Your Stereotypes About California Are Probably Wrong
I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland. But I was born there, and half my family tree is there. So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state. I see it from both within and without. The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland. Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.
One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years. And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California. This, from Box Turtle Bulletin…
We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.
Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.
In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:
“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.
…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death.
Dig it. The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples. Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state. It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America. Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.
There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California. But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander. The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose. The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys. The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton.
It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head. But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate. My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant. During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law. H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun. But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew. California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages. It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world. In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology. There is Hollywood and Disneyland. There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop. The human potential never had it better then in California. It is a place of magic. But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
I HAVE RESIGNED myself to the fact that the abuse of the word "intolerant" is a permanent fixture in this dear country of ours. Intolerant is now almost always (mis)used as a synonym for disagree.
I am "labelled" [sic] as "intolerant" if I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle (or the idea that all roads lead to Rome).
Has a catchy ring to it doesn’t it? Sorta like "I am labeled as antisemite if I disagree with the international Zionist conspiracy." "I am labeled as racist if I disagree with the Negro’s lazy shiftless watermelon eating way of life." "I am labeled sexist if I disagree with feminazis who should just shut the fuck up when a man is talking."
I am labeled as intolerant if I lump homosexual people into one big idiotic stereotype that I can easily feel superior to. I am labeled as intolerant if I’d rather talk about homosexuals as if they were a bunch of empty dancing scarecrows then living breathing human beings who have the same human needs I do. I am labeled as intolerant if all I want to see when I look at teh gay are stereotypes that stroke my pathetic bar stool conceits. I am labeled as intolerant if I just don’t want to see the people for the homosexuals. Woe is me. Woe, woe is me.
Oh…and he goes on in his editorial to cite NARTH junk science as proof that homosexuals can change. And he concludes with a brief but rousing pulpit thumping diatribe about godlessness and evil and atonement. How anyone could think he’s an intolerant asswipe is beyond me.
No Adrian, all roads don’t lead to Rome. Some of them lead straight into the gutter. Yours, for instance.
Well Lookie Here…A Visit From Jackson Memorial Hospital…
First…a little GLBT history…
A gay man dies alone in an unfamiliar hospital while his longtime partner tries fruitlessly to get permission to be by his side. It’s a too-common scenario that documents such as living wills, powers of attorney, and domestic-partnership registration are supposed to prevent. But in the death of Robert Lee "Bobby" Daniel, 34, at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000, none of that mattered, according to a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on February 27. San Franciscan Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., 34, had power of attorney for Daniel, his registered domestic partner, but was barred from his room and from consulting with physicians because Flanigan was not considered "family" by the hospital, charges the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The couple had been driving to meet family in northern Virginia when Daniel became ill. He died without being able to say goodbye to his partner. "I have a huge hole in my heart, and my soul, because I wasn’t allowed to be with Bobby when he needed me most," Flanigan said in a statement.
Hospital officials denied any wrongdoing. "We deliver compassionate care to every patient, with sensitivity to the wishes of our patients and their loved ones," spokesperson Ellen Beth Levitt, told The Baltimore Sun.
Flanigan and Daniel, both residents of San Francisco, signed a legal document giving Flanigan the power to make medical decisions for Daniel in expectation that doctors might not recognize Flanigan. Daniel confided to Flanigan that he did not want to go on life support at the end of his life.
Daniel was transferred to the Shock Trauma Center from the Harford Hospital in Havre de Grace, Md. That night, Flanigan sat in the waiting room for four hours while they worked on Daniel but was never consulted about medical decisions, according to the claim. When Daniel’s sister and mother arrived at the hospital, Flanigan was allowed to see Daniel for the first time.
When Flanigan and the family saw Daniel, he was unconscious with his eyes taped shut, and a breathing tube had been inserted, contrary to Flanigan’s requests, according to the claim.
I did this cartoon about the tragedy back in 2002…
I’d only just started adding the political cartoons to my web site back then, and my drawing skills were stunted from years of neglect, but unlike a lot of the other cartoons I did at that time, this one still holds up I think. Reading the story of Flanigan and Daniel had made me livid, and probably that anger lifted my limited drawing skills up a notch or two. I also blogged about it over and over. Flanigan later found the cartoon while searching the web and I’m happy to say sent me a very heartfelt email thanking me for it.
Later, when an all heterosexual jury excused Maryland Shock Trauma for what they did to Flanigan, I did a follow-up cartoon that was pretty lame and I’ve since removed it from the cartoon site. I guess by that time my anger had turned into a weary contempt. Maryland Shock Trauma had finally found a way to give straight juries an excuse to let hospitals stick a knife in the hearts of same sex couples without having to acknowledge their own bigotries. Oh…we were just too busy to let the Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual…
All of this is to say that if you google the case of Flanigan and Daniel you will likely run across one or more of the pages here on my web site, either in the cartoon pages or the blog pages. Hold that thought for a moment. Because the case of Flanigan and Daniel is not, alas, unique. It’s still happening to same sex couples, who thought, like Flanigan and Daniel did, that their power of attorney documents might actually mean something to gay hating hospital staff…
The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple’s 18 years together.
But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond’s hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an "anti-gay city and state."
Langbehn filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging the Miami hospital with negligence and "anti-gay animus" in refusing to recognize her and the children as Pond’s family, even after a power of attorney was faxed to the hospital within an hour of their arrival.
…
Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.
"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.
…
Jackson officials declined to comment, except to say that the hospital follows state and federal laws on patient privacy that can forbid releasing health information to those outside the patient’s immediate family.
The hospital also may limit visitors if a patient is being treated for a trauma, emergency or serious infection, said Valda Clark Christian, an assistant county attorney representing Jackson.
That last statement there from the ironically named Valda Clark Christian is Jackson Memorial Hospital picking up the knife that Maryland Shock Trauma gave it, and anti-gay hospital staff everywhere. Oh…we were just too busy to let that Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual… Power of Attorney? You homosexuals have no power here…this is an anti-gay city and state…
What Jackson Memorial Hospital is going to do now is play the Maryland Shock Trauma trump card. In the case of Flanigan and Daniel, first they said Flanigan wasn’t family. Then they told him that the power of attorney document had been misplaced. Somehow none of that mattered when Daniel’s Legitimate Family arrived at the hospital because they were let right in and that was when Flanigan was, purely as a matter of coincidence surely, also allowed to see his beloved. When Flanigan sued the hospital finally came up with the excuse that they were just too busy to let Flanigan in. Never mind that they could have still respected his medical directives anyway. They didn’t have to let him into the room to do that. Daniel had a fear of dying with tubes stuck down his throat and that was precisely what the hospital staff did to him. When Flanigan and Daniel’s family were finally allowed to see him, not only were there tubes shoved down his throat, the hospital staff had put Daniel into restraints when he tried to take them out.
That was how Daniel spent his last moments on earth, in the tender care of Maryland Shock Trauma. Because they didn’t give a good goddamn about the faggot in the waiting room and his so-called power of attorney. First they openly told Flanigan that he wasn’t being allowed in because he was "not family". Then they said the power of attorney documents had been misplaced. Then when Flanigan sued they told the jury they were too busy taking care of Daniel to deal with Flanigan too. Probably they were too busy putting the tubes down Daniel’s throat. In any case, the "too busy" excuse allowed the all heterosexual jury to acquit the hospital of any wrong doing. If gay ain’t shit you must acquit…
Jackson’s lawyers surely have their own resources to look up how the case of Flanigan and Daniel went down. But the hospital is covering all its bases apparently. Someone there is doing a little research on the web regarding that case, probably to get a sense of just how the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse card is played. According to my site meter logs, someone at Jackson paid me a little visit the other day…
Nice. Note the search string: "lambda legal flanigan daniels court findings ruling judgement" Too bad you can’t search for your missing sense of human decency on Google. What the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse does is give hospitals the absolute right to disregard anything anyone tells them about patients in their care, whether they’re the "legal" family of the patient or not, whether they are legally married or not, have a power of attorney or a medical directive document. The Maryland Shock Trauma excuse gives hospitals free reign to do to your loved ones as they damn well please, so long as they die of it quickly enough that they can claim they were performing emergency procedures. Nobody’s family rights have to be respected now in any way. But of course everyone understands that it’s only the homosexuals who have no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect.
This is why the fight for same sex marriage is so important. Not that a marriage ring will give bigots any more respect for same sex couples, but that the system will never see our relationships as being equal to those of heterosexuals unless we fight for equality, not some separate but equal civil union status. It’s not about the legal paperwork. Langbehn and Pond had the same legal paperwork that Flanigan and Daniel did, and it conferred nothing. It’s not about the paperwork. It’s about respect. Heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex. Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That’s it. There is nothing more to it then that. If that’s all it takes to make care givers treat loving and devoted couples with less compassion then they’d grant to laboratory rats then the moral problem here isn’t with us. They were a lesbian couple. If the word ‘lesbian’ negates the word ‘couple’ for you then You are the one with the moral problem not Langbehn and Pond. Langbehn, in her struggle to care for her beloved, had more integrity and virtue then any of the runts at Jackson Memorial, who spit on their family while Pond was dying. That’s what this is about. We are not fighting over a word. We are not fighting for a piece of paper. We are fighting for the human status. For the righteousness of love.
A hospital can be a place of hope against all the odds. It can be a place where the human heart takes its ultimate stand against the finality of death. We all die. That we still fight anyway, still love anyway, is either to our glory or just a pathetic conceit. A hospital can be a monument to our capacity to love one another, that even the taint of death cannot take from within us. Or it can be a place of despair, of the end of all things, even love. Yes, sometimes, in the heat of battle, hospital staff have to be left alone to do their jobs. But why even bother, if not for love?
When Your Own Cheapshit Prejudices Start Laughing At You…
So as it turns out, One News Now, the so-called Christian News Service which is actually an American Family Association front group, gets newsfeeds from various real news wire services for its "service" which it then feeds back out to its subscribers in a Family Friendly sorta way. As it turns out, that means filtering the copy it gets from all those secular news sources to make the text more Family Friendly.
Their filtering software is about as doggedly single-minded about fighting The Gay Agenda as they are it seems. Even if it means also fighting the Tyson Gay Agenda…
This is the problem with auto replace. Here’s the article fetched from Google Cache. Go grab yourself a nice cold drink, sit a spell and have yourself a thoroughly enjoyable read…noting how the OneNewsNow auto-replace got all the instances of "Gay", but missed "Gay’s"…
Homosexual breaks Greene’s US record in 100 at trials
Homosexual broke Maurice Greene’s American mark in the 100 meters by running 9.77 seconds in his quarterfinal at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.
"It tells me I’m in pretty good shape," Homosexual said. "We’ve got two more rounds left."
He tied the fourth-fastest time in the history of the event, despite clearly easing up a tad over his final few strides. Still, that was nothing compared what he did in his opening heat earlier in the day, when Homosexual came awfully close to a monumental blunder.
After building a big lead, the reigning world champion eased up a lot with about 30 meters left-so much that the rest of the field began to catch him. Homosexual was forced to accelerate again and he lunged across the finish line in fourth place, good enough to advance.
"The first round I was scared. I almost started crying. I didn’t know if I made it," Homosexual said after bettering the record Greene set in 1999. "This round I felt good."
As well he should. The performance had to be a big boost of confidence for Gay, who was a distant second-a spectator, really-in New York on May 31, when Jamaica’s Usain Bolt broke the world record by clocking 9.72.
Gay’s had to answer plenty of questions about how much of a challenge he’ll present at the Beijing Olympics to Bolt and another Jamaican, previous world record-holder Asafa Powell.
Could Homosexual challenge Bolt’s mark in Sunday’s semifinal or final?
"Anything’s possible," said Wallace Spearmon, who sneaked into the semifinals by running 10.07. "Tyson’s fast."
So is the track at Hayward Field, which already has produced two U.S. records in running events and is serving up the sort of dry, hot weather-the temperature hit 95 degrees Saturday-conducive to quick sprinting.
The runner-up in Gay’s quarterfinal was Jeffery Demps of Okahumpka, Fla., who got out of the blocks a bit ahead of the favorite and wound up setting a national high school record at 10.01. In other words, this was a very fast race.
Between the heats, Homosexual blamed his mistake in his opener on misjudging the lines on the track. It was hardly a veteran move from a man who has won the past two U.S. titles in the dash. He also completed a 100-200 double at the 2007 world championships.
When Homosexual spoke to his coach, Jon Drummond, before the quarterfinal, there was something of a talking-to.
"He told me champions don’t do that," Homosexual said, "and I had to make up for it."
Indeed, had he not recovered, an exit by Homosexual in the first round of qualifying would have been a major surprise at this 10-day meet to determine the American roster for the Beijing Games. His time of 10.14 seconds tied for the 11th-fastest among the 30 starters in the 100. That stuck him in lane 2 for his quarterfinal, a less-than-ideal position.
But it didn’t matter, and after Homosexual crossed the finish line, well ahead of everyone else, he looked up at the scoreboard briefly. Then the trailing runners approached to offer pats on the back and palm slaps.
Walter Dix, the 2007 NCAA champion from Florida State, Xavier Carter and John Capel were among others advancing to the 100 semifinals.
In the women’s 100 semifinals Saturday, Torri Edwards used a perfectly timed start and down-the-stretch speed to win her heat in 10.78 seconds-the fastest legal 100 time in the world this year, by a whopping 10th of a second.
That time also makes Edwards, the 2003 world champion, the eighth-fastest woman in history. She had no desire to discuss that showing, however, with the event final coming later Saturday.
"Finals, please," she said to reporters, and kept walking.
Saturday’s schedule at Hayward Field also included the conclusion of the heptathlon and the men’s shot put final.
Some Google search screen shots from Right Wing Watch showing how One News Now has been doing this to poor Tyson for quite some time now and nobody there seems to have noticed. Certainly none of their readers seem to have. You have to figure there aren’t all that many sports fans in the batshit crazy pews.
This is instructive, in a kind-of Road Runner verses Coyote sense. Chuck Jones once said that his Coyote fit the classic definition of a zealot as being someone who doubles their effort after they’ve forgotten what their original goal was. If the anti-gay fanatics over at OneNewsNow were just a tad little less fanatical, they’d have thought their brilliant plan to automatically replace "gay" with "homosexual" through a little more carefully. But we’re the bell to their Pavlov’s dog and they couldn’t even think to think. They just jerked their knees, and out came one headline after another, about how Tyson Homosexual set a record at the 100 yard dash.
"It tells me I’m in pretty good shape," Homosexual said. "We’ve got two more rounds left."
Hate destroys you from within and it laughs at you while it’s doing it.
Via Box Turtle Bulletin… They guy who cursed that guitar player who was serenading couples waiting to be married in San Francisco, is Kevin Farrer, who fancies himself a street preacher. He was just helpfully spreading the good news to all the poor sinners standing in line…waiting to exchange vows of eternal love…
According to “Storm Bear” at the Bilerico Project, a marriage supporter was playing a guitar when he “suddenly dropped like a tree” of an apparent heart attack or cardiac arrest. Police immediately swooped in and began administering CPR.
And while that was going on, one of the “loving” Christian protesters was chanting, “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear about now?”
I yelled at the guy, “If you are such a Christian, why aren’t you praying for the guy dying on the concrete?” The protester replied, “God killed him for loving fags!!” The cops even stepped in and told the guy to shut his mouth.
Go read the whole thing. This happened in front of San Francisco’s city hall, I think as same sex couples were lined up for marriage licenses.
Love. People in love doing what people in love have done for millennia in one form or another; swearing to love honor and cherish until death do them part. A guitar player…was he married, or single and just in love with love…serenades the happy couples as they wait. I am desperately single myself, and had I a musical bone in my body, I would have done something like that for the waiting couples. Love has not been kind to me, and yet I am still in love with love. But then the guitar player falls to the ground, and an anti-gay protester with as much Christ in him as Himmler steps forward and shouts at him that the devil has him. Love.
Can we stop now with all that love the sinner hate the sin claptrap? I would like, very much right now, to be there to whisper, not shout, just whisper, something in this guy’s ear at the moment he finds himself on death’s doorstep. Not that the devil has him. Not that the next voice he hears will be the devil whispering in his ear. But softly, that Jesus is there with him now…and that guitar player he once cursed is standing right beside him.
So says Save California, an anti-gay group that is calling asking it supporters to call county clerks and demand that they refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. From their website:
Ask your county clerk if they were a Nazi officer during WWII and had been ordered to gas the Jews, would they? At the Nuremberg trials, they would have been convicted of murder for following this immoral order.
Ask yourself if any of the morally righteous folks over at Save California would have refused to sign an order sending a gay man to the concentration camps. Go ahead. Try not to laugh.
Good catch by Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin. Gary Glenn, President of Michigan klavern of the American Family Association, waves the Homosexual Menace scarecrow over at Peter LaBarbra’s Americans For Truth. Beware the gays! Beware the Gays! Beware the Gays! Glenn is warning us about the Homosexual Menace. Can you spot the problem with this passage about the Homosexual Menace…?
Michigan’s largest homosexual activist group says once marriage is legally redefined to include homosexual couples, business owners and even news media outlets who refuse to recognize such marriages should be jailed or sued and “publicly slapped,” a Jewish and openly bisexual columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News reported Monday.
They call them Freudian slips. And hey…wasn’t Freud a Jew too…
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh says he will “cut off the head” of any homosexual caught in his country.
Addressing supporters at the end of his meet the farmers tour here Sunday, Jammeh also ordered any hotel or motel housing homosexuals to close down, adding that owners of such facilities would also be in trouble.
He said the Gambia was a country of believers, indicating that no sinful and immoral act as homosexual would be tolerated in the country.
He warned all homosexuals in the country to leave, noting that a legislation “stricter than those in Iran ” concerning the vice would be introduced soon.
I have a question: Where are all the love the sinner, hate the sin faithful here? Last week the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of giving same-sex couples access to marriage and Pope Ratzinger was Instantly out of the gate with a statement condemining same-sex marriage. So were the usual suspects in the protestant religious right. All the while piously declaring that they were not acting out of any sort of hatred towards homosexuals. Yet here’s a head of state declaring that he will cut off the head of any homosexual caught in his country and the silence from the erstaz followers of Christ is deafening.
Let me hazard a guess as to why: the thought of loving same-sex couples being allowed to marry disturbs them more then the thought of thousands of homosexuals being butchered by a madman. They don’t hate us, they just want us gone. It isn’t hate to believe that everything would be fine if there just weren’t any homosexuals. It’s…love…
As 14-year-old Brandon McInerney prepares to be arraigned today in the slaying of 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, his lawyer is advancing a defense that at least partly blames school officials for the tragedy.
Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys, which began when King openly flirted with McInerney, said Deputy Public Defender William Quest.
No. The tensions pre-existed that. The flirting was Kings way of dealing with the abuse he was getting from the other kids. But look at this carefully. Quest is hanging a dead skunk on a sliver of truth obvious to everyone in hindsight. Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys… Yes. And right here is the poison Quest is trying to slip in along with that…
Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus, Quest said.
You’d think the boy was going to school in drag…which is exactly the image Quest is creating there. Quest is slyly turning a murdered 15 year old gay kid into a drag queen exploring his sexuality on other terrified teenagers. He’s pushing all the usual buttons there. But look past that. King’s behavior was creating turmoil on campus. Quest has probably figured out that blaming a 15 year old gay kid for his own murder isn’t going to play well…at least with California juries. He might get away with it, but considering Matthew Shepard’s killers couldn’t even in Wyoming, it’s a risk. So what to do? Simple. Blame the school for not blaming the victim.
Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus…
Isn’t that a neat trick? The school was siding with the gay kid, which left the other kids in turmoil, which caused Brandon McInerney to bring a gun to school and shoot Lawrence King in the back of the head. Poor Branden was so traumatized over having a gay classmate, and even worse being flirted at, that he couldn’t even look him in the eye when he pulled the trigger. And it’s all the school’s fault. For nurturing the gay kid. When they should have been keeping him under control. So the other kids wouldn’t be in turmoil. So Branden McInerney wouldn’t have been in turmoil.
You have never seen the gay panic defense so slickly inserted into a murder trial.
In fact, since the American Psychological Association says homosexuality is not a choice, some have even labeled sexuality an “undebatable” topic. While the APA did indeed make this claim, I prefer to go straight to the evidence itself rather than rely on the authority of the APA, the only professional institution to be censured by Congress by a unanimous vote.
He’s probably referring to This little bit of manufactured outrage…but never mind. Science holds no sway that a reasoned and considered vote of the impartial members of congress cannot overrule. If congress voted to make the value of Pi three exactly, then of course that would be its value…right?
…let’s jump straight into the facts, starting with Spitzer.
No, not Eliot Spitzer, Dr. Robert Spitzer of Columbia University. Some may recognize him for his role in removing homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973, and while many have praised his willingness to reject the dogma of the day in the name of science, few know the sequel to his story. 30 years later, Spitzer published a surprising paper based on his research, one which suggested that therapy can change the orientation of an individual. Spitzer still had the same commitment to follow the evidence, but many of his colleagues who vigorously supported him in 1973 had a sudden change of heart. In fact, in the most ironic twist of fate, Spitzer, an atheist, interviewed with Christianity Today in April 2005, elaborating on the consequences of his rigorous and scientific studies. “Many colleagues were outraged,” said Spitzer, later adding, “I feel a little battle fatigue.”
"…his rigorous and scientific studies." Sometimes you don’t know whether the winger children are laughing in your face or whether they’re really the gullible sheep they seem to be. If anything about Spitzer’s study was rigorous it was how meticulously rigged it was. In part and unforgivably with Spitzer’s willing consent, but also right under his nose, to produce a particular outcome. And nobody understands better how the rigging was accomplished then participants like Arana…
In fact, I know Dr. Robert Spitzer’s study well. Dr. Nicolosi asked me to participate in it, but instructed me not to reveal that he had referred me; while he wanted his organization’s views represented, he did not want to bring into question the study’s integrity. Wacker must not have read Dr. Spitzer’s study, or perhaps he has a naïve understanding of scientific inquiry. Otherwise he would know that the study consisted of informal interviews with ex-gays and those still in therapy; it was merely a report of what they had said. The APA and the psychological community have criticized the ex-gay movement for not providing controlled, long-term studies — to date, none exist.
Arana went into ex-gay therapy willingly, and left it feeling cheated. It’s a part of his life he says now that he does not revisit, "…not because it hurts especially but because it has become increasingly irrelevant." Thankfully, he was willing to share some of it in his article. For those of you who think the ex-gay movement isn’t about demonizing homosexuals so much as lovingly helping them with their same sex attraction disorder, read this:
Disgust with what was termed the “gay lifestyle” was implicit in therapy. I remember Dr. Nicolosi telling me, in response to the question of whether one could easily contract HIV from semen, that if this were the case then gays would be “jerking off in hamburgers all over” to infect people.
There’s the mindset right there that animates the pews in this particular congregation from one end to the other. And it’s why the patients ultimately don’t matter, and why the leaders of this movement don’t give a good goddamn about what happens to the people they treat or to their families after they leave therapy. You can’t harm someone who isn’t really fully human to start with. And you can’t destroy a family where no Real family exists as far as you are concerned…
I learned to be a man: I was encouraged to play catch with my father, work out, watch football. At one point Dr. Nicolosi assigned me a therapy partner who was my age. Ryan and I used to speak by phone (he was in Colorado, I in Arizona), gossiping about school, at one point promising to send each other pictures of ourselves (the canker was already on the rose). After not hearing from him for a few weeks I called his family, who told me that Ryan had gone to court and emancipated himself from them. His father, in tears, told me this had ruined his life.
Presumably, that father didn’t get a refund on his son’s ex-gay treatments either.
Many times on this site, I have offered to anti-gay Christians the idea that they could still oppose homosexuality without spewing hate or contributing to the culture of violence that exists for gay people. I still truly believe that can be done. I would like to start offering some concrete suggestions that anti-gay, Christian organizations could use to oppose homosexuality but without the hate speech.
But then he goes a little further…
I would appreciate pro-gay folks taking a moment to empathize with those who are oppose gay rights and give them some concrete requests to how they can voice religious opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage without promoting violence or hate toward gays. Understanding that some people believe homosexuality is against their religion, not everyone who voices opposition to us is a religious extremist. Some people just hold different beliefs. Perhaps we can talk about better ways to voice those beliefs and even run organizations that lobby for anti-gay rights groups without hate.
I have several problems with this Joe. Thirdly, you shouldn’t assume that us "pro-gay" folks haven’t tried…hard…to understand what is motivating the opposition. Do not assume that its easier to write off the opposition as malicious and hateful unless you’ve looked, really looked, into that Pit called Hate. There is nothing easy about walking up to that terrible edge, and looking in. There is nothing easy about having to go on living with what you saw. Nietzsche was right about the danger of gazing into an abyss.
Secondly, opposition to some things, like same sex marriage, is predicated upon the very dehumanization of gay people you’re asking them to refrain from. There is just no way to oppose same sex marriage while upholding opposite sex marriage without dehumanizing gay people first. It’s one thing to assert that marriage is essentially a religious rite and another to oppose even civil unions, let alone civil marriage. A lot of deeply religious people see the difference there perfectly well. The problem is that haters tend give their principle objection to same sex marriage a religious gloss to prevent people from actually looking right at it and seeing it for what it is.
If atheists can marry in ceremonies utterly bereft of any acknowledgment of God, then what, really, is the objection? It isn’t religious. It’s constitutional in the sense that they regard same sex relationships as a perversion of normal love. That’s what is being said in the opposition to same sex marriage. They’re not objecting to sinners marrying in sin. Someone else’s sin does not defile their own marriages or every 24 hour church in Las Vegas would have been closed down decades ago. Sinners are free to marry every day of the year as long as it’s to a person of the opposite sex. What the haters have been saying, unambiguously for decades now, is that letting gay couples marry defiles their own marriages. By making a mockery of their feelings for one another. Because homosexuals are incapable of those same feelings. Because all we can do, as Orson Scott Card once put it, is play at house.
Witness their insistence lately on that so-called complementary essence of heterosexual unions. Really look at it. What they’re saying is we don’t even have genuine sex, let alone authentically love the person in our arms. What they’re saying is that by calling our damaged, degenerate, empty assignations marriages we are mocking, deliberately mocking, their authentic humanity. That is not about sin, it’s about how they regard gay people as subhuman deviants. Perverts. Degenerates. That is what we are to them, and that is the basis for their opposition to same sex marriage, or they wouldn’t be using the language of defilement to describe their opposition. Two heterosexual drunks getting married after having sex in a Las Vegas hotel doesn’t devalue marriage. Two sober homosexuals claiming to love and cherish one another just like heterosexuals do does. You are asking them to stop dehumanizing gay people in their opposition to same sex marriage when the bedrock of that opposition is how thoroughly they’ve dehumanized us.
But my first and biggest problem with your suggestion is that the folks who aren’t extremists have never acted toward us in hateful ways. There are many devout people out there who aren’t waging kulturkampf against us but are simply and sincerely, if misguidedly, trying to steer us away from what they regard as sin. They aren’t lobbying against us in the statehouses and in Washington. They aren’t flinging mud at us, at our relationships, at our homes, at our hearts. They are instead, offering us a kind of hospitality. The "Good News" as they say. But that hospitality is hard to see beneath all the static the religious right is throwing out into the public discourse.
We don’t need to give those folks any of this advice because they know it all instinctively. And…this is important…they know it instinctively because They Can See The People For The Homosexuals. We are not some faceless other to them. We are not monsters. We are their neighbors. We are human beings to them, as real and as human as they. They have always known this, and they have always treated us as they would treat any neighbor in this life.
Joe…I think you should look…really look…at the advice you are giving the ones you think should hear it, and ask yourself in all seriousness, what sort of person needs to be told any of this…
…start talking about anti-gay violence and condemning it very vocally…
…be sure your information is balanced and based on PEER REVIEWED research…
…If your message is truly about “reaching out” to gays and lesbians than stay away from calling us insulting and dehumanizing names like sodomite and militant…
…Promote youth safety. If you are opposed to teaching about homosexuality in schools or anti-bullying campaigns that include homosexuality as a subject, then you damn well better have a solution to offer that stops the violence and shame that makes life miserable for these kids…
…Gays and lesbians want the same things out of life that you do. I cannot and will not believe that you unable to come up with ways to present your message without the barrage of negative pictures of gays and lesbians…
…Gays and lesbians really are reasonable human beings. Have you ever thought of setting up some meetings with your organization and pro-gay organizations to see what you can work on together and what you can agree on…
…The only reason this is a “war” is because you continue to promote it as one. If you promoted it as a collaboration or a disagreement, then it would be that instead of a war…
…Admit it when someone on your side just goes too far. Comparing us to terrorist went too far…
…We would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that our requests are valid requests even if you disagree with what we want. There is no secret agenda. We want equality and safety…
…Lastly, vow yourself and your organization to abandon myths about homosexuality, especially the one about us choosing to be gay. No one chooses to be gay. Each time you say that you minimize the whole issue to a simple choice and if it were so simple, I wouldn’t be writing this list of requests right now…
Exodus has been saying out of both sides of its mouth for years how "thousands have made the choice to leave homosexuality" and at the same time when asked to back that up with some cold hard facts admits that it is not, as you say, so simple after all. Do you think they cannot hear themselves talking out of both sides of their mouths?
Who needs this advice Joe? No one who would actually take it is who. You are looking for good faith where there is none. What does opposition to homosexuality minus the hate look like? Well I’ve seen it…rarely…but I’ve seen it, and it looks like hospitality. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I would also ask pro-gay folks to try their best to frame their request in Positive Actions Language. In other words, ask people what you DO want them to do, not what you DON’T want them to do.
I want them to get off my back. I want them to get the hell out of my garden. I want them to finally one day look at themselves in a mirror and die of that shame they’ve been running away from ever since they sold their soul to hate because it was easier then living in a world where other people are happy and content. That positive enough?
David Roberts, over at Ex-Gay Watch, observes the kook pews falling over each other to excuse Sally Kern’s calling gay people a greater threat to the nation then terrorists, and writes…
I’m beginning to realize that, in at least some cases, what I thought was a more civil, sincere change in the hearts and minds of those who have opposed gay rights and equality in this society, perhaps was only a thin veneer which they feel has been imposed upon them.
Welcome to bigotville David. Yes…now they hate our guts even more for making them pretend to love us.
Sometimes a news article just jumps off the screen and laughs in your face. Via Box Turtle Bulletin… If you have any doubts about the depth anti-gay hate in this country, read this:
The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public schoolchildren to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life’s mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
It passed the Senate on a voice vote and the House by a vote of 83-12. It now goes to Gov. Steve Beshear.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The material would be part of the Kentucky Program of Studies, which has state approval but is not required.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He said the pupils began lobbying for legislation that would give students in public schools access to opportunities to study the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
Not powerful enough for some, apparently…
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Dig it. It took them Four Years, just to get the Kentucky statehouse to agree that school kids should probably learn something about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the twentieth century…Maybe. We’ll suggest they learn about it, but not require it. And then someone spies a clause in the bill suggesting that school kids learn that there were other victims besides Jewish folk, and that would have been fine too except for the homosexuals. You know…these guys…
But the republican majority leader tut, tuts, any suggestion that they wouldn’t have been fine…really…with including the gay victims of the holocaust in their Completely Optional Curriculum…
But Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, said in an interview that was never an issue for Senate leadership.
He said he had no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust as long as it’s "age-appropriate."
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can’t study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
You know goddamned well you can. For decades after World War Two nothing, Nothing was ever said about the pink triangles, until gay scholars started digging into it based on rumors and stories they’d heard from survivors. I started learning about the Holocaust in Junior High schools (middle school these days) and it figured in every lesson on that period of time for the rest of my grade school years and Not Once did I ever hear mention of the pink triangles, or how the Nazis had toughened Germany’s seldom enforced anti-gay laws, even before they enacted the brutally antisemitic Nuremberg laws, or how when the death camps were finally liberated, the surviving Jewish prisoners were released, as well as the gypsies, the Slavs, the intellectuals, the opposition party members…hell, even the communist prisoners were let go…but not the pink triangles. They were considered vermin by both the Nazis, and the American liberators.
Yes Mr. Republican Majority Leader Sir, you can goddamned well teach about the holocaust and not once mention the fact that gay men were rounded up by the Nazis too and shoveled into the death camps. That was the status-quo all during both our school years wasn’t it? And you’d like very much to go back to that status quo wouldn’t you? Because you know most of your voter base doesn’t think the Nazis did anything wrong when it came to exterminating homosexuals don’t you? And you know goddamned well you’ll loose votes if you do anything to suggest otherwise don’t you? If you have no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust, then why didn’t you have that line put back into the bill?
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
You did a great job of putting the knife into it Kelly. You had your boys whisper that the bill Whitaker and Marzian worked on four four years was dead unless they deleted the line about gay victims of the Holocaust and they did it and now you can look at the cameras and claim you’re shocked, shocked, that anyone would bother caring about all that. This is why you’re majority leader isn’t it. You could have had it fucking put back in and insisted to your caucus that it stay there and you didn’t, and make no mistake, everybody knows who ripped that little page out of the history books and why.
And one other thing they’ll always know… In 2008, over sixty years after World War Two, Kentucky school children still aren’t routinely taught about the Holocaust, and won’t be because after four years of trying all the Kentucky state house could do was pass a bill that suggests they learn about it. That was about as far as you could go without loosing the bigot vote, wasn’t it Kelly? And now you get to play civilized man for the cameras.
Whitaker said he regretted that Marx, who died last year at age 81, didn’t live to see passage of the bill.
If it’s too much to ask that your schools teach about what happened to six million Jews I suppose it’s way too much to ask that it also mention the unknown thousands of gay victims too. Especially when you and your fellow republicans need to be able to gay bash for votes every few years.
The organization collecting signatures for a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage in California says it is close to meeting the requirement.
Protect Marriage says it has collected 881,000 of the 1.1 million signatures needed. The deadline for turning in the petitions to county registrars is April 21.
Registrars are then required to take a random sample of signatures to verify. If that sampling shows at least 10 percent more valid signatures than required the petitions will be certified and the measure will be placed on the November ballot.
"The numbers are good, solid," Ron Prentice, a spokesperson for Protect Marriage told The Christian Examiner, a conservative Christian publication.
"We are well toward our goal. There are thousands more yet to be counted with a steady stream still coming in."
Among the major donors to Protect Marriage are a group of San Diego County businessmen. Developer Doug Manchester alone has contributed $125,000 prompting gays to urge a boycott of his properties. Manchester owns the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.
Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500, Carlsbad car dealer Robert Hoehn gave $25,000, and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, according to state records.
It would just break my heart if the land of my birth did that to me. I’ve noted before that the only reason I can travel freely around the United States is that I’m single. If I had a spouse, there are many states in this so-called union that we simply could not set foot in because if one of us had a sudden health problem, or there was an accident, it would become a nightmare for both of us. Even with a so-called durable power of attorney, we could be denied the right to simply be with each other in a hospital…even with a medical directives document…we could be denied the power to make medical decisions for each other should one of us become suddenly incapacitated. Some state constitutional amendments, like Virginia’s are so stringently and thoroughly crafted to ostracize same sex couples from the protections of the law, that they can even be read to deny same sex couples the right to hold a joint checking account.
There are simply not that many people in this country who hate us enough to want to do that to us. The problem, like it was for another hated minority group over in Europe back in the 1920s and 30s, is that the rest of the nation doesn’t care enough to tell them to stop it. So when these amendments are put up to a vote, they stay home and allow hate to have its way. These are the people who say later, "We heard the rumors, but we didn’t believe them…"
Once upon a time I planned to move back to California after mom passed away. Then I got the job I do now, and my little Baltimore rowhouse, and I stayed in Maryland. But even now I think sometimes that when my time to retire comes, if it ever does, I’d like to spend the last years of my life back there where I was born. It’s a lovely state. It would break my heart if the day ever came that I couldn’t even visit California again.
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