The Bush Administration announced last week that the nation is no longer losing wetlands–as long as you consider golf course water hazards to be wetlands.
Really.
Thursday (March 30), Interior Secretary Gale Norton called a press conference to claim our long nightmare of wetlands loss had finally come to an end due to unprecedented gains since 1997 (click hear to read the report she cites). However, she then admitted much of that gain has been in artificially created ponds, such as golf course water hazards and farm impoundments.
The sporting community–from Ducks Unlimited to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership–reacted quickly, and not favorably.
I’ll bet not. Next they’ll be saying that global warming is on the decline, because worldwide sales of air conditioners are up.
John at Americablog posted this open letter from gay Democratic party insider Paul Yandura the other day. It pretty much speaks for me too, and I’d intended to blog a little about it…
Dear Friends:
The Republicans have announced that they intend to use gay equality issues as a divisive election year tactic- AGAIN this year. Neither the DNC, nor any of the national committees (DCCC,DSCC), have a strategy to combat this hatred (unless you count avoidance as a strategy).
For many months a number of us have made appeals to Howard Dean and party officials to care about and defend the dignity of gay and lesbian families and friends, in the same way they defend the dignity of other key constituencies.
As the enclosed article shows, the DNC is fighting the vicious attacks being waged upon immigrants by the Republican party. Its the right thing to do and I applaud their action. Why then is it so difficult for them to do the same for us?
Why are gays and lesbians continually left to fight these battles alone? Where are our allies?
All progressives need to be asking how much has the DNC budgeted to counter the anti-gay ballot initiatives in the states. We also all need to know why the DNC and our Democratic leaders continue to allow the Republicans to use our families and friends as pawns to win elections.
We need answers to these questions. Until we get them my advice is don’t give any more money to the Dems.
-Paul
Well, that’s not my advice. My advice is to give to specific democratic candidates who are willing to stand up for justice and equality for gay and lesbian Americans, and To No One Else until they all grow backbones. But then Dean has to go and do something you’d think was worthy only of Petulant George…
Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean on May 2 fired the party’s gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock less than a week after Hitchcock’s domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take stronger action to defend gays.
Howard Dean sacked the party’s gay outreach advisor just days after his domestic partner publicly criticized the party chair for failing to stand up for gay families.
Dean immediately hired gay former Democratic Party operative Brian Bond to replace Hitchcock, according to DNC spokesperson Karen Finney, who called Bond a "proven leader."
…
"It was not retaliation," Finney said of Hitchcock’s dismissal. "It was decided we needed a change. We decided to hire a proven leader."
Sell it to the White House Press Corps Finney. I’m not a republican. You can’t expect me to believe transparantly obvious bullshit just because the party leadership tells me to believe it.
Hitchcock declined comment Tuesday night except to confirm that Dean informed him May 2 through a surrogate that he had been terminated. He said he was considering consulting an attorney to decide whether to contest the firing.
"This is retaliation, plain and simple," said Yandura. "This shows what they think about domestic partners."
Yandura said Tuesday night that Dean was using Hitchcock as a "scapegoat" for problems of Dean’s own making.
"All I did was ask questions about what the party and Dean are doing about its GLBT constituency, Yandura said. "I have yet to see any answers."
Well, you just got one. And so did the rest of us. Howard Dean just retaliated against a gay man whose spouse spoke out about the party’s cowardly behavior in the face of republican gay bashing. The same Howard Dean who eliminated the GLBT Outreach Desk, telling the Gay community when we started raising a stink that it was all really an effort to improve outreach to all constituencies. The same Howard Dean who enjoyed much gay support for his 2004 presidential run, based on his signing into law Vermont’s Civil Unions. Somehow, when he became chair of the DNC, some of us expected that the party would actually start fighting back against the bigots, instead of picking a lot of pointless fights with gay democrats. But I guess not. Well…we always were the easy targets…
My advice is still, and now more then ever, to give to, and work for, democrats who are willing to stand up for us. But then it seemed, once upon a time, as though Dean was one of those democrats, didn’t it. I can almost envy the republicans. Life must be so much simpler when all you have to think is what the party tells you to think, and all you have to do is what the party tells you to do.
There are two subtle misconceptions about the rise of the neo fascist right in America. The first is that it amounts to a new and unholy alliance between big business and the religious right. The second is that the religious right has largely been responsible for giving that rise its energy. Both these beliefs have somewhat more then a germ of truth to them. But there is a power, even behind the religious right, and it isn’t exactly a godly one. The religious right can generate huge quantities of fire and brimstone, smoke and noise. But the fuel for the fire is money, and the major organizations of the religious right can barely meet their own expenses, much less fund a vast network of think tanks, publications, and grassroots political action committees that cannot support themselves. Big American corporations routinely give to political parties and bribe politicians and communities in various ways, but it does not itself fund the vast right wing infrastructure that has come to dominate, and profoundly distort, American politics.
The dragging of the American political dialogue into the gutter has been largely done by a small circle of right wing billionaires. Working quietly behind the scenes, their wealth funds an astonishing array of institutions and groups, from the very large to the very small. Through their foundations, and their occasional direct contributions, they have injected their wealth, and their political viewpoints, into everything from the major right wing propaganda mills masquerading as think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, to newspapers and magazines, to religious and conservative campus clubs and newspapers, and small ersatz community grassroots organizations, many of which seem to suddenly pop up out of nowhere whenever local governments begin enacting progressive legislation, particularly regarding gay rights.
This small circle of billionaires have utterly poisoned the political dialogue in America. But their ambitions are not confined to this nation alone. Their poison now works its way into the veins of many nations abroad as well. Canada. South America. Africa.
And for decades now, subtly and at times in complete secrecy, they have been distorting the dialogue of the mainstream protestant denominations. Through funding of small and otherwise obscure right wing clerical groups, they actively seek to establish their beliefs regarding faith and religion, as they have sought to establish their political beliefs, through the shear power of their billions.
Much of which, unsurprisingly when you think about it, is inherited wealth.
In the current issue of the newsletter of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington D.C., Jim Naughton has begun a multi-part series tracking this money, and its influence, in the Anglican church. I urge everyone to read it, even if you are not an Anglican, because it looks to shine a much needed light on how this group of billionaires not only operates, but who they are, and where they are determined to take this world. What they are doing to this one denomination, which was known for its religious and political moderation until they started injecting their money into it, they are doing to other churches as well. And what they are doing to religious life in America, is pretty much what they have done to our political life.
When the General Convention of the Episcopal Church meets next month in Columbus, Ohio, a small network of theologically conservative organizations will be on hand to warn deputies that they must repent of their liberal attitudes on homosexuality or face serious consequences. The groups represent a small minority of church members, but relationships with wealthy American donors and powerful African bishops have made them key players in the fight for the future of the Anglican Communion.
Millions of dollars contributed by a handful of donors have allowed a small network of theologically conservative individuals and organizations to mount a global campaign that has destabilized the Episcopal Church and may break up the Anglican Communion.
The donors include five secular foundations that have contributed heavily to politically conservative advocacy groups, publications and think tanks, and one individual, savings and loan heir Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., who has given millions of dollars to conservative causes and candidates.
Contributions from Ahmanson and the Bradley, Coors, Olin, Scaife and Smith-Richardson family foundations have frequently accounted for more than half of the operating budgets of the American Anglican Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, according to an examination of forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service and an analysis of statements made by both donors and recipients.
(Emphisis mine). Remember these names if you have not heard of them before. These same names keep popping up over and over again, whenever anyone tries to track where the money is coming from, that funds various right wing groups. Scafie. Olin. Bradley. Coors. Smith-Richardson.
Since the 1970s, charitable foundations established by families with politically conservative views have donated billions of dollars to what the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, has called "an extraordinary effort to reshape politics and public policy priorities at the national, state and local level."
Five foundations are of special note for the magnitude of their donations to political and religious organizations. They are: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; the Adolph Coors Foundation; the John M. Olin Foundation, which ceased operations last year; the Smith-Richardson Trust and the Scaife Family Foundations. Much of the foundations’ largesse supports institutions and individuals active in public policy, including think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute and individuals such as William Bennett, Charles Murray ( The Bell Curve ) and Dinesh D’Souza ( The End of Racism ).
However, the foundations’ activities also extend into the nation’s churches-particularly its mainline Protestant churches. The foundations have provided millions of dollars to the IRD 2 which, in a fundraising appeal in 2000, said it sought to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" Protestant denominations and to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left’s influence."
The IRD was established in 1981 by neo-conservative intellectuals hoping to counter the liberal public policy agendas of the National and World Councils of Christian Churches.
How they operate…
In one well-publicized instance in the 1980s, Diane Knippers, then an IRD staff member, and later its president, distributed information critical of the Nicaraguan Council of Protestant Churches (Consejo de Iglesias Pro-Alianza Denominacional, or CEPAD), a disaster relief organization founded after the devastating 1972 earthquake and sponsored by the mainline American Baptist Church.
CEPAD ran a network of medical clinics for the poor, as well as a successful literacy campaign, according to Fred Clark, an editor of Prism , the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action. "That literacy work had won the admiration and support of Nicaragua ‘s president, Daniel Ortega, and his Sandinista regime. Ortega’s praise of CEPAD gave Knippers what she saw as an opening," Clark wrote in a 2003 account.
Although the evangelical churches did not support the Sandinistas, Clark wrote, "Knippers portrayed CEPAD — and therefore the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society — as ‘guilty’ by association. She wrote of CEPAD as a communist front, part of a supposed Soviet beachhead in Nicaragua . No one in this country paid much attention, but the contras did. CEPAD’s clinics became targets for their paramilitary terrorists."
The ensuing controversy was followed closely by mainstream evangelical publications such as Christianity Today . In the end, Clark writes, "CEPAD was vindicated and IRD suffered a devastating embarrassment. They were, rightly, perceived as an unreliable source of information – closed-minded ideologues who were willing to attack others on the basis of irresponsibly flimsy evidence."
Still, Knippers, who died in 2005, and the institute remained a favorite of conservative foundations. Since 1985, the IRD has received 72 grants worth more than $4,679,000 from the Bradley, Coors, Olin, Scaife and Smith-Richardson family foundations.
Ahmanson…
Ahmanson also helps sustain organizations in the United Kingdom and elsewhere that support removing the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada from the Anglican Communion unless they change their policies regarding same-sex relationships.
The full extent of his contributions cannot be determined because most are made through his private foundation, Fieldstead and Company, whose records are not open to public scrutiny. And neither the AAC nor the IRD discloses the names of its most significant contributors or the amounts of their donations.
As a result, Anglicans have no full accounting of how much money is being spent, and for what purposes, in the struggle for control of their Communion.
Naughton devotes most of the rest of his first part to Ahmanson. That’s a good start. You need to pay particular attention to Ahmanson…
Previously, Ahmanson was a disciple of the Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony, the father of Christian Reconstructionism. Rushdoony died in 2001 with the Ahmansons at his bedside. He advocated basing the American legal system on biblical laws, including stoning adulterers and homosexuals.
Unlike most mainstream protestant churches in America, Christian Reconstuctionists believe that the second coming of Christ won’t happen until After Christ’s kingdom has been established on the earth. They regard it as their duty to God to establish biblical fundamentalist theocracy around the world, so the second coming can happen. Think the Taliban, but with America’s military might and nuclear arsenal. The believe that non-believers can have no civil rights, cannot serve in government or the military, and must be ritually put to death if they violate biblical law…
Ahmanson, who suffers from Tourrette’s syndrome, rarely grants interviews with the media, but he and his wife cooperated with the Register on a five-part profile that appeared in August 2004."I think what upsets people is that Rushdoony seemed to think–and I’m not sure about this–that a godly society would stone people for the same thing that people in ancient Israel were stoned," Ahmanson was quoted as saying. "I no longer consider that essential."
"It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things," he added. "But I don’t think it’s at all a necessity."
Perhaps he’d also find it "a little hard to say" if it was inherently immoral to kill people running medical clinics, and teaching the poor to read in South America too.
This is where the money is coming from, to fund the destabilization of the Anglican church. Be certain that this same money is also actively funding right wing theocrats in every American denomination today. Never mind the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons of the pulpits…this is why religious life in America has become smaller, meaner, more venomous then ever. It is also why America and the American dream of liberty and justice for all is more in danger now, then it has ever been. The money that destabilizes the Anglican church, is also actively working to destabilize America.
Ahmanson emerged as a political force in his home state of California in the early 1990s. Research conducted for The Los Angeles Times found that he and his wife had contributed $3.9 million to Republican candidates in state and local races and $82,750 in federal races between 1991 and 1995. They also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to ballot initiatives that banned gay marriage and affirmative action.Campaign finance records indicate that the couple continues to contribute heavily to Republican candidates nationwide.
Ahmanson is a member of the secretive Council for National Policy, an elite group of politically conservative national leaders who meet several times a year to coordinate their efforts on a common agenda. According to a New York Times report, the dates and locations of the group’s meetings are kept secret, as is its membership. Participants in the group’s discussions promise not to reveal their content. Members in recent years have included Gary Bauer, Tom DeLay, James Dobson, Bob Jones, III, of Bob Jones University, Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series, Grover Norquist, Oliver North, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly.
Ahmanson also supports several think tanks. He was a major benefactor and former board member of Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. He also contributes heavily to the Discovery Institute, the intellectual flagship of the Intelligent Design movement, and the George C. Marshall Institute, which disputes research indicating that human activity contributes to global warming.
One more thing about Ahmanson you need to know…
Increasingly, investigative writers seeking an explanation have looked to Diebold’s history for clues. The electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations – Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined count an estimated 80% of U.S. black box electronic votes.
In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S’s originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68% ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS)…
…
The Ahmanson family sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.
In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel’s first election victory was described as a “stunning upset” by one Nebraska newspaper.
Once again…You Must Read Jim Naughton’s article. Go. As he posts the rest of his series I will link to it. It is not only his church, but this nation, that desperately needs this kind of reporting about the activities of these billionaires, and how many sock puppets they own, because those sock puppets are everywhere.
Over the past three decades, conservatives have painstakingly cultivated the public persona of an aggrieved outsider class, bereft of the money and media influence they claim liberals enjoy. Their well-rehearsed routine consists of the repetition of a series of catchphrases designed to snare votes by using wedge social issues to create class divisions, while their own campaigns are funded by a class of wealthy, corporate donors who keep their think tanks flush with lucre. But this bait and switch is hardly a secret, and the donor class continues to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at conservative think tanks in order to shore up the right wing’s advantage in both organization and message discipline. Since the early 1970s, countless conservative foundations have sprung up to quietly influence American public policy by identifying, training, and churning out conservative journalists, thinkers, and pundits – many of whom now hold positions of power in the media.
Remember these names: Scafie. Olin. Bradley. Coors. Smith-Richardson. Carthage. Koch. Lambe. Earhart. DeVos. Ahmanson. By way of a huge array of foundations and front organizations, it is their money that has turned America from a land of freedom and promise, into the land of George Bush republicans and religious right hate mongers. That money is also working very diligently, to turn the Christ who said "Love thy neighbor" into one who says "Kill the stranger, because might makes right."
State Rep. Kevin Calvey praised the Oklahoma State Board of Education today for repealing their sexual orientation policy.
After a request from Calvey, the State Board of Education met today to make a rule change that repeals their current sexual orientation policy by modifying it to be in sync with federal and state law.
"This brings Oklahoma’s educational rules in line with federal and state law and also in line with the values shared by the large majority of Oklahomans," said Calvey, R-Del City.
Currently, federal and state laws require strong anti-discrimination policies in the areas of gender and race but do not address sexual orientation.
Notice the equivocation there. They are not taking protection from discrimination away from gay citizens, they are merely bringing their laws into conformance with federal rules…which only happen to not protect gay people from discrimination. If homosexuality is such a shameful, immoral thing, as these folks so vehemently insist it is, then why do they act like they’re ashamed to admit what they’re doing, when they do it to homosexuals?
But even more then that…notice this:
"The board’s old policy would have opened the door for our schools to become battlegrounds where activists for ‘alternative’ lifestyles would try to undermine the moral teachings of parents," said Calvey. "Now, Oklahomans won’t have to worry about that."
Oklahomans. Oklahomans. None of whom, apparently in that barren wasteland that is the mental landscape of Kevin Calvey, are homosexual, because homosexuals sure as hell have something to worry about now. But no…Oklahomans don’t need to worry about anything that might happen to them. They’re not Oklahomans, they’re not citizens, they might not even be human beings as he understands the term, and they’re certainly not his neighbors.
"I’m a uniter, not a divider". Remember that? Anyone remember that?
It’s been decades now since I saw that "For Sale" sign on your house. I can measure the years that have passed in all the little messages I’ve stuck in this or that random bottle, and tossed out into this ocean of time ever since. Hello? Hello? Are you still out there…somewhere…?
If only I hadn’t been such a nerdy little geek. If only I’d had a little more courage to just be myself instead of hiding behind my cameras all the time. And my cartoons. There’s more I wanted to say. But mostly this: You opened up the world for me.
Hello? Hello? Are you still out there…somewhere…?
These little messages in a bottle are the only way I have of waving to you now. But I reckon I’ll keep tossing them in…because I can still hope one of them will find you one day. Because I just want to wave at you one more time. Because I just want to see one more smile. Because I have to know. I tossed another one in yesterday. If it finds you, please wave back. Please.
I’ve been a busy little dickens lately… The first one’s about bin Laden’s demand that the Danish Twelve cartoonists be extradited to al Qaeda “…to be judged by the law of Allah”…
The second one is about sex abstinence advocate Marcella V. Meyer’s attempt to force Kraft Foods, via a shareholder’s resolution, to withdraw support for the 2006 Gay Games and “…any other future activities supporting, proselytizing, promoting or encouraging homosexual activity or life style.”
More about each of them (and the full size versions) on the Cartoon Page…
So When’s The Next Coming Out Story Episode…Coming Out…???
I haven’t abandoned my Coming Out Story…honest. And I’m not going to make excuses here as to why it’s been since last November that I’ve posted an episode. But I’ve got the pencils at least finished on the next one just now. I think maybe another week on the inks. This next episode is 17 panels long, and it’s about why my friends back then used to worry about me. Since I started this thing as a web comic, I’ve been determined to make the most of the freedom the web allows me. Some episodes are kinda short, and some are pretty long. Well…I let myself get bogged down on a long one and I shouldn’t have.
I really want to get more episodes done and up, in part because I’m still a ways from introducing my two favorite characters in the series…
The one with the white shirt, tie and pocket protector (and jeans and sneakers) is my right brain. The one with the peace symbol, beads, tie-dye shirt and bells is my left brain. They actually have more on-screen time in this story then my libido, but they won’t get introduced for another…uhm…four episodes yet.
I was also thinking this morning, about putting a couple of Mark and Josh mugs up on that Cafepress thing for sale. I have a vague idea about the design. And maybe some Busy Gay Mafia mugs…since that seems to be one of my more popular cartoons.
Something I hadn’t heard about the recent Bin Laden rant, is that he wants the Danish cartoonists who drew Mohammad extradited…to al Qaeda. For a fair trial of course…
Al Qaeda’s leader focused much of his almost 52-minute message on what he continually referred to as “a Zionist-crusader war on Islam,” which he said was shown most explicitly by the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Muslims consider it sacrilegious to produce a likeness of Mohammad, and the cartoons sparked violent protests throughout the Muslim world.
He said the cartoon controversy was “too serious for an apology” and was the most serious aspect of the alleged war against Islam.
Now, in a babbling rant that touched on “…what he called the slaughter of Muslims in places such as Palestine, Bosnia, Kashmir and Chechnya”, you’d think he’d rank that slaughter at least a tad higher then twelve cartoons of Mohammed. But…no. In the screaming mental chaos of the religious fanatic, bloodshed isn’t nearly as offensive as defiance.
He called for the extradition of those responsible for drawing and publishing the cartoons to be tried by al Qaeda, just as he said the United States and United Nations had demanded he be turned over after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“We demand that their governments hand them over to us to be judged by the law of Allah,” he said.
“This request is from the category of treating in kind, and we say to you, if you have not forgotten, let us remind you that when you announced Osama bin Laden was accused of striking at American interests, you issued a [U.N.] Security Council resolution which was passed unanimously declaring the extradition of Osama was mandatory despite no evidence being provided,” bin Laden said.
Al Qaeda has previously claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
In kind. In kind. He really thinks that drawing cartoons of Mohammed is worse then killing Muslims. Perhaps he’d like a few more then. I’d certainly rather draw cartoons then kill anyone.
Damn…I’m going to be so happy when we finally have a president who wants to go after that bastard.
Yesterday was the Day of Silence, a day when students all over the country refused to speak, in silent solidarity with those whose voices have been silenced by hatred and bigotry. Sounds just like one of those foofoo liberal protest kinda things that the bleeding hearts are always doing…right…? I mean…what the hell is that all about anyway…who needs it…why can’t they just stop waving it in our faces…?
Three-quarters of students surveyed across America said that over the past year they heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke" frequently or often at school, and nearly nine out of ten reported hearing "that’s so gay" or "you’re so gay" – meaning stupid or worthless – frequently or often.
Over a third of students said they experienced physical harassment at school on the basis of sexual orientation and more than a quarter on the basis of their gender expression.
Nearly one-in-five students reported they had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and over a tenth because of their gender expression.
Today the other side gets its shot. They’re calling it, without any apparent irony, the Day Of Truth. And if you’re wondering when truth ever even remotely mattered to a group of people who wave Paul Cameron’s lies about homosexuals around like a goddamn bible, then you’re probably a filthy heathen.
Via Ex-Gay Watch, here’s what Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund, which fights anti-bullying measures in public schools with the ferocity of…well…a bunch of bullies, has to say about it:
“Day of Truth” participants will hand out cards of their own, offering to share a candid, loving, fact-based counterpoint to the unspoken assertions of the advocates for homosexual behavior. While making their case from a Christian perspective, the “Day of Truth”ers will confront with compassion — not condemnation — and restrict their discussions to the periods before, after and between classes.
Loving. Compassion. Not Condemnation. How about a little truth in this Day Of Truth? In April 2004, while other students at Poway High School in northern San Diego County were observing the Day Of Silence, student Tyler Harper put masking tape all over the shirt he was wearing, and wrote messages on it specifically to let the gay students at Poway High School know his contempt for them, and for those who thought their lives, and their right to a decent education, were worth defending:
A candid, loving, fact-based counterpoint….confronting with compassion, not condemnation… If you’d think the Alliance would object to this sort of thing…well…think again. The school ordered Harper to take it off. Harper, with the help of Alan Sears and his Alliance Defense Fund, sued the school. They lost:
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that a T-shirt that proclaimed "Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned" on the front and "Homosexuality Is Shameful" on the back was "injurious to gay and lesbian students and interfered with their right to learn." The court said that the shirt can be barred on a public high school campus without violating the 1st Amendment.
"We conclude that" Poway High School student Tyler Harper’s wearing of his T-shirt " ‘collides with the rights of other students’ in the most fundamental way," wrote 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, quoting a passage from Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of students.
"Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion, or sexual orientation have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses. As Tinker clearly states, students have the right to ‘be secure and to be let alone,’ " Reinhardt said.
It seems so simple. All American kids have a right to an education, that’s what the public schools are for. They’re there for the fundamentalist kids, and the heathens alike, but they’re there for everyone. While you’re in school, you have to respect each other. That means the other kids can’t harass you, and you can’t harass the other kids. It seems so simple. But it isn’t. That kind of live and let live agreement is anathema to the religious right.
Had a the school allowed its students to wear t-shirts condemning fundamentalist Christianity as shameful and telling the student body it should be ashamed for tolerating the fundamentalists among them, Alan Sears would be furiously throwing lawsuits around like an antipersonnel mine throwing shrapnel. But let the school tell fundamentalists kids they can’t to the same thing to their gay and lesbian peers, and Sears sides with the harassing students. Hypocrisy? Oh mes non! Fundamentalists have rights that no one else has…because they’re god’s favorite people. To claim that the heathens have the same rights they do isn’t merely an attack on their privileged status, it’s literally an attack on God Almighty Himself. Heathens simply don’t have the same rights god’s people do. Certainly not the right to be left alone. Especially not the right to an education.
Or for that matter, the right to even live. In Iraq and Iran as I write this, gay people are being kidnapped and tortured to death at the behest of the mullahs, whose sense that they are god’s right hand is little different from the theocrats of the religious right here in America. Exodus’ Randy Thomas takes note of that, and compares it to the persecution Christians face…
If you are Christian in Iran … you get stoned to death.
If you have same sex attraction in Iran … you get stoned to death
If you are a Christian who struggles with same sex attraction in Iran … you get the point.
Alas…he doesn’t.
We must keep this in mind for perspective and seek out ways to intercede (prayer and other ways) for our Christian siblings and for those being murdered because of their sexual orientation.
Homophobia is not some off the cuff comment about Tinky Winky. Homophobia is what you see happening in Iran. I am grateful for the Dutch government finally giving asylum to those fleeing Iran. I pray that those who want to find Christ will and those who want to overcome homosexuality will be allowed their right to self-determine that path for their lives as well.
What’s missing from this? Any hint that homosexuals in Iran have the right to exist just as they are. Thomas’s prayer is only for those who wish to change. For the rest, he has no prayers.
Exodus is now taking it’s tacit approval of anti-gay violence to the caribbean, and to Jamaca, where a murderous killing nightmare is taking place. Wayne Besen writes:
An article in last week’s Time magazine calls Jamaica the "most homophobic place on Earth." It points out that two of the island’s leading gay rights advocates, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, were recently ruthlessly slain. If that was not enough, a crowd essentially danced on Williamson’s grave by celebrating over his mutilated body.
In 2004, a father learned his son was gay and went to his school to invite a group of peers to lynch his son. Now that’s family values!
Not too long after this sickening episode, witnesses claim, police egged on a mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. Earlier this year, a Kingston man, Nokia Cowan, drowned after a crowd shouting "batty boy" (a Jamaican slur for queer) chased him off a dock.
"Jamaica is the worst any of us has ever seen," Rebecca Schleifer of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch explained to Time.
That’s what was left of Brian Williamson after the mobs got through with him. Another human life lost to hate. Another voice forever silenced. Truth. But for Exodus, PFOX and the Alliance Defense Fund to come out strongly against anti-gay violence would be to completely contradict their own message, which is that homosexuals can leave behind all the harmful effects of the gay lifestyle any time they want to. Change is possible. Or, to put it another way, whatever happens to homosexuals is their own fault.
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. -Leviticus 20:13
There is the ex-gay message. Not Change Is Possible, but Their Blood Shall Be Upon Them. Brian Williamson. Nicolas West. Billy Jack Gaither. Gwen Araujo. Matthew Shepard. Barry Winchell. Allen Schindler. Seventeen year old Kristofer Guy King, who was killed when a neo nazi with a knife broke into the trailer he was sleeping in, looking for his eighteen year old gay friend. This is what happened to his friend’s mom, Patricia Wells:
Am I the only one getting sick and tired of hearing about Tom Cruse’s new baby? Seems like every frickin channel is all Tom Cruse, all the time. Well…except for the Law and Order channel…
On April 11, Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher removed protections against job discrimination from gay and lesbian state employees. To add insult to injury, he did it on the same day he declared “Diversity Day”.
Shallow understanding from people of good will, is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Jason Johnson, the gay college student expelled from The University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, has been allowed to return to class and finish the school year, under an agreement hammered out by his, and the school’s lawyers. I’m actually surprised. I’d thought the school would dig in its theological heels and insist on its absolute right to remove filthy sodomites from its sacred grounds. In exchange Jason agrees not to sue the school, but I’m puzzled as to how much leverage the threat of a lawsuit against a Southern Baptist school in the Bible Belt could have been. In any case, they’re not going to lie on his transcripts that he failed the semester anymore. Whether or not they treat him fairly in the classroom remains to be seen.
From the Lexington Herald-Leader comes this column from Paul Prather. I wish I could like it…he says a few things I completely agree with…
• I believe private religious schools should have the right to make whatever rules they want (short of mandates to torture or behead heathens), in keeping with the tenets of their faith…
• If you can’t obey a school’s code of conduct, common sense dictates that you might not want to enroll there.
• On the other hand, the same principle holds true for the school itself. If the University of the Cumberlands hopes to earn accreditation from a secular agency, it must be prepared to abide by that group’s secular standards. You can’t have it both ways.
That’s pretty much where I am generally, and I’d go on to add that if you want to discriminate against a portion of the citizenry at minimum you can’t expect them to support you with their tax dollars. Prather goes on to comment on the hypocrisy of singling out gay students for violations of sexual conduct rules, saying that in his own experience on Christian campuses, the straight kids could be just as sexually active as the kids on the secular campuses, if at least a tad more reserved about expressing it openly. But then he goes on to assert that Johnson’s problem was that he called attention to himself, and from there his column goes down a familiar path…
Thus, Johnson’s main mistake wasn’t simply being gay. It was calling undue attention to his orientation. Christian colleges might have been the originators of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell philosophy.
It is a fact that Johnson posted pictures of himself and his boyfriend on his MySpace profile, but nowhere have I seen it said that he was being open about his sexual orientation at school. What I’ve always heard to date is that someone informed on him to the school administration, and they went looking for his MySpace profile and then confronted him with it. In other words, Johnson didn’t tell the school, the school Asked. That’s not Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…that’s stay in the closet if you know what’s good for you. If heterosexuals understand nothing else about their homosexual neighbors, they need to understand this: Those days are over.
There are a lot of us, far too many in my opinion, who are still perfectly willing to be closeted on a situational basis, but none of us but the desperate self loathing are willing to live our entire lives inside the closet anymore. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not turning your back on God or having a lack of moral values or defiant homosexual militancy. It’s something else, something that the Prather’s of the world just don’t seem to get. And yet it’s so simple, or would be, if only you can see the people for the homosexuals. Prather, in trying his best, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s actually trying, misses it completely.
If a straight student had, say, posted photos of himself and his girlfriend in flagrante delicto on the Internet, he also would have been expelled.
In flagrante delicto. It means "Caught in the act." Johnson didn’t post pictures of him and his boyfriend having sex on his MySpace profile. But you could tell at a glance those photos were of two teenagers in love. Look at that for a second. Prather is using a phrase that generally is taken to mean getting caught having sex (the act) to describe photos of two gay teenagers in love. And he goes on in that manner for the rest of the column, trying his best to be sensible and compassionate, and failing miserably because he cannot see the people for the homosexuals…
Homosexual activities and extramarital heterosexual sex indeed are contrary to biblical and historical Christian standards. Yet, they’re about equally as errant as pride, gluttony, stinginess, temper tantrums, disrespect for parents and lying.
One question raised by the Johnson case is this: How should Christian groups react to sexual misconduct? All religious organizations are made up of human beings who, in my observation, tend to fail miserably a fair amount of the time.
Sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct.
Maybe Christian administrators should consider reacting the way Jesus did. I never can think about an incident such as Johnson’s without remembering the time Jesus was confronted with a woman who had been caught "in the very act" of adultery and was about to be stoned for it…
Adultery. The Very Act.
Jesus said, "Let the one who is himself without sin throw the first rock." That ended the stoning. Then he addressed the woman. "Neither do I condemn you," he said. "Go your way. From now on, sin no more."
What a beautiful response…
Beautiful perhaps, when made to someone who had cheated on their spouse. But it is unmitigated ugliness to say this to a gay teenager about his first love. Johnson is not married (never mind for now, that homosexuals can only Be married in one state of the union). He is not having an affair with another married person. And considering Johnson’s religiosity, it would not surprise me in the least to hear they aren’t even having sex yet. We don’t all jump right into the sack on the first date. So at worst you can only call Johnson’s "sin" fornication, not adultery, and there is no evidence even for that. But notice the mental leap here, from images of two young men in love, to adultery, and even more grotesquely, to forgiveness for adultery. No. From Johnson’s MySpace profile, his sin can only be one thing: being a homosexual in love. And there’s what’s missing from all of Paul Prather’s compassion and understanding: any sense whatsoever that homosexuals love, and that they are punished simply for being in love.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex… This is the bedrock of anti-gay prejudice, the one irreducible premise through which everything else about homosexuals is understood. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Never mind the raving haters of the world like Fred Phelps…if you want to understand how otherwise decent people can casually rip the lives of their gay and lesbian neighbors apart with no thought or care for the human misery and wreckage they leave behind, there’s why. They can do it, confidant in the knowledge that our feelings for our mates are shallow imitations of the real feelings heterosexuals feel for theirs. Heterosexuals feel love and contentment and fulfillment in their spouses, but homosexuals can only feel a pale imitation of that. "Playing house" as the homophobic science fiction writer Orson Scott Card once put it. Heterosexuals feel deep and profound grief at the loss of a spouse, but homosexuals can only try to mimic grief at best. So we cannot rip apart everything in their lives they ever held dear, because they don’t really hold those things dear…not the way we do. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.
It’s how anti gay prejudice becomes it’s own unstoppable machine, grinding up the lives of innocent people while others who fancy themselves decent and compassionate and thoughtful citizens look sadly on, as though watching the fate of dogs that have to be put down because they’re so sick. Oh how…unfortunate…for them… If you think that the only wrong done to Jason Johnson was being expelled from his school, you’re missing the graver injury done to his person, and right at the very core of his being. To see it, all you have to do is be able to see the person for the homosexual. Let me try to explain to the Prathers of the world how horrible that "beautiful response" actually is.
Picture the first time you fell in love. Picture that amazed, wonderful feeling. One day, life just seemed more wonderful, more intense, more amazing then you’d ever dreamed it could be. The sun shone a little brighter on everything around you then it did before. The stars seemed to shine more intensely. Everything old seemed new again. Life was beautiful. It was worth living no matter how hard or desperate it got. Everything that ever happened to you was worth it, because it brought you to that moment, and that person. Everything that ever Could happen to you from then on was worth it, so long as a certain person was there, so long as you could see them smile. Because whenever they smiled, you smiled.
I remember it well. When I was a teenager I used to listen to all the pop culture love songs of the sixties and early seventies on my radio, and never really understood what they were about, until I fell in love myself, with a male classmate. I remember hearing this song on my radio one day, I’d heard it countless times before and I didn’t like it at all because it was it was slow, it had no beat, it was just some gooey sugary love song and whenever one of those came on I would reach for the tuning knob and try to find something else I could rock to, and this time when it came on I sat and listened, and began to cry…because I knew exactly how the person who wrote it felt…because it said it all about what I was feeling then…
Today I feel like pleasing you more than before
Today I know what I want to do but I don’t know what for
To be living for you is all I want to do
To be loving you it’ll all be there when my dreams come true
Today you’ll make me say that I somehow have changed
Today you’ll look into my eyes, I’m just not the same
To be anymore than all I am would be a lie
I’m so full of love I could burst apart and start to cry
Today everything you want, I swear it all will come true
Today I realize how much I’m in love with you
-Jefferson Airplane, Today
Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That we do doesn’t take from us any of the higher emotions heterosexuals are capable of expressing to their mates, or of their unions. We love. We honor. We cherish. Til death do us part. We are capable of great sacrifice for the honor of our love. We are capable of great joy in that love. Our unions are as life affirming to us as yours are to you. The only difference between us is that we mate to our own sex. You can’t take the homosexuality out of a homosexual, otherwise the snake oil salesmen of the ex-gay ministries would have thousands of happy heterosexuals to show as proof, instead of one paid staff member after another who proudly proclaims their heterosexuality only to get caught in a gay bar months or years later. We are what we are.
You can make us ashamed of ourselves. You can make us hate ourselves. You can make us terrified of the slightest shred of sexual arousal. But you can’t make us heterosexuals because we aren’t. What you Can do, is take all the higher aspects of love and devotion away from us. All the romance. All the poetry. All the honor and devotion. All the awe and all the joy and all the wonder. You can take that from us. You can drain our lives of every last drop of it. But when you do we are still homosexuals, and all you have done is leave us empty human shells with sexual needs that won’t go away.
And that’s exactly what you do, every time you tell a gay kid that his feelings for his first love are sin. You convince him of it, and you literally leave him with nothing left in his life but mindless loveless lust. That’s what you’re calling beautiful.
I’m not going to argue theology with anyone. If you’ve got yourself locked into a relentless fundamentalist religiosity that insists that every last comma and period in the King James bible Must be literally true or you’re not a faithful Christian, then I guess the universe really was created in six days and is about six thousand years old and women suffer the pains of childbirth for the sin of Eve. And if that’s what you believe then all I have to say to you is: Get the fuck off my back!
I’m not going to argue about whether or not we have a choice. That argument is over and done with for everyone except bigots and religious fanatics for whom no science could ever be enough to change their minds.
Here’s what I have to say about the case of Jason Johnson and forgiveness of sin: it doesn’t matter if you don’t mean to hurt anyone, if you won’t stop hurting them! And one other thing, which was said more eloquently by another man, dealing in his own blunt way with another mindless human prejudice that was, and still is, tearing away at innocent people’s lives…
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches,
that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress.
Progress is healing the wound…
-El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X)
Forgiveness. The biggest problem I have with Christianity, the reason I could never go back to it, is forgiveness. Christ would tell me I have to forgive. I know that. I just can’t. But maybe if I saw a serious start in this country at healing the wound I could try.
Via a friend on MySpace, comes this appeal for letters. First, from the Wikipedia, a little background…
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), formed in 1987, is a rebel paramilitary group operating mainly in northern Uganda. The group is engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government in what is now one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts. It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself a spirit medium, and apparently wishes to establish a state based on his unique interpretation of Biblicalmillenarianism. The LRA have been accused of widespread human rights violations, including the abduction of civilians, the use of child soldiers and a number of massacres.
It is estimated that around 20,000 children have been kidnapped by the group since 1987 for use as soldiers and sex slaves. The group performs abductions primarily from the Acholi people, who have borne the brunt of the 18 year LRA campaign. The insurgency has been mainly contained to the region known as Acholiland, consisting of the districts of Kitgum, Gulu, and Pader, though since 2002 violence has overflowed into other districts. The LRA has also operated across the porous border region with Southern Sudan, subjecting Sudanese civilians to its horrific tactics.
God save this poor world from your prophets… My friend passes along this request that you send a letter to the U.S. State department, urging them to keep this horrific conflict high on the agenda. In includes the story of one boy who was kidnapped and forced into The Lord’s Resistance Army…
Ms. Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
U.S. State Department
Washington DC 20520
Dear Secretary Rice,
I am deeply concerned about the conflict in northern Uganda, and particularly its devastating impact on children. I am writing to urge you to place this forgotten crisis higher on the United States’ agenda, and to use the U. S. influence to end the human rights abuses by both sides that lie at the heart of the conflict.
Since the war began in 1986, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has abducted more than 30,000 children to serve as soldiers, laborers and sex slaves. These boys and girls are forced to fight against the government Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF), carry out raids, beat and kill civilians, and abduct other children. Girls are additionally forced into sexual slavery as "wives" of LRA commanders. Children who refuse to follow orders or try to run away are often captured and killed.
I want to tell you about a boy who I will call Peter. Peter lives in Gulu, Uganda, on of the most targeted areas in the country. One horrific day, while attending his primary school in Gulu, Peter was abducted by the LRA along with 6 other schoolboys. The same day the LRA went to Peter’s house and murdered his two uncles and his father, and later took Peter home to see their dead bodies, and watch his mother get beaten unconscious. Additional members of his family were also tortured and murdered before his eyes.
Peter was dragged into the bush where he endured severe unspeakable brainwashing meant to turn the abducted children into brutal soldiers. If the children dropped their guns they were beaten, if they tried to escape they were tortured in front of the other children as an example of what would happen in the case of disobedience. Peter lived among this nightmare for 10 long years, quickly rising to the rank of Joseph Kony’s (the leader of the LRA) personal bodyguard. Peter managed to escape the LRA when he was 19 years old and has now lived the last 5 years of his life doing everything he can to spread awareness and end this treacherous war.
Peter is only one story out of the approximate 30,000 children that have been abducted into the LRA.
The threat of LRA abduction is so great that every night as many as 40,000 children leave their homes in the countryside to sleep in the relative safety of towns. They seek refuge overnight at churches, hospitals, bus stations and temporary shelters before returning home again each morning. These children are known as "night commuters" because of the long distances they travel nightly on foot.
Top UN officials have called the war in northern Uganda the world’s biggest forgotten crisis. Child abductions and other human rights have now continued for nearly twenty years,
I urge the United States government to take stronger action to address this crisis. The United States should use its leverage with the government of Uganda to push for increased protection for children and other civilians in the north of Uganda. It should press the new government of Sudan (the government of National Unity, formed with the former rebel forces in 2005) o cut off all support, formal or informal, for the Lord’s Resistance Army which operated in southern Sudan. The U.S. should also support efforts through the United Nations to strengthen human rights and child protection operations in the North.
Under President Bush, the United States played a significant role in achieving peace between long-warring parties in Sudan, Uganda’s northern neighbor. I urge our government to place a similar priority on addressing the crisis in northern Uganda.
Respectfully,
In addition, the request is that you also send a copy to John Bolton. Now…I strongly doubt that Rice or Bolton give a good goddamn about the fate of impoverished children anywhere, let alone in Africa. But it can’t hurt to try and prick somebody’s conscience in the State Department. And while you’re at it, send a copy to your congress critters too. War is hell enough on children but this is beyond evil. It might not seem like much, but sometimes just knowing that people are aware of and watching what’s going on is the difference, that makes a difference.
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