There is a power in sharing our stories and I hope we can learn more of J’s experience and others like J who have submitted to ex-gay treatment.
Peterson, himself a former Love In Action participant (like J, he voluntarily entered the program), knows whereof he speaks. Their stories are wrenchingly powerful. This passage from J’s blog struck me at a place too deep for words:
I just started a new job, and the first day was very interesting. I found out that my manager, who happens to be a pastor of some small Apostolic church, also "Hates Fags." Well, we are all familiar with Fred Phelps and "God hates fags." When I came out to my parents the first time at the age of 16, my father conveniently left pieces of paper around and the website(godhatesfags.com or something) as the homepage on my computer.
Some days I find myself trying to fathom the cruelty of some parents toward their children and I just can’t. Nor could I imagine what it must be like to walk through life with that memory.
One interesting tidbit I learned from J’s blog, and in the comments on Peterson’s, is that LIA is apparently not telling prospective entrants (the voluntary ones) that their program does not promise a cure for their homosexuality, until after they’ve signed on the dotted line and coughed up their dough. In comments on Peterson’s blog, one poster puts it this way:
I too went into LIA expecting to be cured–expecting to come out completely heterosexual. Imagine my disappointment when I learned during orientation that there was no promise of a cure. The disappointment that I felt learning that I would never be anything more than ex-gay was bitter. While some of us in that orientation class were disappointed, others were angry–even livid.
If you take someone’s money under false pretenses, isn’t that stealing? Isn’t there a commandment or something about that…?
On the surface, "Hate Crime" may seem like a movie about violence rooted in religious bigotry, but underneath it’s a poorly disguised argument for vigilantism. The writer and director, Tommy Stovall, uses the same extremism and rigid stereotyping his film purports to rebel against.
When half of a young gay couple is viciously beaten and eventually dies, suspicion falls on the new neighbor, a fundamentalist preacher’s son with a brush cut, a permanently clenched jaw and a nice line in homophobic curses. Stacking the deck unnecessarily, Mr. Stovall dresses him in tight, white T-shirts accessorized with beer cans, gives him a Southern accent and a criminal record, then lights him like Robert Mitchum in "The Night of the Hunter." And just in case we’re still not clear where our sympathies lie, the gay couple is seen purchasing wedding rings and discussing adoption.
I can’t tell from this review whether this movie is any good or not…only that this reviewer thinks that violence against a gay couple by a religious nutcase is a ridiculous concept for a movie. Oh…and that showing a gay couple buying wedding rings and talking about adopting is a over the top. Oh come on…I’m supposed to believe this…?
With a little more subtlety — and a lot less predictability — the movie might have played more like a thoughtful drama and less like an outrageous exercise in wish fulfillment.
A jailhouse visit between accused murderer Benjamin Matthew Williams and his parents in which Williams compares himself to Jesus Christ and jokes, ”Oh, the devil made me do it,” came into more vivid focus Wednesday when a transcript of the tape was released.
The tape itself was entered into evidence Tuesday at a preliminary hearing for Williams, 31, and his brother, James Tyler Williams, 29, who are accused in the slayings of a Happy Valley gay couple found July 1.
…
Sally Williams also asks her son if, as reported, he was heavily armed when arrested.
”Yeah,” he replies, also acknowledging that he wore a bulletproof vest.
Then Sally Williams, apparently worried that her son might be suicidal, urges him to ”stick it out, however hard it is. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t.”
”We put five dollars in the commissary for each of you,” interjects Matthew Williams’ father in one of only two remarks on the transcript attributed to him.
The elder Williams also asked what time the brothers would be arraigned.
”They, they’re not doing the death penalty a whole lot here anymore, are they?” Matthew Williams asks. ”Are we looking at 20, 40 years or something? Then I don’t expect to serve that, though.”
His mother assures him ”the Lord can do miracles, he has.”
But then she tells him that after the detectives’ searches ”they had a tablet you took to the church and they had some of the notes you, that you said, was going to get blamed on you.
”Well, someone ratted, um, I, I don’t know, were there other people involved?” she asks. ”I don’t want to, don’t ans–, this is monitored … Um. I don’t, I don’t think you did what they say you did.”
”What do they say I did?” asks Matthew Williams.
”They say you took out two homos,” she responds.
”Huh. Why wouldn’t you think I’d do that?” Matthew Williams returns.
”Not under those circumstances,” his mother says. ”And Tyler, also?”
”I think they have pretty good evidence,” her son says. ”So I, I don’t know what an attorney could do for you other than take your money.”
His mother suggests an attorney might help with a plea bargain.
”Plea bargaining for what?” Matthew Williams says laughing, adding, ”Oh, the devil made me do it. Yeah.”
A little later in the visit Sally Williams worries about Tyler Williams, his sore knee, diet problems and hypoglycemia.
And she seems to chastise her older son.
”I knew the Lord was going to humble you and I’ve been praying for you for a long time,” she said. ”Some of the things you believe are wrong. … I’m sorry that I have failed you.”
But Matthew Williams suggests that God may have put him where he is because he can use the witness chair as a kind of pulpit and ”a lot of people will hear.”
”Basically, basically, um, society now calls what’s bad good and they call what I’ve done as bad and I want just, just to tell them, you know, if you love me, keep my commandments,” Matthew Williams tells his parents, adding that he has ”followed a higher law …
”I have to obey God’s law rather than man’s law.”
His mother warns that ”a lot of people will hear it with their ears, but not with your understanding.”
Matthew Williams then suggests that ”they” might think he’s insane and ”that might be to our advantage.”
”That will be a good thing,” his mother agrees.
Matthew Williams also says, though he ”didn’t want to do this,” he thought ”that I was supposed to.”
Then he explains that there are ”a lot of parallels between this and a lot of other incidents in the Old Testament.” But he went on to refer to the New Testament.
”I mean, they threw, they threw our Lord and Savior in jail. They, they accused him of things that, that he did that were not wrong, but they said they were wrong, you know, and he was punished for things,” the transcript reads.
Not To Say We Told You So…But…Yeah…We Told You So…
Comes the first tentative stirrings from the kook pews, those first little squeaks of dismay at the wreckage that is the Smirking Chimp’s excellent adventure in Iraq. Then the gulps of dawning appall at the wreckage that is President Junior’s economic policy. What’s this you say…President Strutting Jackass isn’t the tall in the saddle great American whose smirking face every patriotic American should bow down to and venerate every morning? No shit Sherlock.
And so begins the scramble to cover ass. We were all taken in. Bamboozled. He was a fraud all along. A faker. He’s no conservative.
Oh yes he is. He is the living breathing image of conservative values. Never mind the rhetoric…here’s the practice. Here’s the reality. Here’s what you get, when you practice conservative values. You get corruption. You get war and death. You get economic ruin. Smells like…victory. George W. Bush didn’t fail your values, he embodies them. Can’t stand the sight of him now can you? My heart bleeds.
Tom Tomorrow has a post up of quotes from those breathless Mission Accomplished Days, starting with this wee bit of good advice from Cal Thomas:
All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking.
Here’s the source of the quotes. Its good reading, if only as a reminder of how seductive and degrading the mob mentality that the Republicans have deliberately cultivated in America is:
“Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America’s unrivaled power and how best to use it.”
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)
"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we’d seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation–Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)
“The only people who think this wasn’t a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington.”
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)
“We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back.”
(Newsweek’s Howard Fineman–MSNBC, 5/7/03)
"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN‘s Lou Dobbs, on Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech, 5/1/03)
“The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war.”
(Fox News Channel’s Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)
“What’s he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it’s over? I mean, don’t these things sort of lose their–Isn’t there a fresh date on some of these debate points?”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean–4/9/03)
“I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)
"This will be no war — there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention…. The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling…. It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate– cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)
"It won’t take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there’s no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel‘s Bill O’Reilly, 2/10/03)
“I’m waiting to hear the words ‘I was wrong’ from some of the world’s most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types…. I just wonder, who’s going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: ‘Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong’? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war….
“Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that — quote, “The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.” Sorry, Scott. I think you’ve been chasing the wrong tail, again.
“Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don’t call them ‘elitists’ for nothing.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)
“Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years.”
(Fox News Channel’s Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?”
(Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, 1/29/03)
“We’re all neo-cons now.”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
No Chris…the word that describes what you are now is tool. What the rest of us have to live the rest of our lives with is knowing that anyone with a brain and even a meager capacity for independent thought could see this catastrophe coming back in 2003, and yet it still happened. Right here. Right in America. I was in Washington in the days just before the war started. I was attending a software developer’s conference at Washington University, a short walking distance from the Mall…a short (for me) walking distance from that black granite memorial to our Viet Nam war dead. I’d protested that war too, and after Nixon resigned I was certain we’d never let ourselves get dragged back into that gutter ever again. I remember walking the streets of Washington between conference sessions. I remember how the shock of it all had simply made me numb. And now…here we are again…
Flashback…Washington D.C…March 18, 2003
Tuesday afternoon. I am attending a conference on open source software in government being held at George Washington University. I am here because my project manager is investigating the possibility of moving the system I’ve been working on for the past several years to open source software. Work on the Hubble Space Telescope will go into maintenance mode shortly, and the thinking is that the Institute doesn’t want to spend a lot of money it won’t have on software upgrades, simply because a certain vendor has a business cycle that requires you to do that. At least with open source we would have the option of making any small fixes we absolutely needed to have before the end of the mission ourselves, without breaking our systems that depend on it. The alternative is to stick to the vendor’s upgrade cycle, and pray the new versions don’t break anything in our software, or introduce new bugs and security holes.
Between conference sessions, I wander around the Foggy Bottom area, and back and forth to my hotel, which I paid for out of my own pocket, rather then hassle with Washington traffic, which is a nightmare. The hotel has a nice little kitchenette, which allows me to eat reasonably well without further damaging my budget for the month. Around noon I begin the walk back to my hotel for lunch, stopping to examine a decrepit building right next to the conference hall, that I assume is one of the student dorms. It is, and I see by the bronze plaque by the door that this one is named Lafayette Hall. I read the inscription, which briefly describes the history of Marquis de Lafayette, who fought beside George Washington, taking a bullet in the process, for the freedom of a nation that was not his own, and who later attended the first commencement ceremonies of the university that bore his friend’s name, shaking the hand of each of those first graduates. While I am reading, a snarky voice in the back of my mind is saying Freedom Fries…Freedom Toast… An old friend of mine I’d had breakfast with that morning, told me a joke he’d heard about a man who, while visiting France recently, asked a random Frenchman, "Sir, can you speak German?" When the Frenchman replied that he couldn’t, the American said, "You’re welcome." I told my friend the Frenchman could just as easily have asked the American, "Sir, do you have a king?"
My hotel is somewhat oldish. My room is on the sixth floor and the elevators are small and slow. I press the button and when one finally appears, I see that there are already two businessmen inside. It’s a tight fit for three. As we go up I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. There are some who you would never know from the look of them, to be of the right wing thuggish persuasion, and there are others who hit you with it in waves, in the cut of the clothes, the bullying posture that is as second nature as breathing, and the coldness of the face, particularly when smiling at nothing in particular. I tune them both out, pulling out from a space within me I’d almost forgotten about, a "Yes I’m a longhair, yes I know you hate my guts, and no mister establishment person sir, I really don’t give a flying fuck" attitude, close my eyes, and listen to the elevator floor counter click off the floors to mine. I toy briefly about writing a book, "Everything I know about living under Bush II, I learned from Nixon". The old elevator rises slowly. I hear one of my companions say, "I hope they don’t cancel our flight out Thursday." The other chuckles and says, "The war will be over by then."
What you have to understand about that Mission Accomplished banner, is that the mission wasn’t winning the war in Iraq. The mission was starting it in the first place.
Via Alicublog, Ms Instapundit herself comes out swinging for the ex-gay movement…but in the Instapundit way, which is to make gutter crawling bigotry seem downright liberal and progressive, all the while denying that you even agree with…well…anything.
Her beef seems to be that the APA is calling NARTH a worthless bunch of pseudo scientific quacks.
Not only did the APA deny CE (Continuing Education) credit to professionals attending the annual NARTH conference in November, stating that "The program content is not consistent with APA policy" but the APA is attempting to declare therapy to modify sexual orientation unethical
Well…duh. When the fucking science says that ex-gay therapy not only doesn’t work, it is likely to result in long term damage to a patient’s mental health, and can even lead to suicide, then…yeah…it’s unethical to keep doing it lady. What part of "first do no harm" are you having trouble parsing?
And where you really see the agenda here, is that same pusillanimous equivocation that her husband resorts to, whenever he wants to promote the politics of hate without looking like he’s a hatemonger himself…
Personally, I’m skeptical about turning gay people straight…
Like fuck you are lady. A motherfucking cinder block can tell what’s wrong with this, let alone a goddamned doctor of psychology:
But shouldn’t the client be the one to choose, not the APA? The APA has decided that the answer is no.
Are you really a doctor lady, or do you just play one on the Internet? I suppose if someone wants to go on a diet of canned beans and ice cream as a way to cure their left handedness that’s their business…but…yeah…for a doctor to tell them being left handed is a sickness they can cure with canned beans and ice cream would be unethical you drooling fuckwad. That’s the point, and…yes…you fucking know that’s the point!
Dig the way she’s calling it "therapy to modify sexual orientation" as opposed to ex-gay therapy or reparative therapy, as its usually called. This is how we make the essential ugliness of anti-gay hate seem innocuous. It’s not ex-gay therapy, it’s therapy to modify sexual orientation. And a lobotomy is therapy to modify the functioning of the brain.
Christ almighty…who do these jackasses think they’re fooling with this Oh I have nothing against the gays I just think that the people who hate their guts have a valid point claptrap…?
Stand Up For The Pariahs And You’ll Be Treated Like One Too Boy…
A straight seventeen year old high school senior has been expelled from his school for showing his video project to his class. It was about a gay high school romance …
Brandon Flyte, a student at West Linn High School in West Linn, Oregon, was recently expelled for airing a video project he had been assigned in class which includes a same-sex "snuggle" scene. The film, Brokeback High, is a "gay love story" based on themes from Brokeback Mountain, but set in a modern day high school. The shot above was the one that got him expelled.
Flyte writes on his website: "One has to wonder if any of this would’ve happened had the two characters snuggling in my film been male and female. We’re led to believe that diversity is encouraged in schools, but when a 17 year-old straight kid makes a serious gay love story and is expelled for it, it just begs the question of exactly what kind of policy was the administration following?"
Well…let’s see…a quick lookup of the high school web site leads you to a main page with this text very prominently displayed for all to see:
It is the policy of the West Linn/Wilsonville Board of Education and School District that there will be no discrimination or harassment on the grounds of race, color, sex, marital status, religion, national origin, age or disability in any educational programs, activities or employment.
Notice what’s missing…? The school administration wasn’t just sending a message to the gay students, but to the straight ones too. Stand up for the pariahs and you’ll be treated like one… Now that this kid’s plight is getting some internet attention, wait for the school to ban him from his graduation too, in retaliation. I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen, but adults who kick kids around like this for supporting for their gay peers have no conscience.
[Update…] According to Pam’s House Blend, after much local media attention the school has relented and are letting the kid attend classes again. Good.
There’s some discussion in the Pam’s House Blend post about how conservative that particular part of Oregon is. That’s not especially surprising. What is, is this little detail they dug up, from the School District (as opposed to the school’s) policies:
The district shall promote non-discrimination and an environment free of harassment based on an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, parental or marital status or age or because of the race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, parental or marital status or age of any other persons with whom the individual associates.
Which is, in one obvious case, more embracing then the one displayed prominently on the schools’ own web site. I assume the district policies outrank the school’s, but you have to wonder if that one omission was deliberate nonetheless.
After a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, New Zealand’s biggest fertility service, Fertility Associates, has decided to accept sperm from gay men – previously barred because of a supposed higher HIV risk. Responding to the move, Canterbury University associate professor of genetics Frank Sin called for potential recipients of sperm from gay donors to be told that "the gay gene(s)" could be passed on to the child.
Dr Sin told The Dominion Post that it was "not daydreaming" to suggest that sexual orientation could be inherited. Animal models had clearly shown the existence of a gene that controlled sexual behaviour, he said. Though there was nothing so conclusive in human studies, there was strong evidence – particularly from twin studies – of a significant genetic component.
Environment also played a role, Dr Sin said. Though he had nothing against homosexuality, Dr Sin said people had the right to know the trait could be passed on.
Notice however, that he’s not saying that anyone with gay relatives in their bloodline should also have their sperm so labeled. My parents were both straight, as are the parents of most gay children…and yet they produced a gay son. So who does this guy think he’s fooling? Perhaps he’s got nothing against homosexuality, but he’s clearly got a problem with homosexuals.
In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.
…
Specifically, Mr. Panse was charged with making “comments that students could construe as being of a sexual or personal nature…or using [his] position as a teacher to put students into any situation reasonably likely to make them feel uncomfortable because of the injection of sexuality into…the substance of [his] comments”.
One parent complained and the shit hit the fan. Oh for chrissakes…it’s a goddamned art class! What’s it going to be next…they demand art museums put fig leaves on all the nude sculptures and paintings before anyone under 18 years old will be allowed to enter?
Nudity. Flesh. Skin. You know what this is all about? It isn’t sex. Over in the Netherlands, they’re talking about showing images of gay couples kissing to new immigrants as a way of testing whether they’ll adapt to the open and tolerant culture over there. But they don’t even have to do that. Just show them Michalangelo’s David (or better still, Donatello’s David and his Narcissus), Rodin’s "The Kiss", Picasso’s "Blue Nude", Lord Leighton’s "The Fisherman", Anne Swynnerton’s "Cupid and Psyche", Chavannes "The Little Fisherman" and just to make things fun, Broc’s "The Death of Hyacinth" and if they get red faced just tell them to take the next boat back home. It’s not that they hate gays, it’s not even, that they hate sex. The fundamentalist radicals hate the human species, and nothing makes that plainer then the way they react to the sight of the human body itself. It’s not that nudity is obscene, it’s that taking an awed appreciation for and pride in our physical selves is horrifying to them. It’s not sex they think is dirty, it’s the human race they think is dirty.
You may have noticed a slight change in the way things look around here. That’s because I’m migrating the blog, finally, to a blog maintainance system… WordPress. When I moved the site to Winters Web Works (webmaster/host for Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World), Jonah, the admin here, coaxed me into it. For the past several months he’s been letting me experiment with a mirror WordPress blog and I’ve grown to like it, and in particular, the convenience of not having to manually do every little thing, like update the archive file and keep the permalinks and the comment links correct. It’s a very nice system, and one that should allow me to post from any computer with an Internet connection and a browser, so now I won’t have to carry my entire web site with me everywhere I go on a flash stick.
I’ve got a nice rich text editor I can compose my posts in (provided the browser I’m using follows the standard document model) and a spell checker (very necessary) and I can cut and paste links and text and format everything much more easily then editing the HTML by hand. I can also work on a post and save it without publishing, to work on it later, even from another location if need be.
There’s a new comment engine built right in to WordPress, which I’ll be using from now on. But Jonah has migrated the old comments over (which is why some of the old posts have duplicate comment links in them now). If you have any trouble with the new comment engine let me know. My blog should be RSS Feed enabled now, and better integrated with Technorati’s blog update notification system. Hopefully that will make things easier on the readers here who’ve asked me about it.
There may still be some dust to setting after the change over. If you notice anything amiss let me know. But I think the blog looks really nice now. Jonah made some suggestions about the banner image and the overall layout that I think work really well, and I’m very happy with how things look now. And since it’s a lot easier for me to just sit down and drop in a post I’ll probably be posting a tad more often now. I’m pretty sure this will end up being one of those "Why didn’t I do this before" kinda things…
Last week in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, was requested to testify.
He did so. At the end of his testimony, a right-wing senator said: “Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man & a woman. What do you have to say about that?”
Raskin: “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”
The room erupted into applause.
According to 365Gay.Com, the right wing state senator was Nancy Jacobs, republican (surprise, surprise) from Cecil and Harford Counties. So Dwyer isn’t the only nutcase in Annapolis.
Merrill Keiser, Jr., is a trucker by trade, and he’s hoping his next journey takes him all the way to Washington. His goal is a seat in the US Senate, but first he has to make it through the primary that will determine which Ohio Democrat will be the November ballot.
The Fremont man is causing some controversy with one of his beliefs. He tells News 11 homosexuality should be a felony, punishable by death. “Just like we have laws against murder, we have laws against stealing, we have laws against taking drugs — we should have laws against immoral conduct,” Keiser says.
1-40 lashes for crime of maliciousness, like graffiti, porn, strip clubs.
Execution for crime of adultery. (Leviticus 20:10)
Execution for crime of homosexual acts. (Leviticus 20:13)
We have met the Taliban, and they are us. A decade ago I might have said these nutcases stand absolutely no chance of being elected. Now I’d have to say that they both have excellent chances of being elected. And that’s not because a majority, or even a significant number of Americans want to live in an old testament theocracy. It’s because there is no vigorous political defense of individual liberty in America anymore, and in particular, in defense of religious liberty. Religious liberty in America has come to mean that the most extreme fundamentalists can agitate for stoning to death people for old testiment sex crimes, and burning heretics at the stake, and anyone who speaks out against them is anti-Christian.
Believers in the American Dream, defenders of liberty and justice for all, had better start getting as angry, and as loud, and as in your face as the theocrats, or we’re headed for Shira law here in America.
The Associated Press reported today Dobson received a six-paragraph personal note from Alito. In the letter, Alito thanked Dobson for backing his nomination to the Supreme Court.
Read the note, “This is just a short note to express my heartfelt thanks to you and the entire staff of Focus on the Family for your help and support during the past few challenging months. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family during this period.”
Alito went on to write, “As long as I serve on the Supreme Court I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me” and expressed his desire for a personal meeting with Dobson.
States have already begun passing anti-abortion laws so that Roberts and Alito can overturn Roe. And after they’ve accomplished that, expect them to start passing sodomy laws next so Lawrence can be overturned.
Theocracy. That’s what the democrats who wouldn’t filibuster Alito voted for. And that’s what everyone who voted for Bush last election voted for. Well, it looks like you’re going to get it.
So I’m watching my local NBC affiliate do their nightly news thing, and I notice that the story about the West Virginia police chief who prevented a gay man who was dying of a heart attack from getting CPR had drawn the attention of the mainstream news media. I’ve been meaning to say something here about that, because the story really shines a cold hard light on the reality of what decades of relentless gay bashing by the religious right and the republicans does to gay people, but I’m still deep in this sleepless funk I’ve been in for weeks now and my outrage buffer is so maxed out now that I’m like that dog in those David lynch cartoons that just stands rigidly at the end of its leash completely immobilized by anger and I haven’t been able to type a word or skritch a line on paper for weeks now. But…I digress…
So…anyway…the news story deliberately obscures key facts of the story because the facts are so completely damning and journalists can’t take sides, and especially they can’t take sides when there are dead homosexuals involved. So when someone says that police chief Robert K. Bowman prevented Claude Green’s friend Billy Snead from giving him CPR, and tried to discourage the paramedics from doing the same because according to Bowman Green had HIV, never mind that they don’t bother pointing out that the reason the EMS workers ignored the drooling moron and kept on giving Green CPR was because you can’t fucking catch HIV from giving somebody CPR, they basically leave out of the story the part about how Green actually didn’t have HIV, and Bowman only assumed he did because he knew that Green was gay. Hey…he’s a 43 year old filthy homo, and didn’t Paul Cameron say that 43 is about as old as a homo gets? I’m surprised NBC News didn’t give Bowman credit for his remarkable restraint in not evacuating the entire town. But there’s still time for that I reckon.
Can I mention here how much I hate the news media? This is my blog…right? I can say what I want to here can’t I? Good. I fucking hate the news media.
I haven’t been posting much lately because I’m so damn tired all the time. Sorry. I’m still struggling with this sleep problem. It’s all I can do to drag myself to the drawing board to do my cartoons and I’m horribly behind on that too. Hopefully I’ll have this week’s up by the end of the day.
Living in a house I have all to myself is probably not helping my general health out any, a thing I’m finding both ironic and darkly amusing. They say the “Gay Lifestyle” is so bad for your health, yet I am about as far away from the scene as a person can be and my health these days isn’t all that great. I don’t drink much at all, and my casual drug use (remember, I’m a sixties kid) stopped pretty much back in the early 80s. I am not, and never have been, interested in casual hooking up. I’m a romantic. I want…no…I demand the emotional connection too. So I don’t just go trolling the bars like some people do when they feel themselves getting lonely. (No…when I feel myself getting lonely I put it into artwork that, trust me, you don’t want to see) So I’m at somewhat less at risk for HIV and other STD’s. But being constantly single is stressful on your health too, in ways science is only now beginning to appreciate. And when there is nobody in your life to nag you to take care of yourself, you tend not to.
I could be living the perfect ex-gay lifestyle right now, only not quite as miserable inside, because I’m not afraid of what the sight of a beautiful guy does to me. But that beauty seems so out of reach now, that I’m starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t just stop looking at guys anyway. It just makes me more miserable sometimes now, and it never used to do that. But then I might as well just crawl in a coffin instead of my bed, and I’m not ready for that. Celibacy is a healthy virtue only if you’re wired for it. Otherwise you’re just sleep walking through half a life like any party animal who isn’t paying attention to what they’re putting into, or doing with their body. It’s not sex that puts your health at risk, it’s alienation.
I’m shy, but I’m not this shy. I’m just too tired anymore to live a life and I wish I could fix that. So I’ve gained about ten pounds this winter, as my sleeping problems keep me sedentary. My work as a software engineer only complicates the matter: I am seated at a desk in front of a computer monitor most of my day. Then there is the drafting table. But at least I’m sometimes standing up while I’m working there. I don’t move about much any more. Except to drag myself to bed…often…during the day. And there’s nobody here to get me the hell off the bed and out the door to do something…anything…
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
