of time when I just put my cameras away and didn’t touch them for years because I was sick of looking at what I was seeing in my photography.  It was a bad time for me.  But time passes, the universe expands and cools, and I picked my cameras back up again, around 1998, because sooner or later I just had to. 

Hotel Windows - 2004

Hotel Windows – August 2004

 

Store Window

Store Window – August 2004

 

Walnut Street

Walnut Street – August 2004

 

by Bruce | Link | React!

April 28th, 2007

The Things You Learn…

Installing a new lawnmower blade after the old one gets worn out and dinged will make cutting your grass easier, I’ve discovered.  Also…common lawn grass has the ability to wear down steel.

I have an electric lawnmower.  It would hardly do for most suburban lawns but it feels a tad extravagant for the one in the back of my little brick rowhouse.  But two years of trying to cut grass with a basic pushmower sold me on a power one.  Now I just run the mower back and forth over my little patch of grass a few times and I’m done, all but the trimming which I do with my electric weed whacker.   Spring is here in Baltimore now, and the grass in my back yard has already needed mowing once.  But when I got the mower out this year, it seemed unduly sluggish.  I could hear the motor bogging down on grass it shouldn’t have had to work at cutting.  So I stopped, unplugged, and took a look at the blade and was just amazed…I had no idea grass can make steel dull like that in just four years.  Well…I dinged the blade once also, when I pushed the mower too close to the sewer tap that sticks out of the ground in my back yard near the alley, just far enough that a couple weeks worth of grass growth hides it almost completely from view.  I should plant flowers around it or something.  But I swear just cutting the frigging grass for four summers made the rest of the blade about as dull as the edge of a quarter. 

So I went looking around for a new one and none of the local hardware stores carried that particular blade, including the store I bought the mower from.  I guess I’m supposed to buy a whole new lawnmower when the blade wears out.  I ended up googling the part number and finding new blades on, of all places, Amazon.Com.  Somehow buying lawnmower parts where I buy my books doesn’t quite compute.

by Bruce | Link | React!


Mr. King…Your Son Steven Is Under Arrest….

Disorderly conduct now means writing something that disturbs other people…

Student writes essay, arrested by police

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen’s father, Albert Lee, referring to last week’s massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don’t see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

The youth’s father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now.

Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.

"I’m not going to lie. I signed the petition," said senior James Gitzinger. "But I can understand where the administration is coming from. I think I would react the same way if I was a teacher."

Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio said the charge was appropriate even though the essay was not published or posted for public viewing.

Disorderly conduct, which carries a penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine, is filed for pranks such as pulling a fire alarm or dialing 911. But it can also apply when someone’s writings can disturb an individual, Delelio said.

"The teacher was alarmed and disturbed by the content," he said.

But a civil rights advocate said the teacher’s reaction to an essay shouldn’t make it a crime.

"One of the elements is that some sort of disorder or disruption is created," said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "When something is done in private—when a paper is handed in to a teacher—there isn’t a disruption."

(emphasis mine) I hear they’re going to pass a new law against Disturbing The Peace Of The People In Charge.  They say the penalties will be severe.

by Bruce | Link | React!


The Jackass Chronicles…(continued)

Well now we know who’s to blame for all those darkies swarming over our borders…

Utah Republican Blames ‘The Devil’ For Immigration

If you really want to blame someone for trying to destroy the United States, point the finger at… Satan?

The devil, Lucifer… whatever you want to call it, one Utah Republican says it is he who is trying to bring the USA down.

And Satan’s apparent weapon of choice: Allowing illegal immigrants to cross the border.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah County District 65 Chairman Don Larsen has submitted a formal resolution to oppose the devil’s plan to destroy the country — to be discussed this weekend at the Utah County Republican Convention.

“In order for Satan to establish his ‘New World Order’ and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S.,” Larsen’s resolution states. “[It is] insidious for its stealth and innocuousness.”

Larsen’s proposal to defeat Satan? Close the borders to illegal immigrants to “prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion.”

Somebody wake me back up when the voters start electing grownups again…

by Bruce | Link | React!


What Atrios Said…

We normally think of "High Broderism" as the worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake "pox on both their houses" attitude. But in reality this is just the cover Broder uses for his real agenda, the defense of what he perceives to be "the establishment" at all costs. The establishment is the permanent ruling class of Washington, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as "centrism" even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way. Democracy’s messy, in Broder’s world, and passionate voters are problematic. It is up to the Wise Old Men of Washington to implement the agenda, and the job of the voters to bless them for it. When the establishment fails, the most important issue is not their failure, but that the voters might begin to lose faith in and deference for their betters. Thus, people must always be allowed to save face, no matter what their transgressions, as long as they’re a part of his permanent floating tea party.

While this basic attitude isn’t unique to Broder, his apparent lack of interest in the actual details of policy makes him a more absurd figure than some. For him it’s not about results, but about the right people being in the right places. It is terribly elitist in all the wrong ways. Arguments can be made for certain types of elitism – you do want a brain surgeon conducting brain surgery – but Broder’s elites are simply aristocrats. It’s their town.

This has been another edition of What Atrios Said… 

by Bruce | Link | React! (1)

April 27th, 2007

And Now, A Public Service Message

From our Department Of Helpful PSAs…

They have like…ten innings in football…right…?

by Bruce | Link | React!


Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)

In case you were wondering why the quality of journalism coming out of Washington is so Piss poor, David Broder explains here

Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove. In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land.

It isn’t simply that they’re mindlessly parroting the talking points of whoever occupies the White House, as even a faint recollection of the unmitigated hostility Bill Clinton got from them recalls.  No.  They’re see themselves as part of that republican ruling elite now.  There’s David Broder, the man they call the "dean" of Washington journalism, happily recalling his times eating quail…Quail, mind you…with Karl Rove in his historic cabin.  And no…I strongly doubt they went out hunting quail beforehand.  Not with Cheney anyway.

Sorta puts Broder’s crack about how the Clinton’s came in and "trashed the place" into perspective doesn’t it?  Read that Sally Quinn column…it’s one big long inside the beltway bellyache about Clinton and Monica…and ask yourself where the puffed up moral outrage is over…oh say, Guantanamo Bay, the shredding of the Geneva Convention, torture, the destruction of New Orleans, the use of the Department of Justice as a weapon against political opponents and against dissent, being lied into a war that’s killed thousands of young Americans who had their whole lives ahead of them, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of the people we allegedly went to war to liberate.  Don’t see it?  Well there’s a reason for that.  The Washington news establishment all regarded the Clinton team as nothing more then poor southern white trash in Their Town and that’s why they hated them.  That’s all that mattered to them then, and it’s all that matters to them now.

by Bruce | Link | React! (1)


Visual DNA…And Yet Another Social Networking Site

I found this on another gay guy’s blog I read from time to time and gave it a try. At first glance it looked like a more visually interesting then usual online quiz, but behind it is yet another new social networking site, Imagini. It’s marked “beta” on their home page logo so I assume it’s still a work in progress. Ever since MySpace became this huge cultural phenomina a gaggle of other self described “social networking sites” have popped up vying for a piece of the pie, or to be the next big thing. But this one lets you describe yourself in a very eye catching way…

Alas, I can’t figure out how to format its damn embedding code in a way that let’s me put it in the center of the page like I can a YouTube player.

You start out by answering a series of questions about yourself, Visually. This appealed instantly to the graphic art geek in me. The personality profile it generated for me seemed to have me pretty well pegged in a few ways, and not in a few others, but over all it resonated with me and most of these little quiz things don’t.

I’m on MySpace. I’ve been referred to Friendster. I’ve added profiles to blogger and Live Journal so I could leave comments on friends’ blogs there. But as I’m perfectly capable of making my own web space (this one) I’m unlikely to ever be more then a passer-by on any social networking site, no matter how many features it offers. I think that’s what most folks on those sites are. I have my own domain. It’s like my little house on the net here. I can make it whatever I want. Everyone should have their own home out here. But of course not everyone has the skill set or the time to build their own, which is where sites like blogger and Live Journal can help. What’s nice about MySpace, what made it grow as hugely as it did in my opinion, is that it was structured in a way that Does encourage you socialize with the others more then other like sites did. I need that too. The encouragement that is.

So I’m pretty much a regular on MySpace too. I don’t have enough time in a day to be a regular in too many social sites. But Imagini Looks interesting. Alas, it rates me a zero percent match for the gay guy whose blog I found this on (shy little dickens wouldn’t even put a name to his Imagini profile…he’s signed in as “Anonymous”). Ah well. I actually kinda figured after reading his blogger blog for a couple years now that we aren’t exactly compatible types. I just read him ‘cuz he’s so damn cute.

by Bruce | Link | React!

April 25th, 2007

Goddamn Californians And Their Goddamn Blue Sky

Brad DeLong reminds me about that certain smugness of the western half of my family tree…

Plunge in Existing-Home Sales

The Associated Press reports:

Plunge in Existing-Home Sales Is Steepest Since ’89 – New York Times: Sales of existing homes plunged in March by the largest amount in nearly two decades, reflecting bad weather and increasing problems in the subprime mortgage market, a real estate trade group reported today…

…Ummm… if sales are down by 9.1% in the West–which means California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington–how can that have been due to bad weather in February? We don’t have "weather." Couldn’t the AP have asked that of Mr. Lereah? 

You have no idea how much this sort of thing irritates us Californians In Exile…

by Bruce | Link | React!


An Important Announcement

Spring finally arrived today. Every morning for the past week days now I’ve been expecting it, checking the sky for the sign.  But it wasn’t spring yet.  Not yet.  The trees bloomed and then the blooms fell off and now they’re getting their summer leaves.  I have shade now in my front lawn again.  But it wasn’t spring yet.  The male goldfinches who come to my thistle feeders all have their bright yellow feathers now.  Every morning I wake up to the singing of robins.  But it wasn’t spring yet.  The grass is growing…already I’ve had to mow once.  Most days I can sit out on my front porch in shirt sleeves.  But it wasn’t spring yet.  Not until I saw the sign.  I saw it today.  The swallows are back. 

When I came in to work this morning I heard their busy raspy chatter as soon as I rounded the corner by the office and looked up, saw the first wave of returnees, darting here and there, shooting in and out of our triple deck concrete garage like little arrows.  Busily sprucing up their summer quarters now I suppose, after their being closed for the winter.  Every fall, in a final act of defiance, the sparrows try to pick apart the swallow’s nests once they’ve gone for the winter, and every spring the swallows just repair the damage and chase the sparrows back out again.

So spring has arrived finally.  I know, I know…officially spring arrived here in the northern hemisphere a few weeks ago.  But Officially it arrived here in Baltimore today.

by Bruce | Link | React!

April 24th, 2007

1.7 Billion…Did You Say…?

Fred Clark over at Slacktivist, celebrates Andrew Natsios Day

With Congress and the White House in tense negotiations over the next $100 billion for the next six months in Iraq, we take time out today to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Andrew Natsios’ appearance on ABC’s Nightline.

On April 23, 2003, host Ted Koppel invited Natsios, then the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, on the program to talk about the Bush administration’s estimate of the cost of rebuilding Iraq.

Younger readers may not remember Koppel, who’s retired now. They may also be somewhat confused by the assumption, universally reported back in April of 2003, that the U.S.-led coalition had "taken control of Baghdad." After all, just yesterday Gen. David Petraeus said that three months of a security "surge" had produced only modest progress in its effort to, well, take control of Baghdad.

Uh…Nice Job Brownie..?

Anyway, back to Andrew Natsios. Here is the transcript of his conversation with Koppel:

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): Well, it’s a, I think you’ll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that’s been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.

ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no. This doesn’t even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.

ANDREW NATSIOS: This is $1.7 billion.

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.

Since then, "the American taxpayers" have spent at least half a trillion dollars — at least five times the total cost of the Marshall Plan. Chunks of money several times greater than Natsios’ figure have simply gone missing and the monthly cost to the U.S. is more than $8 billion.

In 2006, President Bush appointed Andrew Natsios as the administration’s special envoy to Darfur.

Dig it.  More money then they told us the war would cost, has simply gone missing.  The Monthly cost of the war is several times larger then what they told us the war would cost.  They’re fighting on Capital Hill right now over a Supplemental Budget that is bigger then the total cost of the Marshal Plan. 

And you thought it was about the oil.  Mission Accomplished.

by Bruce | Link | React!

April 23rd, 2007

Enforcing Silence

How much you want to bet they’d do this to a kid who organized a "Day Of Truth"…?

OK… Thanks to a blog reader and supporter over in Tennessee, I’ve gotten copies of the articles (which were never online) concerning David Crockett High School senior Curtis Walsh, who was dismissed from school for a day after organizing the Day of Silence at his school.

The Day of Silence is a national event in which middle, high school and college-aged students take a vow to silence, symbolically representing the silence that is forced upon LGBT people every day by our society.

The articles (which can be viewed as photos: Page 1 and Page 2) state, in part:

Senior Curtis Walsh said he was dismissed for the day early Wednesday morning by David Crockett High School principal Henry Marable for his own safety.

“I showed up at school and within two minutes (Marable) called me and three others into his office. After first period I was dismissed for the day.”

Marable as well as Director of Schools Grant Rowland said they had no comment on anything pertaining to the student of the “Day of Silence,” in which several students reportedly left school early.

However, Rowland was quoted by a local television station later in the day:

“One student and one reporter caused one heck of a mess to be stirred up for no reason,” said Rowland in regard to the article on the “Day of Silence” that appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the Johnson City Press.

This principal has apparently kept Curtis out of his school ever since the Day of Silence…

Zina Owens, the mother of Tennessee high school senior Curtis Walsh, who was dismissed from school after organizing the Day of Silence, gives us an update.

As it seems, Curtis was kept out of school not only on the Day of Silence (Wednesday, April 18th) but also on Thursday, April 19th and Friday, April 20th.

Just wanted to give you an update on Curtis Walsh, the Tennessee senior who was dismissed for supporting the day of silence. I am Curtis’ mother. On Wednesday, he was sent home as the newspaper article said, but we were given NO REASON (the paper said for his own safety). On Wednesday afternoon about 4:00, I received a phone call from Marable, the principal, and he said that Curtis did not need to come to school on Thursday. I asked if he had been threatened (Curtis) or if it was a punishment. He replied, “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.” On Thursday afternoon my husband, Curtis’ STEP-FATHER, NOT HIS MOTHER, received a call from Marable saying that Curtis did not need to be in school on Friday. As you may guess, this fight is NOT over.

This story hasn’t really gotten all that much attention yet… but I hope it will. What is happening to Curtis is beyond unacceptable.

Gotta love it… “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.”  Right.  Anyone who agitates on behalf of the dignity of gay kids let alone their safety, doesn’t need to be in Henry Marable‘s school.  Sorta gives you a flavor for what life is like for gay kids that have to walk those halls doesn’t it?  Meanwhile Pat Robertson’s legal sharks are threatening any school that refuses to support their "Day Of Truth" with litigation.

Contact info for David Crocket High School in Jonesborough, Tennessee can be found, Here.  More info on another kid who was punished for organizing a Day Of Silence, and a school in Indiana that was put into a lockdown over threats of violence during the Day Of Silence, Here.  You can suppose that Jay Sekulow won’t be stepping up to defend the rights of those students…

…or This Teacher who allowed this student editoral calling for tolerance toward gay students to be published.  She stands to loose her job now , for allowing these highly controversial words to be published in the student newspaper, and read by impressionable young minds…

Would it be so hard to just accept them as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else? Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.

Well we wouldn’t want our kids taking any of that shit seriously now would we?

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

(Rodgers & Hammerstein, South Pacific)

 

by Bruce | Link | React!

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