LOS ANGELES, Sept. 22 (UPI) — Film director David Zucker says conservatives are so uncomfortable in Hollywood that being a Republican is "the new gay."
"You sort of feel like you have to hide it," Zucker — director of "Airplane!," "Top Secret" and "The Naked Gun" — told EW.com. "When you meet, you give each other a secret look, ‘Are you a Republican, too?’ It’s the new gay."
OKLAHOMA CITY — Democrat Andrew Rice has a divinity degree and has worked as a missionary, but he is being called to account over social values in his Senate race against Republican incumbent Jim Inhofe, who is known for tough campaign tactics.
An Inhofe ad being carried on Oklahoma television stations contains anti-gay overtones, showing a wedding cake topped by two plastic grooms and a photo of Rice as a young man, curly haired and wearing a leather jacket.
Inhofe said the ad is accurate. He pointed to news stories that Rice, before he became a state senator in 2006, founded a group that opposed a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriages.
Ask the Old Gay to show you around the place Zucker… You might recognize the brand name on some of the furnishings…
Preserving Traditional Marriage
Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. In the absence of a national amendment, we support the right of the people of the various states to affirm traditional marriage through state initiatives.
Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children. Children are our nation’s most precious resource. We also salute and support the efforts of foster and adoptive families.
Republicans have been at the forefront of protecting traditional marriage laws, both in the states and in Congress. A Republican Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of states not to recognize same-sex “marriages” licensed in other states. Unbelievably, the Democratic Party has now pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which would subject every state to the redefinition of marriage by a judge without ever allowing the people to vote on the matter. We also urge Congress to use its Article III, Section 2 power to prevent activist federal judges from imposing upon the rest of the nation the judicial activism in Massachusetts and California. We also encourage states to review their marriage and divorce laws in order to strengthen marriage.
As the family is our basic unit of society, we oppose initiatives to erode parental rights.
– From the 2008 Republican Party Platform
Esprit and cohesion are necessary for military effectiveness and success on the battlefield. To protect our servicemen and women and ensure that America’s Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture, and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service.
– From the 2008 Republican Party Platform
Homosexuality – We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, refuse to recognize, or grant special privileges including, but not limited to: marriage between persons of the same sex (regardless of state of origin), custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values
Texas Sodomy Statutes – We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.
– From the 2008 Texas Republican Party Platform.
The New Gay is it? The New Gay? Rot in Hell Zucker. Go fuck yourself with a Big Tent. Republicans have turned the lives of gay Americans into a scorched earth battleground. They pushed anti same sex marriage amendments in swing states, turning gay Americans into second class citizens because they knew voting for president Nice Job Brownie might not be enough to drive their grassroots to the polls. They’ve been using the lives of gay Americans as a baseball bat to smack democrats over the head with ever since Antia Bryant showed them how well the issue played at the polls. So you and your fellow republicans are…uncomfortable…in the glamorous Hollywood social scene are you? How painful that must be sometimes…
Allegations of a sixteen-year-old high-school student beating another because he was perceived as gay have shaken up a small Kansas town.
Police officers in the small town of Tribune, Kansas – population 800 – responded to a report of an intruder at the home of a sixteen-year-old student. When they arrived they found the teen was badly beaten and his attacker had fled.
Dustin Myers was arrested Sunday and charged with attempted murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed explosive, reports the Hutchinson News Online.
Authorities say that after hearing rumors that his classmate was gay, Myers went to his home with a small explosive device with the intention of killing the teenager.
Jenna, one of the victims who requested that South End News withhold her name for safety reasons, said that she and her friends heard a group of men shouting at them from a parked white sedan. The four friends, who were walking home from a night of clubbing at the Roxy, kept walking, but before long, the four men got out of their car and started coming towards them.
According to Jenna, the perpetrators said, "Fuck you, your fucking friends are faggots," before punching her in the face. When two of her friends came to her aid, two the attackers began beating and kicking them in the face, repeatedly yelling, "Fuck you, faggots."
NEW YORK – A fugitive has been convicted of second-degree murder in the beating death of a gay man on a New York City street in 2001.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown says John McGhee was convicted Wednesday. He says McGhee fled to London after 35-year-old Edgar Garzon died on Sept. 4, 2001, of injuries suffered in a street assault.
Garzon was attacked after leaving a gay bar in Queens on Aug. 15, 2001. Trial testimony showed the victim and McGhee had exchanged words before the assault.
On Thursday, a judge upheld the first-degree murder charge against the man accused in the July 16 bludgeoning death of 18-year-old transgender woman Angie Zapata, née Justin.
Allen Ray Andrade, 31, faces various felony charges in Zapata’s death. Public defender Annette Kundelius argued that the murder charge should be reduced to second-degree, saying that Andrade was driven to kill Zapata after she smiled at him, saying "I’m all woman," after he discovered her male genitals.
"At best, this is a case about passion," Kundelius said. "When [Zapata] smiled at him, this was a highly provoking act, and it would cause someone to have an aggressive reaction."
Phone calls between Andrade and his girlfriend show anti-gay bias and disregard, though he did acknowledge making "a mistake." "All gay things need to die," Andrade said in one conversation, adding that there was "no use crying over spilled milk" in trying to put the murder behind him.
All gay things need to die… Sorry to hear that it’s hard to be a republican in Hollywood Zucker. Try being a gay teenager in Kansas during an election year you gutter crawling maggot.
Damn…and I used to like some of your comedies too. Especially Airplane. But you just stopped being funny. You’re really just an asswipe aren’t you? And asswipe comedy has its own special flavor…
Zucker and some of his fellow Hollywood Republicans — including Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper — collaborated on the upcoming movie, "An American Carol" EW.com characterized the movie as "Hollywood’s first unabashedly right-wing comedy."
"An American Carol" — written by Zucker, Myrna Sokoloff and Lewis Friedman — is the story of an anti-American filmmaker who tries to abolish the July Fourth holiday, and is visited by the ghosts of famous Americans who try to get him to drop his plan.
Dickens would have ripped you and your republican fat cats a new one Zucker. Oh…wait…he did…in that story of his you’re plagiarizing for laughs…
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I’m very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can’t go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides-excuse me-I don’t know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It’s not my business," Scrooge returned. "It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
And a bit more emphatically…
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his wn words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child."
…
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, "but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw!"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man’s," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
So let me get this straight Zucker… You’re going to take A Christmas Carol and turn it into a right wing comedy. About an "anti American" (that would be a liberal and/or democrat…right Zucker?) film maker who wants to abolish the Forth of July. Oh Ha ha ha… And Republican is the new Gay. They say that all comedy holds within it a nugget of pain. But watching a man rot away from the inside isn’t funny.
Barack Hussein Obama has taken the nation by storm. From obscurity, with zero executive experience, or much of any kind, he has vaulted into the position of Presidential frontrunner. It is stunning. On the surface, it appears attributable only to his eloquent oratory and his race. But an invisible factor may be a strong spiritual force behind him, causing some people to actually swoon in his presence.
I have been very concerned that he has publicly said that he does not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven. This makes both the Bible and Jesus a liar, and it means that Christ has died in vain. A person cannot be a true Christian who believes that there are other ways of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life with God. Only Jesus has paid the price for that.
Therefore, there is, indeed, another spirit involved. And this spirit has come into our national life like a flood. Last week at Obama’s acceptance speech, that spirit exalted itself in front of a Greek temple-like stage, and to a huge audience like in a Roman arena. Omama was portrayed as god-like. His voice thundered as a god’s voice.
At the end, Democratic sympathizer Pastor Joel Hunter gave the benediction and shockingly invited everyone to close the prayer to their own (false) gods. This was surely an abomination, but it was compatible with Obama’s expressed theology, and Hunter’s leftist leanings.
God was not pleased.
And God says, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him"(Isaiah 59:19).
Enter Governor Sarah Palin. With incredible timing, the very next day, Sarah Palin also appeared out of nowhere. Her shocking selection as John McCain’s running mate stunned the world and suddenly took all the wind out of Obama’s sails.
We quickly learned that Sarah is a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian, attends church, and has been a ministry worker.
Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing. You can tell by how the dogs are already viciously attacking her. But they will not be successful. She knows the One she serves and will not be intimidated.
Back in the 1980s, I sensed that Israel’s little-known Benjamin Netanyahu was chosen by God for an important end-time role. I still believe that. I now have that same sense about Sarah Palin.
Today I did some checking and discovered that both her first and last names are biblical words, one in Hebrew the other in Greek:
Sarah. Wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. In Hebrew, Sarah means "noble woman" (Strong’s 8283).
Palin. In Greek, the word means "renewal." (Strong’s 3825).
A friend said he believes that Sarah Palin is a Deborah. Of Deborah, Smith’s Bible Dictionary says, "A prophetess who judged Israel…. She was not so much a judge as one gifted with prophetic command…. and by virtue of her inspiration ‘a mother in Israel.’"
Only God knows the future and how she may be used by Him, but may this noble woman serve to bring renewal in the land, and inspiration.
Jim
Unlike President Junior…it’s a safe bet that Palin actually sees herself this way.
This e-mail isn’t the only instance of Palin being seen this way. Sarah Posner, who has an interesting article about Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in Salon today, previously wrote about this phenomenon on TAPPED: "Many evangelicals are talking about Palin being like the biblical Queen Esther, who saved the Jews from the genocidal Haman, and believe that Palin has come, like Esther did, ‘for a time such as this.’ (The same narrative built around George W. Bush when he was running.)"
As John McCain’s manufactured "lipstick on a pig" story was taking flight last week, Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, kicked off the hour by teeing up the story. In a note to viewers that telegraphed his disdain for the lipstick controversy, he announced that during the show, he’d share his own thoughts "about how, with a troubled economy, crumbling bridges, rail and roads, a failing educational system, a war that is now going on for five years, and an uncertain American economic future, we’re sitting here talking about lipstick."
Later, he complained the story was "an insult to the intelligence of our democracy."
Did you hear the media are mad? According to Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post, the press is angry at McCain for his patently untrue lipstick attack ("It’s false. It’s ridiculous"), and they’re seething over how Sarah Palin keeps telling her demonstrably false Bridge to Nowhere tale even after members of the media pointed out her stump-speech applause line was a lie. (A "whopper.")
During the past week, virtually every major news outlet has produced welcomed, hard-edged fact-checking pieces about how the Republican ticket goes far beyond bending the truth and just plain snaps it out on the campaign trail.
In the past, that kind of truth-telling would have embarrassed campaigns and likely caused a dramatic change in the rhetoric. But what do McCain and Palin do in response? They pretty much ignore the press and its critiques.
Writing on The New Republic‘s website, Eve Fairbanks spelled out the conundrum, capturing the dumbfounded realization that spread through the press corps. It’s like that scene in a movie when the superhero realizes his unique power (for the press, it’s collective indignation) has suddenly been rendered useless:
Reporters demolished the claim that the Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, and yet the McCain campaign insolently still uses it. Writers dismantled the McCain campaign’s untrue assertion that Barack Obama compared Sarah Palin to a pig yesterday, and yet the campaign put out an audacious ad featuring the ridiculous allegation, presumably on the assumption that Real Americans don’t care what the elite press says anyway.
Instead of recoiling, the Republican ticket seems to have adopted a post-press approach to campaigning in which the candidates simply don’t care what the press does or says about their honesty. More to the point, the candidates don’t think it will matter on Election Day.
They may be right. And that’s the media’s fault. They’ve reported their way right into the margins. Submerged in trivia and tactics for the past 18 months, the press, I think, has damaged its ability — its authority — to referee the campaign.
For the past 18 months? How about for the past several decades. They absolutely hated Bill Clinton, and it wasn’t anything to do with his policies, which actually left the nation with a budget surplus and a healthy employment outlook. It wasn’t that Clinton lied about anything. It wasn’t Clinton’s character flaws. If lies and poor character were problems for the news media they’d have been all over Bush during the 2000 primaries. But they fucking worshiped him. Oh no…it was the bubba factor. Picture beltway pudit David Broder huffing that Clinton "came in and trashed the place and it wasn’t his" and then review his nearly eight years of Bush worship you see all there is to see about the news media.
Proof? Let’s go back to the pissed-off Matthews for a perfect example. Raise your hand if, in the past six months, you’ve seen an entire episode of Hardball devoted to discussing our "troubled economy," the sad state of America’s transportation infrastructure, the failings of our educational system, the never-ending war in Iraq, or the "uncertain American economic future."
Matthews claimed those are the key issues that face our country and, by implication, are what are important to this campaign. Yet Matthews hosts a cable news program that pretty much refuses to discuss those issues.
Remember, Matthews is part of the same Beltway press crowd that told news consumers Hillary Clinton’s laugh was extremely important and needed to be analyzed for clues about her true character, that John Edwards’ haircuts raised serious doubts about the man’s candidacy, and that Barack Obama’s bowling score spelled trouble on the campaign trail.
And it wasn’t that long ago that the campaign press stressed how important it was that John Kerry windsurfed and that Al Gore spent time as a politician’s kid growing up in a Washington, D.C., hotel. These were issues of paramount concern for the media.
And now they’re shocked, shocked, to discover the republicans know they can lie through their teeth and nobody cares anymore what the press has to say about it. You fuckers sold out America to the rats, and now there isn’t anyone left to speak truth to power but the grass roots bloggers and web masters that you’ve been helping the rats vilify, because you were more worried about defending your jobs more then keeping the American dream alive.
You could have seen what these people are ages ago, if you’d just cared one whit to look. Gay and lesbian Americans have been seeing it for decades. Yes they lie. Yes they don’t care who knows it. The lies aren’t meant to fool anyone. They’re war cries meant to whip themselves up for the fight. They’re the bloody flag waving in the wind. They’re spit in the enemy’s face. And the enemy is all of us…every one of us who thinks that the promise of liberty and justice for all belongs to us too. For decades your gay and lesbian neighbors have known that they hate us. For decades we have seen how that hate trumps every other value they claim to hold. Now you know they hate you too. They hate everyone who isn’t in the gutter with them. Because anyone who rises their head above the gutter reminds them of everything they are not. They want to bring it all down, so they won’t have to know what brave and decent and moral humanity looks like. You didn’t want to see it. You didn’t care enough to do your godamned job and look it squarely in the eye and call it for what it is. You cared about your jobs more then you cared about your country. You sold America out to the rats. Rot in hell.
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.
Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the ministries of Bible Belt televangelists in the 1970s-80s. But these fortunes would never have materialized without a secular weapon from the North–a Massachusetts marketing outfit begun by a group of twenty-something Harvard business school grads called Epsilon Data Management. Falwell began using the company in 1976; he was the first televangelist to sign up. When his contributions exploded, other preachers like Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard contracted with Epsilon and made a pile, too.
Before Epsilon, Oral Roberts used punch tape-driven Friden Flexo-writers. Billy Graham handwrote every homespun fundraising appeal himself. "You could see the buckwheat flying off the paper," recalls Gaylord Briley, one of the top religious fundraisers of the era. In a few years Epsilon was doing work for 7 of the top 10 televangelists in America.
Two threads joined together in the 1970s to produce the political machine we now know as the religious right. In the early 1970s, the feds began challenging the tax exemption of many fundamentalist schools over their race segregation policies. I’ve blogged about that previously Here…
But the spark that lit the roaring fire that eventually consumed the republican party wasn’t integration specifically…
In a recent interview broadcast on CNN the day of his death, Falwell offered his version of the Christian right’s genesis: "We were simply driven into the process by Roe v. Wade and earlier than that, the expulsion of God from the public square." But his account was fuzzy revisionism at best. By 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled on Roe, the antiabortion movement was almost exclusively Catholic. While various Catholic cardinals condemned the Court’s ruling, W.A. Criswell, the fundamentalist former president of America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, casually endorsed it. (Falwell, an independent Baptist for forty years, joined the SBC in 1996.) "I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person," Criswell exclaimed, "and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed." A year before Roe, the SBC had resolved to press for legislation allowing for abortion in limited cases.
While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the "pre-born." For Falwell and his allies, the true impetus for political action came when the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. Connally to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools in 1971. Their resentment was compounded in 1971 when the Internal Revenue Service attempted to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which forbade interracial dating. (Blacks were denied entry until that year.) Falwell was furious, complaining, "In some states it’s easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school."
Seeking to capitalize on mounting evangelical discontent, a right-wing Washington operative and anti-Vatican II Catholic named Paul Weyrich took a series of trips down South to meet with Falwell and other evangelical leaders. Weyrich hoped to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc. In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His implorations initially fell on deaf ears.
"I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. "What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."
Dig it. It wasn’t abortion. It wasn’t militant homosexuality. It wasn’t rampant sexual hedonism. It wasn’t the secularization of America’s schools. It wasn’t even racism, that lit the fire the brought the fundamentalist leadership charging into our political system in a blind destructive frenzy. It was their tax exemption. It was money.
The second thread is the advent of computerized direct marketing. Richard Viguerie was a pioneer in its use for the republican party. Viguerie had more then a mailing list. His genius was in applying computerized database analysis techniques to it, tracking the giving patterns of the names in his database. He paired that with a ruthless analysis of which marketing campaigns worked, and which did not. Viguerie, a right wing extremist, wasn’t interested in informing the republican base so much as in pushing their buttons so they would open their wallets and go to the polls. And he got results. With his database and direct mailing technique, Viguerie almost single-handedly turned around the fortunes of the Republicans after Watergate.
Remember, this was a time before the Internet, before the widespread use of cable TV and the appearance of 24 hour cable news, before even talk radio as we know it today, with its national audiences and personalities. Viguerie showed the republicans how they could bypass the news media of that day, and not only get their their message out on their own terms, but do it below the radar of the popular culture. His mail appeals were Targeted. The message was tailored and precise, and didn’t have to appear in any newspaper or television ad where the rest of the country could see it too.
Falwell saw the success of Viguerie’s technique, and revamped his own direct mailing effort…
Computerized database marketing turned the late 1970s into an era known as the golden age of direct mail prospecting. Direct mail was still an almost clandestine medium. The content of such correspondence was rarely exposed to media scrutiny. Falwell crafted his letters with theological abandon, hitting his mortal enemies with blunt force. Epsilon led Falwell to discover that the secret to steady income is consistency; getting lots of donors to give a little, but regularly. Epsilon also taught Falwell that most donor lists contain "compulsive contributors"–usually amounting to four percent of the list, says Briley.
These twin threads of course, have a common root. Money. It was all about the money. That is why there is a religious right today. And that is why they’ve made common cause with the corporate world, the world of Caesar, the world of mammon, that they once disdained. When Carter went after their tax exemptions, they found had a lot in common with those kings of business after all.
And how do you push the rube’s buttons enough so they’ll give you money, over and over and over again? Well…here’s one way…
Besides Epsilon, Falwell had the formidable talent of Jerry Huntsinger. Then 45, he was a former minister who lived on a farm near Richmond who had been taking advertising concepts from the for-profit world and applying them to nonprofit religious ventures. Huntsinger brought a novelist’s touch to direct mail. He considered every fundraising letter a first cousin to the short story. "A short story has a problem that seems insurmountable, a sympathetic character that is a victim of the problem, complications and obstacles, but finally, a resolution." He advised his clients that emergency appeals work best because they give donors a feeling of "excitement at coming to the rescue."
Huntsinger was also a master at fine tuning the mechanics: the color of the envelope, the position of the address window, which paragraphs to indent, which sentences to underline. He knew how to lure a reader’s eye just to where he wanted.
Huntsinger encouraged Falwell to focus on wedge issues in his mailings, excoriating the feminist movement and attacking homosexual rights, often equating both with the dangers of communism. As one letter stated: "Dear Friend: Homosexuals are on the march in this country. Homosexuals do not reproduce, they recruit, and many of them are after my children and your children….This is one major reason why we must keep "The Old Time Gospel Hour" alive…So don’t delay. Let me hear from you immediately. I will be anxiously awaiting your reply."
The sense of impending doom the letter conveyed fit perfectly with Huntsinger’s operating credo. It turned a pitch into a storyline (gays on the the march) with sympathetic characters (children) under threat from sex offenders (gay pedophiles). It was an emergency appeal that sought to panic his audience into coming to the rescue.
The Forbes excerpt ends on the note that the gay bashing appeals actually raised very little money. Given the history of the religious right’s move into politics, I don’t believe it. Before Anita Bryant showed them that waving the gay menace at people could practically stampede them to the polls, the Falwells and the Robertsons actually did very little gay bashing. But on the day Falwell stood by her side in front of reporters and declared that "a homosexual will kill you, soon as look at you", he knew she was on to something.
Falwell and his kind didn’t create the climate of fear and contempt toward gay people. But in the 1970s they began to whip it into a frenzy. For money. Never mind all that love your neighbor as yourself crap. The harder you push their buttons, the more they open their wallets. And the best button of all was the Homosexuals Are On The March And They Want Your Children button. It worked. The money came rolling in. For Falwell. For Robertson. For Dobson. And for all the other crusaders for Christ. The money came rolling in.
Rowan Williams believes that gay sexual relationships can “reflect the love of God” in a way that is comparable to marriage, The Times has learnt.
Gay partnerships pose the same ethical questions as those between men and women, and the key issue for Christians is that they are faithful and lifelong, he believes.
Dr Williams is known to be personally liberal on the issue but the strength of his views, revealed in private correspondence shown to The Times, will astonish his critics.
The news threatens to reopen bitter divisions over ordaining gay priests, which pushed the Anglican Communion towards a split.
But this isn’t new, and that needs to be emphasized. What is being reported here are Williams’ correspondence on the issue Prior to his becoming Archbishop…
As Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Williams recommitted the Anglican Communion to its orthodox position that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture at the Lambeth Conference, which closed on Sunday.
However, in an exchange of letters with an evangelical Christian, written eight years ago when he was Archbishop of Wales, he described his belief that biblical passages criticising homosexual sex were not aimed at people who were gay by nature.
He argued that scriptural prohibitions were addressed to heterosexuals looking for sexual variety. He wrote: “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.” Dr Williams described his view as his “definitive conclusion” reached after 20 years of study and prayer. He drew a distinction between his own beliefs as a theologian and his position as a church leader, for which he had to take account of the traditionalist view.
The letters, written in the autumn of 2000 and 2001, were exchanged with Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian living in his former archdiocese in South Wales, who had written challenging him on the issue.
In reply, he described how his view began to change from that of opposing gay relationships in 1980. His mind became “unsettled” by contact as a university teacher with Christian students who believed that the Bible forbade promiscuity rather than gay sex.
This wasn’t unknown to church reactionaries at the time of his appointment. They kicked up a fuss over Williams precisely because of what they knew his thinking on same sex relationships was. The question is, does Williams still think this or did he, upon becoming head of the church, revert back to his previous beliefs. Because Williams, despite the hysterical protestations of the haters, has been anything but a friend to gay people. At every juncture on the road to the schism that sure looks inevitable to me, Williams has consistently, Consistently, ratcheted up official hostility toward gay people. He has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to bring gay people more into the heart of the church. Everything, absolutely everything that he has actually done, has pushed gay people further away from it. It’s hard not to conclude that he’s had a profound change of heart regarding the sanctity, the reflection of God, in same sex love.
If the stiff arm he’s giving to gay Anglicans is his way of trying to mollify violent haters like Bishop Akinola enough that they won’t bolt from the church, he’s worse then merely an idiot. And not simply because Akinola and his kind won’t be satisfied with anything short of a purge of homosexuals from the face of the earth, so they sure as hell aren’t going to accept them in the church pews, let alone in the leadership. Those who were hopeful when William’s took office need to consider that the man never really had his heart in affirming gay people as his neighbors. His "definite conclusion" simply melted away when they put the Archbishop’s robes on him, leaving behind only the bedrock that preexisted it.
Because, if the love between a same sex couple Does reflect the love of God, then isn’t the man who strikes at those lovers for bearing that love within their hearts guilty also of striking at God’s love? Either Williams still believes what he wrote or he doesn’t, or worse…he thinks the structure of the church is more sacred then the love of God, reflected in the hearts of the faithful.
It might well be the latter. And if that’s the case, it’s unsurprising that he’s loosing the battle for the soul of the church to the likes of Akinola. Take the love of God out of the church, and Akinola is exactly what you have left.
At some point Akinola is going to lead his flock away from the church of England. If that hasn’t been staringly obvious before now his current argument that the Church of England is a relic of colonialism should I think, decisively settle the question. He is going to do it. And at some point after that…soon I would guess…Ratzinger and Akinola are going to publically shake hands.
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.
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The Bush republicans. The Family Values voters. The Religious Right. They wanted to take back America. They wanted to remake it in their own image. They have.
In the years that follow the Bush Administration, you’ll be seeing a lot of people pointing the finger at Bush and his cronies for all the lies that got us into, and have kept us in Iraq. And a lot of that finger pointing will be done, never doubt it, by the people most responsible…
FAIR studied all on-camera sources on the nightly ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS newscasts: Less than 1 percent – 3 out of 393 sources – were antiwar. Only 6 percent were skeptical sources.
This at a time when 60 percent of Americans in polls wanted more time for diplomacy and inspections.
I worked 10-hour days inside MSNBC’s newsroom during this period as senior producer of Phil Donahue’s primetime show (cancelled three weeks before the war while the network’s most-watched program).
Trust me: too much skepticism over war claims was a punishable offense. I and all other Donahue producers were repeatedly ordered by top management to book panels that favored the pro-invasion side.
I watched a fellow producer get chewed out for booking a 50-50 show.
At MSNBC, I heard Scott Ritter smeared – on-air and off – as a paid mouthpiece of Saddam Hussein. After we had war skeptic and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on the show, we learned he was on some sort of network blacklist.
When MSNBC terminated Donahue, it was expected that we’d be replaced by a nightly show hosted by Jesse Ventura. But that show never really launched.
Ventura says it was because he, like Donahue, opposed the Iraq invasion; he was paid millions for not appearing.
Another MSNBC star, Ashleigh Banfield, was demoted and then lost her job after criticizing the first weeks of “very sanitized” war coverage. With every muzzling, self-censorship tended to proliferate.
I’m no defender of Scott McClellan. Some may say he has blood on his hands – and that he hasn’t earned any kind of redemption.
But as someone who still burns with anger over what I witnessed inside TV news during that crucial historical moment, I’m trying my best to enjoy this falling out among thieves and liars.
Thieves and liars. Yes. That about sums up the miserable lot of them. I was walking through the concourse of Washington National Airport the other day and noticed a CNBC News Store in passing. A Store, mind you…like a Disney store or a Nicktoons store, or one of those As Seen On TV stores. You could buy a CNBC coffee mug, or a T-shirt, and books by various CNBC personalities. I am living in a day and age when network news organizations have their own shopping boutiques. You could get everything but the latest news there.
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…
It is astonishing, though, how quickly gay marriage went from being something as unthinkable by most people as legalized polygamy is today, to being considered a constitutional right by high courts, and accepted by roughly half the populace. I was thinking today that there’s a parallel between what happened to the Catholic Church, especially in Europe, in the 20th century — how it went from being apparently strong and vital to facing all kinds of crises in the blink of an eye. As those familiar with the arguments know, there is a tendency among the right to blame the Second Vatican Council, but the truth is if the Church were as strong as she seemed, things wouldn’t have fallen apart so rapidly.
So it is with the institution of marriage. Gay marriage is and is not a sudden shift in the meaning of marriage. It started with the Reformation. The reason I think gay marriage cannot be stopped, only delayed, is because it is only the latest manifestation of deep social trends in the West going back centuries. These currents run so deep in our civilization they carry us all along without many of us being aware of how far from shore we’re receding.
Ah…for the good old days, when heretics, witches and homosexuals were burned at the stake. Dreher has tried, oh so hard in recent months, to seem like a decent man. A love the sinner, hate the sin kind of man. Not a bigot…just someone who has very strong moral values. And then California goes and does this to him. One good thing to come from the California Supreme Court ruling the other day is that reflexive release of stench from that open sewer Dreher’s kind like to call a conscience. We don’t hate homosexuals…honest…really…we just don’t want THEIR PRESENCE DEFILING OUR SACRED INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE!!! We need to get these from time to time, so we don’t start believing all that crap about them kind actually being anything other then somewhat more publishable in family newspapers then the Westboro Baptist Church.
And Much more verbose. Fred could distill Dreher’s entire column of crap down to a single poster sign that reads: GOD HATES FAG AMERICA. No kidding…go read the damn thing. Dreher is literally calling same-sex marriage a symptom of the inevitable destruction of the west that began with the Protestant Reformation. Take that all you Christian fundamentalists who oppose gay rights. You’re just as much a threat to western civilization as homosexuality as far as Dreher is concerned.
This is why I don’t see any hope of stopping gay marriage. It did not come out of nowhere, but emerged as the working-out of the logic of our civilization and its exaltation of individualism.
You know…all that American stuff about freedom and liberty and justice for all. Why Dreher doesn’t come right out and say that the very existence of United States Of America is a symptom of the inevitable decline of the west too I’ve no idea, other then he likes having that stars and stripes thing on his passport. Oh…and the standard of living in a free country is kinda swell too.
I think the most common, and superficially common-sensical, questions that comes up in discussions of this issue is, "How does Jill and Jane’s marriage hurt Jack and Diane’s?" The idea is that unless you can demonstrate that a gay marriage directly harms traditional marriage, there is no rational objection to gay marriage.
But this is a shallow way to look at it. We all share the same moral ecology. You may as well ask why it should have mattered to the people of Amherst, Mass., if some rich white people in Charleston, SC, owned slaves. Don’t believe in slavery? Don’t buy one.
Look at that carefully. Dreher may seem to be throwing moral relativism back in the face of liberals, but what he’s actually doing is employing it as a weapon. What mattered about slavery was the wrong done to slaves, regardless of who did or did not choose to own any. The question remains, what is the wrong done to Jack and Diane if Jill and Jane are free to marry. But Dreher has an answer for that too…
Redefining marriage to include same-sex partners within its definition radically changes the institution, reinforcing the idea that it has no transcendental meaning, but can be changed at will.
Transcendental meaning. Same sex marriage destroys marriage, by depriving it of its Transcendental meaning. And whatever that Transcendental meaning is, it’s something that only heterosexuals can bring to it. By virtue of their being…well…heterosexual. Whatever it is that same sex couples bring to a marriage, it cannot be marriage because it cannot have that Transcendental meaning. Only heterosexual coupling can possess that Transcendental meaning. Which means that only heterosexual families possess that Transcendental meaning. Because only heterosexual love possesses that Transcendental meaning.
Here…let me decode that: Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Only now the thinking is we don’t even have that. We only have make-believe sex. Mere genital stimulation. Nothing more then that. Certainly nothing Transcendental. We are shallow, empty beings. Creatures who only resemble true humans. Our hearts can hold none of that Transcendental Meaning that heterosexuals wake up to and regard favorably in the bathroom mirror every morning. Our brief barren assignations are just pitiful imitations of true heterosexual love. And by demanding that our pseudo unions be regarded in marriage as being on the same Transcendental plane as the rich and noble and truly human heterosexual unions are, we do more then mock their genuine human capacity to love…we destroy the institute that enriches and sustains it. And take down western civilization with it. And thus, the Protestant Reformation finally achieves its goal. Praise Satan.
That pretty much sum it up Rod?
Over at Box Turtle Bulletin and Ex-Gay Watch the discussion is about how to reach out to the other side. But you can’t. Not to the other side. To your neighbor…yes. Even if they oppose gay rights bitterly. Neighbors must always be reached out to. But you need to understand this…the other side isn’t the anti-same sex marriage side. Listen to Dreher again. Here is the other side:
This is why I don’t see any hope of stopping gay marriage. It did not come out of nowhere, but emerged as the working-out of the logic of our civilization and its exaltation of individualism.
This is the side that has been bitterly opposed to everything fine and noble a human being could ever become since the caveman days. This is the side that would rather make you bow down to the gods and beg forgiveness for being born with a heart and a brain, then live in a world where the human spirit can soar. Because the sight of everything a human can be, that they cannot, is more offensive to them, more frightening, then a landscape of beaten bent and broken humans in chains. When Rod Dreher accuses liberals of using the rhetoric of slave masters, he’s laughing in your face, and then spitting in it.
It is one thing to reach out to a neighbor, and another to reach out to the one who presumes to be your master. They get only the finger, and that so long as they keep their hands to themselves. So…in the spirit of dialogue…Go Fuck yourself Rod…
You and all the other haters of humanity, and everything fine and noble human beings are capable of, and all the beauty they are capable of making, and giving to one another. I’ve got your decline and fall of western civilization right here you gutter crawling bigot…
And if this image frightens you less then the sight of a devoted loving same-sex couple being joined in marriage in the eyes of the law, never mind your Nazi Pope’s, then you can just go fuck yourself because it isn’t the death of western civilization you are worried about because western civilization isn’t anything to you but a perch to shit and squawk on. You never had to go through anything like this to marry the one love of your life…
…so save your pusillanimous rhetoric about the Transcendental Meaning of marriage for someone who thinks you really give a flying fuck about it more then pissing on the courage of lovers who would walk through fire for the sake of their love. Would you go through the gauntlet gay couples have to go through for the woman you married? Would you hold her hand in public if it meant the two of you might get your skulls bashed in? Would you take her hand in marriage if it meant that someday some fanatic might decide to kill both of you to avenge the institution of marriage and prevent the fall of western civilization? Would you have the nerve to love, if you had to have the nerve gay couples do? I doubt it. Because only cowards try to incite passions toward minorities.
And that’s what bothers you isn’t in Dreher. Not that in our struggle for equality people come to see our humanity after all, but that they’ll finally see what a bunch of runts your kind are. It isn’t the end of western civilization that keeps you awake nights. It’s the end of pretense.
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.
The anti-gay religious right is mounting Yet Another protest against the Day Of Silence, itself a protest against anti-gay violence in schools. First it was the misnamed Day Of Truth. Now it’s the Golden Rule Day. Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin writes about the competing religious right activity, and sums it up pretty thoroughly here…
More than a year ago, I attended a Love Won Out conference in Phoenix put on jointly by Exodus International and Focus On the Family. That’s where I heard Focus’s Mike Haley address anti-LGBT violence in a Q&A session:
I think, too, we also have to be just as quick to also stand up when we do see the gay and lesbian community being come against as the Body of Christ. We need to be the first to speak out to say that what happened to Matthew Shepard was a terrible incident and should never happen again. And that we within the Body of Christ are wanting to protect that community and put our money where our mouth is…
That was a real “Wow!” moment for me. I thought finally, someone gets it. I can’t tell you how encouraged I was to hear Mike Haley say that. It was an ultimate Golden Rule moment. And I can’t begin to describe how disappointed I’ve been since then.
One year later, Lawrence King was killed in cold blood on February 12 in front of his teachers and classmates. Since then, conservative Christians leaders have celebrated seventy-three consecutive Days of Silence.
Emphasis mine. You should go read the whole thing. Day of Silence? How about seventy-three Days of Silence after a 15 year old gay boy was shot in the head.
That says it all. Can we please stop talking about their "sincerely held religious beliefs" now? This isn’t about faith. This isn’t about how much they love God. It’s about how much they hate us.
A man has posted videos on YouTube in which he claims to have deliberately infected thousands of women with AIDS.
The masked man – who calls himself “Trashman” and speaks with an American accent in a series of clips posted on the video-sharing website – claims to have infected between 1200 and 1500 women with the disease.
In the videos, Trashman reads the names and ages of some of the women he claims to have had unprotected sex with.
President of People Living with HIV/AIDS Victoria, Brett Hayhoe, said the man seemed genuine.
AIDS is contracted only once a person has been infected with HIV but Mr Hayhoe said the man may have lumped the two together.
“It’s extremely disturbing (and) the guy needs psychiatric help,” Mr Heyhoe said.
The videos – one of which has been viewed 195,000 times – also feature a web address to a “gangsta” portal filled with pornography and where Trashman has a profile.
In the first video, Trashman reads from a list of women he claims to have infected.
“Today I’m doing a show about something that’s more important than killing rappers,” he says.
“This here (piece of paper) that I hold in my hand is a list of women who I actually infected with AIDS on purpose.
“So if I call your name and if you just happen to be on my ‘I got the AIDS from that nigger’ list’, then God bless you.”
He then goes on to name several women and how old they are.
Mr Hayhoe said if Trashman was telling the truth, it would be “absolutely devastating” for anyone who has had sex with him.
“For someone to hear that on a YouTube video is just disgusting,” Mr Hayhoe said.
“To have your name yelled out would be shattering.”
Google, the owner of YouTube, has been contacted for comment.
Indifference is a cancer on society Sally. Greed is a cancer on society. Not ambition, which is self actualizing, but greed which only wants to take what others have. When your neighbors in this life have become nothing more to you then a means to an end, nothing more then stepping stones to your idea of paradise, then you have become the cancer. Trashman is your face in the mirror Sally.
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