Lay aside, for the purposes of this argument, the destruction this war has delivered to Lebanon. Krauthammer has never in his career expressed a word of sympathy for an Arab, anywhere. He hates them all. For him, the only good part of this war is the damage done to Lebanon.
But here’s the beauty part. Krauthammer doesn’t care about the Jews either. He wants a ground war and if it kills 500 Israeli soldier boys, so be it. Can you imagine. Usually, you can count on Krauthammer to weigh in about Jewish losses at every opportunity. In fact, the mean-spirited Krauthammer only cares about Jews. Or so I thought.
Actually I should have known better. About three years ago, I saw Krauthammer flip out in synagogue on Yom Kippur. The rabbi had offered some timid endorsement of peace — peace essentially on Israel’s terms — but peace anyway. Krauthammer went nuts. He actually started bellowing at the rabbi, from his wheel chair in the aisle. People tried to "shush" him. It was, after all, the holiest day of the year. But Krauthammer kept howling until the rabbi apologized. The man is as arrogant as he is thuggish. Who screams at the rabbi at services? For advocating peace?
So I was wrong about Krauthammer. He doesn’t give a damn about Israel…
I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens…
You know…these people really have no business posing as the protectors of children…
Just remember who bellyaches the loudest whenever schools consider anti-bullying measures to protect gay school kids from abuse. If the day ever comes that we manage to convince these louts that sexual orientation is something determined before birth, you best believe that when a toddler is sexually abused and it turns out the kid has a homosexual biology, every talk radio jackass on the dial will be yapping to the mob that the kid probably bought it on themselves. That was their first reaction to Matthew Shepard’s murder wasn’t it.
I’ve been meaning to correct a reference in my Coming Out Story to an old rock poster that caught my adolescent eye back in the 70s and finally got around to it now. The reference comes in episode two, where I defensively tell my libido that I once stared at a poster of Vanessa Williams for an hour. Several readers have pointed out to me that it would have been impossible for the model in that poster to have been Vanessa Williams back in 1971. Yeah. It was Vanessa Redgrave. Here it is btw…
…and I’ll tell you what: Even knowing now that the model is a woman, I would still hang this poster on my wall in a heartbeat if I had one, because with very little effort I can still see a goddamn foxy guy in it. Sorry Vanessa. Really. My head just works like that.
I swear I researched this and yet I Still mucked up the name when I was doing the captions in that cartoon. If that really had been a guy in that poster I’d sure as hell have gotten his name right.
The antigay junk science of the religious right often strikes me like a bunch of drunks in a bar trying to see who can out bullshit everyone. I’m telling you guys, homos are all pedophiles. The average homo has sex with a thousand underage kids in his lifetime…did I say a thousand? I meant ten thousand. In a day. During their lunch break. That’s why they’re all school teachers. I’m telling you. Where’s my drink? The whole entire fucking NEA is a bunch of liberal homos. And they’re communists too. Communist Islamic terrorists. They want to teach six year olds how to use dildos. No shit…I did a study that proves it. They should pass an amendment closing all the public schools and making home schooling mandatory for everyone. Last year the NEA passed out a million dildos to elementary school kids. It’s true. And they panted them to look like candy canes. FOX news did a story on it…
One of these days, I figured, they’d start yapping that we’re having sex with infants too. Well…guess what…
An organizer for the conservative Renew America is under fire for linking homosexuality with infant pedophilia.
"The newest thing in Chicago, it’s becoming a trend, and you’re gonna find this hard to believe…sex with infants," Guy Adams told an Internet radio show hosted by fellow conservative Stacy L. Harp.
Adams (pictured) offered no evidence to back up his claims of infant pedophilia.
He appeared on Harp’s program on Wednesday to discuss the recent Gay Games in Chicago and embarked on a nearly 30 minute conversation with Harp to attack gays.
"It’s not enough that they have…you know when you engage in perversion, and homosexuality is perversion, we don’t hate the gays mind you, we don’t hate them, we hate what they’re doing…pretty soon that perversion is like addiction, it’s not enough, so you need to graduate to something else. You need to move on. So now they’re having sex with animals, a small group that’s getting bigger, sex with infants, sex in the street in Chicago out in the open, it’s just getting more and more perverted."
Adams dismissed the contributions of GLBT people to society by saying, "what contributions, AIDS, pornography?"
He also referred to gay people as "a very angry and violent group when confronted with the truth."
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To "Joe Brummer" <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Cc <stacyharp@gmail.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 216 AM
Subject Reply From Joe
What’s your point Joe? It sex with babies the truth; it IS happening, so what’s your point?
Let’s just assume that gays are not screwing babies. Okay then, what ARE gays doing? Can you describe it for me and the public???
If you won’t describe it, then I will. Openly and in a national forum.
One thing you will quickly discover about me — I CANNOT be intimidated nor will I retreat. I will stand my ground no matter what.
YOU brought this war to me and I will finish it. And there are many, many more like me too.
We simply don’t care about you petty proclamations, not does Alan.
You woke up the wrong guy.
~Guy
—– Original Message —–
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Cc <stacyharp@gmail.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 329 AM
Subject Re From Joe
Dear Joe,
You are intentionally deceived.
Whether I reach gays or not is not that important to me. Yes, I hope that God is able to reach them, but at the end of the day, I have been placed at war with your likes, and that was YOUR choice.
In other words, I declare war against you and your kind.
I did not desire this war, but you thrust it upon us. It was your call.
Having said that, I say to you (now more than ever) that I am singularly determined to see your agenda defeated, and it will be.
Not that I am perfect — far from it, but your behavior is explicitly labeled by God as an "abomination". T\here’s no getting around that judgment.
Say what you will and argue as you must, but at the end of the day, God declares your behavior as totally unacceptable to Him.
God will not change His position on that, as He has clearly stated, Jesus is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.
He will never affirm homosexuality.
Nor will I.
~Guy
On Thu, August 3, 2006 856, joebrummer@joebrummer.com said
> Dear Guy,
> Sorry you feel that way. While your busy trying to get God to call me,
> you are also out in the public eye making outlandish and false claims
> about gays and lesbians. Injustice like that needs to be brought to the
> light of the public eye, or as I commonly say, the sunlight of justice.
> I cannot change your mind about gays and lesbians, although I can
> certainly say I have never had sex with animals or infants. Your claims
> are disgusting and your message is evil. Talk about bearing false
> witness.
> You will never reach gays and lesbians with these immoral acts. Your
> approach is awful. Sadly you discredit anything truthful you could say
> with the utterly outrageous claims like this. Stacy informs me that
> part 2 of the show is worse and that your claims there are eve more
> outrageous.
> Your mentality is nothing more than a call to arms that some sick minds
> will be happy to take. Over the past six weeks there have been some
> violent attacks on gays and lesbians espcially in San Diego. Where do
> you think people get this notion tht they need to "get the homos"? Is it
> perhaps your false messages about gays being after children? Is it your
> false notion we are the biggest danger since the civil war?
> Your message is wrong and it will be paid for in the blood of GLBT people.
> Perhaps you should think before you speak. If you think you are doing
> god’s works, you are sadly mistaken. God would have no part in putting
> his children in danger they way you have done.
> Joe
On Thu Aug 3 1:19 , ‘Guy Adams’ sent
Joe,
Initially, I had a great sense of compassion for you and I hoped that God would be able to reach you.
But after your actions in shutting me down on your blog, and esp after reading your recent pleas to Stacy, I am of the persuasion that you are what God calls a "reprobate", beyond His willingness to save.
Over and out,
~Guy
~Guy Adams
Deputy National Grassroots Director
(Alan Keyes’ RenewAmerica)
Email GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us
—– Original Message —–
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To "Joe Brummer" <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 257 AM
Subject Re From Joe / you lose.
You and your remarks are inconsequential.
At the end of the day, you lose.
~TGuy
—– Original Message —–
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To "Joe Brummer" <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Cc <stacyharp@gmail.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 222 AM
Subject Re From Joe
Your comments are not even worth me read. I’ll bypass. WHO ARE YOU? WHAT’S YOUR NAME?
In the course of a few short months, no one will want to mention your name out of sheer fear.
You CANNOT tear my words apart because you are speaking from the moral low ground and because my words spoke the truth.
In other words, you have no firm ground on which to stand. You are a coward. I initially had a heart for you but you have proven yourself to be a reprobate.
The war is on. As Reagan said: We win, you lose.
Understand that quite well, because in a true war (unlike Iraq), all means available to me will be used.
You targeted the wrong guy, but I thank God that you did.
There it is. There is the hot burning core of hate not far beneath all that pious rhetoric about loving the sinner, and hating the sin. And that kind of thing, I want to emphasize, is nothing new. Over and over I saw words just like those on Usenet, back as far as 1993. Paranoid…threatening…hysterical…and not just from the usual gutter trash, but from…well…otherwise fine and upstanding pillars of the community. People just like Mr. Guy Adams, who, as it turns out, not only works for Renew America, but also is, or was as of January 2005, a Deputy Sheriff in Cook County Illinois.
(Thanks to Pam’s House Blend for the catch) I’m sure he treats the gay and lesbian citizens of Cook County he encounters during the course of his work with dignity and respect. Well…actually I’m not.
President Bush often complains about lack of transparency in places like North Korea or, more recently, Cuba — and contrasts that with the United States.
Here he is in Vienna in June: "We’re a transparent democracy. People know exactly what’s on our mind. We debate things in the open. We’ve got a legislative process that’s active."
But the reality is that, particularly when it comes to Bush’s foreign policy, the minimal press access to the intensely secret inner workings of the White House and the almost complete lack of effective Congressional oversight have left Bush’s decision-making process largely a mystery.
Case in point: What is really motivating our policy in the Middle East? And who’s really making the decisions? We don’t know.
…
Today, Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy Newspapers writes: "If there’s a starting point for George W. Bush’s attachment to Israel, it’s the day in late 1998 when he stood on the hilltop where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, eyes brimming with tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, ‘Amazing Grace.’
" ‘He was very emotional. It was a tear-filled experience,’ said Matthew Brooks, a prominent Jewish Republican who escorted Bush, then governor of Texas, and three other GOP governors on the Middle East visit. ‘He brought Israel back home with him in his heart. I think he came away profoundly moved.’
"Eight years later, Bush is living up to his reputation as the most pro-Israel president ever. As Israel’s military action in Lebanon heads into its fourth week, the president is standing firm against growing international pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Yesterday, I noted former Newsday and Knight Ridder White House correspondent Saul Friedman ‘s essay on NiemanWatchdog.org: "I believe this to be the first time in modern American history that a president’s religion, in this case his Christian fundamentalism, has become a decisive factor in his foreign and domestic policies. It’s a factor that has been under-reported, to say the least, and that begs for press attention."
Former Clinton official Sidney Blumenthal sees another, related form of evangelism at work: The neoconservative variety. He writes in Salon: "By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it. . . .
"The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war."
…
And here’s another data point: Joel C. Rosenberg, who writes Christian apocalyptic fiction, told me in an interview this week that he was invited to a White House Bible study group last year to talk about current events and biblical prophecy.
Rosenberg said that on February 10, 2005, he came to speak to a "couple dozen" White House aides in the Old Executive Office Building — and has stayed in touch with several of them since.
Rosenberg wouldn’t say exactly what was discussed. "The meeting itself was off the record, as you could imagine," he said. He declined to name the staffer he said invited him or describe the attendees in any way other than to say that the president was not among them. "I can’t imagine they’d want to talk about it," he said.
"I can’t tell you that the people that I spoke with agree with me, or believe that prophecy can really help you understand what will happen next in the Middle East, but I’m not surprised that they’re intrigued."
The White House press office wasn’t able to confirm the visit for me, but there have been previous reports about White House Bible study groups inviting Christian authors to come speak.
Rosenberg — like Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the authors of the phenomenally popular "Left Behind" series — writes fiction inspired by biblical prophecy about the apocalypse. The consistent theme is that certain current events presage the end times, the Rapture, and the return of Jesus Christ. Rosenberg’s particular pitch to journalists is that his books come true.
Here he is in a recent interview with Christian talk-show host Pat Robertson , talking about what he thinks is going to happen next: "Now I have to say, Pat, I believe that Ezekiel 38 and 39 — the prophecies that we’re talking about — I think this is about the end of radical Islam as we know it. God says He’s going to supernaturally judge Iran, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, these other countries. We’re talking about fire from heaven, a massive earthquake. It’s going to be devastating and tragic. But I believe that afterwards there’s going to be a great spiritual awakening. We’re seeing more Muslims coming to Christ right now than at any other time in history. But I think that’s just the beginning. We’ve got dark days ahead of us. But I believe there’s a light at the end of that tunnel."
Rosenberg says he got a call last year from a White House staffer. "He said ‘A lot of people over here are reading your novels, and they’re intrigued that these things keep on happening. . . . Your novels keep foreshadowing actual coming events. . . . And so we’re curious, how are you doing it? What’s the secret? Why don’t you come over and walk us through the story behind these novels?’ So I did."
Judy Keen first wrote back in October 2002, in USA Today, that "some White House staffers have been meeting weekly at hour-long prayer and Bible study sessions."
Elisabeth Bumiller wrote in the New York Times last year that "intelligent design was the subject of a weekly Bible study class several years ago when Charles W. Colson, the founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries, spoke to the group."
All this talk about family values, and preserving the institution of marriage as the best way to raise children, and nurture the next generation, and underneath it all the fervent hope that the end of the world will happen in their lifetimes.
LOSING DAVID BRODER….What’s the modern day equivalent of "losing Walter Cronkite"? Perhaps losing David Broder?
In today’s column he doesn’t quite come right out and say that we need to withdraw from Iraq, but he sure wiggles up to within kissing distance of it. Will the rest of centrist Washington follow?
This is painful for someone who grew up watching Walter Cronkite to read. You just see in it so horribly the decline of the American spirit since the Reagan years. I doubt Drum was thinking in those terms when he wrote that…he’s probably thinking in terms of the environment of the inside the beltway kool kids. And he’s probably right. For the D.C. kool kids, loosing Broder may well be, in a sense, like loosing Walter Cronkite. And this very nicely sums up what’s wrong with the mainstream news media today, and in particular, the shitfaced pundocracy. Comparing David "they came in and trashed the place" Broder to Walter Cronkite is like comparing the Matterhorn to Walt Disney’s recreation of it. One’s a real goddamned mountain and the other is a hollow fake created purely for entertainment. And that’s Broder. And that’s why he’s thought well of by the D.C. cocktail party crowd. He entertains them. If, as Broder said, Bill Clinton came in with his trailer trash crowd and "trashed the place", Broder was the man to tell them all their cheapshit Georgetown conceits were insightful and high principled pearls of wisdom. As Atrios points out:
The country doesn’t care what David Broder thinks. He reflects the conventional wisdom of his clique back at them. That’s his audience.
Just so. Broder’s audience is his own Washington inside the beltway clique. The same mindless soulless lapdogs who have been breathlessly kissing the feet of anti democratic republican thugs ever since Kenneth Starr started sniffing Bill Clinton’s underwear. What we’re seeing in the beltway pundocracy now, is that Deer In The Headlights expression of a person watching a catastrophe rushing at them like an out of control semi, bearing their own words on its bumperstickers.
In the months and years to come remember: these people mindlessly, witlessly, cheered President Junior on his way to war, when anyone with half a brain and a functional conscience could tell it was bullshit. These people mindlessly, witlessly, roused American passions for war. Saddam was a threat to our national security they said. And defended Bush and the republicans when they began shredding our consitution. The war would be over in days they said. They’ve been making excuses for why it’s been relentlessly killing people for going on four years now. The Iraqis would shower our troops with flowers they said. They’re killing and maiming more and more every day now. The tyrannies of the middle east would all fall like dominos they said. Now an anti-human religious fanatisism sweeps the entire Arab world, taking its moral authority from everything Bush has done to destroy democracy in America and ignore treaties on the conduct of war, and the practice of torture. And now it’s become too much, even for the likes of David Broder. Second thoughts? No. He’s looking for a way to deflect his share of the blame. They all are.
They’ll say they were all bamboozled by a bunch of terrible, wicked men. But…no. They were willing to be fooled. They held the Clintons in the same contempt Imelda Marco held her shoe shine girl, worshipped the republicans for the same arrogance of power that brought us war, corruption, and an America divided against itself like it hasn’t been since the civil war. They roused the mob, not because they believed in Dubya, but because they loathed the democrats, and their prissy preoccupation with the rights of common people, and that bleeding heart liberal crap about liberty and justice for all. Their support for President Junior was more a gesture of contempt for liberalism then a hurrah for republican oligarchy, but it did its work.
Now president Smirk is egging the Israelis to make war on Syria, and rumbling that maybe we should start another one with Iran. With what troops and with what money who knows…but the republicans don’t care about details like that. They’re Big Picture folks. Broder and the entire inside the beltway kool kids crowd hated liberals and democrats too much to notice or care who they were sanctifying, but it wasn’t their father’s republican party. It is the party of Pat Robertson and James Dobson, men who think the end of the world will begin in the holy lands. Now that they have the power they’ve always wanted, it’s too late to politely suggest to them that they’re making a mistake. They think they’re doing God’s work. They’re ushering in the Second Coming.
Broder and his audience could have used their position to make this country a better place. Instead they pissed on it, and blamed the democrats. They didn’t think it mattered who governed America, as long as it wasn’t common trash who didn’t know how to throw a proper Georgetown party. And now a terrible wind is blowing at the foundations of everything America ever stood for, everything America was, everything America could ever have become, and worst of all, it is bearing their own words back to them.
"Extremism is a powerful alliance of fear and certitude; complexity and humility are its natural foes. Faith and life are essentially mysterious, for neither God nor nature is easily explained or understood. Crusades are for the weak, literalism for the insecure."
“I know that critics of homosexuality do not consider themselves to be hateful. They would say they "love the sinner but hate the sin." If the shoe were on the other foot, however, and someone were attacking their families, trying to take their children away, and constantly working to pass legislation to deprive them of basic civil rights, at some point they would understand that "homophobia" is too mild a word for such harassment. "Hatred" is the only proper term.
I was raised in Dallas, Texas and had classmates who were in the Klan. I remember that they did not consider themselves to be attacking other people. They perceived themselves to be defenders of Christian America. Their "religion" consisted of an unrelenting attack on people who were black, Jewish or homosexual. If anyone challenged these views, these Klan members considered themselves under attack and believed that their right to free exercise of religion was being threatened. In other words, they felt that harassing other people was a protected expression of their own religious faith."
Please Know From My Heart That I Am Not An Anti-Semite. I Am Not A Bigot.
Sure thing Mel…
"For 1,950 years [the church] does one thing and then in the ’60s, all of a sudden they turn everything inside out and begin to do strange things that go against the rules. Everything that had been heresy is no longer heresy, according to the [new] rules. We [Catholics] are being cheated… The church has stopped being critical. It has relaxed. I don’t believe them, and I have no intention of following their trends.It’s the church that has abandoned me, not me who has abandoned it."
Mel Gibson, in an interview with El Pais in January 1992, discussing why his brand of Traditionalist Catholicism does not subscribe to the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 rulings on various subjects including who was responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.
"Why are they calling her a Nazi? …Because modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it’s a lie. And it’s revisionism. And they’ve been working on that one for a while."
On criticism of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a nineteenth-century nun whose writings influenced his portrayal of Jesus’ death. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
"That’s bullshit…I don’t want to be dissing my father. He never denied the Holocaust; he just said there were fewer than six million. I don’t want them having me dissing my father. I mean, he’s my father."
On allegations that his father is a Holocaust denier. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
"I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
In The New York Post, January 30, 2004
"They take it up the ass. This [pointing to his butt] is only for taking a shit."
When asked what he thinks of homosexuals in an interview with El Pais in January 1992
"With this look, who’s going to think I’m gay. I don’t lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?"
When asked during the El Pais interview if he is afraid of being mistaken for a homosexual, because he is an actor.
"I have no idea how anti-Semitism entered into it. But I do feel that gay people will burn in hell. Their way of life goes completely against God’s plan for procreation."
"Fucking Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
During his arrest for driving under the influence, July 2006
"What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?"
To a female sergeant during his arrest for DUI
"In its representation of its Jewish characters, The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing, or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of anti-Semitism, in art and in film. What is so shocking about Gibson’s Jews is how unreconstructed they are in their stereotypical appearances and actions. These are not merely anti-Semitic images; these are classically anti-Semitic images."
It’s worth noting that The Man Without A Face, was produced after Gibson’s homophobic outburst in El Pais, and was widely taken at the time (mostly by heterosexuals sympathetic to Gibson) as a kind of apology to the gay community. I’ve read the book the film was based on, I still have it on my shelves. The story is about a young boy growing up in an emotionally abusive family, who turns to an older neighbor for support and guidance. As their relationship develops, the boy finds himself experiencing a nascent sexual awakening and desire for the older man, which the older man gently but firmly turns aside. He is not interested in having a sexual relationship with the boy, he just wants to help him through a difficult time in his life, despite the suspicions of the local townsfolk. The final confrontation in the book comes when the boy discovers that the man really was a homosexual, and he lashes out at him in fear and confusion over his own sexual orientation.
The story is about growing up, trust, and what it is to genuniely love someone. It’s about accepting differences in others, accepting yourself and not running away from your life. The punchline is that the man was gay, and so was the boy, yet the man did not take advantage of him. There was real love and friendship there between them, that was taken away and destroyed by fear and prejudice. The prejudice of the townspeople, and the boy’s own fears and doubts about himself. Gibson, in making the film, turned the man into a heterosexual who had only been mistaken for a homosexual once in his life, when he was falsely accused of having an affair with a former student, effectively nullifying the book’s point that to be homosexual isn’t necessarily to be a child molester, and thereby weakening the impact of its message about love. The townsfolk were right about the man…and yet they were wrong. The boy lashed out at the man from fear of something within himself. This is what prejudice does to us…it tears us apart from within, tears neighbor from neighbor, friend from friend. But Gibson could not bring himself to make that film. So he turned the story into a tale about the unjust persecution of a heterosexual. Yet to this day people point to this film, Gibson’s directorial debut, as some kind of proof that Gibson really isn’t a homophobic bigot after all.
So when Gibson offered to make a film about the Holocaust after the outrage over Passion of the Christ…I laughed. Some blogger wag whose name I cannot recall just now, joked that in his script for his Holocaust film, Gibson changes the story to make it a bunch of Jews who kill six million Nazis. But no…he would have made a very nice film about the crimes against the Jews by the Third Reich, and few would have noticed that the film’s basic premise was, as Gibson’s father insists, that the killing of Jews by the Nazis wasn’t anything special or systematic, because a lot of people died during world war II.
At the root of prejudice is a terrible blindness to the humanity of the hated other. The hated other is not really human, so the things that happen to them are not remarkable. It is only injustice when bad things happen to real people. Not when it happens to Jews. Not when it happens to women who challenge the authority of men. Not when it happens to homosexuals. That is the message of every film Mel Gibson has ever made. It is what he believes. It is his bedrock. You saw it again last week in Malibu, without the silver screen makeup.
So is the breakfast toast in the congressional cafeterias, with both fries and toast having been liberated from the appellation "freedom."
Three years after House Republicans trumpeted the new names to get back at the French for snubbing the coalition of the willing in Iraq, congressmen don’t even want to talk about french fries, which are actually native to Belgium, and toast.
Neither Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio nor Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, the authors of the culinary rebuke, were willing this week to say who led the retreat, as it were, from the frying pan. But retreat there has been, as a casual observer can see for himself in the House’s basement cafeterias.
"We don’t have a comment for your story," said a spokeswoman for Mr. Ney.
Welcome back to planet earth, jackass. Remember when they were saying the war would be over in a matter of days? Flowers, they were going to shower our troops with. And…and…the oil we got out of Iraq would make the war pay for itself. Well…no. Here’s how you pay for war…
By Brian MacQuarrie
The Boston Globe
August 2, 2006
WASHINGTON — President Bush came and sat by the side of Sergeant Brian Fountaine, a 24-year-old tank commander from Dorchester, a gung-ho soldier who had lobbied to be deployed a second time. Now Fountaine was among the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, his legs amputated below the knees after an explosion June 8 ripped apart the Humvee in which he was riding.
The president chatted about the sergeant’s beloved Red Sox, but made no reference to the war, the soldier said.
If the topic had come up, the president might not have liked what Fountaine had on his mind. In a dramatic change of heart, Fountaine now considers the war a military quagmire in which American soldiers are caught in a deadly vise between irreconcilable enemies.
In his view, troop morale has plummeted, suicide has increased, and the sacrifices being made in American blood and treasure suddenly seem questionable.
The war began with the justifiable goal of toppling a reckless, dangerous dictator in Saddam Hussein, the soldier said. But as the country slides toward civil war, Fountaine added, the goal of a democratic Iraq seems more distant by the day.
"You have to wonder, what exactly are we doing?" Fountaine said. "In my opinion, [Iraq] is a country that has been at war with itself and with other enemies for thousands of years. And we’re supposed to make them happy? I don’t think so. I don’t see it happening."
When asked if history will justify the life-altering sacrifice he has made, Fountaine paused for several seconds, lowered his head, and slowly replied: "If in 10 or 20 years, if Iraq is in the same spot and America is still losing boys over there, then, no, I think my sacrifice will be as futile as anyone else’s."
That sacrifice has been profound, excruciatingly exacted from Fountaine’s body by two large bombs on a dusty road a dozen miles north of Baghdad.
The pain has been both physical and psychic. On June 30, while visiting the Marine Corps War Memorial in a wheelchair he was still learning to use, Fountaine lost control and fell over. Nothing he experienced in the explosion outside Taji — not the searing burn, not the loss of blood, not the experience of binding his own mangled legs with tourniquets — equaled the humiliation of that moment.
…
"When you swing your legs over the side of the bed, you wonder why your feet don’t hit the floor," Fountaine said. "And then you remember: It’s because you don’t have feet, stupid."
When historians question how the United States of America managed to get itself dragged by a smirking spoiled silver spoon jackass brat into a useless pointless war that eventually turned the entire middle east into a raging conflagration, these four words will explain it all: Freedom Fries…Freedom Toast…
Dan Savage got a chance to give Washington state supreme court Justice Gerry Alexander a little grief over his role in that court’s grotesque decision against the rights of same sex couples. The occasion was a previously scheduled interview with reporters from The Stranger for the upcoming election (supreme court judges in Washington state have to answer to the voters). The Stranger website has audio excerpts of the confrontation. There is a moment in these recordings that has to rank among the most telling of the gay civil rights struggle, and it isn’t even anything anyone actually says. It is a sound.
Posted by Unpaid Intern at 02:59 PM
Weeks ago, we—meaning I—scheduled interviews with the state’s Supreme Court candidates in preparation for our annual endorsement issue. Then, one day before the interview, the justices announced they were upholding the gay marriage ban. Coincidence? Entirely. Fortuitous? Very.
Imagine a justice who voted to uphold DOMA trapped in a room with Dan Savage (wielding a framed picture of his son, DJ) and the rest of the Stranger Election Control Board, for an entire hour Well, you don’t have to just imagine the showdown! Here is Justice Gerry Alexander starring in “An Inquisition”:
It’s nine minutes long, so here are some highlights: use of the phrase “child-rearing” (0:34), the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table (0:50), discussion of “suspect class” (5:19), eight-second pause as Alexander ponders response to “Is homosexuality an immutable characteristic?”(5:55-6:03)
…the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table… This would be in front of a justice who signed on to a decision writing same sex couples into second class citizenship because they cannot make babies when they fuck. By that logic every heterosexual couple who use contraception, or whose children were adopted, or who have no children of their own, or cannot have children of their own, shouldn’t be legally married either. But of course, we make exceptions for our fellow heterosexuals…
This has been a month in which the courts have simply walked away from their responsibility to uphold justice and protect the rights of minorities. One court after another has just thrown up its hands and announced that the basic civil rights of homosexual Americans exist only at the pleasure of the heterosexual majority. Justice is a concept that only applies to heterosexuals. What homosexuals get is forbearance.
But we are human beings too. We fall in love. We take our mates. We make our households, grow families, build lives together. Just like real people. And the silence of the courts to the injustices inflicted upon us, upon our homes, is shattered by the sound of a picture frame being placed on a table, before a man whose job it was to protect that family too.
Just over three years after the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, and the middle east is a horrific mess. Say…weren’t the Iraqis supposed to welcome us with roses? Wasn’t democracy supposed to spread like wildfire across the middle east? We’ll be cleaning up after president codpiece’s excellent adventure for generations. But that’s not to say all the news from the middle east is grim. Sometimes it’s funny-grim.
Take the case of Danish imam Ahmed Akkari, of Lebanese birth, who single-handedly instigated months of raging anger in the Muslim world over twelve cartoons of the prophet Mohamed published in a Danish newspaper. The twelve cartoons not being offensive enough, the good imam traveled throughout the Muslim world showing people pictures of things he claimed were images of the prophet produced by the Danes, that actually weren’t. There was a picture of a man wearing a pig mask, that Akkari claimed was a Danish man mocking Mohamed. It turned out to have been a newspaper photo taken at a pig calling contest. Akkari claimed another photo showing a cartoon of Mohamed as a pedophile was also printed in Jyllands-Posten. It wasn’t. Lying through your teeth to incite mob violence is standard operating procedure for all religious zealots, regardless of the specifics of the faith. For his trouble, Akkari got the Danish embassy in Lebanon burned down.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark and Sweden were front-runners in the race to rescue foreigners fleeing the violence in Lebanon, nearly completing the evacuations of more than 10,000 citizens Friday while many other countries struggled to get their nationals out.
The Scandinavians credited new crisis response plans streamlined after bitter lessons learned during the tsunami disaster in 2004.
"It would be fair to say that what we’re able to do now is something we learned from the tsunami," said Lars Thuesen, coordinator of the Lebanon evacuations for the Danish Foreign Ministry.
By Friday morning, Sweden had already evacuated 6,400 citizens while Denmark had shipped out 5,000 nationals from Lebanon — more than any other countries. Both governments said only a few hundred of their citizens remained.
By contrast, the U.S. evacuation efforts were just entering high gear Friday…
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The Danes got a test run in crisis management earlier this year when newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad triggered violent protests against Danish embassies in Muslim countries.
One of the Danish Muslims who spearheaded the rallies against the prophet drawings, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari, was among those evacuated from Beirut on Thursday.
"My impression is that the transportation has been safe and that no one has been suffering," Akkari told Denmark’s TV2 channel as he boarded a Greek ferry chartered by Denmark.
How nice that no one is suffering Akkari. No thanks to you and your kind. And while you’re riding your boat to safety, say thank you to the nice Danes, who despite your inciting mob violence all over the world and getting their embassy burned to the ground, were willing to give a gutter crawling murderous lout like you a ride out of harm’s way.
Say hello to the cartoonists whose lives you put in jeopardy when you get back to the safety of Denmark fella.
As it was last year, there are far, far too many cute longhaired computer geeks here for my own good. And as it was last year, the foreign guys are just a tad sexier. I think that’s because they just feel more comfortable inside their own bodies. One of those little ways that American sex-negative religiosity shows though, is in the way American guys dress below the waist.
Portland’s having a bit of a heat wave, and some of the guys here are in shorts or cutoffs, and you can reliably tell who are the American guys and who are the foreigners, by the length of their shorts. The American guys (generally) won’t wear shorts that are cut well above the knee. Can’t be showing a little thigh or people might think you’re gay.
I was watching some guys swimming in the hotel pool late yesterday, and swear their swim trunks reached down past their knees, halfway to their ankles. Except for one cute blond who was wearing a speedo style trunk. I ran into him at the hotel restaurant and he turned out to be from Spain. It’s like American guys are wearing below the waist burkas these days.
This is how you get to Catalina. They have regular jet-catamaran boats to and from the island, and they are comfortable and fast. Even on a fairly rough sea you don’t feel much. But the sea was very calm on the trip out and back.
At the entrance to Avalon harbor. At the very top of the hill is, I’m told, the Wrigley Mansion. That’s Wrigley as in the chewing gum. The family owns most of the island I’m told.
One of the streets of Avalon looking west. Most of the island is a wilderness preserve. Avalon is the largest town on the island and it ain’t big. Everything the people who live on the island need has to be trucked in by boat. But there is a nice tourest zone right at the beach with good food, a few clubs, shopping, and stuff to do. I’m told there is surfing on the western side of the island. Avalon is on the eastern side, and doesn’t get much wave action at all. The main activites around Avalon seem to be boating, fishing and scuba diving. My brother and my nephew did the scuba park by the casino while I was wandering around taking pictures.
Looking from the end of the Avalon Pier, back to Avalon, as the sun sets.
Boats docked in Avalon harbor. Some of those moorings, I’m told, sell for over a million dollars. Yes…that’s a million bucks just to park your boat..
Avalon harbor from the Casino. It’s not a gambling casino, it’s an old, grand movie theater.
This is the way most folks get around on the island. They don’t like having cars over there, although you’ll see some. Mostly people use these golf carts and small lawnmower engine powered light trucks (and I mean light). Instead of car garages, most houses that have them, have golf cart garages or parking spots.
Many of the nice houses here are built on quite steep hillsides.
Finally…the catamaran trip over and back takes you past the Queen Mary, which is now doing duty as a beautiful art deco hotel. If you like anything art deco, you Have to go see the Queen Mary sometime, it is just amazingly beautiful inside (and out…it’s a lovely ship from the days of the grand trans-Atlantic ocean liners). On the trip back one of those new cruse line ship things was parked nearby, so I snapped this shot of the two of them together. A contrast in Ocean going eras.
More postcards later. I’m on my way now to Portland Oregon for a software developer’s conference. I’ll post more photos of my trip when I get settled in up there.
Our friend Eric Rofes died two weeks ago, and his memorial was held here in San Francisco on Saturday. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 52, completely unexpectedly. He was a leading gay activist and scholar and his memorial was shattering- terribly, terribly sad, with a palpable sense of bereavement felt not only by his friends, but by an entire community. It was most heartbreaking to see and hear the agonized grief and bravery of his partner of 16 years, Crispin Hollins.
Eric and Crispin were of course at the forefront of the Gay Marriage movement. They had long held Californian domestic partnership, and also married when (briefly) we believed that San Francisco law permitted us to do so. They had made for one another all the necessary legal arrangements: powers of attorney, mutual wills, etc etc. All their bases were covered, so they thought. As soon as he heard the news, Crispin had flown straight out to Provincetown, where Eric died, to make funeral arrangements. A friend who accompanied them said that when Crispin began to detail the requirements for the cremation and commitment at the funeral home in Provincetown, the funeral director drew himself up and demanded to know what the basis of their relationship was. He told Crispin: "I don’t believe you will be making the funeral arrangements". It required the intervention of NGLTF lawyers and lawyer friends on both coasts to convince the funeral home that he was indeed authorized as a legal partner to make the arrangements. Crispin requested an autopsy, which was contested by the Medical Examiner on the same grounds, and the cremation was subsequently questioned as well (they called during the funeral to argue the case with Crispin).
This stands as a lesson to all of us. We are continually told that as Queers, we do not need to be allowed to marry because all legal avenues of partnership are open to us as domestic partners. For Christ sake- this happened in Massachussetts! They had the gall to question a 16 year old relationship, legally bound as far as two gay men can go. At a time when Crispin was utterly bereft and distraught they had the temerity to impugn his and Eric’s relationship, which was as closely legally covered as they could make it. (Eric’s family, by the way, have too much respect for Crispin to intervene- they would not, I think, dream of subverting his moral authority to decide the arrangements).
It makes me so fucking angry. Give us our bloody civil rights! Enough of this fucking heterosexual gobbledygook denying that our relationships are as worthy as a man and a woman’s- we are sick of arguing- just do it: not some paltry second-best, lesser citizen crumb from the hetrosexual table: give us what we deserve- marriage.
Right. Fucking. Now..
The republicans have there way and we won’t have Any legal recourse when people start fucking with us while we’re in grief. Hell…that’s the bet time to put the knife in and twist it and they know it. That’s why they are so vehemently against giving us the right to marry. It isn’t about protecting the sanctity of marriage or any of that crap. It isn’t about how marriage is a god ordained sacrament between and man and a woman. It isn’t about how children are better off being raised by heterosexual parents. It isn’t about any of that. It’s about freedom to twist the knife in the heart of a homosexual, because you just can’t stand homosexuals. It’s about the freedom to twist the knife. Nothing else.
I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth…just hanging out with my brother in Oceano California and de-stressing. Which is why I’m not posting a whole heck of a lot lately. It’s very easy to forget the world when you’re walking the sands and looking out at the beautiful California coastline around Pismo Beach. And the even more beautiful California surfer boys.
In the meantime I’ve managed to finish the next episode of A Coming Out Story. Yes, I brought my drafting supplies and a scanner along with me.
…in which our hero discovers that libidos aren’t easily dissuaded. Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or Here, to go to the main page.
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