Michael J. Fox asks the voters of Missouri
to support Claire McCaskill
(Click on image to go to website and view)
Digby says "As I look at all these issues that have come to the forefront in the last few years, I’m struck by how dumb it is to let the Republicans claim the mantle of values and morality." And yet somehow we did. It’s one thing for people to say they’re "pro-life" and another for those same people to champion war, excuse torture, and turn an indifferent eye to sickness and poverty, and the rape of the environment. They call themselves "pro-family" and take every chance to put the screws to families all over America, and their elderly parents, for the sake of the profits of billionaires. They demand the right to set standards of marriage and fidelity and sexual conduct for everyone, that they cannot live by themselves in their own private affairs. They lie through their teeth about gay people, and demand respect for their sincerely held faith. It’s all bullshit. It’s long past time for the rest of America to call them on it.
Jim Valentine lumps gay people and pedophiles together. And he doesn’t want any of them living in Idaho.
The Post Falls business owner posted a message in bold letters on his reader board this morning: “Peds queers fags your (sic) in Idaho now…”
That’s what northbound drivers on Pleasantview Road see when they drive past the sign for his landscape supply and horse-boarding business, Dixie Services.
And…guess who’s flag he’s flying…
“People are kind of numb. I think they need to wake up a little bit,” said Valentine, who drives classic cars emblazoned with the Confederate flag. One has a horn that plays “Dixie.”
Yes Jim…people are kind of numb. And you’re kind of a numbskull. Well…I hear Idaho has its share of folks who greatly admire the Third Reich and fly the swastika, and never mind that the closest they’ve ever been to Germany is a side order of sauerkraut. Why not idiots who love the Antebellum south and fly the confederate flag too. Maybe he’ll take confederate money in exchange for his services.
You have to wonder what southerners think of all this. Ex governor of Virginia, senate candidate and all around racist prick George Allen grew up in California, yet his college dorm was festooned with confederate battle flags, and the occasional noose. He’s as southern as a Hollywood riverboat, but he longs for Dixie just like Jim does. Like all those northwestern American Slavs, Saxons and Jutes dressing up in their brownshirts and swastikas, fantasizing themselves pure blond-haired Aryan stock and longing for the Vaterland. And come to think of it, Hitler was an Austrian anyway, not a German.
Your gay and lesbian neighbors have been staring into this sewer for decades now and the only thing that keeps surprising me personally, is how big the lies have to get before anyone in the mainstream news media notices the stench. But it isn’t the big outrages like Foley you should be paying attention to. It’s the quick little moments of flinching guile, when even though honesty won’t hurt them, they still can’t own up to anything. Let me show you one I came across this morning, while reading the news.
Pure. Think about that word for a moment. Think about the images it conjures. Pure. Edinburgh University’s course on Christian marriage is called, "Pure". It teaches students Orthodox Christian teaching on relationships and sex. It teaches chastity before marriage and so on. Oh, and incidentally, that homosexuality can be cured. Well…maybe not just incidentally …
Students nationwide have expressed their outrage after a Christian course aiming to ‘cure’ homosexuality piloted at Edinburgh University.
Students at the university began protesting the PURE course after it was discovered to recommend homophobic literature, such as What Some of You Were by Christopher Keane, which details the stories of "ex-gays" who have been “cured” of their homosexuality by the power of Christianity, and how "gay relationships are characterized more by promiscuity than by fidelity."
In response to the course, students at Edinburgh set up a Facebook group called "Stop Pure", which has enlisted 1,400 members within a fortnight. Students from around the country have joined from universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews and Kings College London.
Group creator Lucy Chambers said: "We want to use the group to help make students aware of the issues raised by the presence of this course on our campuses and to encourage them to make a stand. Facebook is a great means to contact lots of students up and down the country in the space of a few minutes.
"We have already set in motion a process whereby our students’ association is investigating the course and it is our hope that we will be able to use the group, or perhaps set up a new one, to affect change nationwide."
Which, in their own way, is something the creators of "Pure" also have in mind…
The controversy surrounding the course called Pure, began after pilot courses were held at Edinburgh University. The pilot was deemed a success and the Edinburgh University Student newspaper printed details of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship plans to roll out the courses across Britain.
But just because the Colleges Christian Fellowship is teaching kids that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex, and that they can pray their dirty godless habit away, that doesn’t mean they’re homophobic mind you…
The [University’s Student Representative Council] has already been backed by the university’s chaplain, who said the course can no longer be held at the chapel for fear of upsetting people. But Matthew Tindale, a [Christian Union] staff worker, has denied it is discriminatory against homosexuals.
He said: "This is looking at the orthodox view on marriage, which says there should be no sex before marriage.
"If a heterosexual man came along who sleeps around, I am sure he would find it uncomfortable too.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…
"This is not about discriminating against homosexuals.
"Christian teaching shows that all sin is treated the same way, whether you are homosexual or heterosexual."
Now, look at that for a minute, look at the flinching guile in that statement. He could have said, "Yes but the bible calls upon us to discriminate." But he didn’t do that. Instead he threw out a cheap sophistry. Now think again about what "pure" means. Does the word "truth" also come to mind? As in, Honest? Genuine. Real. Pure. Here we have a course that is ostensibly about marriage, which is in fact more about spreading ex-gay propaganda then it is about marriage, and it’s called "Pure". The only thing that’s pure about it is its animus toward gay people. But the defenders of "pure" cannot even be honest about that much.
If a totalitarian state, like the old Soviet Union, decreed a law forbidding Christian religious worship, could it plausibly argue that the law did not discriminate against Christians, because everyone had to obey it, even the atheists? Yet here is a man from the Christian Union claiming that their course does not discriminate against homosexuals, because even heterosexuals are forbidden from having homosexual relationships. A fact which has heterosexuals all over the world crying in their beer I’m sure. Or…you know…not.
A course on purity in relationships taught by louts like these is a bit like a course on economics as taught by Ken Lay and the board of Enron, or Dick Cheney and Haliburton. All the lofty concepts of mutual honor and respect and trust and faithfulness between lovers, are merely waved around here like a street gang’s colors, and serve no higher purpose then to ennoble bigotry and make bigots respectable. And what the students attending this course pay in tuition, is everything fine and noble and decent within themselves, that they could have become. The reason this course and the people teaching it should be thrown off campus isn’t so much that it’s anti-gay, but that it degrades the very thing it purports to elevate and preserve, and thereby every trusting kid who sits through it, gay or straight.
No stream rises higher then its source… "Pure" makes the sacred a slave to the profane. But it had to. Look at the sort of people who created it. Now look at every other thing this sort has ever done in the name of Values and Morality. If you’re still wondering how the figureheads of the religious right, James Dobson and his like, could instinctively jump to the GOP’s defense in the matter of Mark Foley, you must still think that they really believe the things they say about morals and values and righteousness. No. They only wear those things, so you won’t see them for the gutter crawling scum that they are.
A new Bible translation is causing controversy after it cut out difficult parts surrounding economic justice, possessions and money.
The new bible version, released by the Western Bible Foundation in the Netherlands, has created a storm by trying to make the Christian gospel more palatable.
According to Chairman Mr. De Rijke the foundation has reacted to a growing wish of many churches to be market-oriented and more attractive. "Jesus was very inspiring for our inner health, but we don’t need to take his naïve remarks about money seriously. He didn’t study economics, obviously."
Oh obviously. And we can ditch all that love thy neighbor crap too apparently. But I reckon we already knew that.
This is a joke btw…
Hundreds of Western Bibles have been sold in the first few weeks, whilst anxious Christians filled newspapers and web logs with their doubts.
Sometimes Christians seem to have more anger than humour, however. The names of the board, ‘De Rijke’ (meaning ‘the rich’) and ‘Fortuijn’ (meaning ‘fortune’), as well as the holes in the pages of the Western Bible hint to the truth: the Western Bible is a joke.
…but you want to bet that in a couple years folks will be reading devotedly it in the pews of mega churches from one end of America to the other?
I wonder how many American Baptists realize their faith originated with the Dutch. There’s an old joke about how one Dutchman is a belief, two Dutchmen are a church, and three Dutchmen are a schism.
It’s hard to imagine that when Sabrina Farber sent out an e-mail Wednesday she had any idea what kind of firestorm it would set off.
At 9:08 a.m. Farber, who together with her husband, Todd, owns Garden Guy Inc., a landscaping company on Hillcroft, hit "send" on a message that delivered a painful blow with the verbal equivalent of a smiley face.
"Subject: Cancel Appt – Garden Guy
"Dear Mr. Lord,
"I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals.
"Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs.
"All my best,
"Sabrina"
‘Marriage is under attack’
Michael Lord, who is building a house in the Heights with his partner, told me he had found the company through an Internet search. He liked the "before and after" photos on the company Web site.
He said he didn’t notice, at the bottom of one of the pages, under a photo of the Farbers and their four children, this:
"The God-ordained institution of marriage is under attack in courts across the nation, and your help is needed.
"Go to: www.nogaymarriage.com to take action."
Lord said he filled out a form on the Farbers’ Web site and received a return e-mail expressing enthusiasm for the project. He called the company Wednesday morning to set up an appointment.
"Mrs. Farber kept referring to me and my wife," said Lord. "I told her it was actually my partner."
One-word message: WOW
He said she didn’t say anything about that on the phone, but five minutes after they agreed to a Sunday appointment and hung up, he received the e-mail quoted above.
At 9:17 a.m. Lord forwarded the message to his partner, Gary Lackey, with a one-word message: "WOW."
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone our employer would serve…
(Minneapolis, Minnesota) A bus driver who says homosexuality is against her religion will be allowed to refuse to get behind the wheel of vehicles displaying gay ads.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit agreed to the demand by driver despite objections from her union according to an internal transit authority memo obtained by the Star Tribune newspaper.
The controversy arose after the authority accepted an ad from local LGBT magazine Lavender. The ad shows a photo of a young man and carries the slogan "Unleash Your Inner Gay."
The ad runs on about 50 city buses.
When the driver objected the companied issued a memo to dispatchers instructing them not to assign the driver, identified only by her employee number, to any of the buses running the ad "under any circumstances" the Star Tribune reports.
"The decision has nothing to do with the content of the advertisement," he said. "It has everything to do with the employee’s religious beliefs," Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons told the paper.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit says it made a mistake in the way it handled the case of a driver who refused to operate a bus as long as it had an ad for a local gay publication.
Metro Transit says it was trying to do the "right thing" by the diver based on her religious beliefs, but in doing so sent the "wrong message" to the gay community.
…
"We are not persuaded that advertising, per se, infringes on religious practices and would be reluctant to make similar accommodations in the future," Gibbons said in a statement.
"We deeply regret any impressions of intolerance … Metro Transit employs and serves a diverse population, and we do our best to be respectful of all views."
"We deeply regret…" Right. Notice what’s missing? Any hint that the driver in question won’t be allowed to refuse to operate a bus with an ad for a gay publication again in the future. Kinda reminds me of Macy’s pusillanimous "apology" for yanking a Pride Week display from the window of its Boston store during Pride Week there, at the behest of local bigots. Sure enough afterward came the "We deeply regret…"s but nothing changed. Doesn’t look like it has in Minneapolis either. I was a loyal Hecht Company customer until Macy’s bought it out.
WASHINGTON, October 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In their semi-annual meeting held in Baltimore in November of this year, the American bishops will be voting on a new document meant to help clarify the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality and "those with the homosexual inclination." The document is entitled "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care"
Catholic News Service reports that the document condemns homosexual activity of any sort but is careful to reinforce the necessity of treating those individuals with a homosexual inclination with "respect, compassion and sensitivity."…
Hahahahaha! Respect, compassion and sensitivity anyone…?
A gay-rights advocacy organization is denouncing the firing of a campus safety officer at Marian High School, saying she was dismissed because she publicized that she’s a lesbian.
"It’s a horrible lesson to the young women at that school," said Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation in Detroit.
The officer, Charlene Genther, 55, was in her sixth year at the Catholic, college-preparatory school for girls. A former Detroit police officer, she has a daughter who graduated from the Bloomfield Township school in 2001.
Her firing has prompted Marian alumnae to action. A petition at www.petitionspot.com/petitions/genther that seeks an apology for Genther and the gay and lesbian community had gathered 136 signatures by Wednesday.
Genther said Wednesday that she has been in a committed relationship for 28 years and that it was no surprise to anyone at the school that she is a lesbian. She and her partner often attended school events, chaperoned dances and went to parent-teacher conferences.
But last week, when she began publicizing her autobiography, "Badge 3483: A True Story," which addresses the relationship, she was fired.
Genther said Sister Lenore Pochelski, the school’s president, gave her the news Friday, two hours after a local newspaper reporter interviewed her about the book. She said Pochelski said she wouldn’t have gotten fired if she hadn’t gone public with the book.
"She was very clear," Genther said. "She said it was because my lifestyle does not coincide with the teachings of the Catholic Church. I personally felt she was having a hard time firing me. …
"But she was firm that she had to go along with the teachings of the Catholic Church."
Pochelski confirmed that Genther was terminated, but said she would not comment on her termination out of respect for personnel and confidentiality issues.
"She was a great employee," Pochelski said. "We’re grateful for her generous service."
Their gratitude is worth its weight in gold. But it isn’t just gay people who need to be beaten over the head every now and then with all the respect, compassion and sensitivity the catholic church can muster. Anyone who dares regard the homosexual as their neighbor, as fellow citizens, clearly needs a little respect, compassion and sensitivity too.
CORNWALL, Ont. – The altar rail is no place for confrontation between Catholic politicians and the clergy who want them to fall into line, Washington’s archbishop emeritus said Tuesday.
But if a politician consistently and publicly defies the church, he should be denied communion, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick told the Conference of Canadian Catholic Bishops meeting here this week.
”You have no choice in the matter. That person should not partake of communion. Sometimes you just have to do it.”
In Canada, some priests threatened to bar MPs from communion and church activities over their stance on abortion and same-sex marriage.
In the last U.S. election, McCarrick was caught between hard-right Catholics and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic who supported access to abortion and gay rights.
Hardliners said bishops who gave communion to pro-choice candidates were spineless and not ”real Catholics.” Others were horrified that something as sacred as the eucharist could be withheld as a punishment and used as a political weapon.
Respect. Compassion. Sensitivity. What these things actually mean, depends on your point of view. Is the homosexual your neighbor, or an inferior being of some kind…an emotional cripple with an intrinsically disordered sexuality at best, if not a willing tool of Satan, part of a new ideology of evil, whose struggle for equality is a threat to the existence of civilization itself? How you answer that question, defines the meaning of respect, compassion, and sensitivity with regard to gay people. Which makes these occasional avowals of respect, compassion, sensitivity, and so on from the Catholic church far less important, then that consistent and immovable affirmation of dogma, that homosexual relationships are against god’s plan.
Against that standard of measure, respect, compassion, and sensitivity simply cannot mean the same thing when extended to gay people, that it does when extended to everyone else. And if you think that the staggering mountain of evidence that the love of same sex couples is as meaningful, as essential, as life affirming for them as the love between opposite sex couples, might one day convince the Catholic hierarchy that god’s plan is a tad bigger then their dogmas, then you are a moral relativist. The Bishops here in Baltimore have something to say about that too…
The document addresses the fact that America is suffering from "moral relativism in our society" and a "widespread tendency toward hedonism" which makes the Church’s teaching on homosexuality difficult for some to hear.
A Catholic man I met on the job once, told me that it isn’t so much access to God that the church provides, as Truth. That’s important to understand. What "the church" provides, is Truth. When the Catholic hierarchy talks about "moral relativism", what it means is "seeking Truth from a source other then the church". That’s not the same meaning most people get from that phrase. When you think "moral relativism" you generally think of a kind of subjectivism, where every belief is held to be equally valid. But that’s not what the Catholic hierarchy means. As far as they are concerned, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, James Dobson, Fred Phelps, Dr. Laura…everyone…who thinks Truth can possibly be anything but what the Catholic church tells them it is, are all moral relativists.
To let the facts guide you is moral relativism. To judge a thing based on the evidence at hand is moral relativism. To let nature speak for itself is moral relativism. To believe what you see with your own two eyes is moral relativism. Truth is what the church says it is, because only the church Has Truth. If you believe anything else, you are a moral relativist. And if you’re wondering how an institution that not only turned its back on the victims of child abuse, but actively protected the abusers can even think of itself as embodying Truth, then consider that it is precisely because they believe it that those abuses, of the children, of the trust of the faithful, could happen in the first place.
It isn’t the quest for Truth that turns people into gutter crawling thugs, it’s the belief that they and they alone embody it.
There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts – obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.
It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. it was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".
…We have to cure ourselves of the itch of absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
-Jacob Bronowski "The The Ascent Of Man "
It is precisely the same callow vanity that feels no qualms whatever in firing "a great employee", in demanding politicians ultimately heel to their will as a condition of grace, in turning the joy and happiness of same sex couples into ash, that imposed itself on helpless children, over and over again, and then demanded they and their parents suffer in silence. Truth. What does it mean to extend respect, compassion, and sensitivity to the homosexual? What does it mean to extend them to an altar boy? To his parents? To the faithful? It isn’t power that corrupts absolutely. It’s arrogance.
Washington – The Republican Party last night refused to cancel commercials that claim Sherrod Brown was a longtime tax scofflaw – even though the state of Ohio says the ad’s claim is untrue.
Brown, the Democrat running against incumbent Mike DeWine, paid the tax bill years ago, soon after receiving a tax lien, according to newly released records from the Brown campaign and authenticated by the state.
But the Republican National Committee, supporting DeWine’s reelection bid, is running commercials saying that Brown "didn’t pay his unemployment taxes for 13 years."
DeWine ran his own commercial all day Wednesday with a DeWine family friend saying that Brown didn’t pay "an outstanding tax bill for 12 years."
Hours after Brown campaign lawyers complained, DeWine spokesman Brian Seitchik said last night that the campaign would change its ad "as soon as possible," but that it still would reflect the fact that Brown "failed to pay a delinquent tax bill."
The RNC, however, said last night that it had no plans to change its ad.
Washington) New statistics show that hate crimes against gays and lesbians accounted for the third largest number of bias crimes in the country last year sparking a new push from LGBT rights groups for federal hate laws.
Overall the number of reported hate crimes was down by six percent. Crimes against people based on their race accounted for more than half of the incidents. Crimes based on religious bias were reported in 17 percent of the cases and attacks on members of the LGBT community came in third at 14.2 percent according to the FBI statistics.
The numbers are considered by many LGBT rights groups as low because not all gay victims report attacks on them for fearing of being outed publicly and because not all areas of the country track LGBT bias crimes.
In fact, whenever the issue of tracking these kinds of crimes comes up in the legislatures, it is reliably attacked by republicans and their religious right rubes as a prelude to an attack on their religious freedoms. You know…like the god given right to walk up to a gay teenager and just punch them right in the face while they’re sitting peacefully on a trolley…
(San Diego, California) A 50 year old man who came to the aid of a teenager being gay bashed on a San Diego Trolley was slashed with a knife.
Police say that the Trolley was traveling ;through the Encanto neighborhood when a man in his mid 30’s began making homophobic remarks to the teen. The man then punched the young man in the face.
…not to mention that god given right to take a knife to anyone who interferes…
When the older passenger attempted to intervene and prevent the teenager from further attack the assailant pulled a knife and slashed the 50 year old.
The attacker escaped when the Trolley made its next stop.
…or that god given right to prowl the gay ghettos looking for gay men to beat the crap out of, then rob, then rape.
San Francisco, California) A meeting Monday night between police and residents of San Francisco’s mostly LGBT Castro neighborhood brought a commitment that street patrols would be stepped up following a series of attacks.
About 100 residents attended the meeting, several telling personal stories.
Mark Welsh said he was attacked as he walked from work to his car
"I was attacked from behind and hit in the back, neck and shoulder, which knocked me to the ground … As I fell to the ground, they proceeded to kick and punch throughout most of my body."
Throughout the beating and robbery Welsh said his attackers "kept calling me a faggot, many a time."
When they finished robbing him they sexually assaulted him.
Two other attacks fit the same pattern – beatings, robberies and then rapes.
And who but a satanist would want to deny the faithful and righteous the right to chase gay men into oncoming traffic and to their death…?
(New York City) The charges against two of the men accused of driving a gay Brooklyn man onto a busy highway where he was struck and killed have been formally upgraded to murder. A third man is expected to face the same charge.
…
Police allege that Fox and Shurov posed as gay men, cruising an Internet chat room looking for a mark to rob. They met Sandy online.
Chat messages between Sandy and the men were reportedly found on his home computer and a printout from his computer showing directions to Plum Beach, a popular cruising area, were found in his car.
Police allege that Sandy arranged to meet Fox on a street corner in Sheepshead Bay. The two then drove the short distance to the beach where the other three were waiting.
When the gang began beating him Sandy bolted for the nearby Belt Parkway with his attackers in close pursuit.
They caught up with him in one lane of the highway and as Sandy broke free he was struck by a car, sustaining massive injuries.
The attackers were last seen rifling through Sandy’s pockets before fleeing.
For gay people to stand up and demand a stop to anti-gay violence, is to attack religious freedom. At least, that’s what the Bush base is claiming. Hate crime laws they insist, punish thought. But if that’s the case then so do laws that protect anyone from discrimination on the basis of race or religion, because you can’t say it’s either one if the thinking is irrelevant. Yes I said I wouldn’t serve them at my lunch counter…yes I’m a racist…but to enact laws against that is to punish me for what I think of people like that and that’s thought control… No. The problem isn’t that hate crime laws or anti-discrimination laws punish thought, but that they protect people who bigots believe down in their bones they have every right to beat the living crap out of whenever they damn well please. It isn’t Who the hell are you to tell me what to think, but Who the hell are you to treat those people as if they’re my equals.
If we don’t bleed, they’re not righteous. And so, we have to bleed.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 15 through October 21, 2006, as National Character Counts Week. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, parents, students, and all Americans to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs.
Hey…I have an idea for an appropriate activity during National Character Counts Week… Let’s have a fundraiser for a fellow republican who cheated on his wife and then tried to choke his mistress…
President Bush’s appearance Oct. 19 in Northeastern Pennsylvania will be for a $350-per-person fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood at Keystone College, LaPlume Township.
Keystone spokesman Fran Calpin confirmed Mr. Bush’s appearance at the college but had no other details. However, a Republican source confirmed the ticket price and said the event will not be open to the public.
The visit will be Mr. Bush’s fifth to the region as president, by far the most of any president. He also visited once as Republican presidential nominee in 2000.
Mr. Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock Township, is locked in a tight battle with Democrat Chris Carney, of Dimock Township, for the 10th Congressional District seat.
…In Pennsylvania this week, Representative Don Sherwood, a suddenly endangered Republican, bought time on television to offer an apology in response to allegations that he had abused his mistress. Analysts for both parties said the sweep of outrage over Congressional misbehavior had weakened Mr. Sherwood and forced him to deal directly with the issue.
Frank Rich in the New York Times the other day, gave the Mark Foley scandal some much needed, if incomplete perspective. I’d link to it but they have it behind their subscriber only firewall…
If anything good has come out of the Foley scandal, it is surely this: The revelation that the political party fond of demonizing homosexuals each election year is as well-stocked with trusted and accomplished gay leaders as virtually every other power center in America. "What you’re really seeing is the Republican Party on the Hill," says Rich Tafel, the former leader of the gay Log Cabin Republicans whom George W. Bush refused to meet with during the 2000 campaign. "Across the board gay people are in leadership positions." Yet it is this same party’s Congressional leadership that in 2006 did almost nothing about government spending, Iraq, immigration or ethics reform, but did drop everything to focus on a doomed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
The split between the Republicans’ outward homophobia and inner gayness isn’t just hypocrisy; it’s pathology. Take the bizarre case of Karl Rove. Every one of his Bush campaigns has been marked by a dirty dealing of the gay card, dating back to the lesbian whispers that pursued Ann Richards when Mr. Bush ousted her as Texas governor in 1994. Yet we now learn from "The Architect," the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove’s own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was openly gay in the years before his death in 2004. This will be a future case study for psychiatric clinicians as well as historians.
So will Kirk Fordham, the former Congressional aide who worked not only for Mark Foley but also for such gay-baiters as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (who gratuitously bragged this year that no one in his family’s "recorded history" was gay) and Senator Mel Martinez of Florida (who vilified his 2004 Republican primary opponent, a fellow conservative, as a tool of the "radical homosexual agenda"). Then again, even Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania senator who brought up incest and "man-on-dog" sex while decrying same-sex marriage, has employed a gay director of communications. In the G.O.P. such switch-hitting is as second nature as cutting taxes.
Just so. When the Log Cabin republicans start yapping that the republican party isn’t as homophobic as the democrats paint it, they’re right as far as it goes. In much of the party machine, the gay bashing is purely opportunistic. But that doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse. They know gay people…they work with gay people every day. They know what contributions we make to our country, to our communities, to our neighbors. They know from first hand day to day experience the humanity of the people they are throwing to the wolves every election cycle for votes. Yet they do it anyway.
And now the story in the news media is about how the republicans have been playing the religious right for votes all along. Well imagine that…
“Tempting Faith’s” author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo’s previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft….
He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”
“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.
But the hypocrisy doesn’t stop there, or rather, it doesn’t Begin there. On a Sixty Minutes interview the other day, Kuo delicately as possible for someone in his position, cast a glance at it…
Part of the problem, he says, was indifference from "the base," the religious right. He took 60 Minutes to a convention of evangelical groups – his old stomping ground – and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.
"You’ve got homosexuality in your kid’s school, and you’ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell," Kuo remarked. "Not a mention of the poor."
"This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda – as if this culture war is a war for God. And it’s not a war for God, it’s a war for politics. And that’s a huge difference," says Kuo
Via Pam’s House Blend, you can get an even better look. Condi Rice recently swore in openly gay Mark Dybul as Global AIDS Coordinator. What was all the more remarkable, coming from an administration that has cynically perfected the art of gay bashing for votes, the ceremony was conducted with Mark’s partner Jason right there next to him, and Jason’s mother in the audience, who Rice referred to in her remarks as Mark’s mother-in-law.
A spokesman for a family-advocacy group in Washington, DC, is expressing disgust with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s swearing in of an openly homosexual man as global AIDS coordinator
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
The ceremony involved Secretary of State Rice and the swearing in of Mark Dybul, an open homosexual, as the nation’s new global AIDS coordinator…
Blessed are they that morn: for they shall be comforted…
An Associated Press photo of the ceremony also shows a smiling First Lady Laura Bush and Dybul’s homosexual "partner," Jason Claire. During her comments, Rice referred to the presence of Claire’s mother and called her Dybul’s "mother-in-law," a term normally reserved for the heterosexuals who have been legally married.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth…
We have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse…
Bless them that curse you…
…for her to treat his partner like a spouse and treat the partner’s mother as a mother-in-law, which implies a marriage between the two partners, is a violation of the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act…
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself…
According to news reports, in all three cases the men’s homosexual partners held the Bible on which the oath of office was sworn.
And by chance there came a certain priest that same way, and when he saw him, he passed by. And likewise a Levite…Then a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came nigh unto him, and when he saw him, had compassion on him…
The hypocrisy of the republican party angers me greatly. But it doesn’t disgust me half as much as the braying herd in America’s suburban tract cathedrals, who would gladly have nailed the one who preached love and peace and concern for the poor and powerless hard to the cross themselves, if they had to spit the nails out of their mouths to do it.
If God Had Wanted Clean Bathrooms He Wouldn’t Have Created Men
Well I’m glad to see the United States isn’t the only non-Muslim country with a jittery religious kook bin. They’ve got it bad in Norway too, of all places. First it was the zoo. No…not the kook zoo…the one in Oslo…
(Oslo) Oslo’s internationally acclaimed Natural History Museum is being assailed by Norwegian church groups over an exhibit called "Against Nature" which shows same-sex animal pairs.
The exhibit documents homosexuality among penguins, parrots, giraffes, whales and other animals and insects. A translation from Norwegian into English of a statement at the exhibit says
"We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear — homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature."
The exhibit opened Thursday features a photograph that attracted considerable attention of two sexually aroused whales rubbing together. Another shows two male giraffe’s engaged in sex.
"The sexual urge is strong in all animals. … It’s a part of life, it’s fun to have sex," exhibit organizer Geir Soeli told the Reuters news agency.
But conservative Christian groups are accusing the museum of displaying pornography. One evangelical pastor said museum directors should burn in hell.
The exhibit was partially funded by the government and church groups are demanding an investigation into how the grant was made.
Next thing you know they’ll be picketing the natural history museums that dare to tell their visitors that the earth isn’t really flat…right?
NORWAY has become embroiled in a dispute over toilets and the nature of masculinity.
The matter blew up because a primary school headmistress tried to ban boys from urinating while standing up.
Anne Lise Gjul, the head of a mixed primary school in the southern Norwegian city of Kristiansand, wanted to introduce the ban after complaints from cleaners that many boys could not aim properly.
The measure has upset right-wing Norwegian politicians, however, who say it blurs a God-given distinction between the sexes.
"If boys are not allowed to pee in the natural way that they have done for generations, then it amounts to an assault on God’s creations," thundered Vidar Kleppe, the head of Norway’s Justice and Order party.
Happy Monday. There isn’t a crazier thing you’ll see all week then a bunch of Norwegians thumping the bible for the god given right to pee standing up. And you thought they were bad here in America.
Via Steve Gilliard… If the Russian mob joined in the fight against gay rights, Randy Thomasson would applaud them as "shining models for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community" too…
Sacramento’s large enclave of immigrant Slavic evangelicals is becoming a force on social issues. Their actions shock many.
SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble.
The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.
Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.
"So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."
The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s "Lavender Heights" neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.
Over the last 18 months, Sacramento Russian-language church members have picketed gay pride events, jammed into legislative committee meetings when gay issues were on the agenda and demonstrated at school board meetings.
Incited by firebrand Russian Pentacostal pastors and polemical Russian-language newspapers, the fundamentalists turn out en masse for state Capitol protest rallies.
Last June, urging readers to attend a massive rally, the Russian newspaper the Speaker told them:
"Make a choice. It’s your decision. Homosexuality is knocking on your doors and asking: ‘Can I make your son gay and your daughter lesbian?’ "
In most instances, the Russian-speaking demonstrators far outnumber representatives from all other anti-gay groups combined. Anti-homosexual rallies that a few years ago attracted a few dozen participants now regularly draw hundreds and sometimes thousands, many with a heavy Russian accent.
It’s worth noting, and the L.A. Times article does note, that not all Russian communities in this country are as crazy bigoted as the one in Sacramento. But this one community is different. How?
The Sacramento community, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly evangelical — Baptist and Pentecostalist. The charismatic Pentacostal church, introduced in the Ukraine in the 1920s by missionary and martyr Ivan Efimovich Vornaev, includes speaking in tongues and washing of feet. The churches’ social views are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
And I’ll just bet, relentlessly antisemite too. Russia has had a problem with that for untold generations…the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in Russia…and my understanding is that it is among precicely these fervent religious types in Russia, the kind that like their Christianity loud and gilded and glittering and all controlling, that the hatred of jews is the most vehement.
Well…hating jews doesn’t gain you a lot of traction here in the United States, no matter how proudly you wear Christ around your neck…just ask Mel Gibson. But you can still hate homosexuals and demand respect for your sincere religiosity…
Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.
"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.
Behold a shining model…
Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.
Signs displayed by the demonstrators often equate homosexuality with pedophilia and describe the AIDS epidemic as a message from God. One of the common tactics of the demonstrators is to tap gays forcefully on the head and announce that they have been "saved."
"They’ve declared war on us for some reason," said Stand Up for Sacramento founder Nathan Feldman, a jewelry store clerk. "They got it into their heads that California is the land of sin and that it is their duty to cleanse the state, starting with homosexuals."
What Thomasson means is that they are more aggressive and willing to physically attack gay people then even Fred Phelps’ group. Thomasson is a well known opponent of gay rights in California. What he sees and values in the ethnic Russian community around Sacramento isn’t faith, it’s their willingness to bring fear into the lives of gay people. Because of his new allies in the war on homosexuals, Sacramento Pride Days now require heightened security. This is what brings Randy hope. Or at least, satisfaction.
Simple Pleasures That Should Never Ever Go Together
I like Coca Cola and I like deep fried food. I don’t do very much of either anymore because at my age I have to watch my weight a tad more carefully then I did when I was a wirey little twenty-something. But I have a nice Waring deep fryer here at Casa del Garrett and it gets used at least once a month, either for a fish fry or Maryland crab cakes, and maybe a tad more then once a month for a random side of french fries. All of which are positively decadent when you use peanut oil in the fryer. Trust me. A deep fryer can be addictive.
RALEIGH – It has come to this at the N.C. State Fair: Deep fried Coca-Cola.
Each year, some carnival culinary innovator with a flair for foods bound to lead to congestive heart failure offers a new foodstuff bathed in gooey dough and dropped in a vat of boiling vegetable oil.
Past fairs have seen candy bars, Twinkies, Moonpies, Oreos, cheeseburgers, sweet potatoes and even green beans fried up and, in most cases, impaled on a stick. South Carolina’s state fair even added crispy Ho-hos.
Perhaps the concession operators, these Emerils of the french fry basket, simply ran out of solid foods.
The solution? Mix funnel-cake batter with Coke instead of water. Pour batter into the fryer and cook up a mass of doughy strands. Stuff into a Coca Cola cup, sprinkle with powdered sugar and douse with pure Coke syrup. Top it with whipped cream and a cherry.
Solution to what…that heart attack you’ve always wanted? Why not just top it with a slice of bacon too while you’re at it?
Which brings me to another puzzlement. County fairs and seashore boardwalks both have one thing in common besides Ferris wheels, bumper cars, and other assorted cheap thrills and that’s the quality of the junk food. Funnel Cakes. Cotton Candy. Fries. Pizza. Fudge. Ice cream cones dipped in hot chocolate. Salt Water Taffy. Think about it. On the one hand you have the beach, and all the people frolicking in the surf and sand in their bathing suits mostly, and up there on the boardwalk we’re eating stuff that will eventually make us so overweight we’ll never want to put on our bathing suits ever again.
So I’m walking to work, as I usually do when the weather is nice like this. During spring and fall here in the Mid-Atlantic states it’s usually neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for a good brisk walk in the morning and evening. My path takes me through mostly residential neighborhoods, first my own, then after a small patch of strip shopping centers, Roland Park. I turn a corner on University Parkway, and I’m on San Martin Drive, where the Space Telescope Science Institute is located.
San Martin Drive winds crookedly along the parameter of Wyman Park, which is just behind Johns Hopkins University. The road itself is park like, with a mostly forested scenery all around it. I walk down a tree shaded winding road, until I get to the Muller Building, where the Institute is located. There is one final sharp bend in the road. As I walk I suddenly find myself stepping over broken glass. At some point in over the weekend, there was a bad accident there.
I walk through the debris field, looking around. The point of impact is on my side of the road, near the curb. There are tire marks gouging the grass. It looks like the person coming the other way tried to go up onto the grass to avoid an oncoming car that had taken the curve way too fast and drifted over into their lane. But tire marks gouging the grass from the other direction tell me that the avoidance maneuver was to no avail. The oncoming car went up over the sidewalk too. It would have been close to a direct head-on collision.
Glass is scattered all around the debris field. There are bits and pieces of car here and there. Parts of a headlight. Parts of a bumper. A bit of sideview mirror. I look down and see a car’s horn sitting uselessly in the grass. Ironic. Next to it I see a little plastic part of a child’s toy. A little red fireman’s helmet.
It’s easy to visualize the act of driving as an exclusively adult situation. Children don’t get driver’s licenses. You look around in traffic and you see only adults behind the wheel. Oh, the occasional teen maybe. But that’s a kid making the transition to adult. And so you’re out there on the road and you’re seeing it as being you and all the other adults there on the road with you and it isn’t. There are kids out there on the road with you. Passengers in other people’s cars you mostly either can’t see or don’t notice because they’re not behind the wheel. But they’re there. You teach them not to play in the street. The sight of a group of children playing games in the middle of a freeway would horrify an adult. But the highways are full of children at any given time. In the cars. Blithely trusting the adults to take care of them as children will do.
Visualize yourself driving down a highway with children scattered around everywhere on it. And they aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing.
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