If you think it’s only marriage they want to take from us, you are sadly mistaken. Note this exchange in the chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court, buried within a legal debate about monuments in public parks…
WASHINGTON — The hypothetical questions were flying at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and that was not a good sign for Summum, a small church that wants to place a monument to the Seven Aphorisms of its faith near a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah.
The questioning suggested that the justices were finding it hard to identify a principle that would compel the city to accept the Summum monument without creating havoc in public parks around the nation.
The justices start tossing out various examples of what can and cannot be excluded…and then this comes up…
Would it be all right, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, for the government to exclude the names of gay soldiers from the Vietnam memorial?
This was rhetorical on Stevens’ part. Stevens is one of the sane justices on the bench. But its prime fascist jumped on it gleefully…
Mr. Joseffer had to be pressed to answer the question about excluding the names of gay soldiers. In the end, he said the First Amendment’s free speech clause, at least, places no limits on whom the government chooses to honor.
Justice Scalia agreed. “It seems to me the government could disfavor homosexuality,” he said, “just as it could disfavor abortion.”
This wasn’t even about homosexuality. This was just an aside from Scalia…nothing more. But dig it. If the government wants to exclude the names of gay soldiers, who gave their lives for their country, from the Vietnam memorial, that would be fine by Scalia. And never doubt it, this would also be fine with Roberts, Thomas and Alito.
There is no bottom here. There is absolutely no bottom here. You could say that gay people are to the religious right, as Jews were to the fascists…but that would be ignoring history. In fact, gay people died right alongside of Jews in the concentration camps. There were not as many of us, and it was harder to systematically round us up because gay is not an ethnicity. We have always been, and always will be a diaspora…many of us hidden from view. But we were just as hated back then, and clearly, sickeningly, frighteningly, we are just as hated by them now.
If the day ever came when these modern day fascists achieve enough power to do with us as they have always wanted to, it will be a race to the bottom of the human gutter, and there is no bottom.
When I finished my remarks, it was question time, and the first question was: “But you’re not gay!?” I must radiate a kind of straight guy dumpiness that no self-respecting gay man would be caught dead displaying in public.
Anyway, I took it to mean, “So why do you care about this?” and gave an answer I’ve always been proud of.
“I see it through a Jewish perspective,” I said. “I see you guys as another loathed minority trying to get through the day.”
Which they are. Readers complain to me that homosexuality isn’t a God-given condition, but a sinful choice, and I always respond, “It is? A choice? Really? I couldn’t choose it. Could you?” They never have a good answer to that.
The look-how-far-we’ve-come aspect of Obama’s triumph was mitigated by citizens in California, Florida and Arizona voting to bar gay marriage. An awful intrusion of government into the private sphere, one we would never tolerate if it didn’t touch upon the American obsession with sex. I mean, we’d never ban gays from holding fishing licenses, arguing that they somehow spoil the fishing experience for the rest of us.
But religious conservatives have cooked up this palpable lie about gays and marriage, based on nothing at all, and the public has accepted it because it tickles the unexamined biases they already have.
Just like civil rights, this is a generational war that will be won, I have absolutely no doubt, in the fullness of time. But not yet.
Emphasis mine. And actually…time was a homosexual might not be allowed even a fishing license. Time was you could be denied all kinds of professional licenses if you were known to be homosexual. You could have your plumber’s license taken away. Your license to practice medicine. You could be fired, evicted, rounded up by the cops in your local bar, or just walking down the street in some places, and tossed into jail.
The marriage barrier is a bitter, lingering part of all that. It isn’t marriage they want to protect. It’s the right to persecute homosexuals. They can’t just round us up and toss us in jail anymore. But they can still torment loving couples…still remind us that a whole human life is not ours to have…still drive the knife into our hearts every now and then, so they can feel good about themselves.
Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with "civility, with respect and with love."
"We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on," said Elder L. Whitney Clayton, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Presidency of the Seventy.
…
In a statement, the LDS Church said it does not object to domestic partnership or civil union legislation "as long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches."
Which same sex marriage does not. But…you know that…
As for Proposition 8, "we consider this to be a moral issue," Clayton said. "We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman."
Right. Like you weren’t racist when you were denying black people a seat in your church…just pro white. You don’t have to be racist to be pro-white.
You gutter crawling scum have been lurking in the background of this battle for over a decade now, and all that is over. You fought to make your gay and lesbian neighbors second class citizens in their own country. Own it. Trust me…you will have to. Nobody is forgetting this. You want civility? Get The Fuck Off Our Backs.
After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that’s what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.
The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.
"People were screaming ‘Terrorist!’ ‘Communist!’ ‘Socialist!’" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."
Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting ‘Obama!’ and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."
I hope nobody thinks this sort of thing is going to stop after election day. What you need to understand is they’re not trying to win the election anymore. I really believe that choosing Palin was for inciting the base for war on an Obama administration they had come to believe was a certainty. They know this time the fighting will be harder then it was to destroy Clinton because the democratic grassroots, if not the leadership, is organized and ready for it this time. Expecting it even. And maybe they’ve taken the measure of Obama in their private conferences and figured that he’s no Bill Clinton. So they’re stoking the gutter full of hate, because the gutter is all they have left to win with. That’s why it was Palin. People are shaking their heads wondering how McCain could pick the likes of her to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. But he didn’t pick her to be vice president. Her job is to be gasoline on the fire.
What we’re seeing now isn’t the last ugly gasp of a failed presidential campaign, but the start of the scorched earth after-the-election knife fight for the next four years, if not longer. I’ve been saying for years now that the shit doesn’t really hit the fan until the republicans begin loosing power. In the coming years, it won’t only be gay people getting bashed on the streets of America. Just so you know.
Welcome to the reality your gay and lesbian neighbors have been living with for decades now. You knew it had to be you next didn’t you.
Submitted for your idle viewing pleasure… A wee taste of what your gay and lesbian neighbors have to endure every single fucking day. To my heterosexual friends and family, those of you who have married…while planning your happy day, did you remember to take into account that one or more total strangers might decide to crash it, so they could hurl insults at you, your beloved spouse to be, and everyone else in the chapel?
Of course you didn’t…
More on the guy trying to piss on the happy couple’s big day Here…
…when my editors at SN&R decided that someone with journalistic sensibilities and a sense of humor ought to look into these folks—with their extreme approach to protesting; their bold, yellow “Sodomy is Sin” banner; and their retro use of language that even many anti-gay groups have abandoned as insensitive—I volunteered. The timing was right. Real anger had been stirred up between parts of the local gay community and some members of the Slavic evangelical churches, who have protested at gay events for a few years. And since Proposition 8, which aims to end marriage equality, is on the ballot for November, the upcoming months promised plenty of discussion of gay rights as well as ample opportunity to see Luke and company in action.
So through the rest of the spring and summer and on into fall, I followed Luke and his small crew of activists to protest after protest. With my notebook and camera, I trailed after them during the first local same-sex weddings at the Sacramento County clerk/recorder’s office, at the Sacramento Pride Festival and while protesting at an area McDonald’s, which they perceived as gay-friendly. I kept an eye on the activities of Luke and his friends Viktor Choban and Yuriy Popko at American River College, where they’ve stirred up quite a fuss over the past couple of semesters. They’ve managed to aggravate an impressive list of people: the GLBTQ club, Latinos Unidos, campus progressives, Muslim students and the Improv Club.
The most important thing I’ve discovered through all this: Luke and company won’t compromise. They believe they’re on God’s side, and as far as they’re concerned, if you’re arguing with God, you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.
Gutter crawling bigots like these are no more representative of most of America then Ed Gein, but I’ve often wondered why more good people don’t speak out about the torrent of hate coming from them. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that, but one is almost certainly that they don’t experience this sort of relentless hatred themselves, first hand. They don’t get to see how completely disconnected the haters are from anything remotely resembling reality, and how that unreality they live in gives them a kind of schizophrenic permission to attack anyone and everyone they perceive as an enemy, without any sort of moral or ethical restraint. They embody not just virtue, but God’s own righteousness, and so they are immune from the moral considerations the rest of us must live by.
Gay Americans have been living with this adversary for decades. We’ve watched it grow in reach from the political gutter to the summit of American political power. The only thing that surprises many of us, is how surprised, how shocked, the rest of America is whenever it catches a glimpse of its essential moral degeneracy. How easily…how effortlessly…they will look you in the eye, and lie through their teeth. How they cheat, and even when flagrantly caught doing it, will deny everything. How they ignore every moral law they insist everyone else must live by when it suits them. Because fighting for God’s truth excuses them from having to live it themselves. It’s not absolute power that corrupts, it’s absolute certainty.
We gay folk need to document our experience more, so others can better understand what America faces. These people want to take everyone down into their gutter and they are determined. It isn’t just our freedoms that are at stake here. If you think these people are just a bunch of irritating, but basically weak and harmless wackos, if you don’t think they’re dangerous, you aren’t paying attention. Perhaps that’s something your gay and lesbian neighbors can help you with. Look again. That guy in the video who called us ‘sodomites’…if you don’t obey his rules, then as far as he’s concerned, you’re one too, and you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.
The wind never seems to stop here on the plains. It is October in Wyoming, and the wind carries with it a chill now. The first tentative breath of winter dances restlessly over rolling hills of sage. The days have grown short, the nights cold. And long. Very long. And quiet, save only for the sound of the wind.
Take a walk tonight across the rolling hills of Wyoming sage. Leave the town lights twinkling in the distance behind you. Walk toward the mountains in the darkness ahead. There is only you here tonight. You, and the wind, and the stars in the sky, so far away. So very far away. Around you are only rolling hills of grass and sage, fading into the night. There are remnants of what looks like a small wooden fence here, that was torn down some time ago.
Listen to the wind. Listen carefully. There are ghosts here on the plains. Hear them talk tonight among themselves…
No one knows why Matthew was determined to go to the Fireside that night, or why he left with Aaron and Russell. It was karaoke night, which would not ordinarily have interested him. There was some speculation that he was buying drugs from Aaron and Russell, but his friends find that implausible. A close friend thinks that depression may have weakened his judgment, and wonders if he had taken a heavy dose of Klonopin before he went to the bar. "When he was depressed," she says, "he would just grab a handful." Romaine Patterson remembers how in the coffee shop where she worked Matthew "would just talk to anyone-people no one else would talk to, like this weird old man…. He had no discrimination in his person." -Vanity Fair
Shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998, 20-year-old Shepard met McKinney and Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. Subsequently, Shepard was robbed, pistol whipped, tortured, tied to a fence in a remote, rural area, and left to die. McKinney and Henderson also found out his address and intended to rob his home. Still tied to the fence, Shepard was discovered eighteen hours later by a cyclist, who at first thought that Shepard was a scarecrow. At the time of discovery, Shepard was still alive, but in a coma. -Wikipedia
Aaron Kreifels first met Matthew Shepard in a dream last Thursday night, the night after he discovered his fellow University of Wyoming student badly beaten, barely alive and tied up to a fence outside of Laramie.
Although Shepard was in Fort Collins by then, kept alive by an array of life-support machines in Poudre Valley Hospital’s intensive-care unit, Kreifels said the gay student, who was beaten beyond recognition, allegedly by two young Laramie roofers, perhaps because he was gay, came to visit his rescuer in a dream that night. Kreifels doesn’t remember much of the dream, but he said Wednesday that he awoke the next morning comforted by the vague sensation of having met the person he found in such bad shape two days before.
Although early reports indicated that two mountain bikers had discovered Shepard on the crude fence on an old, double-rutted road, Kreifels was alone that evening, struggling on his mountain bike through deep sand and for some reason ignoring a desire to turn back and find another, easier way back to town. Before he knew it, he had fallen. He was on the ground, his front wheel broken beyond repair. He was unhurt, but what he saw as he got up struck him cold.
"I got up and noticed something out of the corner of my eye,” he said from his room in a freshman dorm at the University of Wyoming on Wednesday. "At first I thought it was a scarecrow, so I didn’t think much of it. Then I went around and noticed it was a real person. I checked to see if he was conscious or not, and when I found out he wasn’t, I ran and got help as fast as I could.”
As the former high school crosscountry runner traversed the quarter- to half-mile of scrub prairie between him and the nearest house in the nearby Sherman Hills subdivision, his thoughts froze before quickly accelerating.
"It was distressing. I was panicked for a couple minutes, because I wanted to make sure I could do all I could do to help save him,” he said. -The Denver Post
Officer Reggie Fluty: When I got there, the first – at first the only thing I could see was partially somebody’s feet and I got out of my vehicle and raced over – I seen what appeared to be a young man, thirteen, fourteen years old, because he was so tiny, laying on his back and he was tied to the bottome of the end of a pole.
I did the best I could. The gentleman that was laying on the ground, Matthew Shepard, he was covered in dry blood all over his head. There was dry blood underneath him and he was barely breathing…he was doing the best he could.
I was going to breath for him and I couldn’t get his mouth open – his mouth wouldn’t open for me.
He was covered in, like I said, partially dry blood and blood all over his head – the only place that he did not have any blood on him, on his face, was what appeared to be where he had been crying down his face. -The Laramie Project
Shepard suffered a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body’s ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital signs. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. -Wikipedia
At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, Matthew lay in bed down the hall from Aaron McKinney. Matthew was comatose; his brain stem which controls heartbeat, breathing, temperature, and other involuntary functions – was severely damaged. He also was suffering from hypothermia and had a red welt on his back, a red mark on his left arm, bruised knees, cuts on his head, neck, and face, and bruising in his groin. -Vanity Fair
Dr. Cantway: I was working the emergency room the night Matthew Shepard was brought in. I don’t think, that any of us, ah, can remember seeing a patient in that condition for a long time – those of us who’ve worked in big city hospitals have seen this. Ah, but it’s not something you expect here.
Ah, you expect it, you expect this kind of injuries to come from a car going down a hill at eighty miles an hour. You expect to see gross injuries from something like that – this horrendous, terrible thing. Ah, but you don’t expect to see that from someone doing this to another person.
The ambulance report said it was a beating so we knew. -The Laramie Project
Exactly a week after his tragic discovery, Kreifels, 18, an architectural engineering major from Grand Island, Neb., said he tries not to think about the condition in which he found the classmate he had never seen before. Authorities say Shepard’s assailants repeatedly beat him with the butt of a .357 Magnum, fracturing his skull. Kreifels doesn’t talk about it.
"I don’t really want to go into details about that,” he said.
-The Denver Post
Aaron Kreifels: I keep seeing that picture in my head when I found him…and it’s not pleasant whatsoever. I don’t want it to be there. I wanna like get it out. That’s the biggest part for me is seeing that picture in my head. And it’s kind of unbelievable to me, you know, that – I happened to be the person who found him – because the big question with me, like with my religion, is like, Why did God want ME to find him? -The Laramie Project
TRIBUNE – Greeley County authorities are investigating what they call an alleged hate crime that occurred early Sunday morning.
Officers responded to reports of an intruder in a Tribune home. By the time they arrived, the intruder had left, but the teenager inside had been beaten, said Greeley County Sheriff Mark Rine.
Dustin Myers, 16, of Horace, was arrested Sunday. Rine said Myers perceived the teen in the home to be gay. Myers is charged with aggravated burglary, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed explosive.
Other news reports on the crime Here, and Here. Myers apparently broke into the home of the unnamed teenager and beat the crap out of him before the police arrived. He’d brought with him some sort of explosive device, and intended to kill the other teen. In the comments section over at Hutchinson news, people are rushing to the defense of Myers…
SHOCKING : 9/20/2008
Yes i know this is shocking to everyone…yes we do need all the prayers we can get…we do appriciate all them…Rutt is not the kind of kid that would ever do anything like this…he just doesnt have it in is heart to hurt anything…we are all just as shocked as everyone else but it would be nice if people would leave us alone about this and let us handle things
WE MISS YOU!!
Let it be said there also seems to be genuine worry about hate, but it’s being expressed in vague declarations that dance around the essential homophobic nature of the crime, along with a lot of calls for prayer. Maybe my friend in Kansas can shed some more light on this one.
The Holmes County School District, which was the site of a court battle over the right of students to declare their support for their gay and lesbian peers, has begun court ordered sensitivity training classes for it’s teachers and staff.
Can you spot the difference between these two news stories on this topic?
First, the local TV News station…
Fla. principal accused of gay ‘witch hunt’
Employees of 1 rural Florida school district are starting the new school year by attending sensitivity classes.
A federal judge’s ruling prompted the classes at the Holmes County School District. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district when a principal banned students from wearing rainbow-colored clothing or other items that he said showed support for homosexuality.
Principal Davis enacted the ban, and suspended students who violated it, after one student told him she was taunted for being gay. Davis told the girl that it was wrong to be gay, order her to stay away from younger students and called her parents. The girl’s friends wore gay pride T-shirts and other clothing in support.
A federal judge ruled that Davis and the district violated the students’ free speech rights by banning the clothing.
Next…365Gay.Com…
Florida school at center of GSA battle begins sensitivity training
Teachers and staff in a Florida school district which was at the center of a long legal battle over gay/straight alliances are back in the classroom – this time as students in sensitivity classes.
The Holmes County School District set up the training sessions after losing a federal court battle in which the judge blasted the principal of Ponce de Leon High School principal David Davis for leading a “relentless crusade” against homosexuality.
U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak said in his ruling last month that principal David Davis “embarked on what can only be characterized as a witch hunt. The ruling also said that Davis led “morality assemblies” that ignored the First Amendment.
Davis has since been replaced as principal.
During the two-day trial in May, Davis testified that he believed clothing, buttons or stickers featuring rainbows would make students automatically picture gay people having sex.
He went on to admit that while censoring rainbows and gay pride messages, he allowed students to wear other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag.
Heather Gillman, a 16-year-old junior at the high school, sued the district with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union after she was told she could not wear buttons, stickers or clothing that supported LGBT civil rights.
After she received the warning, the ACLU last November sent a letter to the school board’s attorney on behalf of Gillman, asking for clarification as to whether a variety of symbols and slogans, such as the rainbow flag or “I support my gay friends,” would be allowed at the school.
The school district replied that it would not allow any expressions of support for gay rights at all because such speech would “likely be disruptive.”
The district then said that such symbols and slogans were signs that students were part of a “secret/illegal organization.”
The problems began in September 2007 when a lesbian student tried to report to school officials that she was being harassed by other students because she is a lesbian. Instead of addressing the harassment, students say the school responded with intimidation, censorship, and suspensions.
Prior to the release of his written ruling, Smoak issued an order that forces the school to stop its censorship of students who want to express their support for gay people. The judge also warned the district not to retaliate against students over the lawsuit.
The AP went one better too…running a story all about how the locals support the principle that started all this, headlined, FL. Town Backs Principle In Gay Student Case. It mentions nothing about the morality assemblies, the fact that confederate flags were allowed to be worn but not t-shirts supporting the gay students, or that Davis said students wearing gay supportive messages would make people think of gay sex, or that the district declared gay supportive students to be part of an illegal secret organization. It did say however, that the townsfolk were sincerely baffled about the judge’s "scathing rebuke", and why the principle had done anything wrong.
The AP also says that "Many in the community support Davis and feel outsiders are forcing their beliefs on them." That would be as opposed to forcing dissenters to keep their mouths shut while they force their piss ignorant beliefs about homosexuality on gay people, their parents and their friends.
Brandon McInerney Shot Larry King. The News Media Will Now Bury Him.
What She Said…
When the kids were killed in the Columbine High School shooting, no one asked what they did to get themselves killed. Every moment of the press coverage was dedicated to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Do we know what Brandon McInerney wore that day? Do we know how he got the gun into school? Do we know what created such rage in this boy of 14 to have him take a gun at point blank range and shoot? Do we know who his friends were, what pushed his buttons, what kind of movies he watched or internet sites he visited?
After all the stink the news media has been raising about the clothes Lawrence wore in school, you’d think he was dressed to go see Rocky Horror when McInerney walked up behind him and shot him in the head. In fact, the day he was killed he was wearing tennis shoes, baggy pants and a loose sweater over a collared shirt.
As a parent, I cannot understand the King’s lawsuit. They are blaming lipstick and glitter instead of the gun and the hand that held it. The message, loud and clear, is the dominant culture can wield a gun and shoot at will at anyone who doesn’t conform. And our Schools should enforce that conformity.
In doing so, they put my son, and anyone like him, at risk. And that really makes me want to scream: How can you miss the point?
It’s the killer, not the killed.
Emphasis mine. And it’s not just King’s parents who are content to put other people’s kids at risk. It’s McInerney’s lawyer, William Quest, who promised out of one side of his mouth, shortly after the first tendrils of his gay panic defense began to appear in the newspapers, that he wouldn’t put Lawrence on trial. Hahahahahaha. It’s a safe bet he’s been behind the media rush to portray 14 year old Lawrence King as a transvestite sexual predator, and taint the jury pool in McInerney’s favor. Even if he doesn’t succeed, without a doubt there will be other dead gay kids because of it.
And perhaps more dead gay adults too. The bedrock of the gay panic defense is that homosexuality is so revulsive that acting violently toward homosexuals is a normal and reasonable reflex. From there it is a simple step to conclude that homosexuals must assume responsibility for violence against them to the degree they are openly homosexual. The gay panic defense is another way of saying Their blood is upon them…
Looks like the parents of Lawrence King have bought into the defense strategy of their son’s killer. News reports I’m seeing this morning are that King’s parents have filed a claim against the school where he was shot to death, asserting that it was their failure to enforce the dress code on their son that led to his death (so far all I see is the AP report, which I’m not linking to because of the blogger AP boycott). In other words, because Lawrence felt himself more feminine then the other boys, and the school allowed him to dress more femininely, the school made him a target.
This is so unbearably sad. The poor kid’s parents seem deathly ashamed of their own son, even in death. He had to know how they felt about him before he died. And maybe that was why some of the teachers at his school took him under their wing as they did. Lawrence’s parents aren’t arguing here that the school failed to protect their son, but that they failed to keep him in the closet. They are granting the premise of their son’s killer and his lawyer, that hate has more right to walk in the hallways of the public schools then gay kids do.
It’s one thing to argue that the school let the bullying that Lawrence endured escalate dangerously. It is another thing entirely to argue that letting Lawrence be openly gay led to his murder. Waving the dress code around is a calculated and disgustingly cynical ploy. It sidesteps the question of whether the code itself embodies discriminatory gender norms. Gay and transgendered children should feel welcome and safe and secure in school too, or they cannot assert their right to an education. Shoving them into the closet, for the sake of the delicate sensibilities of bigots, punishes them simply for existing, forces them to try and learn, somehow, in an environment where they are made to feel deviant, outcast and ashamed.
I read elsewhere that Lawrence’ father has complained bitterly that the gays have turned his son’s death into a cause. As though the safety and welfare of all the other gay and transgendered kids in the public schools isn’t something worth fighting for. It’s one thing to forgive his son’s killer. The boy is only 14 after all. But it’s another thing to excuse him. Many gay and transgendered children know with horrible sickening clarity, some living on the streets because they were thrown out of their homes, that their parents would excuse their killer too. Some would excuse them with great sadness. Some would applaud.
The Times editorial board formulates its positions on ballot measures not only by research, but by inviting representatives of both sides to (separate) meetings with the board. It’s a good forum for probing an issue, and the results sometimes are surprising.
Here is where we win. When the only people who were engaging the gay haters directly were us, they were able to hide the depth of their hate from the rest of straight America. They could claim they were only motivated by a desire to protect children. They could claim that they were only out to protect the institute of marriage in a time of every increasing divorce rates. They could claim they were only motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, and not merely animus. That love the sinner hate the sin was always just a thin coat of paint over God Hates Fags was something the rest of America never really got much of a chance to see, as long as most heterosexuals kept their distance from the fight. Now, as more sons and daughters, more friends and co-workers come out to them, they are taking a closer look…
So it went with the supporters of Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution so that gay and lesbian couples no longer could marry. The board already has published its stand on the measure, but the editorial left out some interesting turns in the conversation.
The measure’s supporters are generally careful to avoid appearing anti-gay, probably because they realize that, for all the voter split on same-sex marriage, Californians generally support gay rights. They professed in our meeting to have no ill will toward gay people…until the talk went deeper.
And I expect it didn’t have to go very much deeper…
At one point, the conversation turned to the "activist judges" whose May ruling opened the door to same-sex marriage, and how similar this case was to the 1948 case that declared bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. According to one of the Prop. 8 reps, that 1948 ruling was OK because people are born to their race and thus are in need of constitutional protection, while gays and lesbians choose their homosexuality. So much for the expert opinions of the American Psychological Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics that people cannot choose their sexuality. Oh, those activist doctor types.
In any case, one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children’s rights, and it’s obvious that same-sex couples who married would "recruit" their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments.
Emphasis mine. As Molly Ivins would have called it, a "whoa moment". It isn’t so much the myth that children can catch homosexuality like a goddamned cold. It’s the image of gay people as almost a separate parasitic species that shocks the conscience. But for these people, it’s just common knowledge. Homosexuals aren’t human.
Aside from this notion of a homosexual recruitment plot — making it understandable where the word "homophobia" came from — this made no logical sense at all. Same-sex couples. whether married or not, already have children. Marriage wouldn’t change a thing about this picture except, perhaps, to model for children that parents tend to be married.
Exactly. But it’s not about insuring that children have stable family lives. It’s not about imparting the virtues of marriage to them. It’s about cutting gay people out of the human family tree. That’s it. There is nothing more noble about their cause then that. If you don’t believe that, spend some time talking to them. Enough time for them to get all their spiels about loving the sinner out of the way, so they can get down to brass tacks.
So I decided to take a stroll through the archives at Mormon Times (When I looked their banner read: "Have peace with one another – Mark 9:50". Presumably this only applies to Mormons…). On July 3, Card had a column in which he wrote:
I happened to be visiting a singles ward in California when the First Presidency’s letter concerning LDS support of the pro-marriage amendment to the California constitution was read out.
The bishop added comments from the stake president dealing with the rules for talking to the press (not inside the church building). Then he added his own comments, reminding the Saints (but not in these words) that this is not a declaration of war against individuals, but a defense of a vital institution. We should not forget our compassion amid this struggle.
I add my words to his: We are not angry with those whose lives have been shaped by desires that most of us don’t feel.
So this would be conciliatory, Love The Sinner Orson. Intrigued…I read onward through the column, eventually coming to this…
I say this knowing that several of my friends have already entered into "gay marriages" and have done so in the firm belief that it will lead them to greater happiness, that they harm no one by doing it and that it is wrong for society to withhold from them what is so freely given to others.
These are good-hearted people. They cannot help having desires that most other people do not have, or lacking desires that might lead to happiness within traditional marriage. They look at our traditional marriage laws and see, as Ellen DeGeneres puts it, "we’re being told to sit in the back of the bus."
I don’t want to make any statement that would condemn these friends of mine or even hurt their feelings. I believe that they are mistaken in their belief that their "marriage" harms no one.
That a few individuals suffer from tragic genetic mixups does not affect the differences between genetically distinct males and females.
That many individuals suffer from sex-role dysfunctions does not change the fact that only heterosexual mating can result in families where a father and a mother collaborate in rearing children that share a genetic contribution from both parents.
I’m sure that didn’t hurt a bit. And as many people now know, there was also this…
Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.
and this…
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
That Card is playing with fire here is not mitigated in the least by his gloss that the war is not to be waged against individuals, by which he presumably means gay people. What does he seriously expect to happen if it ever came to the second American civil war he earnestly desires, and the rallying cry is Save Humanity From The Homosexuals? He knows damn well what will happen.
James Carrol, author of Constantine’s Sword, wrote in The Bostan Globe, about the fire that Card is playing with. He speaks of Bush and the republican’s effort to demonize gay people for political gain, but replace Bush with Card and it still applies…
…When quasi-hysterical fearmongering replaces reasonable debate, dark forces can be set in motion that outrun anyone’s intentions, and that is especially true when the question involves a segment of society that has long been subject to irrational bigotry. To define the wish of homosexuals for equal access to marriage rites and rights as a mortal threat to the social order, as Bush does, is to put gay people themselves in an unprecedented position of jeopardy. Bush and a conservative punditry, out of crude self-interest, are working hard to reverse the evolution of attitudes that has blurred the boundary between blue America and red. Bush wants that boundary bright. In an election year, it may work. But it is dangerous.
The phrase "culture war" comes from "Kulturkampf." That word was coined in the 1870s when Germany’s George W. Bush, Otto von Bismarck, launched a "values" campaign as a way of shoring up his political power. Distracting from issues of war and economic stress, the "Kulturkampf" ran from 1871 to about 1887. Bismarck’s strategy was to unite his base by inciting hatred of those who were not part of it.
His first target was the sizable Catholic minority in the new, mostly Protestant German state, but soon enough, especially after an economic depression in 1873, Jews were defined as the main threat to social order. This was a surprising turn because Jewish emancipation had been a feature of German culture as recently as the 1860s. By 1879, the anti-Jewish campaign was in full swing: It was in that year that the word "anti-Semitism" was coined, defining not a prejudice but a public virtue. The Kulturkampf was explicitly understood as a struggle against decadence, of which the liberal emancipated Jew became a symbol. What that culture war’s self-anointed defenders of a moral order could not anticipate was what would happen when the new "virtue" of anti-Semitism was reinforced by the then burgeoning pseudo-science of the eugenics movement. Bismarck’s defense of expressly German values was a precondition of Hitler’s anti-Jewish genocide.
One need not predict equivalence between the eventual outcome of Bismarck’s culture war and the threat of what Bush’s could lead to. For our purposes, the thing to emphasize is that a leader’s exploitation of subterranean fears and prejudices for the sake of political advantage is a dangerous ploy, even if done in the name of virtue. No, make that especially if done in the name of virtue.
Card may even shed a tear or two for his gay friends if they should meet the fate of the gay character in one of his Homecoming books who had his testicles cut off by a mob and rammed down his throat.
Or not. While digging around for Card references, I stumbled upon this blog post titled, Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat, which led me to dig for, and finally find this one titled, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy For The Superman. Go read them both for some insight into how deep the facist strain runs in science-fiction and fantasy circles (assuming you haven’t already read Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream…). I’m not entirely convinced that Card was deliberately patterning Ender’s life after Hitler’s…you could probably find likenesses to Ender’s life in any number of historical figures just by random chance…but that some inner sympathy for Hitler’s situation, if not the man himself, animates Card deep down inside is unmistakable to me. Card’s protestations that some of his best friends are notwithstanding, we are as much a threat to the survival of humanity in his eyes, as the Jews were to a whole lot of people in the days just before they were being crammed into showers and dosed with insecticide. When he waves the gay menace scarecrow at his readers he knows exactly what he’s doing and why. And like every other hatemonger who ever walked this earth, he doesn’t want to be held responsible for the consequences because he didn’t Intend them. He says. He may even believe it. Ender isn’t Hitler but Card himself, who causes the buggers to be wiped out of existence, but is himself innocent of genocide.
Because his motives were pure. He didn’t hate the sinner…he loved them. We should not forget our compassion amid this struggle…
In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him,
then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody,
what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
And then, in that very moment when I love them…. I destroy them.
I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.
In relating Ender Wiggin’s childhood and training in Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card presents a harrowing tale of abuse. Ender’s parents and older brother, the officers running the battle school and the other children being trained there, either ignore the abuse of Ender or participate in it.
Through this abusive training Ender becomes expert at wielding violence against his enemies, and this ability ultimately makes him the savior of the human race. The novel repeatedly tells us that Ender is morally spotless; though he ultimately takes on guilt for the extermination of the alien buggers, his assuming this guilt is a gratuitous act. He is presented as a scapegoat for the acts of others. We are given to believe that the destruction Ender causes is not a result of his intentions; only the sacrifice he makes for others is. In this Card argues that the morality of an act is based solely on the intentions of the person acting.
The result is a character who exterminates an entire race and yet remains fundamentally innocent. The purpose of this paper is to examine the methods Card uses to construct this story of a guiltless genocide, to point out some contradictions inherent in this scenario, and to raise questions about the intention-based morality advocated by Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead.
I’ve known for a long time now that Orson Scott Card is a homophobe. It’s why I haven’t read Ender’s Game, despite the recommendation of literally dozens of readers whose opinions I respect.
But this story informs me that things have escalated a bit on the Orson Scott Card front:
According to science fiction author Orson Scott Card…recent court decisions in Massachusetts and California recognizing same-sex marriage mean “the end of democracy in America.” As such, he advocates taking down our government “by whatever means is made possible or necessary.”
The article links to a hate-filled essay by Card in the Mormon Times. Here is his explanation why gay marriage is an abomination:
There is no natural method by which two males or two females can create offspring in which both partners contribute genetically. This is not subject to legislation, let alone fashionable opinion.
Human beings are part of a long mammalian tradition of heterosexuality. No parthenogenic test tube procedure can alter what we, by nature, are. No surgery, no hormone injections, can change X to Y or make the distinction nonexistent.
That a few individuals suffer from tragic genetic mixups does not affect the differences between genetically distinct males and females.
What’s I found interesting in the Mormon Times article is that Card is at least now willing to make a rhetorical nod to the vast body of modern science showing that gay people aren’t gay by choice, and to the reality that heterosexuals themselves are a bigger threat to the institution of marriage then same sex couples could ever be. But his heart isn’t in it. Here’s where the heart is:
Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.
Society gains no benefit whatsoever (except for a momentary warm feeling about how "fair" and "compassionate" we are) from renaming homosexual liaisons and friendships as marriage.
Married people attempting to raise children with the hope that they, in turn, will be reproductively successful, have every reason to oppose the normalization of homosexual unions.
It’s about grandchildren. That’s what all life is about. It’s not enough just to spawn — your offspring must grow up in circumstances that will maximize their reproductive opportunities.
Why should married people feel the slightest loyalty to a government or society that are conspiring to encourage reproductive and/or marital dysfunction in their children?
Why should married people tolerate the interference of such a government or society in their family life?
If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn’t require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government?
What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
Biological imperatives trump laws.
You need to keep in mind, this is a man who made his fame and fortune with a story about a boy who wiped out an entire species of intelligent beings, yet was morally innocent of genocide.
There’s always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won’t reflect the storyteller’s true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he’s been persuaded of.
But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don’t even think to question, that you don’t even notice– those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.
-Orson Scott Card
Yes it does Orson. And not only in a writer’s fiction either.
You’ve probably heard by now about that church shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee. You may have even heard that the church, a Unitarian congregation, has just put up a sign outside affirming of gay people. The reflex, and I understand this perfectly as it was my first one too, is to connect the dots. But it’s not so simple at this point…
The man accused of a mass church shooting this morning was described by his Powell neighbors as a helpful and kind man, but one who had issues with Christianity.
Jim D. Adkisson, 58, has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, which killed one and injured eight others.
He is being held on $1 million bond.
"He had his own sense of belief about religion, that’s the impression I got of him," said neighbor Karen Massey. "We were talking one day when my daughter graduated from Bible college, and I told him I was a Christian, then he almost turned angry.
"He seemed to get angry at that."
According to Massey, Adkisson talked frequently about his parents who "made him go to church all his life … he was forced to do that."
Another story out there says the cops found a letter in Adkisson’s car…a "manifesto" according to the story. The police are being tight lipped at the moment about what was in it.
So. At this point all I know is that a man walked into a church full of people and started shooting. He killed one person who confronted him at the door instantly with a shotgun blast. He killed one more before he was tackled by other church members. The usher who was killed first is being called a hero for acting as a human shield to protect the children’s choir that was singing when Adkisson walked in.
A man walks into church and starts shooting. Maybe it was the sign affirming gay people. Maybe he had a grudge against Christianity and that church was just a random target. Maybe it was something else entirely. Hate has its own reasons.
[Update…]
The Knoxville police chief says Adkisson targeted the church because of its "liberal views". The letter in his car apparently shows he was frustrated at being out of work, and that he had a hatred of "the liberal movement". I just saw this in an AP article which I’m not linking to because of the blogger AP boycott. But probably this will be showing up in other news outlets later.
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