I like to read Drew Curtis’ Fark.Com precisely for its being such a mixed bag. The Photoshop contests are what I mostly like, but the random news links users throw in there are often interesting too. And sometime the user community response is even more interesting.
The other day, someone posted a link to this story …
Man Allegedly Attacks Quizno’s Cup Mascot
NORTH HUNTINGDON, Pa. — For four years, Tammy Scattell has been hiring teenagers to fill a Quizno’s cup costume and advertise her North Huntingdon Quizno’s store.
Now, she can’t get anyone to do it.
"They’re like, ‘Let’s just give it some time.’ They are afraid to go out now. It’s kind of scary," Scattell said. The cup suit is a great marketing tool.
But police said a teen inside the suit took punches and kicks from a man who pulled over to attack him along Route 30 while his buddies took pictures of it on their camera phones.
A North Huntingdon police officer’s wife saw it happening and called police.
"A young man had jumped out of the vehicle, knocked a boy over in a Quizno’s suit and started kicking him. They got back in the vehicle and took off, and we were able to stop them a short time later," said Patrolman Tom Harris, of the North Huntingdon police. The Quizno’s mascot is OK.
These men face summary disorderly conduct citations:
Nicholas Trumpe, of Elizabeth
Justin Walker and Tony Anthony, of Greensburg
Jeremiah Bozich, of Irwin
Brian Goossen, of Jeannette
Each of the men is in his 20s.
They thought it was funny. Funny enough to take pictures as a keepsake. Maybe show them around to all their friends. Maybe post them on the Internet. Fuckin hilarious… A number of Farkers seemed to agree…
At least he was wearing a cup.
Thereby accomplishing what most of us have always wanted to do to character suited figures, but have never dared.
I so very badly want to do that but I have never seen one in my city.
I have wanted to do this oh so many times.
/minus the camera phones
//maybe just one
Thanks dude who beat up foam Quizno’s cup guy as I’ve wanted to do that as every single time I leave Quizno’s I have the crazy shaits. But I keep on going back.
QiznOWNED
Furries are bad enough. Pervs who dress as inanimate objects deserve whatever they get.
One of them almost gets it though…
When Bestbuy had their grand opened in New Orleans we tried for thirty minutes to get one of my friends to tackle the big stupid looking tag mascot that was waving and just being a general dumbass. Finally after we promised him 40 bucks he agreed. We waited on one of the isles and when the tag was coming by he got a huge running start and speared the crap out of it. We were all in uproarious laughter until we started to hear cries and then the tag unzipped to reveal a 14 year old girl. He got expelled from our school and an assult conviction….
But then he ends it with…
best.bet.evar.
Actually, you and your pals should have been arrested and jailed too, for paying that guy forty bucks to beat up a kid in a costume. Especially the ones who paid to watch it.
The sight of those mascot things usually irritates me, but that’s because I project on them how I would feel if I was trapped in a dead end minimum wage job and forced to humiliate myself in front of every car that drove by my place of work. I am a deathly shy soul, more stage crew then stage, and I would probably walk off the job rather then put one of those goddamned things on. But some people really like doing the mascot thing. I’ve met a few of them over the course of my lifetime, and they’re generally sweet exuberant souls who just want to make everyone smile. Bully bait, in other words.
Let it be said that not everyone in that thread thought what those guys did was funny. A few were pissed off that the only charge leveled against the attackers was disorderly conduct. What kind of person thinks it’s not only funny, but funny enough to take pictures of someone beating up someone else for no other reason then…well…it’s funny to watch someone getting beaten up. The kind of person you don’t really want walking the streets. And precisely because they don’t think its any big deal, and can’t fathom why anyone would want to make a big deal out of it. It was just some kid in a stupid costume…fuckin hilarious watching him trying to fight back from inside that stupid costume… It’s not what people hate that tells you how depraved they are…it’s what makes them laugh.
BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.
"You know, I’ve experienced many great moments and it’s hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.
"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.
Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Yep…sitting in your boat catching perch on your lake has just about got to be the best part of presidenting.
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.
According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.
The website said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.
According to the website, workers said the rum in the 300-litre barrel had a "special taste" so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.
The wife has since died and the man was buried in a proper grave.
A special taste. Well…my Baptist grandmother always said rum drinkers were the worst of the worst. Personally, I prefer a little Coke and some ice…
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…
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