So Utah’s only (out) gay state senator Scott McCoy, a democrat who represents Salt Lake City, is proposing now that Utah repeal its sodomy law. Such laws were rendered unenforceable when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. At least that’s the theory…Virginia seems to disagree but then Virginia has a history of that sort of thing. So McCoy is stepping up to the plate and asking Utah to do the right thing now…
After all…as McCoy says, this is about getting government out of our lives. What wouldn’t conservatives like about that, eh?
Utah’s only openly gay senator is sponsoring a bill to eliminate the state’s anti-sodomy law. But Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, said the bill has nothing to do with his sexuality.
"I’m doing this bill for all the consenting adults who don’t want the government’s nose in their business," he said. "It applies to heterosexual individuals with equal force."
…
McCoy will try to gain support from conservative lawmakers who routinely support legislation aimed at Utah’s gay population by describing his bill as a "conservative" measure.
"This is a ‘government get out of my life’ bill," McCoy said.
Well then conservatives should love it…right? Hahahahahaha!
But McCoy’s measure will still face heavy opposition from people such as West Jordan Republican Sen. Chris Buttars.
He promised Wednesday to "fight that all the way."
"You can like sodomy, I don’t," he said. "I think sodomy is sickening."
And as every conservative knows, government exists to enforce their own personal likes and dislikes on everyone else. Particularly when it comes to people’s intimate lives. But when it comes to protecting the safety of children, not so much. If you look at the front page of Thursday’s Salt Lake Tribune, right next to the story of Scott McCoy’s attempt to get Utah to repeal its sodomy laws is this little gem:
Mandatory booster seats bill gets killed in the full House
The full House killed its first bill of the session on Wednesday, which would have required parents to place their children ages 5 to 8 in a car booster seat.
Rep. Tim Cosgrove, D-Murray, sponsored HB209 saying that seat belts can be dangerous for youngsters.
"Seat belts designed for adult use are inappropriate for children," he said. "They simply don’t fit their bodies."
That argument didn’t sway many Republicans who argued that forced booster seats would place a burden on parents and grandparents who take care of many children.
"I don’t know if it would be practical," said Rep. Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville.
Provo GOP Rep. Chris Herrod said the bill unnecessarily impacts parental rights.
Swell. We have a perfect right to tell consenting adults what kinds of sex they can and cannot have, but we couldn’t possibly mandate child safety seats because that would be an intrusion into people’s private affairs. Who says republicans don’t have standards?
I remember vividly the day I realized for the first time that I was in love. A more magical, wonderful moment there has never been. I’d gone through most of my adolescence thinking love and sex were boring, stupid, icky things only jocks and dweebs cared about. And then in an instant the world, and my life, became more richer and fuller then anything I could have ever imagined before. When he smiled, I smiled. When he looked at me a certain way, my heart would skip a beat. Life was more wonderful, more beautiful, then I’d ever thought it could be. Everything my eyes beheld seemed to radiate the joy I felt inside of me. The future beckoned, bright with promise. So long as we could be together I thought, everything was possible. I was 17. He was 17. I would live my entire life over again, and every bully’s fist, every curse, every attack on my person, every assault on my intimate spirituality by piss ignorant bible thumpers, every job I’d ever been fired from for being gay, every opportunity denied, every tear I’ve ever shed in loneliness…I’d live it all over again, so long as I could live that moment over again too.
Now I’m 53, and desperately lonely. But I know better then to blame my sexual orientation for that. Rather, I never fully appreciate how much harder a gay person has to work at finding their other half, even in the best of tolerant cultures, let alone ours. We are few, and when you realize how hard it is for heterosexuals to find the love of their lives, you wonder how gay people can even hope to stand a chance at it. But many of us do…I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and it is beautiful. Some people are just naturally good at the dating and mating game. But most of us aren’t, and especially the deathly shy and clumsy ones like me. But were I heterosexual, I’d have had the unquestioned support of the culture around me in guidance and nurturing and encouragement. Instead I had to endure not merely indifference, but outright hostility toward my efforts at finding love. I can’t help thinking now, how much different my life might have been had I lived in a culture where same sex lovers were given the same respect, the same chance to succeed, that heterosexuals take for granted. I’d have known earlier on that boys could fall in love with other boys. Perhaps I’d have been more ready when my first love came into my life. Things may have turned out differently. But I didn’t grow up in that culture. I grew up in one where the lives of gay people are the monopoly money with which so many heterosexuals buy their righteousness.
My fury at the way same sex marriage is under attack is in large measure a reaction to my own loneliness I’m sure. I don’t think even my close friends know how utterly solitary my life is these days. Fighting off the loneliness is a constant battle and it leaves me emotionally drained. And then I hear some self righteous jackass step up to the pulpit to denounce same sex lovers as unfit to enter into the Sanctity Of Marriage and I think of how much that unmitigated contempt for the hearts of gay people has taken away from my own life and I just want to shove their faces into a burning wall. It’s that kind of anger that worries my friends, and I’ve had more then a few recently tell me that I’m getting too angry. But as long as I still believe finding my other half is possible to me, I’m unlikely to act it out. When I meet him, I want to be worthy. But I won’t deny that it is a struggle to keep anger, from becoming hate.
Sanctity. I’ve loved and lost several more times since I was 17, but even so my dating history is a pitifully short one. I’m just too damn shy. Most of the heterosexuals I knew in school had been on several times as many dates as I’ve ever had by the time they were out of college. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find prince charming, as they say. And it’s true. But when it did happen to me, it was so wonderful, so awesome, so profoundly life affirming that to this day I just can’t grasp what kind of bottomless pit must exist in someone’s heart to make them want to spit on the affections of two people in love. But every time they say they’re fighting to protect the sanctity of marriage, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And I am convinced now, that a lot of them do it knowing full well how deeply it cuts into the hearts of gay people. But if we don’t bleed, they’re not righteous. So we have to bleed.
By Jessie Torrisi
Columbia News Service
December 31, 2005
On the face of it, Sam Beaumont, 61, with his cowboy hat, deep-throated chuckle and Northwestern drawl, is not so different from the ranch hands in Ang Lee’s Critically acclaimed film "Brokeback Mountain," which opened in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
"Listen," the character Twist says to del Mar as part of a dream that goes unrealized. "I m thinking, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together –little cow and calf operation, your horses – it’d be some sweet life."
That pretty much describes the life Beaumont had. He settled down with Earl Meadows and tended 50 head of cattle for a quarter-century on an Oklahoma ranch. "I was raised to be independent. I didn’t really care what other people thought," Beaumont said. In 1977, Beaumont was divorced and raising three sons after a dozen years in the Air Force when Meadows walked up to him near the Arkansas River.
"It was a pretty day — January 15th, 65 degrees," Beaumont said. "He came up, we got to talkin’ till 2 in the morning. I don’t even remember what we said." But "I knew it was something special."
Beaumont moved to be with Meadows in his partner’s hometown of Bristow,Okla., a place of 4,300 people. Together, they bought a ranch and raised Beaumonts three sons. The mortgage and most of the couple’s possessions were put in Meadows’ name.
"People treated them fine," said Eunice Lawson, who runs a grocery store in Bristow. But in 1999, Meadows had a stroke and Beaumont took care of him for a year until he died at age 56.
That’s where the fantasy of a life together on the range collides with reality. After a quarter-century on the ranch he shared with his partner, Beaumont lost it all on a legal technicality in a state that doesn’t recognize domestic partnerships.
Meadows will, which left everything to Beaumont, was fought in court by a cousin of the deceased and was declared invalid by the Oklahoma Court of Appeals in 2003 because it was short one witness signature.
A judge ruled the rancher had to put the property, which was appraised at $100,000, on the market. The animals were sold. Beaumont had to move.
"They took the estate away from me," said Beaumont, who said he put about $200,000 of his own money into the ranch. "Everything that had Earl’s name on it, they took. They took it all and didn’t bat an eye.
Every state has common-law marriage rules that protect heterosexual couples. If someone dies without a will, or with a faulty one, his or her live-in partner is treated as the rightful inheritor.
But only seven states currently give gay couples protections — such as inheritance rights and health benefits — through marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. What’s more, Oklahoma last year amended its state constitution to ensure that neither marriage nor any similar arrangement is extended to same-sex couples.
Last year, Beaumont moved to nearby Wewoka, Okla., to a one-bedroom place with 350 acres for his horses, white Pyrenees and Great Dane to roam.
Sanctity. I got your Sanctity right here…
He said he was continuing to fight the cousins, who are suing for back rent for the years he lived on the ranch.
Sanctity. They took the ranch Earl left to his beloved Sam away. But you need to understand that it wasn’t so much about taking the ranch away from Sam, as taking Earl away from him, and everything inside of Sam, that remembers Earl in peace and contentment and joy. That’s why they’re suing for back rent. So that Sam won’t be able to remember any of the years they had together without feeling pain, so any place inside of Sam where there was once love, must be emptied. They want what was rightfully theirs, back. Not merely the ranch, but the love Sam felt for Earl.
When they speak to you about the Sanctity of Marriage, this is what they mean. Our hearts must be empty. Our lives must be empty. If they’re not, if we’ve somehow managed despite their best efforts to find our other half, then we’ve stolen what rightfully belongs to them…Sanctity…And they want it back. If they have to cut our hearts open to get it.
Sanctity.
One final note… I don’t expect everyone in my life to agree with every political or moral stand I take. And there was a time when I’d make exceptions for family. But since mom passed away a few years ago my heart has grown that much lonelier, and that much harder, and I am disinclined now to accept excuses, let alone make any for people who have been content to sit back and watch me walk into my fifties utterly alone. I have gone to bed with an aching heart for far, far too long to politely ignore the knife in my back. If you’re about denying gay people, if you’re about denying Me, the means to find our someone to love and to build a life together with them to the best of our ability…And That Damn Well Means Also The Right To Marry Them If They Consent…then you are no friend of mine. I do not know you.
But when a judge warned that unfaithful spouses could technically be sentenced to life in prison, an obscure and seldom-used provision of the state’s criminal law became the subject of international scrutiny.
It’s unclear how serious Judge William Murphy of the Michigan Court of Appeals was when he pointed out the possible consequences of extramarital sex. Some observers say the liberal judge was making a political point by taking a strict interpretation of the law to an absurd conclusion.
Others have suggested Murphy was trying to embarrass Michigan Atty. Gen. Mike Cox, whose office triggered the ruling by appealing for a harsher sentence for a man who traded drugs for sex. In 2005, Cox acknowledged having an adulterous relationship.
Murphy’s adultery bombshell was a footnote in a November ruling on a drugs-for-sex case. But since a Detroit Free Press columnist wrote about the footnote last week, blogs and radio talk shows have debated the pros and cons of life sentences for cheating spouses.
The ruling came in the case of Lloyd Waltonen, 43, a man from Charlevoix in northern Michigan, who supplied a cocktail waitress with the prescription painkiller OxyContin in exchange for sex. Last year, Charlevoix Circuit Judge Richard M. Pajtas sentenced Waltonen to four to 20 years in prison, but dismissed four counts of firstdegree criminal sexual conduct, punishable by a life term, on the basis that the sex was consensual.
The state attorney general’s office successfully appealed Pajtas’ ruling, citing an obscure provision of Michigan’s criminal law, which states that a sexual act committed at the same time as a felony constitutes criminal sexual conduct.
An appellate panel found Waltonen guilty of criminal sexual conduct. He has asked the state Supreme Court to consider an appeal.
In the opinion, Murphy wrote that although legislators may have drafted the law conceiving of scenarios in which there was a violent felony involving forced sex, he was "curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."
Murphy wrote that a person was technically guilty of firstdegree criminal sexual conduct any time he or she "engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship."
He noted that state law defines first-degree criminal sexual conduct as sexual penetration involving another felony. Because adultery is a felony, he wrote, adulterous sex could result in life imprisonment.
So…dig it. A wingnut prosecutor on an anti-drug jihad piles a sex charge on top of a drug charge, in order to get a stiffer sentence handed down. The law he’s trying to bend out of shape here was only intended to apply to violent sex crimes, but never mind…he thinks he can use it any damn way he pleases, because he’s on a mission to clean up what consenting adults do in private. And it works. Even better then he probably wanted it too. See…one of the big jokes here in all this, is that this prosecutor has admitted to having an adulterous affair in his own past…
No one in Michigan has been charged with adultery since 1971.
Nevertheless, defense attorneys across the state are snickering and speculating about the prospect of life in prison for the attorney general.
From his office in Lansing, criminal defense attorney Hugh Clarke Jr. chuckled as he contemplated the idea — apparently raised by colleagues — of setting up a special prosecution team to charge Cox.
"It’s all so silly," he sighed. "I only wish Judge Murphy would have used a different example. The judiciary in Michigan shouldn’t be held up to ridicule because of his use of that analogy."
Cox declined to speak to reporters about Murphy’s ruling. His spokesman, Rusty Hills, said Cox’s adultery was not relevant to the case.
He is trying to get a man sentenced to life in prison for trading drugs for sex, with a completely willing partner, and he thinks his own immorality isn’t an issue. Well of course not. Morality laws are for the peasants…to keep them in line. The authorities live by their own rules, up in Valhalla.
But this is what happens when the law starts treating purely moral issues as criminals ones. It’s what happens when the law is reduced to panty sniffing by puritan nutcases who are outraged over the possibility that somewhere someone is having a good time. Suddenly, we’re all criminals. Every one of us. And that’s the point. All have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God…and especially fallen short of the glory God’s right hand men… If we weren’t here to tell you how to live your lives…who knows what you’d do with them…
But the real belly laugh here isn’t the prospect of a jackass prosecutor getting hung by his own petard. Here’s the belly laugh, proudly posted on the right wing news site, World Net Daily, and thanks to Pam’s House Blend for catching it…
What do you think of the possibility of life in prison for adultery?
Sex between consenting adults should not be a matter for any criminal court, period
32.43% (1248)
Leave it up to civil courts for monetary damages like alimony, but not jail time
15.75% (606)
Come on, if everyone who committed adutery were jailed, there’d be hardly anyone left on the street
12.16% (468)
Stiff jail time is needed, we have to do something about rampant infidelity
10.63% (409)
A little jail time is proper, but life is preposterous
9.98% (384)
Old Testament laws call for executions, so let’s get back to the Bible
7.28% (280)
Other
4.96% (191)
I agree, life in prison is appropriate
2.60% (100)
Any jail time for adultery is ridiculous in this modern age
2.31% (89)
Life sentence is too light, should be execution according to Sharia law
1.90% (73)
TOTAL VOTES: 3848
This is the same crowd that was screaming for blood when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. This is the same crowd that thumps the bible like a machine gun constantly on issues of gay rights. They can cite you chapter and verse each passage in the bible that they believe condemns homosexuality.
Never mind that Adultery is condemned right in the fucking ten commandments not just once…but if you read it broadly enough, twice:
7. Thou Shalt Not Break Wedlock.
10. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s House; Neither Shalt Covet Thy Neighbor’s Wife, His Manservant, His Maid, His Ox, His Ass, Or Ought That Is His.
-Translated by William Tyndale
Suddenly it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame when it’s a matter of…er…your own balls. Listening to the American right wing bellyaching about morals and values, right up to the moment the finger turns around and starts pointing right back at them, you really begin to see why Jesus didn’t much like hypocrites.
I’m reading about the big blow-up at ABC over Isaiah Washington’s insults to fellow Grey’s Anatomy actor T. R. Knight. Knight is gay and Washington called him a faggot on the set. Then during the Golden Globe award ceremonies Washington announced to all the assembled reporters that he’d never called Knight a faggot. You have to admit, the guy has a certain deft charm when it comes to his co-workers. Seems like now everyone is calling for Washington’s head…
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 21 — Executives at ABC and its parent, Disney, are mulling the future of the actor Isaiah Washington, a star of the hit series “Grey’s Anatomy,” after Mr. Washington last week publicly used an anti-gay slur for the second time in roughly three months, a Disney executive said Friday.
…
The executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because company officials were instructed not to go beyond a prepared statement, said that Mr. Washington’s behavior could be considered grounds for dismissal under Disney’s corporate antidiscrimination policy.
ABC and Touchstone, Disney’s television studio, called Mr. Washington’s behavior “unacceptable” in a statement issued on Thursday, three days after Mr. Washington’s most recent remark, which occurred in the backstage press room at the Golden Globes ceremony last week.
The situation has potentially great implications for ABC, which is reaping millions of dollars in advertising revenues from a show that, in its third season, is among the highest rated on television.
If you piss on the grave of a dead gay kid and it gooses your tabloid news show’s ratings…that’s good business. But if a fag baiting actor’s antics start cutting into your multi-million dollar profits on your high rated prime time TV series…well, that’s just plain unacceptable.
And…by the way…I hear the right wing shock jocks at ABC/Disney’s San Francisco talk radio station who called Barack Obama a "halfrican" still have their jobs.
It’s a fair criticism of popular culture, that most of the images of human beauty being thrown at us are completely unrealistic. In fact, most of them nowadays probably aren’t even real at all.
Check out the images on this professional Photoshopper’s web site…
Greg Apodaca has worked as a digital retoucher in pre-press houses, design studios and advertising agencies in and around the San Francisco bay area since 1995.
You need to understand, this is how it’s done nowadays. That beautiful babe you see in this month’s issue of Maxim was probably computer enhanced to get your hormones going so you’ll buy the damn magazine. I don’t know about the gay glossies, but I suspect the same is true of them. Every month I get an Out Magazine and a couple others pushed through my mail slot, and I take a few moments to gawk at the beautiful men in them. Hey…sex sells. But I think eye candy, like real candy should be made with…er…all natural ingredients. You have to be careful of anything these days that has too many cheap additives in it. A steady diet of that kind of thing isn’t healthy.
There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of beauty. But when the images of it we consume day after day aren’t even real, then its no wonder so many people have such poor self images, and so many behave in very self destructive ways…not eating right, taking drugs, hating their bodies…all for an image of human beauty that is actually quite inhuman.
I was blessed at a young age with a wandering, curious eye, and maybe that’s why I’ve never really believed in what the advertisements, and the glossy magazines have been telling me about human beauty all these years. I like looking at them, sure. But it’s like looking at anime in a way: The images are beautiful, but human anatomy just doesn’t do that Ever notice how goddamn huge eyes are in anime and maga? Not even birds have eye to skull size ratios like that. It can be strikingly beautiful in its own way, but it’s an abstract representation of a human being. It isn’t real. Neither is what we’re seeing in ads and glossy magazines.
Go for a walk in the city. Take in the faces at your local mall, or even the grocery store. Real people are beautiful. More beautiful actually, then anything you see in an advertisement, or a lifestyle magazine. Go get yourself some real eye candy. All natural. Free range. Seriously. It’s better for you.
This one was so outlandish that Dittrick actually faxed us the two-page itemized receipt to prove it: "We live in an Amish community here and we had an Amish guy who tried to take a deduction for his buggy with velvet interior, the whole works. It was tricked out. He was legitimately Amish, but with all the accoutrements on this buggy, when they’re supposed to live the simple life, it was absolutely hilarious," she says.
How pimped out was his ride? According to the receipt, this baby came equipped with dash lights, kick plates, tinted windshield, speedometer, hydraulic brakes and dimmer switches. The standard buggy costs $2,675; this pimped-out version ran $3,545.
"He could deduct the buggy of course, since it was used for business, but on that one, we had to pick and choose what we were going to deduct," Dittrick says. "But the Amish teenagers do go through a period where they sew their wild oats, so to speak, and put the fuzzy dice and boom boxes in them. Every so often in the police blotters up here you’ll see a complaint about a buggy with music playing."
My Baptist grandmother warned me about Amish boys driving buggys with fuzzy dice hanging off the rearview mirror. ‘Don’t you go getting into one of those buggy’s’ she told me…
Via Ex-Gay Watch, I read this story about Levi Kreis, a gay musician whose only desire was, as he writes “to sing Christian music and be the purest vessel for God that I could be.” At 15 he secretly checked himself into one of Exodus ex-gay programs in order to, again as he puts it, “heal the homosexual in me”.
Well, you know where that’s going. He eventually came out, was dropped by his record label and expelled from the Christian college he was attending. Love the sinner.
There’s a passage in that interview that moved me deeply. It comes where Kreis discusses the impact seeing a performance of Del Shore’s Southern Baptist Sissies. What artists do for the world that they find themselves in, they do even more urgently for one another…
Southern Baptist Sissies’ was the sole catalyst in putting years of pain behind me. Embracing the thought of being an abomination to God and an embarrassment to my family instilled within me the heaviest, darkest self-hatred I could imagine. Walking in that theater one day, having no idea what I was about to see, I found myself in a fetal position in my chair crying uncontrollably. I had no idea there were other young men out there that had experienced the same journey as I had.
There is this hoary old bromide I would love to get my hands on and strangle, about how before an artist can produce great works that move people, they have to suffer. Paying your dues, as they say. It’s a lie. More often then not, the creative gift is strangled by great personal pain and suffering. It dies without ever being noticed. The one blessed with great creative gifts who manages to create something, anything, while in a state of great internal pain, does so in spite of it, not because of it.
“Del happened to be sitting behind me during my break down in the first act,” Levi continued. “He came to me during intermission to see if I was okay. After the show, he invited me to come in anytime and see the show as many times as it took for me to come to terms with my past. It was SBS that introduced to me the idea of a loving God; that helped me realize that I could actually love myself. The impact it had on me could never be accurately conveyed in words.
Creative gift or not, this is why our stories are so important. In telling them to the world we both heal ourselves, and one another. Don’t imagine you need a lot of talent to just tell your own story in your own voice, in your own way. Just put it out there. It will find someone to heal.
It might have to bounce off a few brick heads first though. In googling Southern Baptist Sissies…I came across this…
Shores, in an interview, said Southern Baptist Sissies, which won an award from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), is about “love and acceptance” for homosexuals who “have felt excluded from the church, from the love of God because of the teachings and doctrines that were taught to us as children and beyond.” Shores, a homosexual activist, has said he was raised in a Southern Baptist church in Texas and attended Baylor University in Waco.
Shores described his play as ending “with the message of hope — that God loves us all, just as He created us.”
…
While the theme that God creates people to be homosexuals likely will be promoted in the film, it is unfounded, said Michael Dean, pastor of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the site of a recent seminar on what the Bible says about homosexuality.
“The viewpoint that homosexual behavior is ‘natural’ for some persons cannot be supported by Scripture,” Dean said, noting that the behavior is regarded as sinful in both the Old and New Testaments. “But even if it were discovered that there is a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, that would not remove the sinfulness of the expressed behavior. Heterosexual desires are ‘natural,’ but are also sinful when expressed outside of a biblically defined marriage between a man and a woman.”
Dig it. Even if the reality is that homosexuals are born, not made, it’s still unnatural because scripture says it is. Reading that pure submission to dogma over reason put me immediately in mind of this passage from Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man:
It happens that there is a philosopher called Friedrich Hegel, whom I must confess I specifically detest. And I am happy to share that profound feeling with a far greater man, Gauss. In 1800 Hegel presented a thesis, if you please, proving that although the definition of planets had changed since the Ancients, there still could only be, philosophically, seven planets. Well, not only Gauss knew how to answer that: Shakespeare had answered that long before. There is a marvelous passage in King Lear, in which who else but the Fool says to the King: "The reason why the seven Starres are no mo then seven, is a pretty reason". And the King wags sagely and says: "Because they are not eight". And the Fool says: "Yes indeed, thou woulds’t make a good Foole". And so did Hegel. On 1 January 1801, punctually, before the ink was dry on Hegel’s dissertation, an eighth planet was discovered – the minor planet Ceres.
Never mind what nature reveals…what does scripture say? But in the end it isn’t even scripture that matters, but the word of the person who claims to be an authority on it. Or as Groucho Marx once said, “Who are you going to believe…me or your lying eyes?”
Shores told Baptist Press he does not anticipate that Southern Baptists will “stand up and applaud” the message of his forthcoming film, that of “love and acceptance that would include gays.”
But Stith said he believes Southern Baptists will respond biblically. “The most loving thing we can do for them is say that this is not what God wants for them, and that they need to live in obedience to His Word,” he said.
No, no Mr. Stith…not God’s word after all…but yours. The reason why the seven Starres are no mo then seven, is a pretty reason…
If one reads the news coverage following pretty much any Love Won Out conference it quickly becomes obvious they are attended primarily by family, friends and clergy rather than actual ex-gays or gays. As I’ve stood at the driveways to churches where Love Won Out is hosted I’ve seen too many cars pass by with children in the back seat, looks of sheer fear and dread on their faces, their parents unable to reconcile their faith with their child’s sexuality.
I’ve seen that horrific spectacle myself, while standing on a protest line outside of Love In Action. Last summer I watched while one car drove out of Love In Action with a very young, very miserable looking teenage boy in the back seat. He put a a spiral notebook up to his face to hide it as the car approached the picket line, his parents sat in the front seats with angry faces. Not five minutes before, I had been told by one of the protest organizers that an LIA staffer had assured him there were no underage kids attending Refuge that year. And as it turns out, John Smid, the child abusing leader of that little cult, is trolling the Exodus Love Won Out conferences for fresh blood…
“I go to every Love Won Out conference,” Smid said, “and 60% of those who attend are parents. It’s primarily a ministry to parents, that’s their goal.”
Which is just as a lot of us thought. Parents are really the only significant growth opportunity left to the ex-gay snakeoil salesmen. Especially fundamentalist parents who can be terrified into forcing their kids into undergoing ex-gay therapy. Which John insists really does work…
“The world is bombarding us with the lie that [homosexuals] should not change, cannot change, that it’s harmful to change,” said John Smid of Love in Action (LIA). “The media is bombarding people with those lies.”
The wall is yellow John.
He said parents want to know how to build a respectful relationship with their children, which is necessary before they can help their children escape the tentacles of a homosexual lifestyle.
Oh really? I was at the protest against the Love Won Out conference in Silver Spring last year, and a former "client" of John’s, Lance Carroll, was there on the protest line too. Lance was also at the Love In Action protest in Memphis last summer, and spoke to reporters there about his experience as an unwilling participant in John’s Refuge program for teens. Like other teens who have been through the "program", Lance was forced into it by his parents, a situation that John happily goes along with, I guess in the name of building respectful relationships. But what was really heartbreaking about Lance’s story, was what happened to him after he left LIA. His situation at home became even more abusive, to the point where the boy was being beaten up and he had to get the hell out of there. Now there’s a respectful relationship for you. And it only cost his parents $10,000.00.
Lance expressed the hope several times to me while standing on that picket line, that John would come out and talk to him. Of course he didn’t. If you don’t acknowledge the people in your life that you have failed, then you can say you have not failed anyone. And cash the checks with a somewhat clear conscience.
Smid says family involvement is crucial to give the client the best shot at restoration in his or her life. Many other ministries have used LIA’s materials to start their own outreach, notable among them Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conferences. Not only did Focus on the Family adopt LIA materials and resources, but the ministry was pioneered by LIA graduates.
Materials let it be said, created by someone whose own family life is somewhat less then perfect, apparently. This is something I hadn’t heard before, but it’s strikingly unsurprising:
“Healing from the causes of homosexuality takes time,” Smid said. Again, his own experience brings a poignant focus on the needs he still faces in his restoration process. One of his deepest prayers is to reach reconciliation with his daughters. Those dysfunctional family relationships – consequences of his own poor choices – now fuel his passion for LIA to serve the whole family.
So to recap: he’s a self loathing gay man who spent his entire life running away from what he is, he’s on somewhat less then good terms with his own children, and he’s getting thousands of dollars from the parents to teach them, he claims, how to build respectful relationships with their gay children. Swell. Next time my roof needs fixing I think I’ll call a carpenter whose house has fallen apart. Sure…I can hold a hammer. Watch me hit myself in the head with this one. Watch me do it again…
You see this over and over again in this struggle…people who are thoroughly obsessed with fighting the homosexual demon, that turn out to have painful family lives. Maybe it’s a gay kid they loath. Maybe it’s a gay parent. Maybe it’s a failed marriage. Maybe it’s their own failure to be the parents their kids need them to be. But whatever it is in their own family lives they’re unhappy with, rather then accept responsibility for it they turn outward, looking for scapegoats. And for thousands of years, gay people have played the role of human scapegoats for the intimate failures of heterosexuals…and those who wish they were heterosexual. I wonder if John was having trouble with his daughters the day he told Tom Ottosen "I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle." What I don’t wonder now is what John would have told Ottosen’s parents had he actually done that. Nothing. The man who could not so much as bring himself to walk over to Lance Carroll and acknowledge Lance felt so badly about how he was treated inside Love In Action…not even to apologize for it, just to acknowledge it…would have said nothing to Ottosen’s parents if their son had died as a result of John’s advice. Of that I am absolutely certain. The man who instructs his unwilling charges that they have to "be honest, authentic, and real", has a long familiarity with running away from his own issues.
"I’m looking at that wall and suddenly I say it’s blue," Smid said, pointing to a yellow wall. "Someone else comes along and says, ‘No, it’s gold.’ But I want to believe that wall is blue. Then God comes along and He says, ‘You’re right, John, [that yellow wall] is blue.’ That’s the help I need. God can help me make that [yellow] wall blue."
The wall is yellow John.
"Basically, their form of therapy is conditioning. It’s a negative reinforcement of shame. Anything that you connect to homosexuality, you connect to shame within yourself. You internalize this hatred toward yourself, this homophobia, this embarrassment…two months, every day, morning and evening, they would take turns. A person would get up and you would literally shame them for their feelings…"
-Lance Carroll
You don’t build respectful relationships on such a foundation as this. You can’t. When you rip apart someone from within like this, you aren’t doing it to make them a better person. You do it, to punish them for existing. You do it, so they will never rise above you, will never become the fully realized human beings that you never could yourself. The staringly obvious thing about this assault on gay teens is that it isn’t about healing them, let alone bringing their families together. Just look at the indifference toward them after they’ve left the "program". This is about destroying the person within. Nothing else. John Smid is doing nothing more noble and righteous then making himself a willing pawn in the big boy’s Kultar Kampf, so he can fill the void inside of him with the lost hopes and dreams of young adults and helpless teenagers. Probably, they remind him of himself the day he took his own hopes and dreams around behind the barn and killed them. The big boys, the rich and powerful of the American hard core right wing, do it out of a bottomless hatred of the human spirit, which does not willingly accept their whips and chains. But for the likes of John, it is more personal, more focused, more intimate. Every light he manages to snuff out within a young person’s heart, justifies the choices he made in life that left darkness inside his own. That’s why he does it. In a larger sense, that’s why they all do it. It matters not if it leaves a family in ruins. Just so long as it leaves the kid’s heart in ruins.
Did you know that, right now, artificial electromagnetic (EM) waves could be tearing your skin cells apart and causing your face to age prematurely? Waves from televisions, mobile phones and radios are all around us. They pass through metres of concrete, so imagine what they’re doing to your skin.
Clarins reckon they have something to help. It’s Expertise 3P, "an ultra-sheer screen mist containing a pioneering combination of plant extracts capable of protecting the skin from the accelerated-ageing effects of all indoor and outdoor air pollution but, most significantly, the effects of Artificial Electromagnetic Waves." It’s a bargain at £30 a bottle.
Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. I’m sorry…I’m giggling right now as I type this. I think I’ll be giggling about this for days. Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. Do artificial electromagnetic waves produce artificial magnetism? If you moved lines of artificial magnetic force across a wire, would they induce an artificial electric current?
Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. Sounds like something out of Lost In Space dialogue… Danger! Danger Will Robinson! Artificial Electromagnetic Waves! Warning! Danger! Danger!
Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. What won’t they think of next?
"The Hindu, a leading national newspaper, reports that the Communist government of Kerala (the state with the highest literacy rate in India) has announced its all-out support for FOSS in the draft IT policy announced yesterday. The draft also calls for preferential treatment for companies coming forward to work in the FOSS domain.
Wasn’t it Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who said that open source software was a Communist plot…?
On the January 15 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly said of Shawn Hornbeck — who was abducted at the age of 11, held for four years, and recently found in Missouri — that "there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" and that he "do[esn’t] buy" "the Stockholm syndrome thing." O’Reilly also said: "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn’t have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted." When fellow Fox News host Greta Van Susteren pointed out that "[s]ome kids like school," O’Reilly replied: "Well, I don’t believe this kid did."
The following day, during his "Talking Points Memo" segment, O’Reilly responded to viewer mail criticizing his comments about Hornbeck. O’Reilly concluded: "I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because" his kidnapper "made things easy for him. No school, play all day long."
But then…it makes everything about right wingers make sense when you think about it. Digby puts the pieces together here…
I think this is one of the defining aspects of conservatism. They have a stunted sense of empathy and an undeveloped ability to understand abstract concepts. It makes them unable to fashion any solutions to common problems, which they blame on "poor character" because they cannot visualize themselves ever being in a vulnerable or unlucky position through no fault of their own. Until it happens to them or someone they know, in which case they never question their philosophy as a whole but merely apply a special exemption to whichever particular problem or risk to which they have personally been exposed.
Empathy is not some altruistic concept. In fact, it’s quite selfish and designed to make humans better able to survive. It allows a person to walk in another’s shoes so that they might have an inkling of what it would be like if that person’s experience became their own. It is necessary to understand how to head off problems that you might someday have to confront and it is certainly necessary to fully understand other necessary concepts such as justice, fairness and love.
I’m not drawing any conclusions from this [Warning…PDF file], but it’s interesting. It seems that when they test psychopaths, they find that they can’t understand abstract concepts. I’m just saying.
That PDF from Crime Times Digby links to is really interesting…
Psychopaths are callous, glib, superficial, and impulsive; lack empathy for others; and display no guilt or remorse for their harmful acts. One reason for these traits, research suggests, is that psychopaths have difficulty understanding emotions. However, a new study indicates that psychopaths are impaired not just in the emotional realm, but more broadly, in understanding abstract information in general.
Sound familiar?
In particular, the psychopaths showed clear deficits in activating one brain area, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus, when processing abstract stimuli. This region failed to differentiate normally between abstract and concrete stimuli.
The researchers say, “These data support the hypothesis that there is an abnormality in the function of the right anterior superior temporal gyrus in psychopathy.”
“Perhaps,” the researchers say, “psychopathic individuals have difficulty engaging in cognitive functions that involve material that has no concrete realization in the external world. We might speculate that complex social emotions such as love, empathy, guilt and remorse may be a form of more abstract functioning. Thus, difficulties in processing and integrating these conceptually abstract representations to regulate or modulate behavior would be [seen] in these individuals.”
I’ve always wondered about this, particularly regarding the hard core homophobes. How is it that any decent person could stick a knife in the hearts of loving couples, do everything possible in their power to gut them of their capacity, not just to love each other, but to trust anyone, let alone love anyone? How is it they can look you right in the eye and tell you to your face that marriage doesn’t have anything to do with love…that it’s just about making babies and nothing more? How is it, they can throw helpless gay teens into ex-gay camps where they’ll be taught to fear and loath their sexual nature, how do they pray to God above that if their kid can’t be made into a heterosexual, at least dear god make them incapable of loving someone of their own sex? How does anyone do this to a kid and say they’re doing it out of love? Well…maybe this is why.
Look at what O’Reilly is saying up there again. How do you look into the camera at millions of viewers and tell them you think that kid was enjoying himself? How do you do it with an air of plain talk common sense? The only answer I can think of is, you do it like that because you simply cannot fathom what that kid must have been going through. Empathy. You could swim in the open sewer of that man’s conscience forever and not find a single shred of it anywhere.
Or in any of them. This is why appealing to their better nature isn’t bloody likely to buy you anything.
President Bush on Saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new Iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in Baghdad. "To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," Bush said.
This from the man who just weeks ago received the Iraq Study Group Report, which did exactly that, and which he reportedly called a "flaming turd". Okay…fine…he doesn’t like what they’re proposing. But why lie about it?
Well for one thing, because for six years going on seven now, he’s been able to lie through his teeth about damn near anything he’s wanted to and the press never called him on any of it. But mostly, it’s just junior doing what he’s always done all his damn life…shifting the blame elsewhere.
I’m seeing chatter making the rounds on the blog nets now, about how those of us who opposed this war from the beginning, those of us who felt it would turn out as badly as it now, unmistakably has, were nonetheless wrong anyway, no matter how right we were, because we based our opposition on our dislike of Bush.
Well…duh! I said early on that I could imagine one of any dozen or so other possible presidents, including republicans I absolutely detest, who if they’d made the case for Iraq I’d have gritted my teeth and reluctantly gone along with it. But from the start the problem was that it was Bush. Anyone taking even a little peek into that toxic waste dump that was his resume before 2000 could have seen this coming. Bush, let alone the right wing machine that pushed him on America, was not trustworthy. Period.
And now…thousands of dead Americans, a foreign policy in ruins, a lost American city, trillions of dollars in debt, a constitution in tatters and our moral standing in the world in the gutter later…the rest of you know it too.
Why on earth couldn’t you people see what this man was made of before you voted him into the highest office in the land? Twice for fuck’s sake!? Why couldn’t you just use a little basic common sense and…LOOKOUT, THE GAYS WANT TO BAN BIBLES AND MARRY EACH OTHER!!!
Or at least the part of it incorporated by Texas. If you’ve ever driven I-10 in the middle of summer, a headline that has the words ‘Ice’ and ‘Interstate 10’ in the same sentence Will catch your attention…
The system that coated Texas with ice was moving east Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, and snow, sleet or freezing rain was possible Wednesday night from Louisiana to the Carolinas.
…
The wave of arctic air that trailed the storm system helped to kick off more freezing rain and snow Wednesday in Texas, closing schools and some businesses and government offices.
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport canceled 100 flights. The Austin airport canceled 32 outbound flights and 28 inbound, and ran out of de-icing fluid, officials said.
Houston and San Antonio were under rare ice warnings Wednesday and icy roads in Dallas slowed morning highway commuters.
A 300-mile stretch of Interstate 10 in Texas from Fort Stockton to San Antonio had been closed since Tuesday because of fresh snow atop a layer of ice.
Ice. On Interstate 10. Wow. I’ve driven I-8 to I-10 all the way from San Diego to Kent Texas where it forks with I-20. In the middle of August. You drive it someday in the middle of August and try to picture it coated with Ice. I’ve never been through Fort Stockton, but that’s further south then Gila Bend Arizona, where they sell mock roadsigns with an arrow pointing forward that reads "Tuscon – 100 miles" and another arrow pointing down that reads "Hell – 5 feet".
I have a refrigerator magnet I bought down there that reads "But It’s A Dry Heat…"
Looks like it’s heading my way, but when it gets here we’ll only get a few snow showers…
Bank sees February or March timeline if Israel strikes
Warning that investors might be "in for a shock," a major investment bank has told the financial community that a preemptive strike by Israel with American backing could hit Iran’s nuclear program, RAW STORY has learned.
The banking division of ING Group released a memo on Jan. 9 entitled "Attacking Iran: The market impact of a surprise Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities."
ING is a global financial services company of Dutch origin that includes banking, insurance, and other divisions. The report was authored by Charles Robinson, the Chief Economist for Emerging Europe, Middle East, and Africa. He also authored an update in ING’s daily update Prophet that further underscored the bank’s perception of the risks of an attack.
ING’s Robertson admitted that an attack on Iran was "high impact, if low probability," but explained some of the reasons why a strike might go forward. The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as "not prepared to accept the same doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that kept the peace during the Cold War…
Robertson suggests a February-March 2007 timeline for several reasons…
Well right now we are advising our clients to put all they can into canned food and shotguns…
The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.
BearingPoint is fighting to restore its reputation in the US after falling more than a year behind in reporting its own financial results, prompting legal actions from its creditors and shareholders.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 (£60,000) to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor. Other recipients include three prominent Congressmen on the House of Representatives’ defence sub-committee, which oversees defence department contracts.
One of the biggest single contributors to BearingPoint’s in-house political fund was James Horner, who heads the company’s emerging markets business which is working in Iraq and Afghanistan. He donated $5,000 in August 2005.
The company’s shares have collapsed to a third of their value when the firm listed in 2001, and it faces being thrown out of the New York Stock Exchange altogether…
The company is a mess, not because of malfeasance according to the article, but bad management. Yet they were cherry picked to be consultants for creating a new market economy in Iraq. And BearingPoint had the advantage of months of helping the Bush administration write the specifications for the contract they eventually won. Turns out its competitors only had a week to read the specifications and submit their own bids. Nice.
Well, the Iraqis sure got their new market economy didn’t they? Question: how does anyone in their right mind expect a corporation that can only play in the marketplace if the game is rigged, to help another country rebuild their own economy? I know…I know…that’s not the point. The point is that the got the contract, because they knew which palms to grease. In George Bush’s America, that’s savvy business management. The product doesn’t matter, let alone the customer. What matters is the buying and selling of politicians. Remember children, republicans are better at managing the economy then those communist socialist democrats, who hate the free market.
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