In case you’re wondering what the head of the Republican Party thinks about the flu outbreak, here is his statement:
After the break, Rush attacked the UN for issuing a warning for a worldwide flu pandemic, claiming that it is “by design” to get people to respond to government orders. The media fall right in line with this stuff, Rush said, amplifying the nature of the crisis. Rush — in his capacity as public health expert — added that “the flu’s a common thing.”
This makes perfect sense. If you are a conservative you can’t believe that something like an epidemic or a pandemic could even exist or you would have to grant that the necessity for public health — a government function. Indeed, you even have to grant that a pandemic requires that people are going to be forced to behave in ways that explicitly explicitly define their own personal survival with the common good.
Rush is right to be a little bit nervous about this, though. Public health crises tend to focus the public on the usefulness of things like science, international cooperation, government coordination. You know, the sort of thing that liberals think are necessary. Something like that simply doesn’t fit into the conservative worldview.
The magic hand of the free market is suppose to prevent pandemics. Somehow. Actually, they don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. In the rarefied gated communities and resorts of the fabulously well to do, communicable diseases don’t matter unless they somehow manage to get inside. And once there, these are people who really do have access to that “best health care system in the world” thing that the rest of us here in the U.S. only rhetorically do.
Less than two weeks after raising the prospect of seceding from the union, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is calling on the federal government to come to his state’s aid in the midst of the swine flu outbreak.
Repeat after me: Government is the problem, not the solution… Government is the problem, not the solution… Government is the problem, not the solution…
Fred Clark writes about the persecution complex behind the NOM ads…
We’ve seen how this plays out on the national scene two, three times a month. Some pious dignitary remarks that homosexuality is just like pedophilia or bestiality — a statement regarded within the hegemony of the sect as wholly innocent and inoffensive. Someone outside the sect will reply, accurately, that this is an offensive lie, a vicious slander. That response will be perceived, within the sect, as "religious persecution." The response — any response other than "thank you, sir, may I have another?" — implicitly rejects the legitimacy of the hegemony and rebels against the privilege enjoyed by the sect. (A big part of that privilege, it turns out, is the expectation that one can say offensive things without others taking or expressing offense. This has become far more important as a hallmark of American evangelicalism than, say, Sabbath-keeping.)
I’d say this isn’t just a religious right phenomena. You see culture warriors on the right holding the same two mutually contradictory positions that Fred points out in certain American evangelical circles. On the one hand, we represent the Great American Heartland…the Common Folk…The Moral Majority…The Silent Majority… And so on… But on the other, we are oppressed. Our values and our way of life are in danger of becoming extinct.
Your gay and lesbian neighbors have been hearing a version of this self contradicting complaint for decades now. On the one hand, gay people are a teeny-tiny minuscule minority, whose claims of oppression don’t even merit a laugh, let alone any serious thought. On the other, we are a vast and powerful conspiracy that will soon extinguish any trace of American values. On the one hand we are contemptible, weak, easily frightened swishing faggots. On the other hand we are dangerous militants. Huh?
The thought police are always out to get them. Political Correctness is always taking away their right to express their deeply held beliefs. Whenever someone is called out for their cheap bar stool prejudices, they complain that they are being silenced. It isn’t that people find their knuckle dragging bigotries disgusting. It’s that a vast liberal socialist communist homosexual conspiracy is out to get them. When Mrs California endorsed cutting off the ring fingers of all the gay citizens of California, and promptly fell out of favor with the Mrs America judges, a great wail arose from the kook pews, clamoring that she was the victim of political correctness, and that people who opposed the gay agenda were being silenced.
PRAGUE (AFP) — A former US Ku Klux Klan chief was arrested Friday in a Prague restaurant while he was on a speaking tour here, Czech police said.
Former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana-founded Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, was arrested on suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights, police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky told local media.
Regardless of how low in the human cesspool Duke is, that charge sent a little chill down my spine. It was pure reflex, most likely born of having spent my entire life swaddled in American culture. But there it was. David Duke is lower then spit in a urinal in my book, but I am much less afraid of anything David Duke might say, then I am of the charge he was arrested under. …suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights… What the hell does that mean? Suspicion of promoting movements…? Seeking the suppression…? What is the fucking criminal act here? It could be anything. Today that might mean talking about suppressing the rights of black people. Tomorrow it might mean arguing against it, thereby suppressing the right of white people to keep black people in their place. It could be anything. Totalitarian states love that kind of thing. It’s the kind of law that can be whatever they want it to be, whenever they want it to be that. And you don’t have to actually Do Anything to break that law. Just talk about doing something. Maybe with one person. Maybe with a whole roomful of people. It doesn’t matter. You open your trap, say the wrong thing, and you’re toast. And you can never be sure what the wrong thing to say is. It’s whatever the state wants it to be. Probably just right then, in order to arrest you and make it all seem legal. Giving police the power to arrest someone for speaking their mind just greases the skids for fascism.
Mrs Proposition 8 California and her fans aren’t being silenced. Critics of same sex marriage aren’t being silenced. Their freedom to dispense horseshit about morality, religion, family values and same sex marriage does not trump other people’s freedom to call their cheapshit prejudices for what they are, and regard them with disgust. If you can’t tell the difference between loosing a crown or loosing a tax break and going to jail then go get yourself arrested in some foreign land for opening your trap at the wrong time in the wrong place and find out.
I wrote previously that the fight for gay equality isn’t over simply when common, decent heterosexuals stop seeing their gay neighbors through the prism of every anti-gay stereotype the hatemongers have been pushing for generations, and start seeing us for the human beings we really are. That’s an important step, but not the final one. The last step comes when they finally start seeing the hatemongers for…well…the hatemongers they are.
The saving grace of it is that it gets easier the closer gay folk get to the equality prize. The masks of civility and decency just start dropping like crazy and for a moment, the homophobes seem to have suddenly become completely unhinged. But your gay and lesbian neighbors know that they have always been unhinged. They’ve just never talked that way in front of the rest of the nation before. Case in point, Peter LaBarbera. Or as he’s affectionately known over at Pam’s House Blend…The Peter.
LaBarbera’s signature act is to go "undercover" into the gay S&M scene and report back on all the unsavory things going on in the backrooms, sex parties and dungeons. Never mind that S&M isn’t a particularly gay phenomina. Never mind that you could wander through the heterosexual side of any adult bookstore anywhere in this country and find grown heterosexual adults engaging in the very same acts. LaBarbera seeks out the most exotic, the most extreme, the most unsavory things he can find in the gay community, and then presents it to his flock as what it is to be homosexual. This is how hatemongers have operated since the dawn of human history. Via Pam’s House Blend, here’s a typical example of how LaBarbera preferrs to operate…
Man, oh man…after he wrote me a letter to chastise me for making fun of his excursions to leather clubs to do undercover work for Jeezus, Illinois Family Institute’s Peter LaBarbera just lets it all hang out in an article on Salon (registration required) by Michelle Goldberg, "Sinners in the hands of an angry GOP." It’s an inside look at the goings-on at the War on Christians and the Values Voters conference.
Because Petey’s efforts to demonize the entire gay community are failing miserably (the Gay Games are going on in Chicago with Walgreen’s sponsorship; his marriage amendment initiative can’t get the signatures it needs) he must now escalate the homo-hate wars with a little spice — by trolling on gay boards for research on how to scare youth away from the gay agenda.
Perhaps worrying that anti-gay rhetoric hasn’t been sufficiently inflammatory lately, some speakers urged listeners to start using more scatological and stigmatizing language. Peter LaBarbera, who heads the Illinois Family Institute and is known for his obsession with gay men’s most outré sexual practices, told the audience, "My greatest frustration has been our side’s inability to make homosexual behavior an issue in the public’s mind." In order to inspire the kind of revulsion he wants to see more of, he read from a posting on a gay message board: "Hey guys, I know this is kind of gross and all, but I was wondering if I’m the only one. I’m usually the bottom in my relationship with my boyfriend. After having been the receptive partner in anal sex it’s only a few hours before I start to experience diarrhea … it really stinks, because I really like sex, duh, but it takes the fun out of it when I know I’ll be tied to the bathroom for the next day."
"I don’t think so-called GLBT teens are told anything like this" by their school counselors, LaBarbera said. "We need to find ways to bring shame back to those who are practicing and advocating homosexual behavior."
Take note of two things: firstly, that this is being discussed openly as a matter of tactics. It’s not about what the facts are, it’s about what creates the maximum effect. Secondly, this is the kook pews talking among themselves. This is being discussed at the War on Christians and the Values Voters Conference. In the mainstream news, they would never say they are choosing what to say about homosexuality mostly for effect. Yet note also, the rote bemoaning of their inability to get the message out. Time and again you hear them saying among themselves, that if they could only get their message out Teh Gays wouldn’t be winning the culture war. Note that, and note along with it that they are nonetheless careful to moderate their rhetoric in public.
At least, up until now. Triumphant after last November, once again they see themselves loosing ground to an enemy they can’t seem to get an edge up on no matter how much they do, no matter how many political victories they score. When all you have are lies to win the war with, then the war is lost. But you go into battle with what you have. And as I said, the saving grace of all this is that the more they loose, the more vehement they become. And then people start to notice something.
People like Glenn Sacks. Sacks, a columnist whose focus is on men’s and fathers’ issues, specifically on the father’s rights movement, but also on men’s rights in general, took issue recently with Christian Newswire’s giving LaBarbera a forum to dump his poison into the political dialogue…
Mercifully, most opponents of gay marriage are not anti-gay bigots like LaBarbera. I have no problem with gay marriage and gay rights, but however one feels about gay marriage, it has nothing to do with the decline of the American family. The real threat to American families is not gay marriage but instead divorce and a family law system which separates millions of children from the fathers they love and need.
Sacks provided his readers with a handy link they could use to tell Christian Newswire what they thought of LaBarbera’s bigotry. Naturally, LaBarbera couldn’t take that laying down. As Sacks reported in a follow up post, LaBarbera responded in his own characteristically measured and thoughtful way…
Are you a homosexual, Glenn?
More of that exchange Here. Here’s where it get’s interesting. LaBarbera sent an alarm out to dozens of religious right groups, calling Sack’s post arrogant and harmful to the movement. You get the sense from Sacks’ follow-up post that he expected better from the movement’s leaders then he got. But almost any gay American citizen could have told him what to expect…
In a letter to me cc’d to dozens of Christian leaders, LaBarbera called my post "arrogant and harmful" and sent a follow-up letter asking "Are you a homosexual, Glenn?" A lively debate ensued, in which many Christian leaders wrote to me.
What I expected was that many of them would say something along the lines of "We agree that Peter LaBarbera’s views are extreme and we don’t support them, but we do believe that gay marriage is harmful." While I don’t believe that gay marriage is harmful, I do not now nor have I ever believed that all who oppose gay marriage are anti-gay.
I taught in Christian high-schools for several years and the religious leaders always told me that the Christian teaching on gays is to "Love the sinner, hate the sin." If Christians want to have credibility on opposing gay marriage, they must also oppose anti-gay bigotry, and I expected that many of them would.
Instead, I’ve been disappointed and at times floored by the unreserved support some have shown LaBarbera, including many letters with the subject line "I Stand with Peter."
Many of these are major figures. For example, Janet M. LaRue, Chief Counsel for Concerned for America, wrote:
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"…I know Pete LaBarbera. Pete LaBarbera is a friend of mine.
Christian radio host/author Janet Folger Porter wrote:
Peter LaBarbera is the best example of what Christians should be doing…Peter’s comments have been nothing but honest, loving, and courageous.
Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel and Scott Lively, president of Defend the Family, signed on to the "I Stand with Peter" letter. Lively, apparently referring to me, wrote:
Who is this uncircumcised Philistine who challenges the army of the Living God?
Lively adds
You obviously don’t have a clue about the role of the homosexual movement in the disintegration of the natural family model in America. Without the "gays’" largely hidden but relentless anti-family social-engineering campaign since the 1940s, there wouldn’t be a fathers’ rights crisis in our land.
Hetersoexual divorce and out-of-wedlock births are the fault of gays? Lively is right–I certainly missed that one.
Townhall columnist Robert Knight of Coral Ridge Ministries writes:
Peter LaBarbera is a courageous, talented and honest advocate for the truth who will not back down in the face of vicious attacks or smear campaigns. He has said nothing that is not backed by voluminous evidence…
He has exposed the relentless and reckless promotion of behavior that is documentably dangerous and soul-destroying. That’s the face of real compassion, not the ersatz concern of people who pat homosexuals on the head, watch them go off a cliff into disease, drugs, alcohol, and suicide, and then blame others for not going along with the fictions that homosexuality is harmless and inevitable.
Ingrid Schlueter of the VCY America Radio Network writes:
Peter, unlike most evangelicals today, has the testosterone to challenge those who pervert Scripture, pervert sexuality, and insist that everyone accept it as normal. He has my absolute support…
Phil Burress, Chairman of Equal Rights not Special Rights, writes:
Peter LaBarbera is my friend and I want to be named alongside him the next time you attack him for telling the truth.
It goes on and on…with Sacks just staring dumbfounded…
Peter Sprigg, Senior Director of Culture Studies of the Family Research Council, did give an answer to my question "If Peter LaBarbera’s statement isn’t bigoted, what is?", writing:
Fred Phelps, who says "God hates f-gs," is bigoted. Peter LaBarbera is not.
Both Phelps and LaBarbera are bigoted, but I would agree with Sprigg that Phelps is far worse.
Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International and author of Leaving Homosexuality, defended LaBarbera, writing:
Peter may not always say the right thing, but who one of us does? As Christians I think we ought to go to our brother or sister when we think they have missed the mark before we do a blog post on it…
I’m fully aware that people sometimes don’t always express themselves the way they would like to, and I’ve certainly said things on TV and the radio that I could have phrased better. But Peter’s views that I criticized are ones that he has written on many occasions–it’s fair to characterize them as his views and criticize them.
Chambers also states that he is "unalterably convinced that Peter indeed loves sinners and cares about their eternities more than the policies he fights for." All I can say is that if this is true, Peter is uncharacteristically shy about letting the public know about it.
That Chambers would be quick to come to LaBarbera’s defense is interesting for the controversy that’s been actively reported on over at Box Turtle Bulletin, concerning Exodus participation in a Ugandian conference on homosexuality. Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively was a speaker and once again ginned up anti-gay passions in a land torn by genocide, by claiming that genocide is the work of homosexuals, while Exodus board member Don Schmierer sat and smiled. Jim Burroway and Timothy Kincaid have been asking Exodus to repudiate board member Don Schmierer’s participation in the conference, which included calls for wholesale witchhunting and imprisoning of gay people in Uganda. To date, other then a squalid bit of both-sides-of-the-mouth boilerplate PR, Exodus has remained silent. Gay people are killed time and again in the venomous hostility created by hatemongers like LaBarbera and Lively, and Exodus, which laughably claims to be a non-political faith group that only seeks to heal unwanted "same sex attractions" acknowledges with President Alan Chamber’s defense of LaBarbera, that the blood of all those innocents is on its hands too. As Christians Alan, you ought to consider whether your words bring peace to the world, or inflame passions. But then, your Christianity is as thin as your ersatz love for those gay poeple who had more courage and stronger inner resources of character then you could ever muster in your own life, isn’t it Alan?
Sacks ends the exchange with this…
In conclusion, I’m surprised and rather disappointed. Is Peter LaBarbera really representative of modern Christian thought? I don’t believe that–I believe Christians are much better than that. I have a very hard time imagining the many hard-working, devoted religious faculties I once worked with holding LaBarbera’s views. But in general this recent exchange doesn’t do much to support my optimism.
LaBarbera isn’t representative of modern Christian thought. He’s merely and utterly representative of a certain kind of American culture warrior…the kook pews…the ones who are still arguing that giving women and non-property owners the vote is what ruined America. And no doubt the darkies too. There is a good deal more to Christianity then this little corner of the human gutter. You thought they were better then this. A lot of people do. Welcome to the other side of the public face…the side that has been spitting in the faces of your gay and lesbian neighbors for decades now.
Yes…it’s pretty awful. But you needed to see this. Just remember what Nietzsche said about staring into an abyss. You have to keep reminding yourself that there is more to humanity, let alone to Christianity, then this.
"Last June, a "500-year flood" ushered millions of gallons of water through eastern Iowa. In Cedar Rapids alone, more than 25,000 individuals were displaced in one day. Hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage was done. The Flood of 2008 is arguably the most destructive disaster that the state of Iowa has seen — at least, that is, until last Friday… Flood waters erode the soil. "Gay marriage" erodes the soul. A flood impacts for a decade. "Same-sex marriage" destroys generations. A flood draws a community together. "Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart. Communities recover from floods. The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence," – pastor Eric Schumacker, Baptist Press.
I’m 55, and single, and it’s looking now as though that is how my life will always be. And I blame hatemongers like Schumacker for that. The ones for whom hating gay people just isn’t enough. The ones whose cheap bar stool hatreds have to be shared by everyone for them to feel good about themselves. The ones who teach gay kid like the one I was once upon a time to hate themselves, just as much as their haters do, driving their knives deep into hearts only just learning what it is to feel desire, and glimpse a world of romance, trust, and tender joyful companionship. The ones that drive a knife deep into a kid’s capacity to love themselves, let alone anyone else, and who do it, with a smile in the name of God, and once again in the name of Jesus, and then one more time in name of love. I might have found a love of my own by now, were it not for gutter crawling human hating maggots like pastor Schumacker, who had to make me, and other human beings like me who mate to our own sex instead of the opposite, into their scapegoats for all the cheap failures of character within themselves. We had to be monsters, so he could be righteous…and monsters aren’t allowed to love.
It isn’t that I reject the theology, although I do. Somehow, all the little rules and regulations that come along with being a Christian as the kook pews percieve Christianity to be, don’t translate into loving your neighbor. Or rather…love consists of sticking a little dagger with Jesus’ name engraved on it into your neighbor’s heart and praising God. The earth was not created in six days…the rocks in the ground say different, and if God is that which created all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be, then the rock, not the word, is the testament of God, the original manuscript, God’s own handwriting. But even the word means only what the reader says it means, and it seems, especially so when it’s telling you to love your neighbor. Ah yes…love… Feel the love for their gay neighbors in this life here: "Gay marriage" erodes the soul. No. Hate does. And I have fought so very hard to keep it from eroding mine all my life, and especially whenever someone tries to put their Jesus dagger into my heart in the name of love.
We love you…stab stab stab…Can you feel our love? Stab Stab Stab… You may never know how hard that personal inner battle has been for me, or the cost. I get angry. Livid. And I am all alone with it, with no companion of the heart to talk to, no smile to look for whenever I need reminding that life is good, and that the haters, the bigots, the human vampires who suck the love out of everything they look at aren’t important. No hand to put into mine. No companion of the soul to put my arms around for a little while, and feel that life is good and the world makes sense after all. I put my head down on the pillow every night it seems, just a little bit angrier then the night before, just a little bit angrier then I thought it was humanly possible to be angry. And I am all alone with it. Alone with it, and the memories of all the near misses I’ve had in my life, when love seemed like it might just be possible after all, only to have that chance snatched away from me once again, in the name of love.
The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence… But murdering another person’s ability to love, and accept love from another, apparently does not in his bible. I would give up everything I have to have had the love of my life beside me. I would wash dishes for the rest of my life, dig ditches, clean pigsties, live without anything but the clothes on my back to have had his smile to look at, and his hand to hold every now and then. I would spend forever in Hell, knowing that even an eternity of pain could not touch the love I had shared once. I could survive in Hell forever with that smile to remember, those moments spent in the arms of the one I loved. If you don’t know what I am talking about then you have never loved and I feel sorry for you.
Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart… All the gay children who were thrown out the door like they were so much human garbage. All the gay sons and daughters who will go to their grave remembering the sound of their parent’s voices as they told them to burn in hell. All the grieving parents who will go to their graves remembering how they drove their own children to suicide for the glory of God. All the lonely people, bearing the wounds on their hearts that keep them from reaching out to another in trust, and then in love. I dated one of these once and naively thought that if I loved him wholeheartedly I could heal that wound. But even love can’t heal a wound that someone blames their own existence for.
Un-natural unions… I know what Jesus would want me to do. I have to forgive him. I understand it. I understand the necessity of it. Jesus, whatever you think he was, was absolutely right about this one thing: we must love one another. This poor world tears itself apart a little more every day with hate. He would tell me I have to forgive this man, and all the others like him, who put all those knife marks on my heart. And I can’t. This world is so much poorer, and meaner, and smaller for the likes of him, and all for nothing more then so Schumacker can imagine the monster he sees every morning in the bathroom mirror is some other person, some other convenient scapegoat. So many broken hearts, turned into someone else’s angel wings. So many lost dreams of love and peace and joy, turned into other people’s stepping stones to heaven. They say God never gives us a greater burden then we can bear, and some days I think that what I am being spared is that I will never know how, I will never know why, some folks can walk to heaven on the broken hopes and dreams of their neighbors with little tears of joy in their eyes. It’s not that I reject the theology, it’s that I can’t forgive. I just…can’t. And that is why I am not a Christian.
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
-Edgar Watson Howe
You Can’t Punish A Group Because You Don’t Like Them. Unless I Don’t Like Them Either. Then It’s Okay…
Via Box Turtle Bulletin . Congressman Daniel Lungren complains that congress, in its outrage over bonuses paid to the AIG group that wreaked the company, and oh by the way, the entire world economy, is ignoring the constitution…
Here are the facts: in the stimulus package an amendment was adopted that the Majority put in stating that provisions in the TARP and stimulus bills that limited compensation payments would not apply to ‘any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009.’ It was written specifically to protect the very bonuses that we’re talking about here today. And so now we’re asking how do we undo what we did? And the Majority has brought to us a bill that doesn’t recognize the truth of the Constitution. There is something called a bill of attainder. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. You can’t have them treated more onerously than somebody else without a trial.
Now, that’s an unfortunate truth that we have to deal with. How can we deal with it? Yesterday in the Judiciary Committee we had an alternative using bankruptcy principles, but that hasn’t been brought to the floor because it’s arguably constitutional. This is to get headlines to show we are outraged. Let me tell you if we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Because in the future what we will do is say, we have a precedent that when we have an unpopular group, when we have a group that deserves some punishment, we won’t go through the real laws.
Emphasis mine. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. If we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Ya think?
In the post Scott mentioned earlier, Dreher insists that the jarring juxtaposition that occasioned many readers to question his values and priorities, has been the subject of a significant misinterpretation. It’s the surprisingness of the "bisexuality is cool" claim that motivated his post, not it’s relative wrongness.
Many commenters remain, understandably, unpersuaded by his effort to explain his bizarre post. But it’s necessary to take Dreher at his word to fully grasp the depravity of his position. So let’s grant him: a) that a remark by one (horribly traumatized) parent is sufficient evidence to to grant that bisexuality is indeed "cool" in the high school culture of one East Texas town, and b) that while this doesn’t rise to the level of parricide in an index of moral wrongs, it is a disturbing and troubling trend that suggests something that was once right with the world has gone wrong.
The nature of the typical experience of non-heterosexual adolescents in our schools and our society is hardly a secret. The ostracization and bullying of those suspected to be non-heterosexual takes an enormous psychological toll, and has life and death consequences, as evidenced higher rates of depression and suicide amongst non-heterosexual youth. They typically live in fear: fear that something is horribly wrong with them, fear of being rejected by their friends and family, and fear of violence. But: in one small town, at least for some non-heterosexual youth, there’s a chance this status quo might be changing. For anyone whose moral worldview contains any compassion, changes to this horrific status quo are a sign of hope. For Dreher, it’s the precise opposite.
Dreher was adamant in that post that he was "so keeping his kids away" from modern American culture, if that meant a toleration of bisexuality…let alone one supposes homosexuality. But what if one of those poor kids is gay themselves?
Tens of thousands of gay kid come of age in that hostile environment every generation and many of them don’t make it to adulthood alive. And it’s a fact that many of their parents would actually rather they killed themselves, or were killed, then grew up to be happy, contented gay adults. It doesn’t take much to imagine where Dreher fits in. He reads a horrific news article about a home invasion massacre, and instead of grieving for the dead kids, their mother, and the father who has to now carry those horrible memories to his grave, he goes on a rant about something the father said offhandedly about how cool bisexuality was in his town. I read something like this and I can’t get out of my head how horrible their last moments must have been (which is why I avoid crime stories in the newspapers). Dreher, reads it and is just stunned by the fact that bisexuals in one small East Texas town aren’t hated.
This is eminently typical of what hate does to a person’s conscience. This is the conscience of the culture warriors. Look at it if you have the stomach for it. There is the Pit, grinning back at you. The grotesque indifference to human life in that crime story, and in Dreher’s callow, superficial response to it, are of a single piece. What is more shocking then the murder of a man’s entire family? Why…bisexuality of course.
Don’t look for too long. Nietzsche was right about the dangers of staring into an Abyss.
Exactly what Lopez said in Matteson’s class is unclear. Lopez turned down an interview request, Matteson did not respond to e-mails, and French said he did not know enough about the speech to detail it.
So we still don’t know what it was he actually said. And that’s the crux of the entire episode. But…dig it. Lopez, the kid who is suing (through the courtesy of the culture warriors at the Alliance Defense Fund), isn’t saying. Now…why would he not want to tell anyone what it was he actually said? Better yet…why would couldn’t the reporters covering this story not be bothered to find out?
His Alliance Defense Fund mouthpiece (French) says Lopez spoke two verses from the bible that "had nothing to do with homosexuality." But…look at this…he’s not saying what they were. If he knows for a fact that they had nothing to do with homosexuality, then he knows what they were and he can tell the reporters what they were. If he doesn’t know what Lopez actually said then he can’t say that they had nothing to do with homosexuality.
They’re being very evasive here. It’s not hard to figure why.
Scott Lively, author of the revisionist Pink Swastika, is in Uganda. Lively has previously traveled to eastern Europe, and the former Soviet block, to tell the people there that the Nazis who massacred millions of Slavs during World War II were homosexuals. Here’s what I wrote about it a year ago January…
Alex Shevchenko has been arraigned for a hate crime tied to the assault and eventual death of Satender Singh in July. According to prosecutors, Mr. Shevchenko and Andrey Vusik taunted Mr. Singh in a park because they thought he was gay. Mr. Vusik eventually threw a punch that toppled Singh, dashing his head, they charge.
Gay leaders in Sacramento say the incident followed several years of escalating tensions with some Slavic immigrants.
"The gut feeling of the [gay] community is that preaching among the local Russian evangelical community is breeding hate and that something would happen. And Satender was the something that happened," says Ed Bennett, a gay Democratic activist.
While Slavic leaders say their community is being unfairly scapegoated for legitimate political protests and deeply held religious beliefs, some monitors warn that an emerging group called the Watchmen on the Walls may be fomenting a dangerous atmosphere within the ranks of Slavic immigrants here.
I’ll say it’s dangerous. Scott Lively, one of the group’s founders, is also the author of The Pink Triangle…a Holocaust revisionist book that argues that the Nazis were basically a homosexual movement and that rather then being among the victims of the Holocaust, homosexuals were the primary instigators of it. Consider that Lively is now preaching this message to Slavs in what was the eastern Soviet bloc at one time…a people who suffered a staggering loss of life at the hands of the Nazis during world war two…
Videos of Watchmen conferences abroad suggest some leaders are less modulated, and their audience less against violence. One video shows Lively giving a version of Singh’s killing different from reported facts, including the notion that Singh was undressing in front of children. The audience cheered twice as Lively recounted the punch and the death of Singh – a reaction Lively rebuked, saying: "We don’t want homosexuals to be killed. We want them to be saved."
The camera was on and Lively knew it. There is no way on God’s green earth Lively doesn’t know the impact his message that the Nazis were homosexuals and homosexuals are all basically Nazis has on this particular group of people. He knows Exactly what he’s doing. He has never publicly condemned the killing of Satender Singh by a group of young Slav men in Sacramento. There’s a reason for that.
Eastern Europe taken care of, and sufficiently incited to murder, Lively has now traveled to Africa, with basically the same message: African genocide is caused by homosexuals…it is the homosexuals who are killing Africans… Jim Burroway reports…
According to anonymous blogger GayUganda — as we said, Ugandan gay bloggers need to remain anonymous for their own safety — American Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively provided the much-anticipated red meat on day three of the anti-gay conference taking place in Kampala.
On Saturday, Lively repeated his discredited historical revisionist theory in which he claims that the cornerstone of Germany’s Nazi lies firmly in the gay movement, and that the gay movement today, if left unchecked, will result in a similarly murderous fascism wherever it goes. In Kampala, he went further by expanding his examples of what he calls homosexuals’ murderous impulse by blaming the 1994 Rwanda genocide on gay men.
Now consider the environment Lively is pouring his gasoline into…
Lively was asked about the current state of Ugandan law, which provides for a life sentence for homosexuality. Lively reportedly approved of the existing law, and endorsed adding a provision mandating forcing convicted gay men and women into ex-gay therapy. Conference speakers had called for such a law on the second day of the conference. Adding more fuel to the fire, GayUganda had earlier noticed that this apparent press release was posted on The Earth Times:
Kampala Anti-gay activists in Uganda Saturday formed a pressure group to discourage homosexuality, following a two-day conference of religious leaders, teachers and social workers in the capital Kampala.
The group, to be called the Anti-Gay Task Force, is intended to “fight against the spread of homosexuality and lesbianism in the country,” spokesman for the group Stephen Langa told reporters. Same sex-relationships and marriages are illegal in Uganda, and human rights groups have criticized the government for harassing homosexuals.
The task-force said that it would one day “wipe out” gay practices in the African state.
The threat to “‘wipe out’ gay practices” is not an idle threat in a nation that provides a life sentence for those convicted of homosexuality. Further, Uganda witnessed at least three seperate campaigns of government sanctioned and media-led vigilantism between 2005 and 2007. The last spate of violence was sparked by a press conference of LGBT leaders calling on the nation to simply allow gays and lesbians to live in peace. The LGBT leaders at the conference wore face masks out of fear of being identified.
This conference poses a very dangerous development in a country with such a volatile history in how it treats gays and lesbians.
Which is precisely what Lively went there to accomplish. Is there any doubt now that this man wants to rise the mob against gay people, in order to enact his final solution? This is deliberate incitement to violence. There is just no mistaking it for anything else. Like so many other Culture Warriors, Lively wants gay people dead. But unlike most of the others, he has a plan to accomplish it. Step one: Go to nation that has suffered genocide. Step Two: Teach the people of that nation that the ones who killed their kinfolk were homosexuals. Step Three …
Satendar Singh was a native of Fiji. At age 19 he immigrated to the USA and lived with relatives in the Sacramento, California area. He worked at an AT&T call center. He was well liked by both his co-workers and friends.
On Sunday afternoon July 1, 2007 he and 6 friends, reportedly 3 couples of Indian and Fijian descent, were partying at a California State park at Lake Natoma, east of Sacramento. Trouble broke out between Singh’s group and another group, reportedly Russian speaking and of Russian descent. Verbal assaults were traded between the groups. The Russian group allegedly made racist and homophobic comments to Singh’s group and singled him out for homophobic comments.
About 8pm that evening as Singh’s group was leaving, the men of the Russian group confronted Singh’s group in the parking lot. During the confrontation one man punched Satendar Singh in the face and Singh fell backward hitting his head. Singh slipped into a coma never to regain consciousness. Four days later on July 5, 2007, family removed Satendar Singh from life support and he died.
A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.
"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.
If you’re surprised about this then you haven’t traveled much in the bible belt. I see more highway billboards advertising strip shows and adult entertainment dives when I take a road trip through the Fundamentalist States of America then anywhere else, except maybe Nevada. But at least there they aren’t hypocritical about it. Oh…and guess who is the biggest consumer of online porn in the nation.
The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.
Utah. Where marriage is so sacred they pour millions into California last year to prevent loving same sex couples from being allowed to marry. Nice. The magic underwear isn’t working so well I take it. Or perhaps too well. Perhaps it was all part of a plan on the part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to drain money out of the faithful’s porn budgets.
Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code’s religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.
Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.
I keep thumping my pulpit on this but it keeps being relevant. They need their scapegoats. Gay people are their handy punching bags for all their own private secret shame, their own pathetic failures of moral character. They hate us, because we learned to live with our sexual nature and they, locking it in the closet, never learned how to control themselves.
Denial isn’t a plan for life. The human identity isn’t a blackboard anyone can scribble their will upon. Least of all religions founded by con artists. No river rises higher then its source.
The anti-gay American Family Association is calling now, for a boycott of Pepsi. Seems they’re none too happy that Pepsi treats its gay customers like something other then human garbage. Here’s their email alert to the faithful…
Dear ****,
Pepsi has produced another TV ad not only promoting Pepsi but also promoting the gay lifestyle. Click here to see the ad.
Pepsi had released a similar ad before. The ads serve two purposes for Pepsi: to sell Pepsi and to promote the homosexual lifestyle. AFA asked Pepsi to remain neutral in the culture war, but the company refused – choosing to support the homosexual activists.
Pepsi has made no effort to hide their support for the homosexual agenda:
Pepsi gave a total of $1,000,000 to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to promote the homosexual lifestyle in the workplace.
Both HRC and PFLAG supported efforts in California to defeat Proposition 8 which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. HRC, which received $500,000 from Pepsi, gave $2.3 million to defeat Proposition 8.
Pepsi forces employees to attend sexual orientation and gender diversity training where the employees are taught to accept homosexuality.
Pepsi is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
Take Action!
So you folks in the kook pews are going to drink…what…from now on? Coke? Coca Cola company gets a 100 Percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign. Hmmm. Well…you Could do 7-Up, which is owned by Dr Pepper/Snapple…but only here in the U.S. Elsewhere it’s owned by…Pepsi.
Jonathan Rauch, who writes from time to time like he has common sense, joins hands with a bigot to announce they two have found common ground. Wow…common ground…
In politics, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now.
It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.
I see. Well that sounds like a plan all right. And it would work too…right up to the point that something like this happens…
One moment everything was fine. You were in your stateroom on the cruise ship — it was to be an anniversary cruise — unpacking your things. The kids were in the adjoining stateroom playing with your wife. Suddenly, they banged on the door crying that mom was hurt.
So now you’re in the hospital — Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami — waiting for word, and it’s not coming. They tell you, Joe (we’ll call you Joe) you can’t be with her. You plead with them, to no avail. No, Joe, sorry, Joe, we can’t tell you anything.
One hour turns to two, two to four, four to six. Your wife is dying and no one she loves is there.
Finally, in the eighth hour, you reach her bedside. You are just in time to stand beside the priest as he administers last rites.
Your wife is dead. Her name was Lisa Marie Pond. She was 39.
It happened, Feb. 18-19, 2007, except that Pond’s spouse was not a man named Joe, but a woman named Janice. And there’s one other detail. Janice Langbehn who, as it happens, is an emergency room social worker from Lacey, Wash., says the first hospital employee she spoke with was an emergency room social worker. She thought, given their professional connection, they might speak a common language.
Instead, she says, he told her, "I need you to know you are in an anti-gay city and state and you won’t get to know about Lisa’s condition or see her" — then turned and walked away.
Now consider what the legal status of that couple would be in a hospital run by a "religious organization", as many increasingly are, within the scope of your…compromise. Oh…I know…just tell the ambulance driver not to take your dying spouse to the closest available emergency room if it’s owned by a church.
Right. Something like this happens and that artifice of civility you’re trying to prop up comes crashing right back down in flames again Jonathan. And what we see in the wreckage, once again, sickeningly but clearly…very clearly…is how much your new found friends hate us, how bottomless that hate is. And…oh by the way…they hate you too. You knew that, right?
I have a question Jonathan. Who do you think you are talking to? Someone who can see a human being when they look at homosexuals? Someone who wants the same decency and common civility to flourish in society, and nurture the best within its citizens? Are you smoking crack? Are you drunk? Did banging your head against that impenetrable wall that is Blankenhorn’s cheapshit bar stool prejudices for years make you simple? Read your own goddamned newsprint jackass. The open sewer that is your pal’s conscience is right here, laughing in your face:
Whatever our disagreements on the merits of gay marriage, we agree on two facts. First, most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage. Second, many Americans of faith and many religious organizations have strong objections to same-sex unions. Neither of those realities is likely to change any time soon.
I’m sorry…you’ve been "discussing" this issue with Blankenhorn for…how long now…? And finally…Finally…you get him to agree with you that "gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage"…? Well that’s a giant step forward all right. Look at that goddamn it! Just look at it! He isn’t agreeing that we need anything whatsoever, let alone the perquisites and protections of marriage, but only, and grudgingly, that we Feel like we do. I suppose Janice Langbehn was only pretending to be in anguish while her spouse was dying. But then don’t we all. Someday Jonathan, if either you or your husband find yourselves in that same situation, you’ll pretend to feel anguish too. It takes a lot of practice to mimic how attached heterosexuals are to their spouses and their families, doesn’t it Jonathan?
You’d think a civilized, let alone civil society would recognize such a basic human need. Certainly your pal Blankenhorn believes it does. But there’s the rub. Homosexuals aren’t human. They don’t need marriage, they only feel like they do. I guess because we’re jealous of how heterosexuals have real human needs and we don’t, or something. And you think that this is an improvement over whatever it was that he was thinking about gay people before you started having your discussions with him? What could that have possibly been? That we were only making noises about marriage to hear ourselves talk? Either you’ve never really looked down into that Pit that is the human capacity to hate, or you’ve been staring into it for too long. Either way, you just don’t seem to appreciate, or care, how much damage your bigot pal and his fellows in the kook pews have done to American society, let alone to civility.
A compromise…you say? I have a compromise for you. It’s called the constitution of the United States. That first amendment thing? What it doesn’t give your pal is the right to drop his church onto my back, or yours, or anyone else’s. He can build his church. He can worship in it. He can live his life as he sees fit. And all that America ever asked of him in return, is that he give his neighbor the same right. The compromise used to be this: in the public square, we were all equal, if not in the eyes of God, then at least in the eyes of the law.
Your pal and his neighbors in the kook pews absolutely despise that idea. And they have been waging a relentless scortched earth war against that American compromise for generations. How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who think being civil to heathens amounts to condoning sin? How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who believe that the basic premise of America is itself evil? They don’t call it a nation where Christians have freedom to worship…they call it a Christian nation. What is the compromise between those two things? I’ll tell you what it isn’t: The United States of America. Liberty and justice for all? Yes. So long as "all" means just the folks in the pews of Blankenhorn’s church. Civility doesn’t mean you have to allow your neighbor to sin. Why…that’s just the opposite of civility…
Meanwhile, back in Utah…another doomed search for common ground goes on…
A legislative committee defeated the last in a group of gay-rights bills presented to Utah lawmakers this year. As was the case with the others, committee members said the bill was not necessary and voiced concern about the law opening the door to gay marriage.
The bottom line is most conservative lawmakers just don’t believe any of these bills just address civil rights. Instead, the Common Ground bills were viewed as a "threat" to traditional marriage.
The last Common Ground bill would have affected medical visitation and inheritance. Changing the law could affect people outside the gay community as well. But the focus—and concern—was predominantly centered on gay rights.
They can’t even let same sex couples visit their spouses in the hospital. Civility anyone? Common ground? Here’s your common ground…
Today, the Utah state legislature “dealt a final blow” to the last of five gay rights bills taken up under the Common Ground Initiative, when it defeated a bill that would have granted gay couples rights of inheritance and medical decision-making. Yesterday, the state House rejected bills that would have allowed gay adoption and protected gays from housing and employment discrimination.
Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.” Some excerpts from the interview:
– To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts! But I don’t care.
– They say, I’m born that way. There’s some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol.
– They’re mean! They want to talk about being nice — they’re the meanest buggers I ever seen. It’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.
– I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society, because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman, the family. … And I believe that they’re, internally, they’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of. Yep, the radical gay movement.
He also said that gay people have no morals…that "It’s the beginning of the end. Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure. Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide." Oh…and bragged that he’d killed every bill in his judiciary committee that so much as smelled of gay rights. When this blew up in the media, the Utah Senate took swift action. They removed Buttars from his chairmanship. Oh…but not because they disagreed with him mind you…
"I want the citizens of Utah to know that the Utah Senate stands behind Senator Buttars’ right to speak, we stand behind him as one of our colleagues and his right to serve this state," [Senate President Michael] Waddoups said. "He is a senator who represents the point of view of many of his constituents and many of ours. We agree with many of the things he said. …We stand four square behind his right [to say what he wants]."
Waddoups refused repeatedly to clarify which of Buttars’ opinions are shared by himself or Senate leaders.
Emphasis mine. And to further clarify…
He said the decision to remove Buttars from the committees was ultimately his own as president, a move he made so the Senate could function smoothly. The judiciary committee, in recent years, has heard most of the bills dealing with gay and lesbian rights, and removing Buttars from his position would remove the "personalities" and focus on the issues, Waddoups said.
This was a PR move. They weren’t disgusted with the man…they just wanted him to stop saying to publically what they all believe. That homosexuals are not human beings. That homosexuals are destroying the world.
Civility. Common Ground. So you got Blankenhorn to agree that homosexuals Feel as though they need the protections of marriage did you Jonathan? Wow. Peace in our time. Do let us know when you’ve got him to the point where he agrees that we Feel a human heart beating in our chests. That would be…awesome.
A House committee rejected Rep. Jennifer Seelig’s HB160, which would have offered two, unmarried cohabiting adults — including same-sex couples — rights of inheritance and medical decision making for one another.
Nope. We can’t even allow same-sex couples to have inheritance rights, or make medical decisions if one is incapacitated. Let alone protect gays from job discrimination, let alone allow them to adopt. No common ground there. Same sex couples need to consider this carefully when planning trips that might take either or both of them into or through Utah. Getting sick or injured could be just the beginning of your nightmare in Mormonland.
I’m going to have a heart attack from this surprise.
Strong comments against the gay community were made recently by Utah senator Chris Buttars during work on the documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition" just a year since he called a black baby a "dark, ugly thing" on the Utah State Senate floor.
He compared gays to radical Muslims and suggested they may be America’s greatest threat, likening gay rights to "the beginning of the end." Although the footage has only been seen by Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate, some audio has been released.
Buttars describes gays as having "anything goes" morals, and "the meanest buggers" he’d ever seen; some comments were too graphic to include. He also takes credit for "killing" every bill related to gay rights in the Utah State Senate since 2001.
"What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that because anything goes."
"They’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of."
Common ground. You folks out there just keep right on searching for that common ground. And when some gay basher splits your head open because he’s been told that gays, with their anything goes morality, are the greatest threat to America, you’ll have found it. Common ground.
Jim Burroway makes a good catch I’d missed when looking at the new anti-gay ad campaign created by Campaign Secrets…the one that shows an unseen gay sniper putting a family and more specifically their little children in the crosshairs. This one is good…it really says it all…
By the way, we also learn that public schools no longer celebrate Father’s Day. Wait a minute. That couldn’t be because it’s celebrated on the third Sunday in June while school’s out, could it? Naah, it’s a much better story when it’s all the gays’ fault.
Dig it. Never mind that Father’s Day happens after the school year ends…just remember that the homosexuals have forced schools to stop celebrating Father’s Day.
Now…this kind of crap may actually fool a lot of people, not all of whom necessarily want someone to feed them pre-fabricated lies about gays they can pass around without taking responsibility for it. Some people will actually hear this and think…Wow…the gays took Father’s Day out of the schools… But you know goddamned well the people who made that ad knew that it was horseshit, and almost certainly so did the folks who bought it. And it’s a safe bet that its target audience doesn’t care if it’s truthful or not.
There’s your moral crusade right there. There’s your righteousness.
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