"But I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle," she said.
Cinq…
"That doesn’t make it a marriage. Some people have group sex. Should we allow two men and three women to marry? Should we allow polygamy with one man and five wives? For some people, the alternative lifestyle is bestiality. Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?"
Le Curtian…Applaus a Voux…
[Edited a tad…] I found a copy of the actual quotes she made about having gay friends and having the utmost respect for them…
A ceremony to honor the achievements of six high profile gay Californians erupted into a political fight at the State Capitol Monday with some Republicans storming off the Assembly Floor.
The Legislature’s Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Caucus (LGBT) sponsored the first Pride Recognition Awards, a program they say is designed to recognize the accomplishments of people who happen to be gay in their respective fields.
Conservative Assemblymembers boycotted the program.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise," said Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia, R-San Diego. "We’re wasting a lot of time we have a lot of bills on the floor."
The honorees included several celebrities, including former NFL tackle Esera Tuaolo and Reichen Lehmkuhl, the million dollar prize winner of the "The Amazing Race 4" reality television show. Watching quietly from the back of the room was Lehmkuhl’s partner, Lance Bass, a singer with the former boy band ‘N Sync. Bass recently went public with the fact he is gay.
Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he hoped the event would benefit Republicans by showing them the "strength of our diversity and the many accomplishments in a variety of disciplines." But about 10 Republicans either walked out or boycotted the event altogether.
"So it’s a great disappointment that they’re acting like such children," Leno said.
MEADE – Two Meade boys have confessed to cutting down a rainbow flag outside a hotel here, the proprietors said Monday.
The Lakeway Hotel became a focus of controversy last month after owners J.R. and Robin Knight hung the colorful banner, a gift from their 12-year-old son, in front of the place. Locals uncomfortable with such a symbol – it also stands for gay pride – decried the flag’s presence and then, in the early-morning hours of July 31, someone cut it down.
The disappearance had remained a mystery, but the father of two local boys brought them to the Lakeway on Friday and they owned up to their involvement.
"They apologized and said they’d replace it," J.R. Knight said. He didn’t name the boys, and Meade County Sheriff Michael Cox said only that officials are investigating.
Meanwhile, Knight said replacing a 5-foot-by-5-foot plate glass window smashed in at the hotel’s restaurant – also apparently due to the flag flap – probably would cost about $500. Two neon beer signs destroyed in the same incident probably will cost another $1,000.
Someone tossed a brick through the window early Friday morning, according to the Knights and local authorities, who are investigating. Scrawled on the brick was the word "fag."
An 18-year-old gay man who was badly beaten in Edgewood on July 30 might have been assaulted because a man at the party believed the gay man had touched his butt, a statement of probable cause filed in state District Court says.
William York, 21, of Edgewood, and Leroy Segura, 19, of Moriarty have been charged with aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Bond for each man was set at $100,000 cash only by District Judge Michael Vigil on Monday. Two juveniles, a boy and girl, are also being held in connection to the case.
York believed the victim tried to grab his butt while they were at a party in Edgewood on July 30, the statement says. He said Segura, who is known by the nickname “Half Pint,” told him the victim tried to grab York’s butt, the statement says.
In an interview, York told state police the comment upset him and made him want to fight the 18-year-old man, the statement says. York said everyone at the party made fun of the 18-year-old man because he was gay, the statement says. York said he wanted to “scare” the victim to “make him straight and to get him to stop acting the way he was,” the statement says.
The juvenile male arrested in the case said he, York and Segura tied the gay man’s hands, placed a torn black T-shirt over his head, walked him into a deserted field, pushed him onto a downed fence and beat him, the statement says. The juvenile, the statement says, said he egged on York by calling the gay man joto, a derogatory Spanish word meaning gay.
The documents did not contain statements from Segura, who wore a rosary around his neck in court Monday.
The gay man suffered bleeding on the brain, a concussion, facial lacerations and bruising from the beating, which lasted for hours, state police have said. York, Segura and the juvenile male have been charged under New Mexico’s hate-crimes law.
The 18-year-old victim went to the party with a girl, who was also beaten and held inside the trailer house where the party took place, the statement says. She told police “the male subjects would knock (the gay man) down and if he did not get up off the ground within a certain count or if he did not make any noise, they would jump on him, hitting and kicking him,” the statement says.
The female victim said the beating stopped as “the sun was coming up,” the statement says.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise…"
This is not your typical newsletter from Outsidepride.com, Inc. In fact, this is the first one in six years which is not business related. I apologize for cluttering your inbox with an unsolicited email; however you are free to unsubscribe just by clicking the link at the bottom.
I want to share with you my television viewing experience the other night on prime time television. I ask those of you who agree with me to go to www.cbs.com and go to the bottom of the page, click the feedback link and express your opinion. I know the vast majority of you will agree with me as all polls indicate. We are the majority, not the minority as the liberal media would lead you to believe.
My wife and I sat down to watch television the other night with our children. Cold Case was on which is normally a fairly enjoyable show to watch; however, the last half hour of the show dealt with a young man who wished he had asked his male friend to come with him (long story short). The show ended with the two men hugging and obvious intimation they had discovered their gay feelings towards each other. The very next show was Without A Trace. The whole last half hour of this show was about two lesbians who were struggling with their feelings of lesbianism. It ended with full acceptance from one father and the two lesbians making out. Yes, they were kissing right at the end of the show on public prime time television. So much for wholesome family television.
Now, I am NOT trying to bash homosexuals and I am not a bigot; however, I feel homosexuality is morally wrong and should not be "promoted" as what is the norm for society. Text books are being rewritten as I am writing this to "highlight" every homosexual who has made a contribution to society. There are teachers who have been asked to make sure students know that, "This person in history was a homosexual." History is being rewritten to promote homosexuality and prime time television is doing its best to make homosexuality a "normal" behavior. If homosexuality was the norm, civilization would have ceased to exist thousands of years ago. Procreation takes a man and a woman. There was Adam and then there was Eve, not Adam and Steve.
There are literally tens of thousand of you reading this email right now. If you are tired of the way public television is going let CBS know! It will only take about 1 minute of your time. Again, just go to www.cbs.com and click the feedback link at the bottom. It is time the majority speak up and not let the minority run this country. The majority can bring back the Christian heritage this country was founded on because it is, "In God We Trust."
Thank you for your time,
Troy Hake
President
Outsidepride.com, Inc.
No Troy…you’re not a bigot. You just assume that everyone who does business with you is heterosexual but you’re not a bigot. You just want gay people to live their lives in the closet safely out of the sight of normal people because even the simplest gesture of love and affection between them are "gay feelings" and not simply the feelings all human beings feel towards the ones they love, and you’re not a bigot. And those "gay feelings" are immoral whether or not they lift and sustain the lives of gay people in exactly the same ways that feelings of love and affection otherwise lift and sustain the lives of heterosexuals, and you’re not a bigot. And a kiss between two heterosexuals who love each other is wholesome but a kiss between a same sex couple who love each other just as much is not because that isn’t love it’s "gay feelings" and you’re not a bigot. And there are no gay kids in schools anywhere because no homosexual was ever a kid once who had to endure a relentless torrent of bullying and messages of disgust and loathing and shame and you’re not a bigot. And schools shouldn’t teach kids a few honest facts about homosexuality because schools exist only to enforce the worldview of you and your religion and you’re not a bigot. And anyone who doesn’t agree with you isn’t a Christian like you are and you’re not a bigot. Well…actually you are Troy.
What the fuck…you run a lawn and garden business and you don’t think you have any gay customers? You didn’t think you had any heterosexual customers with gay kids…or gay siblings…or gay friends? You just thought that spitting in your customer’s faces was a great way to do business? No…you’re a bigot, and bigots just can’t keep their goddamned knees from jerking can they Troy? Hey…you unwholesome destroyer of civilization…wanna buy some garden soil from me? I am not a bigot.
Support for a fair-housing ordinance that prohibits discrimination against gays and lesbians has cost Orange County [Florida] Mayor Rich Crotty the support of his biggest re-election backer.
The county Commission voted unanimously last month to expand the existing law to include gays. (story)
Last week Tom Hutchison, the chief executive officer of CNL Hotels & Resorts Inc., informed Crotty that he would have nothing more to do with the mayor’s re-election campaign. He had been a key fundraiser and had served on the campaign steering committee.
In an email to Crotty, Hutchinson attributed his decision to Crotty’s "favoring the absolutely ridiculous vote on legal protection for equal housing for gays."
"I am not interested in supporting candidates with seemingly zero Christian biblical principals on the issues regarding the alternative gay lifestyle," the email said.
After the email to the mayor became public CNL quickly disassociated itself from Hutchinson’s statements, saying he was speaking as a citizen and his views did not reflect those of the company.
Whoops! Kindly disregard that raving lunatic who happens to be our CEO…
Hutchinson also issued a public statement to the Orlando Sentinal which the paper noted appeared at odds with the email he sent to the mayor
"I do not believe in discrimination of any kind, for any reason – period," it said. "I am thankful that this is a community that embraces the individual views of all its citizens."
I don’t believe in discrimination of any kind, I just support discrimination of some kinds. And if you oppose the discrimination of any kind that I don’t believe in I will withdraw my support for you. And please don’t hold me accountable for the discrimination I support, but don’t believe in.
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.
The usual suspects have filed suit in Michigan , to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay people.
LANSING — A conservative group sued Wednesday to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay workers and said the school is violating a 2004 amendment to the state constitution.
The American Family Association of Michigan filed the lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court and hopes to get a ruling setting a precedent that would block domestic-partner benefits at other state universities.
The purpose of the suit is to ensure that courts rule on the constitutionality of domestic-partner benefits at public universities, said Patrick Gillen, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, which is representing the association.
By providing same-sex benefits, MSU is "recognizing same-sex marriage in substance, if not by label," Gillen said.
Not to mention providing access to health care for a class of people the American Family Association would just as soon see dead. The bible says their blood will be upon them after all…
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has reportedly fired his top aide after discovering the man is gay.
The Mail reports that Stephen Noon’s sexuality was discovered when his long-term partner visited him at his office.
"His partner came to the office at the end of the day and was introduced to the Cardinal," a friend of the couple tells The Mail.
"Shortly afterwards the Church made it clear that his sexuality was incompatible with the job he had to do. Since he was the spokesperson for the Cardinal, Murphy-O’Connor clearly felt he had to act because homosexual acts are regarded by the Church as a sin," the friend was quoted as saying.
You know Murphy…I’ll just bet I could encapsulate your very existance inside a fairly small DOS Batch file…
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?
On April 11, Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher removed protections against job discrimination from gay and lesbian state employees. To add insult to injury, he did it on the same day he declared "Diversity Day".
Shallow understanding from people of good will, is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Jason Johnson, the gay college student expelled from The University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, has been allowed to return to class and finish the school year, under an agreement hammered out by his, and the school’s lawyers. I’m actually surprised. I’d thought the school would dig in its theological heels and insist on its absolute right to remove filthy sodomites from its sacred grounds. In exchange Jason agrees not to sue the school, but I’m puzzled as to how much leverage the threat of a lawsuit against a Southern Baptist school in the Bible Belt could have been. In any case, they’re not going to lie on his transcripts that he failed the semester anymore. Whether or not they treat him fairly in the classroom remains to be seen.
From the Lexington Herald-Leader comes this column from Paul Prather. I wish I could like it…he says a few things I completely agree with…
• I believe private religious schools should have the right to make whatever rules they want (short of mandates to torture or behead heathens), in keeping with the tenets of their faith…
• If you can’t obey a school’s code of conduct, common sense dictates that you might not want to enroll there.
• On the other hand, the same principle holds true for the school itself. If the University of the Cumberlands hopes to earn accreditation from a secular agency, it must be prepared to abide by that group’s secular standards. You can’t have it both ways.
That’s pretty much where I am generally, and I’d go on to add that if you want to discriminate against a portion of the citizenry at minimum you can’t expect them to support you with their tax dollars. Prather goes on to comment on the hypocrisy of singling out gay students for violations of sexual conduct rules, saying that in his own experience on Christian campuses, the straight kids could be just as sexually active as the kids on the secular campuses, if at least a tad more reserved about expressing it openly. But then he goes on to assert that Johnson’s problem was that he called attention to himself, and from there his column goes down a familiar path…
Thus, Johnson’s main mistake wasn’t simply being gay. It was calling undue attention to his orientation. Christian colleges might have been the originators of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell philosophy.
It is a fact that Johnson posted pictures of himself and his boyfriend on his MySpace profile, but nowhere have I seen it said that he was being open about his sexual orientation at school. What I’ve always heard to date is that someone informed on him to the school administration, and they went looking for his MySpace profile and then confronted him with it. In other words, Johnson didn’t tell the school, the school Asked. That’s not Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…that’s stay in the closet if you know what’s good for you. If heterosexuals understand nothing else about their homosexual neighbors, they need to understand this: Those days are over.
There are a lot of us, far too many in my opinion, who are still perfectly willing to be closeted on a situational basis, but none of us but the desperate self loathing are willing to live our entire lives inside the closet anymore. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not turning your back on God or having a lack of moral values or defiant homosexual militancy. It’s something else, something that the Prather’s of the world just don’t seem to get. And yet it’s so simple, or would be, if only you can see the people for the homosexuals. Prather, in trying his best, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s actually trying, misses it completely.
If a straight student had, say, posted photos of himself and his girlfriend in flagrante delicto on the Internet, he also would have been expelled.
In flagrante delicto. It means "Caught in the act." Johnson didn’t post pictures of him and his boyfriend having sex on his MySpace profile. But you could tell at a glance those photos were of two teenagers in love. Look at that for a second. Prather is using a phrase that generally is taken to mean getting caught having sex (the act) to describe photos of two gay teenagers in love. And he goes on in that manner for the rest of the column, trying his best to be sensible and compassionate, and failing miserably because he cannot see the people for the homosexuals…
Homosexual activities and extramarital heterosexual sex indeed are contrary to biblical and historical Christian standards. Yet, they’re about equally as errant as pride, gluttony, stinginess, temper tantrums, disrespect for parents and lying.
One question raised by the Johnson case is this: How should Christian groups react to sexual misconduct? All religious organizations are made up of human beings who, in my observation, tend to fail miserably a fair amount of the time.
Sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct.
Maybe Christian administrators should consider reacting the way Jesus did. I never can think about an incident such as Johnson’s without remembering the time Jesus was confronted with a woman who had been caught "in the very act" of adultery and was about to be stoned for it…
Adultery. The Very Act.
Jesus said, "Let the one who is himself without sin throw the first rock." That ended the stoning. Then he addressed the woman. "Neither do I condemn you," he said. "Go your way. From now on, sin no more."
What a beautiful response…
Beautiful perhaps, when made to someone who had cheated on their spouse. But it is unmitigated ugliness to say this to a gay teenager about his first love. Johnson is not married (never mind for now, that homosexuals can only Be married in one state of the union). He is not having an affair with another married person. And considering Johnson’s religiosity, it would not surprise me in the least to hear they aren’t even having sex yet. We don’t all jump right into the sack on the first date. So at worst you can only call Johnson’s "sin" fornication, not adultery, and there is no evidence even for that. But notice the mental leap here, from images of two young men in love, to adultery, and even more grotesquely, to forgiveness for adultery. No. From Johnson’s MySpace profile, his sin can only be one thing: being a homosexual in love. And there’s what’s missing from all of Paul Prather’s compassion and understanding: any sense whatsoever that homosexuals love, and that they are punished simply for being in love.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex… This is the bedrock of anti-gay prejudice, the one irreducible premise through which everything else about homosexuals is understood. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Never mind the raving haters of the world like Fred Phelps…if you want to understand how otherwise decent people can casually rip the lives of their gay and lesbian neighbors apart with no thought or care for the human misery and wreckage they leave behind, there’s why. They can do it, confidant in the knowledge that our feelings for our mates are shallow imitations of the real feelings heterosexuals feel for theirs. Heterosexuals feel love and contentment and fulfillment in their spouses, but homosexuals can only feel a pale imitation of that. "Playing house" as the homophobic science fiction writer Orson Scott Card once put it. Heterosexuals feel deep and profound grief at the loss of a spouse, but homosexuals can only try to mimic grief at best. So we cannot rip apart everything in their lives they ever held dear, because they don’t really hold those things dear…not the way we do. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.
It’s how anti gay prejudice becomes it’s own unstoppable machine, grinding up the lives of innocent people while others who fancy themselves decent and compassionate and thoughtful citizens look sadly on, as though watching the fate of dogs that have to be put down because they’re so sick. Oh how…unfortunate…for them… If you think that the only wrong done to Jason Johnson was being expelled from his school, you’re missing the graver injury done to his person, and right at the very core of his being. To see it, all you have to do is be able to see the person for the homosexual. Let me try to explain to the Prathers of the world how horrible that "beautiful response" actually is.
Picture the first time you fell in love. Picture that amazed, wonderful feeling. One day, life just seemed more wonderful, more intense, more amazing then you’d ever dreamed it could be. The sun shone a little brighter on everything around you then it did before. The stars seemed to shine more intensely. Everything old seemed new again. Life was beautiful. It was worth living no matter how hard or desperate it got. Everything that ever happened to you was worth it, because it brought you to that moment, and that person. Everything that ever Could happen to you from then on was worth it, so long as a certain person was there, so long as you could see them smile. Because whenever they smiled, you smiled.
I remember it well. When I was a teenager I used to listen to all the pop culture love songs of the sixties and early seventies on my radio, and never really understood what they were about, until I fell in love myself, with a male classmate. I remember hearing this song on my radio one day, I’d heard it countless times before and I didn’t like it at all because it was it was slow, it had no beat, it was just some gooey sugary love song and whenever one of those came on I would reach for the tuning knob and try to find something else I could rock to, and this time when it came on I sat and listened, and began to cry…because I knew exactly how the person who wrote it felt…because it said it all about what I was feeling then…
Today I feel like pleasing you more than before
Today I know what I want to do but I don’t know what for
To be living for you is all I want to do
To be loving you it’ll all be there when my dreams come true
Today you’ll make me say that I somehow have changed
Today you’ll look into my eyes, I’m just not the same
To be anymore than all I am would be a lie
I’m so full of love I could burst apart and start to cry
Today everything you want, I swear it all will come true
Today I realize how much I’m in love with you
-Jefferson Airplane, Today
Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That we do doesn’t take from us any of the higher emotions heterosexuals are capable of expressing to their mates, or of their unions. We love. We honor. We cherish. Til death do us part. We are capable of great sacrifice for the honor of our love. We are capable of great joy in that love. Our unions are as life affirming to us as yours are to you. The only difference between us is that we mate to our own sex. You can’t take the homosexuality out of a homosexual, otherwise the snake oil salesmen of the ex-gay ministries would have thousands of happy heterosexuals to show as proof, instead of one paid staff member after another who proudly proclaims their heterosexuality only to get caught in a gay bar months or years later. We are what we are.
You can make us ashamed of ourselves. You can make us hate ourselves. You can make us terrified of the slightest shred of sexual arousal. But you can’t make us heterosexuals because we aren’t. What you Can do, is take all the higher aspects of love and devotion away from us. All the romance. All the poetry. All the honor and devotion. All the awe and all the joy and all the wonder. You can take that from us. You can drain our lives of every last drop of it. But when you do we are still homosexuals, and all you have done is leave us empty human shells with sexual needs that won’t go away.
And that’s exactly what you do, every time you tell a gay kid that his feelings for his first love are sin. You convince him of it, and you literally leave him with nothing left in his life but mindless loveless lust. That’s what you’re calling beautiful.
I’m not going to argue theology with anyone. If you’ve got yourself locked into a relentless fundamentalist religiosity that insists that every last comma and period in the King James bible Must be literally true or you’re not a faithful Christian, then I guess the universe really was created in six days and is about six thousand years old and women suffer the pains of childbirth for the sin of Eve. And if that’s what you believe then all I have to say to you is: Get the fuck off my back!
I’m not going to argue about whether or not we have a choice. That argument is over and done with for everyone except bigots and religious fanatics for whom no science could ever be enough to change their minds.
Here’s what I have to say about the case of Jason Johnson and forgiveness of sin: it doesn’t matter if you don’t mean to hurt anyone, if you won’t stop hurting them! And one other thing, which was said more eloquently by another man, dealing in his own blunt way with another mindless human prejudice that was, and still is, tearing away at innocent people’s lives…
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches,
that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress.
Progress is healing the wound…
-El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X)
Forgiveness. The biggest problem I have with Christianity, the reason I could never go back to it, is forgiveness. Christ would tell me I have to forgive. I know that. I just can’t. But maybe if I saw a serious start in this country at healing the wound I could try.
You may have already heard the story of Jason Johnson, a gay student who was expelled from the fundamentalist University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky. You may have heard this university claims the right to treat any of its students like less then dog shit because…hey…they’re a private institution and they don’t have to answer to any of those damn secular civil rights and equal opportunity laws. You may have heard further that the University of the Cumberlands is slated to get a sweetheart 11 million dollars of Kentucky tax payer money from the state assembly this year…it’s status as a private institution willing to discriminate against any citizen of Kentucky it damn well pleases to notwithstanding. God says it’s okay to steal money from the heathens.
What you may not have also heard, and which attracted my attention just a few moments ago while reading this article about the incident, is that the University of the Cumberlands is apparently also quite willing to lie through their teeth about Jason’s school record…
The summer after his freshman year, he came out to his parents and returned to campus as an openly gay man.
"I just knew that I couldn’t go back to hiding again. I wanted to be out," said Johnson, adding that he never experienced harassment or conflict because of his sexual orientation. "Being gay is part of who I am, but not the totality of who I am."
Johnson posted messages about his boyfriend and being gay on his profile at MySpace. com, and school administrators eventually saw the Web site; Johnson doesn’t know how they found it. They confronted him last week with a printout of the site, an order to leave the school and failing grades for a semester that probably would have ended with honors.
The university did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
(Emphasis mine) Okay…it’s one thing to say that an openly gay student doesn’t conform to your school’s religious teachings. It’s one thing to expel that student. But it’s quite another to claim in his transcripts to any other school he might want to attend, that he failed classes which in fact he was doing quite well in, but which in fact you did not permit him to finish. No…you mark the semester as incomplete, and if you’re ashamed to go into detail about why this particular student didn’t complete the semester you let it go at that. But you don’t say he failed, because he didn’t. He wasn’t allowed to finish.
The word for what University of the Cumberlands is doing here….is lie. The word for people who do that sort of thing…is liars. But the word from the pulpits in America now, is that it’s okay to lie through your teeth about homosexuals, and god won’t mind.
Getting Away From The Traditional Family, Prostitution, Adultery, Murder and Violence, Is A Dangerous Thing
Brokeback Mountain has been released onto DVD and I’ll probably pick up a copy sometime this weekend. I might skip through it when I get it back home but I doubt I’ll sit through the whole thing for quite a while. As I’ve said before, I am not really up to watching tragic and doomed love affairs these days. But after Hollywood’s giving it the pie in the face last month, I figured the least I could do was my part to help DVD sales.
While scanning google for articles about the DVD, I came across a little tidbit in the Deseret News, which all the more interesting because that paper is owned outright by the Mormon church. It’s about Larry Miller, the Utah creep who canceled the showing of Brokeback at his theater right at the last minute, while ticket holders were in line, allegedly after he was told what the movie was about. And I say, allegedly…
Miller says he knew he’d catch some flak for pulling the film about homosexual cowboys from his theaters, but did so because he’s very worried about the break-up of the traditional American family.
In his words, he wanted to draw a line in the sand by not showing the film.
Miller said, "Getting away from the traditional families, which I look at as the fundamental building block of our society, is a very dangerous thing."
Miller, of course, has every right to his opinion. And every right to choose what movies to show in his theaters. And we should be grateful to him for standing up for "traditional families."
Just like he does with the TV station he owns, KJZZ. Let’s look at a few things airing on Ch. 14 next week:
• "Friends," which is replete with extramarital sex, plots about porn and even homosexuality.
• "Cheers," which revolves around an unrepentant womanizer.
• Various forms of extramarital sex and vulgar shenanigans on such sitcoms as "Just Shoot Me," "Becker" and "The Parkers."
• "ER" — sex and a decidedly pro-gay agenda.
And here are a few of the movies KJZZ will be airing:
• "The List," about a high-priced prostitute.
• "Her Best Friend’s Husband," about a woman who has an affair with her best friend’s husband.
• "Primary Suspect," about a man who kills his wife.
Miller’s TV station it turns out, also carries Montel Williams, Tyra Banks, and Maury. Swell family values fare that. But it gets even more ironic:
Oh, and don’t forget next week’s eight airings of "Will & Grace," which not only features healthy, happy gay guys but is replete with the most off-color humor you’ll find in a network sitcom.
Will and Grace. Miller’s TV station shows Will and Grace, and he balks at showing Brokeback Mountain in his movie theater? No. I think not. Pierce goes on to complain about what Miller does show…
This week alone Miller’s theaters are showing R-rated "Basic Instinct 2," "Slither," "Inside Man," "Find Me Guilty" and "V for Vendetta."
Not bad. But wait…it gets even better…
And one of the biggest stories the Jazz generated this season was about how the wife of one of the players granted him the right to one extramarital sexual encounter per year.
"The Jazz" would be that Utah NBA basketball team that Miller owns. I guess more then one extra-marital affair a year might count as a dangerous thing for the Traditional American Family. Mind you…this criticism comes from a newspaper that almost certainly welcomed Miller’s canceling showings of Brokeback Mountain, and would have probably liked it very well thank you if the film never saw the light of day anywhere in the United States, let alone Utah. But Miller is no more a true believe then George Bush. What Miller, like Bush, knows is when to throw a little human flesh to the mob, and from whose skin.
Here’s what I think: Miller knew damn well what the subject matter of Brokeback Mountain was, and to him it was just another booking until someone(s) in the powerful Mormon church had a chat with him and told him they’d like it very much thank you if he just pulled it from the venue. R rated fun and games for sexually ignorant and repressed heterosexuals in Utah is one thing, but a film that so graphically shows how ignorance and prejudice have utterly destroyed the emotional lives of gay and lesbian people in America is more then the market will bear. Particularly when that market is so deeply implicated in that destruction. Miller can show Will and Grace and the religious right may bellyache about it, but Will and Grace is lite TV entertainment that manages to have its cake and eat it too, re-enforcing many gay stereotypes along the way while laughing along with them like it’s all an in-joke. Brokeback on the other hand, is desolate landscape with a finger pointed right back at hate. That simply cannot be tolerated.
Having failed to force Ford Motor company to discriminate against homosexual people via threats of a boycott, the religious right will next attempt to force it to discriminate via shareholder vote…
(Washington) Ford Motor Company shareholders will vote next month on a resolution to drop protections for LGBT workers from the company’s human resources regulations.
The company had fought the motion, submitted by shareholder Robert Hurley of Alton, Ill, but when Alton took the issue to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the commission said the automaker must put the resolution to a vote at Ford’s annual meeting May 11.
The motion calls for Ford to change its policy to exclude any reference to sexual interests, activities or orientation.
Fine. Let’s see how the shareholders feel about their gay and lesbian neighbors. Every time we buy a Ford product, which now includes Volvo, that’s money into their pockets too after all, in one way or another. It isn’t just the executive salaries we’re helping to pay.
Pitching wares to the gay community while discriminating against glbt employees is nothing new in the auto world of course. BMW seems more then willing to try it , and they don’t even have the excuse of being located in a nation that religious fundamentalists are holding by the balls…
Our goal is not to incite a boycott of BMW’s cars, but rather to arm you, our readers, with awareness of the company’s actions as well as of those of the media outlets that published the ad. Speaking of which, one would hope that the publishers of GLBT-owned magazines and web sites would have higher standards than to accept advertising from a major, multinational corporation whose policies discriminate against the very audience that those publications were created to serve. Advertising dollars are scarce these days, but there is plenty of business from other car companies to go after—Gaywheels.com lists no less than 30 brands that qualify as gay-friendly.
But what really makes you angry about Robert Hurley’s cheapshit attempt to put a knife in the back of loyal Ford Motor Company employees, is that Ford management wants to be part of the civilized world, was willing to stand up to bigotry in a way that it’s founder, who admired Adolf Hitler, could never have fathomed. And like an infection the homophobic bigots keep trying to drag it down into their gutter.
You’d have thought that by now the United States of America would at least be past the point about arguing whether or not gay and lesbian people should even be allowed something as basic as the ability to hold down a job. But you’d be wrong. Never mind same sex marriage…it’s the twenty-first century and we’re still arguing about evolution, let alone about the humanity of women, people of color, and homosexuals. There’s an old joke about how Australia got all of England’s criminals, and America got all its religious fanatics, and between the two countries we got the shit end of the stick.
If you’re not a married heterosexual, a male who regards himself as having a natural right to dominate women, or a women who understands that her place is to passively obey her man and spit a quiver of children out of her vagina like a machine gun, then the little middle of nowhere town in Utah named Kanab would like you to know that you’re not welcome there…
KANAB – After unanimously endorsing a conservative think tank’s resolution supporting the "natural family," Kanab’s City Council is coming under fire – naturally.
Gay-rights advocates and even some residents are scolding city leaders for embracing a nonbinding proposal that:
* Labels marriage between a man and a woman as "ordained of God."
* Sees homes as "open to a full quiver of children."
* Envisions young women "growing into wives, homemakers and mothers and . . . young men growing into husbands, home builders and fathers."
Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Utah in Salt Lake City, finds such language archaic and offensive.
"It doesn’t address what the landscape of the American family looks like today," she said Tuesday.
She said the concept of family "has evolved in a lot of different ways, and it is sad when government discriminates against the rights of families."
Kanab waitress Marina Johnson, a single mother of three, agrees, arguing that the resolution stigmatizes those who fall outside its limiting language.
"It should not matter if a couple is gay or single or what their religious affiliation is or whether they believe in God," she said. "It is not right that [someone’s partner] be denied medical benefits just because they are not married in the traditional way."
Instead, she says, "people should be allowed to do the right thing and take care of the people they love."
But Kanab Councilman Anthony Chatterley backs the measure "wholeheartedly."
"I support the values, hopes and goals stated in the resolution," he said. Kanab "is a strong, family-oriented community. It always has been, and we would like to see this continue."
Carol Sullivan voted for the resolution – pitched by the conservative Sutherland Institute – last week when it was introduced by Mayor Kim Lawson. But the council’s sole woman did so with some reservations.
"I saw no reason to vote against it because it is nonbinding," she said, noting that no one spoke out against it. "But I did wonder why it should be a government issue."
Okay…let me get this straight lady…you’re a conservative and you voted for a resolution even though you weren’t sure it was something government should be involved in? Digby’s Right, conservativism doesn’t mean anything anymore other then pure unadulterated right wing tribalism.
Kanab’s problem however, is that it fancies itself a tourist destination. And now, some of the tourists, and the people who make their living on the tourist trade, are a tad pissed…
"Recently read about your vote to censure anyone other than . . . heterosexual, childbearing couples. Even though I fit that bill, I am so disturbed by your actions that I am rescheduling my travel plans to avoid Kanab completely," reads one e-mail sent to the city.
"Y’all are silly," reads another e-mail, obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through the Government Records Access and Management Act.
And a northern Utah woman vows to stop visiting Kanab because the resolution supports "prejudice, discrimination and subtle social cruelties."
Such responses from potential hotel-staying, souvenir-buying, restaurant-dining visitors worry Hallisey, executive director of the Kane County Office of Tourism and Film Commission.
"With 700 of 1,000 [hotel] rooms in the county here in Kanab, it’s a viable tourist location," he says.
No, it isn’t. I’ve driven through Kanab several times, and the operative word there is through. I stopped for the night there once and swore afterwords I’d never do that again. There’s nothing there worth seeing, and the accommodations there are pitiful for the price they expect you to pay. Kane county is about as empty as a patch of Utah gets. Bryce Canyon is in Garfield county, Zion National Park is almost entirely in Washington county, and the various locations of Dixie National Forest (I think it’s some kind of franchise) are scattered in the surrounding counties.
Just about all Kanab has going for it are those motel rooms, none of which get better then three diamonds in my Triple-A guidebooks. Oh, and its own little Hollywood Walk Of Fame, which is basically nothing but a series of placards erected on the sidewalk of the main drag, that breathlessly tell you about any Hollywood western that might have been filmed anywhere within miles of the place. As I read those things I was actually embarrassed for the people of that town, but it’s on that basis that Kanab likes to call itself "little Hollywood". When all the good sightseeing is somewhere else, you go with what you’ve got.
The evening I was there, after I settled into my motel room, I took my camera and strolled the main drag, looking in the little tourist shops, scouting for anything worth bringing back home. I struck up a brief conversation with a young high school aged girl working the cash register alone in one of them. The common conversational theme you get from most people that age, living in towns like that, is their almost panic stricken need to get the hell out of there by any means necessary. No prisoner walking a cell in San Quenton is as determined to find a way to escape as these kids are. We’d not exchanged two sentences I think, before she was telling me about her plans to go live somewhere else. That particular girl’s ticket out, she was convinced, was to go to California and appear on American Idol. As we talked I swear every time I tried to turn the conversation to what life in the area was like, she would always yank it right back to her upcoming appearance on American Idol and how that would be the thing that would get her out of that there and to some better place. By the time I’d walked out of her store, I was gripped by a need to get the hell out of Kanab too. But I’d already paid for my room.
Kanab is a place highway travelers stop on the way to someplace else. If it has any other source of income besides those 700 motel rooms and the few eateries and curio shops along it’s main drag I’d like to know what it is. So you’d expect that they’d at least not give anyone a reason to keep on driving.
But no…
The resolution is a "slam to everybody, including those who fit their definition of a natural family," Brunner says. "We’re becoming a diverse community so there are more who feel comfortable about speaking out."
That includes those who support the resolution.
"I salute Mayor Kim Lawson and the council," writes Katie Thomas, who noted she came to the area 32 years ago from California seeking a quieter way of life. "Many of those who are offended and opposed to the proclamation…may have an agenda that would bring the kind of changes that could redefine all that we came for."
The Rev. Doug Hounshell says he "thanks God for a community that doesn’t think it has to be ‘gay-friendly.’ "
"We don’t mean to be mean-spirited," says Hounshell, pastor of Cliffview Chapel Baptist Church in Kanab. "But the message to a homosexual might be that this is probably not the friendliest town for that type of thing."
No Doug…it isn’t that you don’t mean to be mean spirited. It’s that you are and you just want everyone to politely ignore that fact while you’re busy cutting your town’s throat to satisfy your cheapshit prejudices.
What’s interesting here is that for all this moral posturing going on, the actual resolution that the Kanab city council passed is hard to locate. It’s modeled on a boilerplate Natural Family Resolution that the theocratic Sutherland Institute came up with, and has been pushing in Utah. But it’s hard to find a copy of this resolution, even on Sutherland’s own website. It took a little digging, but here it is:
Resolution 1-1-06R The Natural Family: A Vision the City of Kanab
Whereas, the natural family is the fundamental unit of society and is entitled to protection in Utah by local and state governments; and
Whereas, the natural family is the locus of the true common good and that citizens of the City of Kanab, Utah help ourselves when we help our families; and
Whereas, the natural family results in healthier, happier, more productive, and more civically-engaged adults as well as healthier, happier, safer, and better educated children; and
Whereas, most serious public pathologies – including crime, delinquency, illegal drug use, domestic violence, long-term poverty, and low educational achievement – are closely associated with family breakdown and disorder; then,
Be it resolved, that the City of Kanab, Utah adopts the following vision as a guide to policy formation and public action:
We envision a local culture that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as ordained of God. This culture affirms marriage as the best path to health, security, fulfillment, and joy. It casts the home built on marriage as the source of true political sovereignty and ordered liberty. It also holds the household framed by marriage to be the primary economic unit, a place marked by rich activity, material abundance, and broad self-reliance. This culture treasures private property in family hands as the rampart of independence and liberty. It celebrates the marital sexual union as the unique source of new human life. We see our homes as open to a full quiver of children, the source of family continuity and social growth. We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers; and we see young men growing into husbands, home-builders, and fathers.
We see true happiness as the product of persons enmeshed in vital bonds with spouses, children, parents, and extended family. We look to a landscape of family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children. We envision parents as the first educators of their children. We see homes that also embrace extended family members who need special care due to age or infirmity. We view local neighborhoods and communities as the second locus of political sovereignty. We envision a freedom of commerce that respects and serves family integrity. And we look to local government that holds the protection of the natural family to be their first responsibility.
NOW THEREFORE, it is hereby resolved by the City of Kanab, Utah, that the Natural Family: A Vision for the City of Kanab shall be in effect until further resolution.
Dated this 10 day of January, 2006.
A full quiver of children. You’d have had to see it with your own eyes to appreciate the desperation I saw in one young girl’s face one evening in Kanab, which by the way is not all that far from Colorado City, where the men of the Lee’s Ferry polygamists are apparently having their way with teenaged girls. Do you folks out there have any clue what happens to a lot of teenage kids who go to Hollywood looking for a way out of the suffocating woman hating mind numbing hopelessly bigoted and going nowhere fast hell holes you’ve made of your communities? There’s your Vision for the future. Right there.
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