As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.
The other was a nine millimeter Glock. Yes, in fact you Can hose down a place with a semi automatic handgun. Ask me how I know. And according to news accounts, he had a lot of ammo with him.
At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him.
You’re a kid sitting peacefully in class and then someone bursts in and starts shooting. Never mind you have not clue one at that point what kind of gun it is, let alone how many rounds it can hold. Never mind the blast of even a small caliber handgun inside a closed space can be positively disorienting. Never mind that with practice you can drop the clip on that Glock and have another in it and a round chambered faster then someone could probably rush you unless you were practically standing right over them. Just fucking for once in your life try to put yourself in someone else’s place you drooling soulless right wing babbling moron. You’re a kid…you are in class peacefully going on about your school day and then suddenly you and your classmates are being shot at. By the time the first few shots are fired your thoughts are a frightened scrambled mess. Count? Count? Grow a fucking brain Derbyshire, you pathetic warrior male wannabe.
Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat.
Why is that not surprising. I shoot mine all the time too John, and I figure I’m not all that exceptional at hitting what I’m shooting at, because most of the other folks at the range there with me usually do too. But you probably think the gun adds several inches to your dick and that’s why you’re not really working it. You think just holding it in your hand makes you something. No. It doesn’t. It’s just a damn gun and you’re still the sorry brain dead soulless asshole you were before you picked it up.
Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything?
Moron! Asswipe! The people on Flight 93 were grown Adults dealing with a situation that allowed them the means to find out what was happening to them (via their cell phones) and time to get themselves organized and together. And their attackers didn’t have guns, only crude knifes. The passengers of flight 93 had a chance the kids at VA Tech never did.
Point of fact, I read of at least one adult, a professor, who seems to have actually tried to save as many of his kids as he could, by staying behind and trying to block the doorway as his kids jumped out the classroom windows. Apparently the killer managed to get in anyway because that professor was one of the dead. But he stayed behind to try and save some of his kids. There’s a hero.
Garance Franke-Ruta, to her credit, has a somewhat novel take on What We Should Learn from the tragedy – namely, that we need to take domestic violence more seriously:
Because the first victim was a woman, and possible had a romantic connection to the killer, the police did not see her murder as a threat to the community. Now the police are pretty plainly telling the public that they failed to warn the campus there was a killer on the loose because they failed to understand that men who kill their partners are also threats to society.
Yes. Yes! But Sullivan doesn’t get it…
So while maybe there’s a case to be made for shutting down a campus or a neighborhood in any situation in which a killer is on the loose, it’s hard to see why intimate homicides in particular should be taken as warning signs that a killing spree is about to begin, and easy to see why police investigating a crime of passion would take the risk of random violence less seriously than when, say, there’s a murderous convict on the loose.
But it wasn’t random. There’s a sense you get, merely from the phraseology "crime of passion" that it was a spur of the moment unthinking, instant of madness kind of thing and mostly domestic violence isn’t that at all. It certainly wasn’t in this case. He chained the doors shut so the kids inside couldn’t get out. He brought along two guns and plenty of ammo. It was cold and brutal and calculating.
There are two dark and ugly shadows staring us back in the face after all this, and one of them is domestic violence and the other is the grotesque assumption that anyone who would violently attack their lover probably isn’t a threat to anyone else because…well…it was personal. But that willingness to attack the intimate other is Just the sort of thing you need to be watching out for in people. I keep harping on this quote from the author Mary Renault, but it keeps being a relevant insight into human behavior…
Politics like sex is only a by-product of what the essential person is. If you are mean and selfish and cruel it will come out in your sex life and it will come out in your politics when what really matters is that you are the sort of person who won’t behave like that.
There’s almost nothing that shows us what the inner person is like, then how they treat their lover. Yes, just about no one else on earth can hurt you quite as painfully, or as deeply, as the one you love (unless it’s your own parents). Yes the emotional wounds a lover can inflect, particularly during a breakup, can be devastating. Ask me how I know. But that’s because no one else’s feelings matter to you as much. If someone you love isn’t safe around you then who the fuck else can be? Nobody, that’s who.
DUNDALK, Maryland — A dramatic hostage escape from a home near Baltimore, Maryland late Tuesday gave police information they needed to storm the house and safely rescue a remaining hostage. The alleged hostage taker, Joseph Palczynski, was shot dead in the raid, police said.
The standoff had dragged on for four days, and it was the time factor that police credited with ending the siege.
"Patience," said Baltimore County Police Chief Terrence Sheridan. "It was waiting for the opportunity to save three lives" that led to the end of the standoff.
That opportunity came when hostage Lynn Whitehead escaped through a window in the home where she, her boyfriend Andrew McCord and his 12-year-old son Bradley had been held since Friday. McCord then followed Whitehead out the window and both ran to safety.
"We were having a briefing when we were informed she had come out of the window," Sheridan said. He said that Whitehead and McCord told police that Palczynski was sleeping on a living room couch and that the boy was asleep on the kitchen floor.
"At this point, SWAT team officers made what’s known as a tactical entry," Baltimore County Police spokesman Bill Toohey said. "They broke through a window, encountered Mr. Palczynski in the family room and shot him. They then rescued the boy."
"Joseph Palczynski is dead," Toohey said. "He was shot by Baltimore County tactical officers shortly after 11 tonight and died at 11:05 on the scene." None of the police was wounded.
Police rescued the boy, who was found asleep on the kitchen floor. None of the hostages was hurt, Sheridan said.
Palczynski was accused by police of killing four people in the Baltimore area two weeks ago while he allegedly tried to kidnap his former girlfriend, Tracy Whitehead, who later escaped.
Whitehead, who is the daughter of Lynn Whitehead, had broken up with Palczynski, recently, police said. The ex-girlfriend escaped from Palczynski at a motel, police said. Family members said she had been beaten with the butt of a rifle and sustained a broken nose, black eye and multiple bruises.
You can read more about Palczynski’s violent history here. He killed the couple his ex was living with, Gloria Jean Shenk and her husband, George Shenk. He killed David M. Meyers who tried to intervene while Palczynski was dragging his ex to his car. He killed Jennifer McDonel and wounded her child during an attempted carjacking because he needed vehicle to run from the cops in. For two weeks he terrorized the Baltimore area. He took some relatives of his ex, including a 12 year old boy, hostage and for four days randomly shoot up the neighborhood they lived in, demanding that police let him talk to his ex (they didn’t, knowing full well that as soon as he got her on the phone he’d start shooting his hostages). A swat team finally brought him down after one of his hostages managed to sneak a tranquilizer into his drink and he fell asleep and the adults were able to get away. Nobody later questioned the hail of bullets he was awakened to, because for certain he would have killed the boy the instant he knew the game was up, had he the slightest shred of a chance.
To assume that nobody else but the ‘Ex’ is in danger from a violent lover is stunningly stupid on its face. If they’re dangerous to their lover, then nobody else around them is safe either.
[Update…] Now we’re hearing that girl he killed first in the dorms wasn’t romantically involved with him at all. So this apparently wasn’t all brought on by a violent lover after all. Cho seems to have simply just been mad. As in…crazy.
Horrific news from VA Tech. I suppose I don’t have to repeat the headlines you’ve already seen. Just keep in mind that the first things you hear about ugly, shocking events like this are almost always the noise coming out of the fright and confusion. If you have friends or loved ones down there, don’t take the initial reports you hear to heart. Hang on, find some family and friends to be with, and wait for the solid facts to start coming in.
The Daily Dish: Enemy of the People: Meet Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University. He’s a former Marine, with five years of active service and 19 years in the reserve, and a legal critic of Roe vs Wade and supporter of the Alito confirmation. He’s also on the Terrorist No-Fly List:
I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That’ll do it," the man said."
Just a heads up about what these people are up to.
I am posting the below with the permission of Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University. For those who do not know, Professor Murphy is easily the most distinguished scholar of public law in political science. His works on both constitutional theory and judicial behavior are classics in the field. Bluntly, legal scholarship that does not engage many themes in his book, briefly noted below, Constitutional Democracy, may be legal, but cannot be said to be scholarship. As interesting, for present purposes, readers of the book will discover that Murphy is hardly a conventional political or legal liberal. While he holds some opinions, most notably on welfare, similar to opinions held on the political left, he is a sharp critic of ROE V. WADE, and supported the Alito nomination. Apparently these credentials and others noted below are no longer sufficient to prevent one from becoming an enemy of the people.
"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving."
"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."
"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That’ll do it," the man said. "
"After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they=re going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I’m a tad skeptical."
Nice. Welcome to George Bush’s America. If you’re thinking they "lost" his luggage so they could take it somewhere they could inspect it more thoroughly for evidence of a crime, you’re still not paying attention. This was harassment. State sanctioned harassment of someone who was critical of Bush. And they would have Wanted him to complain publicly about it. So harassment not only punishes its target, but also sends a message to anyone else thinking about speaking out against the Bush administration. One of DeLong’s commenter’s avers the following:
Possibly, just possibly, Walter Murphy might now question his support for the nomination of Samuel Alito.
Yah Think? Another commenter brings up the firing of all those federal prosecutors via this New York Times story:
April 9, 2007
Another Layer of Scandal
As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration, it should review the extraordinary events the other day in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin. The case involved Georgia Thompson, a state employee sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger. It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?
Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.
The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s "corruption" to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.
The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. "It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin," Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.
For years now critics of those of us who have been warning of the creeping facisim of the Bush administration have been called hysterical, and suffering from something they call "Bush Derangement Syndrome". The only thing surprising about Ms. Thompson’s case is that she was allowed to challenge her imprisonment in the courts at all. Bush, Gonzalas and the republicans have made it quite clear that they think Habius Corpus is a luxury America can no longer afford…
At the end of the post I wrote last week about ABC News and Brian Ross’ new report that Iran could have nuclear weapons by 2009, I noted that ABC and Ross — back in October and November 2001 — were the driving force, really the exclusive force, behind news reports strongly suggesting that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were responsible for the anthrax attacks on the U.S. There are several very important issues arising from those events which I strongly believe merit real attention. This post is somewhat lengthy because it is vital to set forth the facts clearly.
Last week, I excerpted several of the Saddam-anthrax reports from ABC and Ross — here and here — but there are others. ABC aggressively promoted as its top story for days on end during that highly provocative period of time that — and these are all quotes:
(a) "the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite";
(b) bentonite is "a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet";
(c) "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons";
(d) bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program"; and,
(e) "the anthrax found in a letter to Senator Daschle is nearly identical to samples they recovered in Iraq in 1994" and "the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschle are almost identical in appearance to those they recovered in Iraq in 1994 when viewed under an electron microscope."
At different times, Ross attributed these claims to "three well-placed but separate sources" and, alternatively, to "at least four well-placed sources." All of those factual claims — each and every one of them, separately — were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. There is now no question about that. Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports — reports which, as documented below, had an extremely serious impact on the views formed by Americans in those early, critical days about the relationship between the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax attacks and Iraq…
The fact is, nobody can trust a damn thing ABC News says. That’s a problem not only because Iran may indeed be a real threat to the world, but because any grave threat to worldwide peace and stability now has to be judged through the understanding gleaned now from the past six years of George Bush and his crony’s, that they govern by way of lies. Who do we trust? Well…not ABC News. We all saw it in the course of their bogus anthrax reporting. Your gay and lesbian neighbors saw it also, on November 26, 2004, when ABC News cynically gave a dead gay kid’s killers a public forum to spit on his grave a few times, so that the republicans could later argue that hate crime laws are unnecessary.
The claim that the anthrax was laced with bentonite, and that government tests detected the presence of bentonite, was simply false — a complete invention from Ross’s sources, eager to link Saddam and anthrax attacks. And separately, it was a complete fiction that "the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschle are almost identical in appearance to those they recovered in Iraq in 1994 when viewed under an electron microscope." That just never happened.
Equally false, really completely frivolous, was the conclusion Ross’s sources fed to him from this false premise — namely, that even if bentonite — which ABC referred to as a "troubling chemical additive" — had been found in the anthrax, that would be some sort of compelling proof linking Iraq to the anthrax attacks.
The very idea that bentonite is "a troubling chemical additive," let alone that it is some sort of unique Iraqi hallmark, is inane. Bentonite is merely a common clay that is produced all over the world, including from volcanic eruptions. Over the weekend, I spoke via e-mail with M.A. Holmes, a Geologist in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who wrote:
Bentonite is mined and used for drilling mud (getting the rock chips out of a drill hole when drilling for oil or deep water) and now is mined for the clumping-type kitty litter ("swells when wet"). It’s also used to draw cactus spines put of the skin (sold as a product called "Denver Mud"). It has lots of other uses, like lining pits for waste disposal (because it "swells when wet" it forms a pretty good seal).
Bentonite is mined extensively in Wyoming and oh, yes, SOUTH DAKOTA. It is not "a chemical additive" and it is not unique to Iraq. It is widespread and common, and readily available wherever you can get "drilling mud."
Go read the whole thing. The drumbeat to war is happening again. Just remember whenever you hear something from ABC News about Iran, that this is the news organization that stooped to smearing a dead gay kid’s memory for the sake of republican party talking points. Nothing is beneath them. Nothing.
The Faggot Always Has It Coming…Just Ask Elizabeth Vargas
So…here’s the scenario. A young gay man is found brutally murdered. The murder scene shows the classic evidence of overkill. The killers, leaving behind not only a host of physical evidence, but statements to friends about how they’d just "killed a faggot", are quickly apprehended. Then as news of the vicious murder percolates, first through the gay community news channels, and then, somehow, manages to find its way into the consciousness of the nation at large, and people recoil at the senseless brutality of it, we begin to hear that the gay victim of the crime had been out cruising for sex, or was looking for drugs, or some sort of criminal activity, had gone willingly with his killers, who by then look in their newspaper perp walk photos like they had "I Kill Faggots" tattooed on their foreheads…and you can almost hear the sigh of relief from one end of the country to the other…because now we know it wasn’t really hate that killed the victim, there is no hate in America, and especially not any systematic hatred directed at homosexuals…it’s their own stupidity after all, that keeps getting them killed…
Typical faggot…out cruising for anonymous sex…or drugs…gets himself killed by a couple of street punks…nothing here for the rest of us to worry about…
One of the saddest aspects about the aftermath of Ryan Skipper’s murder is that no one outside his friends and family seems to care about the heinous manner in which he was killed.
Neither the governor nor the attorney general in Florida — both of whom are Republicans — has expressed concern about the fact that Skipper’s murder has been labeled a hate crime. National gay organizations have been largely mute, and coverage in the local and national gay press has been very slim, especially considering the brutality of his murder.
Sheriff’s Assertions Were Based on Killers’ Statements
It is likely that the lack of outrage stems from a series of misstatements to the media at the outset of the investigation that have been attributed to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and others in his office. One the face of it, the motivation for making these statements appears to be bigotry toward gay people.
On Friday, March 16, two days after Skipper’s body was discovered, the local newspaper, The Ledger, reported:
Skipper, 25, was driving around Eloise late Tuesday night looking to pick up someone when he met [his all edged killer, Joseph] Bearden, whom he took back to his home in Winter Haven, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The next day, the paper ran a quote from Sheriff Judd that sounded like it could have been the basis of the earlier reporting:
“What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening,” Judd said.
“What we do know is that Ryan was looking for someone to pick up that evening. And unfortunately for Ryan, he picked up the wrong person.” [Emphasis added.]
In fact — and as we have said in other coverage of this story — Sheriff Judd did not “know” this. It was immediately obvious to my colleague Trish, who reported the story here on March 18, that, since the victim was dead and could not speak for himself, the only source for this information had to have been the alleged killers.
But the slander against Ryan Skipper did not stop there. In its coverage on March 17, The Ledger published the trawling-for-sex allegation as well as three additional completely unsubstantiated statements:
[1] Skipper was driving around Wahneta on Tuesday night when he found [murder suspect Joe] Bearden walking along Sixth Street in Eloise about 11 p.m. Tuesday, and offered him a ride. [2] The two went back to Skipper’s house, where they [3] smoked marijuana and [4] discussed using Skipper’s [laptop] computer to copy checks, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Three weeks later all four of these statements are in dispute:
No one who knew Ryan Skipper believes he had a propensity for trawling for anonymous sex.
The other alleged murderers, William Brown, was an acquaintance of Skipper’s. We have seen a statement from one of Ryan’s roommates that Ryan got a call after he got home from work at 10:30 that night, which appeared to have prompted him to go back out. It seems more likely that Brown phoned Ryan and asked for help in the form of giving him ride somewhere, and that the call was part of premeditated ambush plot by Brown and Bearden against Ryan.
No evidence has been produced that Ryan was involved with these chuckleheads in a check forgery scheme — and no one who knew him believes he would do anything of the sort.
Ryan’s roommate has said that after Ryan received the phone call, he left and never came back. She denies that he brought anyone home with him that night.
Ryan’s friends and family all confirm that he had a desktop computer but did not own a laptop. And yet, early reports stated that Brown and Bearden were charged with stealing a laptop from Ryan after they murdered him..
No one who knew him believes Ryan smoked pot.
That the "trawling for sex" story is so reaily accepted by the mainstream news media when it comes to gay victims of violent crime, Even When The Source Of The Story Is The Victim’s Own Killers, is all the proof you need that there is a climate of contempt toward gays right here in America, that is relentlessly fueling that violence. No climate of hate in America? Compare and contrast…a white jogger is raped and nearly killed in New York’s Central Park and the focus slams immediately on a gaggle of black teenagers who were said to be out "wilding" that night. Nobody suggests the woman was out looking for rough sex. Had that woman been a gay man instead, does anyone seriously believe that the Very First Thing out the gate in the mainstream press wouldn’t be that he was probably there looking for sex.
Ryan Skipper walks out the door to his apartment and is found dead hours later with 20 stab wounds in his body, and his car is found later with the insides soaked in his blood. The killers are arrested, claim their victim was hitting them up for sex and anyway he was helping them forge checks. It’s just their word at that point, but guess what the Accepted Narrative is the following day…
“What we do know is that Ryan was looking for someone to pick up that evening. And unfortunately for Ryan, he picked up the wrong person.”
And we know that how precisely? We know it, because his killers said so, and because he was a gay man, and gay men always do something stupid to cause their own deaths…just ask Elizabeth Vargas and ABC News …
O’Malley was a detective with the Laramie Police when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered six years ago.
He was one of several people interviewed for ABC’s 20/20 that aired Nov. 26. He said that the interview and the way the show was ultimately put together has left him angry.
O’Malley was notified about a week in advance of the ABC crew’s arrival for the interview. He invited them into his home and they stayed for “maybe three to four hours.”
He did not see the tape until the night the show aired.
The people interviewed for the show did not surprise him. He was, however, surprised that “a production as popular as 20/20 would hinge all of their support for their theory on meth addicts, Doc O’Connor and two convicted murderers … it did not surprise me the way the thing came out.”
O’Malley said that he did find out what the focus of the show was shortly after the interview was over and the crew left Laramie. Someone with the crew had left copies of e-mails on his dining room table — 10 pages of information discussing the overall focus of the program and “their pre-conceived focus that this was not a hate crime. This was a drug crime. That’s what they went with,” he said.
When he was approached by the producers of this particular segment, O’Malley said he had a weird feeling. “After 30 years, you learn to trust your gut instinct. I asked them specifically if they were coming to do something from a particular angle … I wanted to be able to answer intelligently, think things out.”
In the conversation with the producers, O’Malley was assured that the report would be objective, six years after the actual event.
Sucker.
Prior to the arrival of the 20/20 crew, he had heard that the show might be more about the methamphetamine issue. When they arrived at his home, O’Malley asked a few questions of his own.
“I was trying to be comfortable … and I felt comfortable. But when Elizabeth Vargas got into the methamphetamine portion of it, it surprised me,” he said. “Actually, it made me extremely angry and, in my opinion, these guys lied to me.”
During the segment of the 20/20 program, O’Malley said that he believed that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, the two Laramie men convicted in Shepard’s death, intended to rob the University of Wyoming student. But, for reasons only McKinney and Henderson know, something happened and the killing became a hate crime based on Shepard’s sexual orientation.
“My feelings have been that the initial contact was probably motivated by robbery because they needed money,” O’Malley said. “What they got was $20 and a pair of shoes. … then something changed and changed profoundly.”
But whatever that was, it couldn’t be hate. No. Never.
20/20 did not discuss the expertise of the arresting officer.
“Flint Waters is a trained narcotics officer. … in controlled substances,” O’Malley said.
Waters reported that Henderson exhibited no signs of being under the influence of meth, just an odor of alcohol.
O’Malley said that 20/20 failed to report on the jailhouse letters that McKinney had written — letters that added information that this could have been a gay-hate crime.
The 20/20 segment with McKinney indicated that he, along with his lawyers, had concocted this gay panic issue, but, according to O’Malley, police interviews with McKinney showed that he had already started that (the gay panic issue) without the benefit of council.
“The statements he made, the fact that after he was sentenced he was high-fiving other inmates and signing autographs in the jail — if it wasn’t motivated by bias, he was sure eating that up.” O’Malley said.
Shepard was struck between 19 and 21 times, all to the face and head area.
“It was a concentrated effort to destroy somebody,” O’Malley said. “I believe it was triggered because Matt was gay. I’ll go to my grave believing that.”
O’Malley said that “It is abysmal that they (20/20) don’t present the other side of the issue … to be objective in their reporting.”
But they had a job to do…not merely to whitewash the murder of Matthew Shepard, but more importantly, to undermine the fight against anti-gay hate. The problem for ABC New and other Bush/Republican Friendly mainstream news media outlets, is that for the nation to finally begin to combat the kind of hate that killed Matthew Shepard means taking away one of the republicans better vote getting tools…
So Matthew Shepard’s murder, against all the evidence to the contrary, had to be a drug deal gone bad, and Shepard a druggy, or trawling for sex, or something. And the payoff wasn’t just hope that his killers might be paroled, but breathing life into the cultural indifference to anti-gay violence, which at that moment in time was seriously in jeopardy of, finally, being taken seriously for the unmitigated horror that it is. It’s not so much about the gay panic defense, as the gay panic vote. You can’t drive voters to the polls with the gay bogeyman, without getting some gay people killed in the process. It has to be their own damn fault they got themselves killed, not the climate of hate. Never the climate of hate.
Typical faggot…out cruising for anonymous sex…or drugs…gets himself killed by a couple of street punks…nothing here for the rest of us to worry about…
“What we do know is that Ryan was looking for someone to pick up that evening. And unfortunately for Ryan, he picked up the wrong person.”
So ABC and Vargas’ did their job and you can see the results of it now, in the case of Ryan Skipper with sickening clarity. The meme that gay victims of violent crime always, somehow, bring it on themselves, were idiots who should have seen it coming, went cruising for guys who have "I Kill Faggots" tattooed on their foreheads, fell prey to a kind of crime that the rest of us need not worry about, because We’re Smart And We Don’t Do Things Like That, will probably live on for quite some time to come. Hate crime laws are unnecessary, because the victims of these kinds of crimes are always stupid. There is no epidemic of violence against gay people, just an epidemic of stupidity. You are now free to look the other way. Pay no attention to that blood on the floor…it doesn’t concern you…
Cameron has now documented Early Gay Death Syndrome (EGDS). According to this new research, which Cameron claims is the largest random sex survey ever conducted, the oldest male that could be found who engaged in homosexuality was 54 years old and the oldest female was 49. According to Dr. Cameron the reason for this is because the average life span of a homosexual is 20 plus years shorter than for a heterosexual.
According to Richard Rothstein at QueerSighted, this new Paul Cameron propaganda offensive is bases on his sex survey of a single Canadian community of just over 120, 000 adults. And you just know you can take Cameron’s word for it, that his methods and his data on this were all top notch…
The best part of this story is that Cameron put out a press release that suggests that he presented his latest research during yesterday’s sessions of the annual Eastern Psychological Association Convention in Philadelphia. According to his press release, "Drs. Paul and Kirk Cameron told attendees of the Eastern Psychological Association Convention…" In fact, he did not present and was not on the agenda at this meeting. The fact is that he roamed the public corridors of the convention venue and "told" doctors about his research. Cameron was neither a registered speaker nor a member of the convention faculty.
Yeah…and he once cited a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine, in one of his publications, as if it were an actual peer reviewed article. Trustworthy guy, eh? The Morals and Values crowd just loves him.
Nonetheless he will present this research to lawmakers and judges as data that was "presented" at this legitimate convention and it will be published (@ $27.50 per page) in a so-called scientific journal, a publication that will be slapped down on desks in court houses and legislatures and successfully used against us.
Yes. That’s how the game is played by the Morals and Values crowd. Rothstein gives us an insight into how junk like this effectively poisons the political process…
As an aside, I rarely reference my professional life, but for the purpose of this posting I will tell you that I have engaged in professional lobbying on behalf of private industry both in Albany and in Washington. And this kind of crap really resonates. If it’s easy to read, can be summarized on one official and slick looking sheet of paper, lists titles like PhD, MSS and ARNP and was published in a journal with an impressive name, congressional and legislative staffers and their bosses will not look beneath the surface. Only two things really matter: how will it play with voters and will you be supporting my campaign efforts.
(Emphasis mine…) So the Morals and Values crowd has understood for a long time now, not only that lies are effective, but Why they are effective and How to make them even more effective. And you thought it was us godless heathens who made the best liars.
John Ashcroft. You remember him…right? The man who scared the steaming crap out of everyone when President Junior made him Attorney General, because of his bedrock fundamentalist contempt for all that civil liberties and religious pluralism stuff? The man whose father, a traveling Pentecostal minister, anointed him with oil in the kitchen the day he took office? The religious zealot who asked nominees for judgeships if they were faithful to their spouses, and whether they drank? Who vetoed a bill while governor of Missouri to allow liquor sales on Sunday? The sanctimonious jackass who said, "I don’t particularly care if I do what’s right in the sight of men. The important thing is for me to do right in God’s sight. The verdict of history is inconsequential; the verdict of eternity is what counts." The self righteous prig who ordered a cover for the statue of the "Spirit of Justice" in the lobby of the Justice Department because one of her breasts was exposed?
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who sent a letter this week to his successor Alberto Gonzales blasting the proposed merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., approached XM in the days after the merger was announced offering the firm his consulting services, a spokesman for XM said Saturday.
The spokesman said XM declined Mr. Ashcroft’s offer to work as a lobbyist for the company.
Mr. Ashcroft was subsequently hired by the National Association of Broadcasters, which is fiercely opposed to the merger. On its behalf he conducted a review of the effects on competition if the two satellite radio companies were allowed to merge.
See…all this time you thought what made Ashcroft dangerous was his moral fanaticism. But people become fanatics precisely because they have no personal sense of the moral and decent. Their inner lives are a vast unexamined wasteland where no personal sense of right and wrong ever had a chance of taking root. So as they walk through their lives, they come to embrace a kind of idolatry that’s all performance and ritual and ostentatious humility, dress themselves up as the idol’s champion and commissar, wage righteous war on behalf of it, so they can appear to themselves, to each other, and to the world, as all they are not within. Moral. Honorable. Decent. They wear their religiosity on their sleeve like that because not having a conscience, it’s the only place they have to put it.
Which is why fanatics are so dangerous. It’s not their moralizing. Fanaticism is the opposite of moralizing. They are incapable of moralizing. They have no brakes. They’ll do whatever that stone idol sitting silently in the middle of that vast inner wasteland tells them to.
A gay Baltimore man who’s fighting to keep his late partner buried in rural Tennessee may have to sell his car and home to fund the legal battle.
Kevin-Douglas Olive said the parents of his late partner, Russell Groff, have appealed a court ruling that granted Olive an early win in the case. The appeal effectively restarts the case, making progress a costly proposition.
Olive said he’s committed to continuing a case in which he’s already invested $8,000 — but fears his legal bills may demand another $20,000.
"I’ll do what I gotta do," he said, "but they’re telling me to expect to spend a lot more than I spent before."
Read more at the Washington Blade’s site Here. The article references the comments from the Groffs to this post on my blog that I’m pretty certain are genuine, and which if they are they show just how far into the gutter hate has led them. They’ve lied through their teeth pretty consistently throughout about the condition of Russell’s gravesite and the events that led to their lawsuit, claiming that it was neglect when it was the removal of their cheapshit insults to the man Russell loved that provoked them into going to court.
Olive said Groff became so weak that he couldn’t leave his bed to urinate. To best help the man he loved, Olive would hold the bedpan for him.
“This is my soul mate, so I just did it,” he said. “You don’t even think about it. You just do it.”
Eventually, a staph infection that originated in Groff’s gall bladder spread throughout his body, and on Nov. 23, 2004, he died.
"I just collapsed on the floor of the hospital, face down and shrieking," Olive said. "Part of me knew that was entirely inappropriate, but part of me didn’t care.”
And how does an all-American God fearing family treat the man who cared for their son in his last hours. Well…like dogshit of course…
In keeping with the burial instructions signed Nov. 18, Groff was interred in the West Knoxville Friends Cemetery outside Knoxville, Tenn.
Olive said the grave, located about 30 minutes from Groff’s childhood home, was to remain simple and clean. But Groff’s mother, Carolyn, made changes.
"She made it into this shrine that really offended the sensibilities of the Quakers," he said, "because we’re all about simplicity."
Olive said Carolyn routinely decorated the grave. At one point, she posted a picture of Groff with his female prom date, plus a poem Carolyn wrote wherein her son essentially apologized for being gay.
"I was so insulted by seeing this,” Olive said. "She was trying to paint him as this repentive person who was heterosexual, really."
After seeing that picture and poem, Olive said he could tolerate no more and cleaned his husband’s gravesite.
"When I cleared the grave, that was the final straw for her,” he said. “She filed the caveat and challenged the will."
Without a doubt Russell knew what was coming after he died, and that was why he had that will drawn up. He loved Kevin, and he didn’t want him to go through the kind of hell he knew his parents were going to bring down on him. And without a doubt, the reason why the homophobes want to deny same sex couples not just the right to marry, but Any legal rights whatsoever, is Precisely so they can twist the knife in our guts, just like the Groffs are twisting the knife in Kevin’s. There is no other plausible reason for the all-out assault on any and every possible legal status for a same sex couple, other then to facilitate this kind of grotesque scorched earth warfare where even our lover’s graves aren’t safe. None. When they talk about fighting to preserve the sacred institution of marriage, what they mean is they’re fighting to preserve the right to dig up your spouse’s grave.
A Maryland judge upheld the will, on the staringly obvious grounds that Russell knew what he was doing when he made it. Russell saw it coming. He did the only thing the law in Maryland allows a gay man do, to to protect the man he loved from it. But the Groffs are bound and determined to bleed Kevin as much as they can because now all they have in their lives is how much they hate him. He’s having to sell off possessions now, and perhaps even his house in order to pay the legal bills over this continuing fight.
I want to ask everyone reading this blog to help him out in any way they can, however much. Do you believe in love? Did it make a difference in your life? Do you remember the first time someone you loved took you into their arms? Do you remember that first kiss? Does it make you angry that some people feel as though they have a god-given right to spit in your face whenever moments like those bring you joy and peace and contentment? Kevin-Douglas Olive watched the man he loved and was loved by die, and now he’s having to fight over the ground he laid his body to rest, and I think even more then money to pay the legal bills, it would help him now to know that there are people out here who Care.
Donations can be sent via mail to the Kevin Olive Defense Fund, c/o C.W. Hardy, 715 Park Ave., Apt. B, Baltimore, MD, 21201.
As a point of interest, it looks like Kevin’s lawyer is Mark Scurti. In fact some years ago I had his law firm, Scurti and Gulling do my own will, and Medical Directives document. They’re good people, known and respected in Baltimore’s gay community for their work fighting for our legal rights.
I don’t know why so many people seem so surprised about this…
The Enemy At Home – Dinesh D’Souza
Publisher Comments:
Whenever Muslims charge that the war on terror is really a war against Islam, Americans hasten to assure them they are wrong. Yet as Dinesh D’Souza argues in this powerful and timely polemic, there really is a war against Islam. Only this war is not being waged by Christian conservatives bent on a moral crusade to impose democracy abroad but by the American cultural left, which for years has been vigorously exporting its domestic war against religion and traditional morality to the rest of the world.
D’Souza contends that the cultural left is responsible for 9/11 in two ways: by fostering a decadent and depraved American culture that angers and repulses other societies — especially traditional and religious ones — and by promoting, at home and abroad, an anti-American attitude that blames America for all the problems of the world.
Islamic anti-Americanism is not merely a reaction to U.S. foreign policy but is also rooted in a revulsion against what Muslims perceive to be the atheism and moral depravity of American popular culture. Muslims and other traditional people around the world allege that secular American values are being imposed on their societies and that these values undermine religious belief, weaken the traditional family, and corrupt the innocence of children. But it is not "America" that is doing this to them, it is the American cultural left. What traditional societies consider repulsive and immoral, the cultural left considers progressive and liberating.
Taking issue with those on the right who speak of a "clash of civilizations," D’Souza argues that the war on terror is really a war for the hearts and minds of traditional Muslims — and traditional peoples everywhere. The only way to win the struggle with radical Islam is to convince traditional Muslims that America is on their side.
(emphasis mine) Note the appeals to traditional cultures scattered throughout. There’s a glaring problem at the core of the book, and what’s remarkable to me is that so many people see it, and yet they don’t. D’Souza’s book, which places the blame for the 9-11 terrorist attacks squarely on Liberals and western liberal democracy, has been disturbing the comfortable clubhouse atmostphere on the right ever since it came out. That’s not surprising. Here’s Stanley Kurtz, dancing around it…
Not only does D’Souza downplay and deny the profound influence of Islam on our current dilemma, he ignores an array of non-religious, or only marginally religious, factors that his own explanation is (or ought to be) directly tied to.
With all the post-9/11 attention to Islam, for example, we’ve given short shrift to Middle Eastern kinship structures-like the Muslim preference for marriage to the father’s brother’s daughter (see “Root Causes”). These marriage and family patterns inhibit political and economic development, block immigrant assimilation, and are indeed directly threatened by the sort of cultural productions D’Souza decries. Yet, while Islamists may seize upon Hollywood films and international productions of the Vagina Monologues as symbols of their underlying objections to modernity, the more important sources of conflict are the distinctively Muslim social practices that generate such complaints to begin with.
In other words, if immigrant British Muslims weren’t secluding their daughters in hopes of preserving family honor and protecting an already promised marriage to a cousin back in Pakistan, they’d be far less upset with Western movies in the first place. What’s driving the distress is less the movies that a daughter sees at college than the fact that British daughters go off to college at all, freely meet men there, and freely choose their husbands from among those men. Other British immigrant communities, with less restrictive family practices, may occasionally grouse about cultural depravity. Yet the complaints are less frequent, less deeply felt, and far less deadly. It’s the marriage practice, not the movie, that counts.
To give us insight into the Jihadist loathing for American culture, D’Souza relies on the writings of the father of modern Radical Islam, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb spent two years in America and then returned to the Middle East thoroughly disgusted by American culture. He spent the rest of his life chronicling his hatred for America’s decadent society.
Here’s where D’Souza is dishonest or careless: He informs the reader that Qutb died in 1966. He fails to inform the reader that the time Qutb spent in America was between 1948 and 1950.
Since D’Souza blames our culture for much of the Islamic world’s animus towards America, this is no small matter. The culture of the 1940’s wasn’t what it is today. Perhaps Qutb was scandalized by pop culture products of the time like the overt raciness of “The Best Years of Our Lives” or the raw sexuality contained on the typical Bing Crosby record; the man was after all a lunatic. But the culture of the late 1940’s contained none of the things that D’Souza so obviously deplores and that he postulates are inflaming the Muslim world. The 1940’s had no filthy hippies, no gangsta rap, no gay weddings.
D’Souza may think it would be a swell thing for us to turn our cultural clock back to 1949. No big deal there – to each his own. The point is that even if D’Souza were able to wave a wand and pull off such a trick, the Jihadists wouldn’t care. Qutb briefly immersed himself in our late 1940’s incarnation and emerged full of hatred.
To his everlasting credit, Hewitt specifically denounces D’Souza’s central claim:
Second, and this is also no small thing, it’s not liberals’ fault. Radical Islam hates a respectable Church-going Presbyterian family man every bit as much as it hates a spoiled libertine like Paris Hilton. As far as radical Islam is concerned, the two are in the same basic class; they’re both infidels. Short of conversion or surrender, there is nothing our society can do to appease radical Islam.
This is all true…but the problem civilization faces today isn’t specific to radical Islam.
I think the best review of The Enemy At Home I’ve read so far is Bruce Bower’s over at The Stranger. But Bower, while conservative, isn’t a winger, and he is willing to name the nature of the betrayal that D’Souza’s book represents…
D’Souza (who says he is Catholic) invites us to “imagine how American culture looks and feels to someone who has been raised in a traditional society… where homosexuality is taboo and against the law…. One can only imagine the Muslim reaction to televised scenes of homosexual men exchanging marriage vows in San Francisco and Boston.” Let it be recalled that D’Souza is referring here to a “traditional society” in which girls of 13 or 14 are routinely forced to marry their cousins, and in which the groom, if his conjugal attentions are resisted on the wedding night, is encouraged by his new in-laws to take his bride by force. Such are the sensitivities that, D’Souza laments, are so deeply offended by the American left…
He’s quick to warn, moreover, that in discussing potentially troubling aspects of Muslim culture, “we should be on guard against the blinders of ethnocentrism.” In short, while inviting conservative Christians to buy the idea that Muslim family values are essentially equivalent to their own, he wants them to overlook the multitudinous—and profoundly disturbing—ways in which they aren’t. He labors consistently to minimize this value gap—and thereby reinforce his argument that today’s terrorism (far from perpetrating a centuries-long tradition of violent jihad) is, quite simply, a reaction to America’s post-’60s moral dissipation. He would have his readers believe that if only the U.S. returned to the values of the Eisenhower era, our Muslim adversaries would let us be. But he deliberately obscures the mountains of evidence that for “traditional Muslims,” even small-town 1940s America wouldn’t do.
The question is, would it even do for D’Souza and his neighbors in the kook pews. I’m not being melodramatic here.
For those who cherish freedom, 9/11 was intensely clarifying. Presumably it, and its aftermath, have been just as clarifying for D’Souza, whose book leaves no doubt whatsoever that he now unequivocally despises freedom—that open homosexuality and female “immodesty” are, in his estimation, so disgusting as to warrant throwing one’s lot in with religious totalitarians…the book he’s written is nothing less than a call for America’s destruction. He is the enemy at home. Treason is the only word for it.
Yes. Yes it is. And yet…how many times have we heard the pulpit thumpers of the religious right calling down God’s wrath on America for it’s sins? Didn’t Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwall state flatly, while the rubble that was once the World Trade Center was still smoldering, that America, specifically American immorality, was to blame for 9-11? Isn’t there a traveling preacher named Fred Phelps running around the nation hoisting signs at the funerals of dead American soldiers (like he did the funerals of gay people like Matthew Shepard), that praise the terrorists for killing them? The threat America, the threat civilization itself faces today, isn’t radical Islam, it’s religious fundamentalism. But you can appreciate why Kurtz and Hewitt are loath to say so…that’s a key part of the republican base nowadays after all isn’t it.
Critics on the right dance around one of the key distinguishing features of that fundamentalism, preferring to refer it delicately a reaction to "immodesty", but note that it isn’t the immodesty of males that’s the issue. Kurtz nearly says it when he talks about the culture of arranged marriages in Middle eastern cultures.
…for D’Souza, it’s enough to note that the virtues praised by most traditional cultures make up “pretty much the same list.” D’Souza goes so far as to equate “the traditional morality that holds sway in all traditional cultures” with the “virtual moral consensus in America prior to the 1960’s.”
That would certainly have surprised the 1878 Supreme Court, which unanimously rejected the practice of polygamy on the grounds of its incompatibility with democracy. (See “Polygamy Versus Democracy.”) Polygamy, the court said, embodies a “patriarchal principle” characteristic of societies in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa — a principle incompatible with the American system of government.
Now polygamous relationships where they’re entered into freely by both men and women don’t necessarily embody that patriarchal principal. But where it becomes an enforced polygyny that regards women as the property of men then it isn’t just incompatible with our system of government, it is anathema to the principals of individual liberty and equal justice that is its philosophical bedrock. You simply cannot sustain a democracy where people are literally regarded as property, as the United States found out during the horrors of our civil war. That includes women. And where you find this deeply entrenched religious fundamentalism, you inevitably find a bedrock of hatred toward sexual freedom. Fundamentalism hates all freedom, but in particular, it absolutely despises the sexual freedom of women.
After his 1983 graduation from Dartmouth College, D’Souza moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked for Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative organization strongly critical of coeducation, affirmative action, and campus access to birth control. As writer and editor-in-chief for Prospect, the organization’s magazine, D’Souza wrote a March 1984 cover story identifying a Freshman undergraduate who had begun a sexual relationship with another student against her mother’s wishes. D’Souza offered details of the woman’s sex life, and criticized Princeton University for paying the student’s tuition fees after the student’s mother withdrew financial support.
The ensuing scandal was reported in The New York Times. D’Souza claimed that the woman’s name had been published as the result of a "proofreading error" and that he "care[s] about the girl; that’s why [he] wrote the story."
No, no…I strongly doubt that was any kind of accident. What D’Souza was doing there was little different from what the Saudi morality police do every day when they see women who, in their considered opinion, are behaving immodestly and smack them upside the head if they’re feeling good, or cut it off altogether if they’re feeling…well…traditional.
If you want to know where someone stands in the war between civilization and fundamentalism, their attitudes toward the dignity and equality of women is a good place to start looking. The fundamentalist hatred of modernity points back, time and again, to its core contempt for women. And the republican base is just brimming with it.
A few days ago I posted this cartoon about Bill Donohue (he of of the Catholic League) bellyaching that the Edward’s campaign had hired two "trash talking" bloggers, who in his esteemed opinion were anti catholic bigots. What had apparently set him off was the writing of one of them, Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, about the Catholic Church’s war on contraception and abortion. Well…you can see where this is going…right?
Because I had the nerve to be critical of the Catholic church’s stance on birth control and abortion—nevermind their political opposition to distributing condoms to fight HIV, a stance that has helped usher thousands and possibly millions to their untimely deaths—I’ve gotten a number of letters from people who call themselves “Christians”, as Bill Donohue also calls himself.
Bill managed to get his faithful up in arms over what this woman wrote. Here is a sampling of what they wrote back…
Andy Driggers from Dallas, TX was also so moved by my criticisms of religious anti-choicers, that he wrote:
Problem with women like you, you just need a good fucking from a real man! Living in Texas myself, I know you haven’t found that real Texan yet. But once your liberal pro feminist ass gets a real good fucking, you might see the light. Until then, enjoy your battery operated toys b/c most real men wouldn’t want to give you the fucking you deserve b/c the shit that would come out of you ears.
An example, from Paul Bernard of Scottsdale, AZ:
i like the way you trash talk i don’t particularly want to have sex with you but i would like a blow job.
Bud Phelps, another person who opposes "bigotry", as defined by right wing shill Bill Donohue.
It’s just too bad your mother didn’t abort you. You are nothing more than a filthy mouth slut. I bet a couple of years in Iraq being raped and beaten daily would help you appreciate America a little. Need a plane ticket ?
Romanco De Leone was also moved by Donohue’s poignant claims about insulating the Catholic church from legitimate criticisms.
YOU RACIST WHORE. FAT UGLY BITCH. SUCK MY LONG COCK ASSHOLE I HOPE YOU KIDS NEVER LIVE AND YOUR PARENTS DIE A TRAGIC DEATH YOU ASSHOLE BITCH!
I HOPE YOUR WOMB IS BARREN AND YOUR CAREER PLUMMETS TO HELL YOU BITCH
Whore. Bitch. Slut. You just need a good fucking from a real man. There’s the enemy civilization is facing today. There’s the enemy civilization has always faced. And there’s the burning core of hatred it feels for it. We’ve taken their wimmin away from them. And with that comes all the primitive instincts for survival and aggression of the cornered savage. They despise civilization, because it frees women from obedience to them; and with that goes the only way they know how to sire children, and acquire status.
You can argue that American fundamentalists aren’t as violent as Islamic radicals in the grand scheme of things, but I would argue that’s because they don’t feel quite so powerless against their own societies as the Islamists do against the west. A decisive victory in the culture wars by liberals and moderates against fundamentalism, particularly in the struggle against the independence of the courts, a decisive shift in power toward the democrats and against the republicans, and I believe we’ll all be singing a different tune about that.
And Hewitt, perhaps, is more right then he knows. The church-going Presbyterian family man, provided he has even a vaguely live and let live attitude, is hated every bit as much, and regarded as no different at all, from the spoiled libertine in the eyes of the Fundamentalist. He could be opposed to abortion, and yet if he does not object to contraception then he might as well be an abortionist. He could be opposed to same-sex marriage and if he is willing to grant gay couples Any kind of legal status, even merely hospital visitation rights, then he might as well be a homosexual himself. If he is willing to grant people any kind of sexual freedom, no matter how limited, then he is the enemy, and he must be destroyed.
You can argue that the entire religious right mindset is one of assumed priviledge and status over others. That, we are the people of God and the rest of you are the devil’s tools attitude. Nationalism. Racism. Homophobia. But I am convinced now that it all reaches its climax in its need to dominate women. Reading the rhetoric and watching all the flag waving going back and forth between the middle eastern radicals and our own home grown ones since 9-11, I am convinced now that at its core the war between civilization and fundamentalism is a fight who owns women’s bodies. Everything else about it springs from that one central obsession. The attacks on science, the attacks on liberal democracy, public education, science, contraception, sexual license, pop culture…anything that enables a world where women might even want to choose for themselves is the enemy, and must be destroyed.
Even I think, the war on homosexuality. Notice how it’s almost always male homosexuality that they bellyache the most about. People smirk that it’s because lesbians titulate them, but in the kook pews lesbians are thoroughly destested too, because they reject men. But with gay males the hatred seems to burn a tad hotter, and I think it’s more then their regarding us as traitors to our gender. We’re the ones whose sexuality demonstrates that males can take their lovers as equals, that a male doesn’t have to be dominant, that he can be taken and well as take, can give themselves wholeheartedly to their mate as well as recieve, can…well…be fucked after all…and still be gloriously, assertively male. How do you beat into a woman’s head that men were created by God to be the head of the household, to which they must Gracefully Submit, when that kind of thing is going on? We are males whose sexuality completely denies the theology of natural male dominance. The street punk may feel his brittle manhood threatened by the sight of two guys holding hands and lash out, but this is why the mullahs say we have to be stoned to death. We break the sexual pecking order.
At the core of its hatred, with all it’s higher principles stripped away, fundamentalism is about women, of that I am currently convinced. Western civilization and its liberal democracies have taken their wimmin away. For that they have to be destroyed.
Is it really so surprising that a man who plastered the intimate details of a female college student’s sex life across the pages of his magazine because she was defying her parents, that rails against birth control, co-habitation and women who find fulfillment outside of the home, would write a book essentially siding with terrorists from a "traditional culture" that views rape as a legitimate means of controlling its women? No. Not really. What’s surprising is that more of them don’t say so outright like he did. I’ve been waiting now, pretty much since 9-11, for someone on the far right to write the book D’Souza did. If I’m surprised about anything, it’s that it’s taken so long.
On the January 15 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly said of Shawn Hornbeck — who was abducted at the age of 11, held for four years, and recently found in Missouri — that "there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" and that he "do[esn’t] buy" "the Stockholm syndrome thing." O’Reilly also said: "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn’t have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted." When fellow Fox News host Greta Van Susteren pointed out that "[s]ome kids like school," O’Reilly replied: "Well, I don’t believe this kid did."
The following day, during his "Talking Points Memo" segment, O’Reilly responded to viewer mail criticizing his comments about Hornbeck. O’Reilly concluded: "I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because" his kidnapper "made things easy for him. No school, play all day long."
But then…it makes everything about right wingers make sense when you think about it. Digby puts the pieces together here…
I think this is one of the defining aspects of conservatism. They have a stunted sense of empathy and an undeveloped ability to understand abstract concepts. It makes them unable to fashion any solutions to common problems, which they blame on "poor character" because they cannot visualize themselves ever being in a vulnerable or unlucky position through no fault of their own. Until it happens to them or someone they know, in which case they never question their philosophy as a whole but merely apply a special exemption to whichever particular problem or risk to which they have personally been exposed.
Empathy is not some altruistic concept. In fact, it’s quite selfish and designed to make humans better able to survive. It allows a person to walk in another’s shoes so that they might have an inkling of what it would be like if that person’s experience became their own. It is necessary to understand how to head off problems that you might someday have to confront and it is certainly necessary to fully understand other necessary concepts such as justice, fairness and love.
I’m not drawing any conclusions from this [Warning…PDF file], but it’s interesting. It seems that when they test psychopaths, they find that they can’t understand abstract concepts. I’m just saying.
That PDF from Crime Times Digby links to is really interesting…
Psychopaths are callous, glib, superficial, and impulsive; lack empathy for others; and display no guilt or remorse for their harmful acts. One reason for these traits, research suggests, is that psychopaths have difficulty understanding emotions. However, a new study indicates that psychopaths are impaired not just in the emotional realm, but more broadly, in understanding abstract information in general.
Sound familiar?
In particular, the psychopaths showed clear deficits in activating one brain area, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus, when processing abstract stimuli. This region failed to differentiate normally between abstract and concrete stimuli.
The researchers say, “These data support the hypothesis that there is an abnormality in the function of the right anterior superior temporal gyrus in psychopathy.”
“Perhaps,” the researchers say, “psychopathic individuals have difficulty engaging in cognitive functions that involve material that has no concrete realization in the external world. We might speculate that complex social emotions such as love, empathy, guilt and remorse may be a form of more abstract functioning. Thus, difficulties in processing and integrating these conceptually abstract representations to regulate or modulate behavior would be [seen] in these individuals.”
I’ve always wondered about this, particularly regarding the hard core homophobes. How is it that any decent person could stick a knife in the hearts of loving couples, do everything possible in their power to gut them of their capacity, not just to love each other, but to trust anyone, let alone love anyone? How is it they can look you right in the eye and tell you to your face that marriage doesn’t have anything to do with love…that it’s just about making babies and nothing more? How is it, they can throw helpless gay teens into ex-gay camps where they’ll be taught to fear and loath their sexual nature, how do they pray to God above that if their kid can’t be made into a heterosexual, at least dear god make them incapable of loving someone of their own sex? How does anyone do this to a kid and say they’re doing it out of love? Well…maybe this is why.
Look at what O’Reilly is saying up there again. How do you look into the camera at millions of viewers and tell them you think that kid was enjoying himself? How do you do it with an air of plain talk common sense? The only answer I can think of is, you do it like that because you simply cannot fathom what that kid must have been going through. Empathy. You could swim in the open sewer of that man’s conscience forever and not find a single shred of it anywhere.
Or in any of them. This is why appealing to their better nature isn’t bloody likely to buy you anything.
There is a new movie out that I absolutely cannot fathom ever watching; Alpha Dog. As I understand it, the film dramatizes the true life kidnapping and murder of a 15 year old boy. I glanced at a review of it, which gave a few details. The victim was the brother of an older teen who owed a drug debt. Murder was not the original intent, only to make the brother pay up. The kid was taken to a house where he eventually began to enjoy the drugs and the scene and party it up a bit himself, not taking too seriously the situation he was in because his kidnappers were other kids not much older then he was. He thinks he is making friends with them.
But then the kidnapper talks with his lawyer and realizes the magnitude of the crime he’s committed, and step-by-step, feels backed into a corner where actually killing the kid looks like the only thing he can do. The review I read remarked on how uneasy you feel watching the whole situation unfold, watching that kid in the company of his kidnappers, enjoying their company, not taking too seriously the situation he’s in, hoping that what what you just know is going to happen won’t And then it does. I can’t watch that. Just thinking about it now as I type this, is stressing me out. I feel an urgent need to get that kid the hell out of there, by any means necessary. And I can’t. It’s too late. It’s many years too late. I think about how I was blissfully enjoying my own life, while this fifteen year old was in the company of kids who would eventually murder him and it just stresses me out. No way am I going to watch that movie.
On June 26, 2006 I initially left voice messages for Alan Chambers of Exodus International and another national ex-gay leader about inappropriate incidents that affected youth at an Exodus member ministry. I will not go into the details at this time, but I shared three specific situations that happened within the previous year. The shocking details of the third situation compelled me to contact Alan and this other national leader. In my initial messages I said that I would rather discuss this privately, but if they did not wish to talk, then I would initiate a public discussion.
Peterson Toscano, after all he’s been through in his life, is one of the most inwardly calm and decent people I’ve ever met. His style is not to be confrontational, but to speak to a person’s conscience, to their better nature, and try to work together with them to resolve problems. He would not be making this matter public if there was any other way. But Exodus doesn’t seem to want to address the issue. For half a year, he has been trying to get Exodus to agree to some basic guidelines for protecting the kids in their "programs". Now it looks like he’s just getting the brush-off.
The non-violent work that I do involves attempting to connect with people to create a "win-win" situation if at all possible. Building relationships, shedding assumptions, believing the best in people are all part of my Christian testimony. Joe Brummer outlines some of these non-violent steps in his most recent post. I don’t hate Alan or Exodus. I have used much restraint in hopes of seeing real change.
Some of us who feel we have been wounded by the ex-gay ministries and the anti-gay church may have sometimes wish to do them harm and to think the worse, to malign them the way that we feel they malign the LGBT community. For me Jesus’ teachings is that I should seek to do good and speak out against injustice but not exact revenge.
Perhaps some people would love there to be a major Exodus scandal. I want to see one avoided.
Do I wish them harm? Here’s what I wish. In a just society anyone who participated in forcing a gay kid into one of these places would be in jail, along with the other child molesters. That’s my wish. But the possibility of a scandal of this nature disturbs me so deeply that I have to step back from this fight periodically, for the sake of my own sanity. I think that’s why a lot of people hold this fight at arm’s length. It’s just too emotionally stressfull. You want to get those kids the hell out of there and you can’t. The law is against you. There’s nothing you can do but watch in a kind of growing gut wrenching horror. Ever since the Memphis protests, ever since I read that Refuge Rule Book Zach Stark posted, I’ve felt like I was watching a situation unfold, watching gay kids being put into camps run by men with no training other then religious dogma, no understanding of human sexuality, and no respect for the sexual nature of these kids, hoping that what what you just know is going to happen won’t And when it does, I am not going to be happy, I am going to be sick.
Peterson Toscano is one of the most decent people I have ever met. I hope his way of conflict resolution has the desired effect. I trust, since he actually knows more about this environment from first-hand experience then I’ll ever know in a lifetime, that he knows what he’s dealing with. I hope I am wrong: He believes there is a better nature within these people that can be reached. I think they’re rotten to the core. I think they’ve taken their conscience around behind the barn and killed it. I hope I am wrong. I hope I won’t see happen, what I just know is going to happen. But I don’t think even a sex abuse scandal will cause these people to reconsider what they are doing to kids. They’re on a mission from God, and God is never wrong.
People already know there is a potential for abuse here. This isn’t rocket science. And yet nothing is done, and kids are still being shoveled into it. Perhaps the reason for that is because the people involved in running these places Don’t Care. Exodus is not about helping people out of homosexuality…it is about fighting against gay civil rights. It’s about enforcing the pariah status of homosexual people. That is what Exodus is about. You may disagree, but that’s the only scenario where this behavior, this practical if not rhetorical indifference to the welfare of the kids in it, Makes. Any. Sense.
You think that any sane parent, even one that was vehemently opposed to homosexuality (I know…I know… It’s like being vehemently opposed to left-handedness…), would be disturbed to learn that their kids where being tossed into a mix of adults that included men who admitted to being sexual addicts and compulsives. You’d think that even these parents would be appalled to learn that some of these "former" sexual compulsives were staff members themselves, who could at any time get their kid alone somewhere on campus for a little private counseling. You’d think.
But then you watch these parents come and go in and out of Exodus "Love Won Out" conferences, you see them taking part in the larger anti-gay political agenda, and you listen to them mouth the same filthy lies about gay people we’ve all heard over and over thousands of times like a mantra of hate, and you realize that…yes…they probably wouldn’t care anyway. For a lot of these parents, I am convinced, these ex-gay camps aren’t a last resort to changing their kid’s sexual orientation at all. They’re punishment, pure and simple. What the religious right likes to call "tough love" and what otherwise decent people call child abuse. They want the kid to suffer, so they’ll never forget how much their own parents hate them for turning out to be faggots. Not necessarily suffer actual physical sexual abuse…no. Of course not. But the environment they’re being tossed into is primed for just that kind of thing to happen. It cannot be defused without gutting them of their mission, which is not to cure, but to enable the social and political abuse of these kids, and the adults they will grow into. You cannot enable the one, without some degree of indifference for the other. And it is of a piece with the indifference of the religious right to anti-gay violence in general. Here is Randy Thomas of Exodus, in an ad campaign against hate crime laws:
Of course, yes, many parents, not vehement about homosexuality, are simply terrified into sending their kids into these camps. They’re afraid for their kids, afraid because of the lies they’ve been taught by the religious right about homosexuals and homosexuality, afraid for their immortal souls. The last thing in the world these parents want is for their kid to be sexually abused while in one of these things. They trust in the people who run these camps, being righteous men and women of God. But the horrible nature of these places is that sexual abuse is in fact, what these places do. It is what they are meant to do.
We know instinctively that sexual abuse isn’t simply a matter of the physical act alone. It is a dagger plunged into their heart of the one who suffers it. We know this. And yet, we loose sight of it when it comes to what the ex-gay ministries do. We think of the child abuser as a monster, acting in pure selfish contempt and greed. We picture them as evil, vicious, brutal thugs. But greed has many faces. Consider for a moment instead, the victim. What do we often see in the victims of sexual abuse, and in particular, in the kids who have suffered it. Withdrawal. Guilt. Shame. Alienation. Self destructiveness. Guilt. Shame. A fear of sex and sexual intimacy that can work against any intimate human relationship they might attempt throughout their lives. Shame. Guilt. Shame. Shame. And shame. And what do we see in gay kids who have been taught to fear and loath their sexuality? Exactly the same things.
To methodically teach a gay kid to fear and loath their sexual nature is to do to them essentially what a rapist does to their victims, but without the physical act. And worse: because the child molester is universally condemned in our society and in human societies all over the world, but the people running these camps are held in high esteem as doing the work of God. For gay kids who internalize the message these camps do their damnest to put into them, there is no refuge from shame, not even the slightest comfort that what was done to them was a profound and unforgivable crime. To the contrary, the sense that they were to blame for what happened to them, is brutally re-enforced by the culture around them, particularly if they come from fundamentalist families.
What kind of people do this? Monsters? Perhaps. But not necessarily. There is hate, and there is greed. Sometimes they dance together. Sometimes they dance alone. Sometimes greed wears a face that seems compassionate and loving, until you realize that it’s the face of a vampire. There is love that is selfless and giving, and rejoices in the happiness of the beloved. And there is that greed that is selfish and needy and possessive and wears love like a mask, to hide a bottomless indifference to the damage it does.
Peterson has been trying hard to raise awareness of the potential for something worse then what he’s already discovered happening in these camps, and he’s made little headway judging from his post. He would greatly disagree with me on this I’m sure, but the problem as I see it is they’d have to care first, and you can’t care about what happens to kids physically without caring about what happens to them spiritually too. And the problem with that is it raises too many uncomfortable questions. Questions that call into doubt the very existance of these camps. Better not to ask them.
This is all of a piece. Note that none of these places keep any follow-up statistics on their "clients". As Wayne Besen found out while investigating them for his book, Anything But Straight, they can’t tell you their success rate because they don’t know it themselves. They don’t know how many of their "clients" stay heterosexual. They don’t know how the bond between parent and child does after a kid is run through their "program". They don’t know anything at all about the sexual, let alone the emotional health of their "clients" one, two, three years or more after they’ve been in the "program". They don’t want to know. The anecdotal evidence after all, is bad enough. I’ve heard the stories first-hand, from kids who have lived it. And the recurring theme through all of it is that none of these places seemed to give a good goddamn what happened to them after they’d gone through their "program".
This isn’t rocket science. Following up should not only be easy, but for people who are acting out of love for the kids it should be imperative. They should be critically intent on knowing how well they are doing their job. Are the kids better for having been though the program, or not? Are we doing anything wrong? Could we do better? Yet, they don’t want to know.
This blindness to the sexual safety of the kids in their custody is telling, in precisely the same vein. You need to pay attention to this. The great crimes against humanity don’t happen because of people who shake their fists at God and hoist the Jolly Roger. They happen, because of indifference to the humanity of their victims. Elie Wiesel, who survived the extermination camps of the thousand year Reich, captures it perfectly here:
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The claim of the ex-gay camps is that they do what they do to kids out of love. To that, Peterson Toscano says taking steps to protect young people from abuse while in these camps is not only good business, but shows a genuine love for them. But there’s the problem.
The break happened not long after a boozy election-night wake for Blount, who lost his Senate bid to the incumbent Democrat, John Sparkman. Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he’d yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he’d rented in Montgomery trashed — the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people’s possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents’ home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too
They put a whining rich man’s brat, full of self pity and a grandiose sense of his own entitlement into the White House. They picked him because they knew he appealed to a large swath of their base: small minded bigots also full of self pity and a grandiose sense of their own entitlement. Then, to their growing apprehension, he put his hands on the levers of the most powerful economy and military in the world and proceeded to act like a whining rich man’s brat, full of self pity and a grandiose sense of his own entitlement. Did they think he would stop now that he’s left a staggering trail of wreckage and lost American lives in his path? You don’t understand. The man who couldn’t even bring himself to say the words "shame on me" while reciting the old proverb, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" is not to blame. It’s never his fault. Nothing is ever his fault…
Nine days after Zelikow’s resignation the Iraq Study Group report was released. Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the report "a flaming turd," but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection. Still, Scowcroft and Baker, like Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot," waited for Rice.
…
The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report.
Rice was supposed to be the one to get Junior to see reality. But it seems she’s sized him up a tad better then the Wise Old Men of Washington. He’s going to do what he damn well pleases, and throughout his life everyone who has ever known him knows this one fact above all else: you’re either with him or against him. Loyalty to junior doesn’t mean you tell him what he doesn’t want to hear when he needs to hear it anyway. It means you flatter him, agree with everything he says and does, and most of all, take the blame for him when he makes a mess of things. Rice probably figured, correctly, that siding with the Wise Old Men of Washington now would incure junior’s wrath. Junior does not tolerate disloyalty.
Rice, who had fallen into radio silence, canceling a scheduled speech on "transformational diplomacy," finally intervened. When the U.S. military commanders in Iraq and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad protested against a rush by the Iraqi government to hang Saddam Hussein, Rice overrode their objections and gave the signal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to proceed.
Maliki’s management and subsequent defense of the gruesome circus surrounding Saddam’s execution disabused any illusion that he could act in the larger Iraqi national interest rather than as a political representative of Shiite sectarianism. He is to his marrow a creature of the Dawa Party, founded by Muqtada al-Sadr’s father, and his alliance with al-Sadr. While the intent of the surge is to revitalize the Maliki government, that government cannot and does not wish to be reformed. The problem is not merely that Maliki is a weak political leader, or that his political coalition wouldn’t permit it, or that his Iranian sponsors wouldn’t allow repudiation — all of which are indisputably true. The irreducible reason is that Maliki exists only to achieve Shiite control, and if he did not he would not exist. There is no other Maliki. Nor can Bush invent one.
But none of this matters. What an escalation will do is give junior time to do what he has done all throughout his life, pass the problem onto someone else. First there will be his troop buildup. Then it has to be given time to work. And by the time it’s staringly obvious to even a brick that it isn’t working, the next election cycle will be upon us. Bush can claim that he’s left a structure in place that will lead to success in Iraq and bring peace to the middle east…if only the new administration follows it. And then he’s out the door, and shed of the consequences. The blame for loosing Iraq will belong to the next administration, to someone else. At least, he can always say so. And so can his loyal base. Someone else is always to blame. But that’s not what you should be paying attention to…
The Wise Old Men of Washington…the power brokers…the insiders…and their ass kissing media sycophants…the ones who cherry picked him to be the republican nominee in 2000. The ones who figured he’d be their boy, appeal to the base, and usher in a permanent republican majority. They thought he would take the escape hatch they built for him. They thought he would take the chance they offered him to withdraw and save face. They thought he would listen to them. They really thought he would listen to them.
Now that the new spiritual leader of the schisming Episcopalians is getting a little mainstream news media attention, the conservatives are having…concerns…
Nigeria’s conservative Anglican archbishop has contacted for the first time the nine Episcopal churches in the state of Virginia whose members voted this month to leave and align with him.
The churchs’ new leader, Archbishop Peter Akinola, addressed in a letter some concerns about his support for a proposed law in Nigeria that would make same-sex union ceremonies illegal. The law also would ban public affection between same-sex couples and private meetings of gay advocacy groups.
Parse this…go ahead…
"We recognize that there are genuine concerns about individual human rights" in the law "that must be addressed both in the framing … and its implementation," wrote Akinola, who has called the growing acceptance of gay relationships a "satanic attack" on the church.
When news reports about dead gay people in ditches start coming out of Abuja like they are coming out of Baghdad, Akinola will recognize the genuine concerns about that too.
A church whose former pastor was president of the Southern Baptist Convention has been rocked by allegations of child abuse, PageOneQ has learned.
Pastor Paul Williams, who directs prayer programs and special projects at the Bellevue Baptist Church outside of Memphis, has been forced to take a leave while a church committee investigates charges that Williams sexually molested a family member 17 years ago. Williams has been at Bellevue for 34 years, reports Agape Press, a news service run by the American Family Association.
In a statement issued by the church and obtained by PageOneQ, the church’s personnel committee says that Williams has taken a paid leave of absence in the wake of "a past, but highly concerning moral failure."
Dr. Steven Gaines (pictured), pastor of the church, has been attacked for not taking action earlier. Gaines acknowledged learning of the allegations in June of this year. While explaining that he thought the issue had been resolved, Gaines said he kept the information private because "the event occurred many years ago."
Understand, that when Bellevue fires someone over allegations of sexually abusing children, it’s a safe bet it wasn’t the gay teenagers being force fed fear and loathing of their sexual nature over at John Smid’s Love In Action, which lives in part on Bellevue’s dime. That kind of sexual abuse they’ll pay good money for. Sexually abusing kids isn’t a sin after all, if it’s done in Jesus’ name.
The schadenfreude here is very tempting. Watching people suffer the kind of witch hunts and sexual panic they’ve brought down on gay people for so many decades can make you believe there is a roughhewn cosmic justice after all. But you need to pay attention not only to the fact that these are merely accusations, but their source. I mean that. The story is making the blog rounds of the witch hunt going on now at Ted Haggard’s former megachurch, going as far as setting up a web site where people can leave anonymous tips about New Life Church staff or its leaders…
To assist in both the process of Rev. Haggard’s restoration and the protection of the Church itself, the Overseers are open to receiving current information relevant to either Rev. Haggard’s recovery process or any concerns about New Life Church staff or its leaders. While they cannot promise confidentiality, the Overseers will handle any such information discretely.
They encouraged friends, family, and neighbors to report anyone who didn’t toe the party line; many parents turned in their children; children turned in their parents; neighbor turned in neighbor; friend turned in friend. This witch hunt, and despite their protestations to the contrary, it is a witch hunt, shows the demented nature of not only the leadership of this "church," but of most of the organized "Church" in its single minded obsession concerning sexual matters, even "indiscretions" not involving minors, that happened well in the past. To say that this is an embarrassment to Christians worthy of the name is an understatement! These limited human beings obsess over sexual matters; indeed, froth at the mouth at the slightest suggestion of what they term to be "sexual impropriety," yet are blind to their own witch hunting, hurting others and their families…
Without question people who sexually abuse kids should be held accountable for it. But in the current climate of sexual panic, it’s hard not to see how a lot of bogus accusations are going to be made. I know…I know…they throw tons of bogus accusations at gay people daily. All the more reason to treat any accusations that come out of the megachurches now with skepticism. When it comes to sex and fundamentalism, truth is the first casualty.
And yes, ironically now, that fact is coming back to bite them in the ass. But this reckoning has been building for years. How many times have we witnessed, well before Haggard went looking for a massage, other fundamentalist church leaders getting caught up in sex sting arrests. They’re caught with female prostitutes. They’re caught with male prostitutes. They’re caught with their own children, or someone else’s. It’s the so-called bible belt that has the worst statistics on divorce, spousal abuse and child abuse, and surprise surprise, teenage pregnancy. Who’d have thought…right?
I’m sorry if people have dug themselves into situations where they feel backed into a corner over biblical literalism verses that complicated messy reality of the flesh, but as a matter of fact, the bible saying it’s so, Doesn’t make it so. Sex is an instinct older then the fish, let alone the mammals, let alone the primates. For what should be staringly obvious reasons, it is a powerful urgent drive. It can trump the survival instinct, as many a backdoor lover who ended up in the hospital after the spouse came home can attest. You treat the human sexual response like its some kind of blackboard for scribbling bible verses on and it will simply have its way with you.
They say without the bible, there are no moral standards. But what kind of a moral standard is it that makes you close your eyes to the reality of your own nature, and then blames you for not taking responsibility for it when it runs out of control?
Lacking an understanding of human nature that you can build wholesome and life affirming moral values upon, there’s probably been quite a lot of sexual immorality going on in America’s fundamentalist churches. For years they’ve been pointing their fingers for the devils within themselves at liberals, at secularism, at Hollywood, at feminists, and of course, the favorite scapegoat, the homosexuals. And as you sow, so shall you reap. Now they’re pointing their fingers at each other. Anything, but look in a goddamned mirror. Anything but listen to the guy who once said Let him who is without sin…
No, no. The stones must keep flying…at everyone else…
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