…via ScienceBlogs – Dispatches From The Culture Wars, which you should read:

A reader sends along this link, which he says is not a parody but is actually a serious statement by a guy named Matthew Stucky. He says that Santa Claus (which he spells Clause, for some reason) is satanic and is "corrupting people all over the world." Oh, and the reindeer are all gay. Seriously.

So I go take a look…

Santa Clause
1. He knows if a person has been naughty or nice. He is omniscient.
2. If a person has been nice then he will give them gifts.
3. If they have been naughty then they get a lump of coal.
4. Most people are good enough to receive gifts & few get a lump of coal.
5. Santa somehow has the ability to give gifts to the entire world in one time although that would be scientifically impossible. He is basically omnipresent and omniscient.
6. The word for Holy in Spanish is Santa. This gives the world the perception that a man can be a really good person & this makes Santa Clause a mock of God. 

Okay…

Santa’s queer reindeer:
Take a look at the names of the 8 reindeer.
Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Dancer, Dasher, Donder, Prancer and Vixen.

The person who originally came up with these names probably did not have this intent. They probably originally had some of the reindeer as male & some as female. However, the animated movie that was made in 1964 had a different idea. In the movie all 8 of these reindeer were male reindeer. Take a look at those names again. Male reindeer named Dancer, Prancer, Vixen & Cupid?!?!?!

Let’s start with Vixen in the dictionary:
1 : a shrewish ill-tempered woman 2 : a female fox 3 : a sexually attractive woman

So Vixen is a queer. It’s nice to know the creators of this sweet innocent cartoon were so concerned with young kids who would be watching.

Cupid
1: the Roman god of erotic love — compare eros 2 not capitalized : a figure that represents Cupid as a naked usually winged boy often holding a bow and arrow

Dancer & Prancer certainly sound like feminine terms as well.

I think from these names we know Vixen, Dancer, Prancer & Cupid are queer reindeer.

Let’s go back to the story from the animated movie with Rudolph. Rudolph gets shy around girls & his nose turns red. As a result, the other reindeer won’t let him play any reindeer games. That sounds sick, perverted & homosexual. Basically Rudolph like girls because he is straight & as a result they don’t let him participate in their homosexual games.

People are going to read this & say I’m crazy but hasn’t Hollywood always been trying to pump in homosexual themes into kids movies & cartoons. One of the teletubbies is gay. Bert & Ernie are gay. In Scooby Doo Greg is gay. Hollywood has always had agendas they are trying to push and one of those major agendas is homosexuality is ok. It’s no big deal. Another one they are trying to push is "It’s ok for women to work."

The truth is Santa Clause is being used by Satan to corrupt kids at a very young age. This is much like in the Disney movies which are littered with sexual content, homosexuality, etc… A woman falling in love with an animal(Beauty & the Beast). A grown man who wants to hang around little boys all day(Peter Pan). Peter Pan is also always played by women in plays because he is a long haired looking faggot in the movie.

We as Christians need to separate ourselves from this kind of garbage. You can say I’m crazy but Satan Clause is corrupting kids & we ought to have nothing to do with it. We ought to keep our kids away from these fun little animated shows that came from Hollywood. It came from the world so it’s not of God. 1 John 2:15-16 "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."

Leviticus 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

According to the Bible homosexuality should be punishable by death. I would be overjoyed if every single queer in the entire world died today. The Bible makes it clear they are reprobates who are past the point of salvation. The Bible also makes it clear they are rapists & very wicked people. They have no chance to get saved and no saved person could ever become a queer. Therefore, I would be overjoyed if they all died tonight & our government would actually follow what the Bible states. The death penalty should be enacted for the queers.

Matthew Stucky 

Just one screwy little blogger boy you say?  Yes.  Of course.  But there’s your grass roots.  Right there.  The fertile soil decades of pulpit thumping against the Homosexual Threat was meant to take root in.  Check out his goals for the new year…

Personal Physical Goals
1. Get my mile time under 5 minutes & keep it there for the entire year.
2. Run a marathon.
3. Bench 250 lbs.
4. Leg Press 900 lbs.
5. Get my 6 pack abs back before the end of January & keep it for the entire year.
6. Dunk a basketball.
7. Maintain my side to side split but be able to do one front to back both with left leg forward & right leg forward.
8. Learn how to do a front flip.
9. Learn how to do a back flip.
10. Be able to flat jump on the pulpit by the end of the year. 

Nice.  He also wants to "Personally lead 1000 people to the Lord" this year.  No word on how many homosexuals he intends to kill.  I suppose we’ll find that out eventually.

Good thing I’m not a Mormon though.  Then I’d have to endure angry threats and rhetoric.

Steve Fidel over at the Mormon Times complains, Thusly ….

For those who have (correctly) assumed the editor of a Web site called MormonTimes.com is a Mormon, I’ve been called on to be an insider in this discussion by those looking for support for their views against same-sex marriage. As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Goodness gracious.  

Another Gay Bashing Mars Vancouver

Two men walking in Vancouver’s Davie neighborhood were targeted for attack in still another anti-gay incident in the gay-friendly area.

The attack took place on the evening of Dec. 4 at around 8:00 p.m., according to a Dec. 8 article posted online at Canadian Web site Xtra!.

Chris Hiller was quoted as saying that he and his boyfriend had just come out of a gay bar and were walking along the sidewalk holding hands.

Hiller noted that he knew another person was following behind, but the presence of the other individual did not alarm him until, Hiller said, "my friend goes, ’Come on, Chris, let’s keep walking,’ and next thing I know I’m on the ground with my face covered in blood and dazed, and my friend’s gone to get help."

Hiller did not see his attacker, but he said that he heard the man utter the words, "You fag, I’m going to beat the shit out of you, I don’t like you, stay away from me."

Added the alleged attacker, "Don’t even come near me, you fag."

The article said that Hiller recounted being stuck on the jaw and then receiving a blow right to the teeth.

The article quoted Hiller as saying that he was down for "about four to five minutes," at which point, "I got up and I’m woozy and staggering a bit."

Hiller continued, "I couldn’t see for a few minutes, and then I sat down."

Police arrived a few minutes later in response to the call Hiller’s boyfriend placed, but by then the alleged attacker was long gone.

Hiller was taken to a local hospital.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Wow…

Assault Conviction Tossed Out in 2005 Dwan Prince Attack

A state appellate court reversed Steven Pomie’s conviction on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree assault as a hate crime in the 2005 anti-gay attack on Dwan Prince, ordered a new trial for Pomie, and said he could only be tried on lesser charges of second-degree assault and second-degree assault as a hate crime.

The assault, which happened in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section, left Prince permanently disabled and unable to work.

Note that three of the four appellate judges in that case, Peter B. Skelos, Robert A. Lifson, and William F. Mastro, were appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki.  Oh…and Skelos is the brother of Dean Skelos, currently the Republican majority leader in the State Senate.  You know…the guy who has been single handedly blocking a vote on same-sex marriage in New York for the past several years.

In 2005, Lifson was one of three judges on a five-judge panel who barred a gay man from bringing a wrongful death suit against St. Vincent’s Hospital after his partner died there. The majority ruled that only a spouse could bring such a case and that the couple’s Vermont civil union did not confer that status on the surviving partner. That same gay man won a 2008 case that sought a benefit from an insurance company for his partner’s death. Mastro was one of two judges who dissented from that ruling from a five-judge panel.

We can only assume it would have been even worse for the spouse, had he been a heterosexual Mormon suing for the wrongful death of his legally married wife.  Who knows what angry threats and rhetoric he’d have had to endure then.

So…I write back to Mr Mormon Times Fidel…Thusly…

"As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right."

I see.  Tell you what…  Walk down almost any street in America holding another man’s hand and see what kind of angry threats and rhetoric you get.  That’s all.  Just holding hands.  That simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of heart-to-heart love is enough to get your head bashed-in, in a lot of places.   And you don’t even have to be gay to get gay bashed either, as Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay found out.  A couple brothers walking down the street arm-in-arm and suddenly an SUV full of angry young men jumps out at them and one of them has an aluminum baseball bat in his hand.  And now Jose, alas, is dead.  And his brother will take the memory of that night to his grave.  Or if holding another man’s hand is too much for you, just try putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your car.  You might get what happened to a lesbian in Richmond California last week when four young men saw the rainbow sticker on her car.  All those ads your church paid for warning Californians that the homos were coming into the schools for their kids sure paid off didn’t they?  You wrote that sentence I quoted above for your fellow Mormons to read so you could all nod your heads together about how hateful the gays are, didn’t you?

I love it when the faithful complain that teh gays are trying to elevate behavior to the level of a civil right.  You’re a Mormon…right?  Well…no.  You aren’t.  Mormon is just a behavior.  It isn’t what you are, it’s what you do.  You attend church.  You do whatever church activities it is that Mormons do.  And it came to pass you read the Book of Mormon.  You wear the magic underwear.  Mormon is something you do, not something you are.   See?  And we don’t want to be elevating behavior to the status of civil right now do we?

Jackass. 

—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

Which is about as much calm and respectful dialogue as I can manage at the moment.  It’s too early in the morning here in Baltimore for me to be getting angry at knuckle-dragging morons. 

What you have to understand about the fundamentalist mindset is that it isn’t just gay people they hate.  It’s everyone.

For those who believe that Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry–and its portrayal of evangelical preachers as hypocritical frauds–offers the last word on conservative Christianity, Rick Warren cannot possibly be a force for good. I have yet to let Jesus enter my life, but I admire Warren. We once appeared on a panel together along with Harvard’s Peter Gomes at the Aspen Ideas Festival. When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding–and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps. My reaction was that either you believe that Jesus is the savior or you do not, and I found myself impressed that Warren remained true to his convictions, knowing full well that the audience would not like what he said.

–Alan Wolfe, The New Republic

Emphasis mine. You can suppose Wolfe would be equally impressed that Al Capone remained true to his conviction that crime pays.  Anyone who thinks that all Sinclair Lewis did in Elmer Gantry was paint a shallow two-dimensional picture of the fundamentalist herd as a bunch of cynical hucksters never read the book.  Lewis is hard to read sometimes for the brutally clear eye he lays on American life in the early twentieth century, and his relevance to the America we live in today becomes crystal clear the moment you start reading him.  The picture he painted of American populist fundamentalism was so spot-on accurate to the practice of it I knew as a kid in the late 20th, not so much in the particulars as in the culture and mindset, that reading it made me squirm uncomfortably.

The church provided his only oratory, except for campaign speeches by politicians ardent about Jefferson and the price of binding-twine; it provided all his paintings and sculpture, except for the portraits of Lincoln, Longfellow, and Emerson in the school-building, and the two china statuettes of pink ladies with gilt flower-baskets which stood on his mother’s bureau.  From the church came all his profounder philosophy, except the teachers’ admonitions that little boys who let garter-snakes loose in school were certain to be licked now and hanged later, and his mother’s stream of opinions on hanging up his overcoat, wiping his feet, eating fried potatoes with his fingers. and taking the name of the Lord in vain.

If he had sources of literary inspiration outside the church–in McGuffey’s Reader he encountered the boy who stood on the burning deck, and he had a very pretty knowledge of the Nick Carter Series and the exploits of Cole Younger and the James Boys–yet here too the church had guided him.  In Bible stories, the the words of the great hymns, in the anecdotes which the various preachers quoted, he had his only knowledge of literature–

The story of Little Lame Tom who shamed the wicked rich man that owned the handsome team of grays and the pot hat that led him to Jesus.  The ship’s captain who in the storm took counsel with the orphaned but righteous child of missionaries in Zomballa.  The Faithful Dog who saved his master during a terrific conflagration (only sometimes it was a snowstorm, or an attack by Indians) and roused him to give up horse-racing, rum, and playing the harmonica.

How familiar they were, how thrilling, how explainatory to Elmer of the purposes of life, how preparatory for his future usefulness and charm.

…

He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.

Hypocrisy isn’t in knowing you are a fraud.  That’s Hollywood’s fundamentalist and it exists to reassure actual ticket-buying fundamentalists that Hollywood still loves them and will keep selling them all the blue-eyed white anglo-saxon Jesuses they want.  Yes, it’s a safe bet that many in the upper ranks dispise the flock.  But not all of them do.  The mindset both in the pews and behind the pulpit is that they are a better class of miserable sinner then you are and that makes them the right hand of God Almighty.

This particular strain of Americana is the fountainhead of American anti-intellectualism and know-nothingness and the reason for that isn’t because they understand that intellect without conscience is a very dangerous thing.  Conscience is the first thing you have to kill within yourself to join the tribe.  They hate any and all human achivement because it shows that humans Can achieve.  The sight of human kindness and compassion, the kind that comes straight from the heart, without strings attached, simply out of love, terrifies them, because that kind of selfless whole hearted love is utterly unfathomable to them. How can anyone possibly love their gay son for the person they are?  Ney…’tis a greater love to stick a knife in their heart…  The common complaints about "elitism" from the kook pews isn’t a complaint about vanity and arrogance…it springs reflexively from that deep hatred within for anyone with a bigger brain and a bigger heart then their own.  H.L. Menkean pegged the type perfectly in his obiturary of William Jennings Bryant.  He might as well have been talking about Warren when he wrote the following…

This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses. He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without any shame or dignity. What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition–the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine. 

Warren has none of the vitriolic bombast of a Bryant or Falwell or Dobson, but so what?  When you can look a jewish person in the face and tell them they’re going to burn in hell for all eternity, does it really matter that you do it with a smile verses a snarl?   Does calling down God’s wrath on Jews really command respect when it’s done out of conviction?  Then I guess the millions who went to the ovens in the Holocaust died for nothing after all, and all the millions who died in anti-Jewish pogroms before them too.  We know how many Jews were alive in the days of Christ, because their Roman overlords kept good population records.  By the standards of natural population growth, or so I’m told, there ought to be around 280 million Jews walking this good earth right now, right this moment.  In fact there are about 19 million.  And Hitler didn’t do all that…

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such.  These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.

-James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword

Rick Warren is a hate monger, and the fact that he is willing to stick to his religious conceits over the humanity of one Jewish woman standing right in front of him isn’t proof of integrity, it is proof that he’s taken his own humanity around behind the barn and killed it.  Is sincerity really being able to look a person in the face and deny the common human heart you both share?   Doesn’t blind obedience to dogma of any sort involve a necessary amount of self-deception?   What you have to keep in mind, is that just because you are a charlatan that doesn’t mean you don’t see yourself as being sincere.  The first person you have to fool after all, is yourself.

Fine.  When we’re all equals in the eyes of the law. 

Proposition 8 was not about agreeing to disagree.  If the law treated gay people equally with heterosexuals, I doubt any of us would give a rat’s ass what Rick Warren thinks.  First we should be a nation of equals.  Then we can all agree to disagree.  Not before.

Pam Spaulding puts it all into perspective …

While it’s obvious that an invocation is just a prayer and that Warren is not part of the Obama administration, Warren taking the pulpit as some sort of olive branch to evangelicals and a show of unity and diversity is absurd and insulting symbolism. The fact that the Obama camp’s talking points mention a LGBT marching band’s presence during the official parade shows you how clueless (or calculating, you decide) these folks are.

A marching band is entertainment…

Gay people have always provided the entertainment for heterosexuals.  And…we do their hair.  And decorate their homes.  And arrange the floral bouquets on their wedding day.  It’s our function in life…

A. Serwer over at Tapped gets it…

I think it’s more likely that he’s marginalizing Warren’s rivals among the Evangelical leadership. Warren is not actually any less conservative than Dobson or Robertson or anyone else. He is less partisan. His views on abortion and violence are similarly inconsistent, with one being abhorrent and the other acceptable. (The power and legitimacy of the American state, it seems, turns the conservative faithful into moral relativists.) But Warren has shown a tendency not to attack individual political figures the way his peers have, and so Obama has made the decision to elevate Warren at his rivals’ expense. I had an argument with my colleague Brentin Mock yesterday about Obama’s decision, where he pointed out that someone else would be occupying Warren’s leadership role if it wasn’t Warren, and given the alternatives he’s the best choice.

None of this really changes the fact that mainstreaming homophobia is inexcusable, and that Warren does not deserve to share a stage with the Rev. Joseph Lowery. The contrast between Warren’s celebrity and Lowery’s life fighting for civil rights is absolutely staggering. It’s possible to interpret the decision to include Warren and Lowery as another Lincoln "we are not enemies but friends" moment, an attempt to bring the religious right and religious left together. The only problem is the most offended parties, the LGBTQ community and the women Warren equates with Nazis, are not in any symbolic sense present to make the choice to be friends or enemies. Had Obama, say, chosen a gay pastor and forced Warren to make the difficult decision of whether or not to appear, the situation might be a bit different. At the same time, Lowery’s presence as a symbol of his generation’s sacrifice is absolutely necessary. Obama simply wouldn’t be able to run for president without men like Joseph Lowery.

Even if one reads Warren’s presence as a cold political calculation, it’s hard to see why the LGBTQ community wouldn’t be outraged at being exploited for the purpose of cultural triangulation. Obama isn’t a homophobe, but you gotta wonder how long the LGBTQ community has to wait before they get a president who thinks homophobia is unacceptable…

Someone else…I forget who…remarked that it was as if it was 1993 all over again…an unpopular Bush leaves office and a bright and shining new hope for everyone who believes in liberty and justice for all takes office, only to sell out gay Americans and begin a strategy of triangulation…

How long?  Yes.  That is The Question.  How long do we have to wait for our heterosexual neighbors to finally, at long last, become appalled at what has been done all these years to their gay and lesbian neighbors…to their friends…to their own children…?  How long before they finally, Finally see the magnitude of what has been taken from?   How long before the sight of hate toward loving couples disgusts them more, then the sight of someone making excuses for hate?  How long before shaking hands with gutter crawling bigots like Rick Warren disgusts them enough that even a politician can feel it?

Isobel White over at Huffington Post pretty well sums it up …

ike everyone else who cares about LGBT equality, election night brought a mix of joy as it became apparent Obama would win, and pain as we realized Prop. 8 would pass. My wife and I spent the evening in Union Square trying to enjoy a birthday dinner with friends before heading to the official No on 8 party. When word came at around 8:15 that Obama had been elected, cable cars rang their bells and whoops of job sprang up all around the Square. I joined a dozen folks clustering around a local TV station’s van watching a teeny tiny TV broadcasting CNN. I tried to join in the revelry, but all I could access was alienation. At no other time in my life had I felt so discriminated against . I spend my days working on a variety of progressive issues, but in that moment — and for the next week — all that mattered was Prop. 8. My vision narrowed and intensified. They say this happens when you feel under attack. "What about us?" I kept wanting to say. "What about our rights?"

Our dinner ran late, so we missed Obama’s speech and we even missed the official No on 8 party. Upon leaving the restaurant all we saw was members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and other assorted folks out on the street, stunned and wondering what to do next. I spent the next few days fearing conversation with anyone who might not be thinking about Prop. 8 — anyone who would want to talk about Obama, or the weather, or our kids’ school, or anything not related to my pain. It was as though I was grieving and I didn’t want to be with anyone who wasn’t grieving too.

This is exactly why I haven’t posted much here about Obama’s victory.  Yes, I’m grateful.  Especially so since a certain someone told me recently, that he’d have moved, possibly back to Germany, if McCain had won.  As he’s lived here in America most of his life, its not exactly like the old country is home now.  But for him, like for a lot of people, America had started to become a strange foreign land…a place where the American dream of liberty and justice for all had become a dirty joke.  A McCain victory would have been the final straw.  I’d have wanted to leave too then.  I wanted to leave after the 2004 election.  But I’m too old to immigrate anywhere unless I bring sacks of money along with me.  It’s good Obama won.  But how good…really?

So it breaks my heart — in fact, it’s pretty much inconceivable — to learn that Obama has asked anti-gay California pastor Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

I could forgive Obama his tepid support for the No on 8 campaign. It was election time — he had to win. There are so many critical issues in front of him. He had to win.

But he could have chosen any clergy member in the nation to deliver his invocation. So why one from the state where religion has so recently been a painful dividing line? One who spoke out so publicly in support of Prop 8, stating that "there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … This is not a political issue — it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about"? One who continues to argue that marriage equality silences his religious views?

Why re-open painful wounds?

As unlikely as it seems, here’s hoping Obama will listen to reason and rescind his invitation. Here’s hoping I will finally, finally, be able to have my Obama moment.

He won’t.  He’s smarter then that.  Rescinding the invitation now would just make more headlines and keep the thing in the news that much longer.  But it’s a disaster.  Lee Stranahan, also over at the Huffington Post , assures us that he understands our anger, but that the reality is most Americans agree with Warren on same sex marriage. 

Like my comrades, I think Warren is dead wrong on same sex marriage. But the reality is that at the end of 2008, a majority of voters in California agreed with him. A majority of Americans agree with Warren about same sex marriage and many more states have made marriage equality unconstitutional than have ratified it.

Fine.  But Warren’s dagger at same-sex marriage was dipped in hate monger’s poison.  Here’s some reality for you: Warren said that same sex love was akin to incest.  He said that same sex couples were akin to pedophiles.  Stranahan urges us to embrace what we have in common with Warren…but what could any decent person have in common with that gutter crawling bigot, other then that we’re all breathing the same oxygen? 

This is being portrayed as an olive branch to the social conservatives, by a heterosexual news media that thinks the cheapshit hatreds of bar stool preachers like Warren are more legitimate, more real, more essentially American, then the love and devotion of same-sex couples.  But the betrayal here is larger then the gay community.  Obama’s election give the entire world hope.  That hope, for peace, for justice, for a re-awakening of the better part of human nature, is what was betrayed here.  

Rick Warren is on record as saying America should feel free to assassinate foreign leaders if that is in its interests.   But when is political assassination ever in the interest of democracy, let alone the rule of law?  Reality.  Obama is about to sit down in the Oval Office in a world that has become so violent with hate, sectarian and nationalistic, that the possibility of world war III has practically become moot.  Hundreds of innocent people died in a series of co-ordinated terrorist attacks in India just a few weeks ago.  Reality.  And Obama choses a minister of hate to speak the words that begin his presidency.  There’s your reality Stranahan.  Look at it.  No…really look at it.

You don’t heal the wounds in a people by spitting more poison on them.  You don’t bind a nation back together by giving the knife that cut it apart a place at the table.  You don’t offer an olive branch to your enemy while he’s still busy burning down the forest. 

…Not.

Vermont called healthiest state, Louisiana last

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Louisiana has displaced Mississippi as the unhealthiest U.S. state and other Southern states were close rivals due to high obesity and smoking rates in new rankings that deemed Vermont the healthiest.

…

Many Southern states were clustered near the bottom of the rankings. The region has some of the highest rates of obesity, which contributes to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer, as well as high rates of smoking, which causes cancer, lung disease, heart disease and other problems.

One in five Louisianians lacked health insurance, while 31 percent were obese. It also suffers from high child poverty, infant mortality, premature death rate and cancer deaths, according to the report.

And if you think all that counts as a black mark against Louisiana’s political leaders…well…the GOP has something to say to you about that…

GOP Looks to Louisiana’s Governor

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Last weekend, 18 days after Barack Obama decisively defeated their candidate for president, a mostly Republican crowd of self-described conservatives received their first introduction to someone many prominent members of the GOP think could be the party’s own version of Obama.

Like the president-elect, Gov. Bobby Jindalof Louisiana is young (37), accomplished (a Rhodes scholar) and, as the son of Indian immigrants, someone familiar with breaking racial and cultural barriers. He came to Iowa to deliver a pair of speeches, and his mere presence ignited talk that the 2012 presidential campaign has begun here, if coyly. Already, a fierce fight is looming between him and other Republicans — former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who arrived in Iowa a couple of days before him, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is said to be coming at some point — for the hearts of social conservatives.

"The Republicans really have no choice except to look at some people more youthful if they want to have a better chance of winning," said Betty E. Johnson, an independent and the wife of a Cedar Rapids pastor, who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 but who went for Obama over 72-year-old John McCain. "I liked Obama’s energy and hope. I don’t know, but maybe a younger person would give Republicans a feeling of more energy, openness."

Jindalof is a religious right nutcase who is still trying to get creationism taught as science in the public schools, and who participated in an exorcism when he was in college.  Yeah…he’s sure to get the vote of the faithful.  And never mind all that stuff about the health and welfare of the citizens of his state.  None of that is more important after all, then their spiritual well being.  Which is why the bible belt states routinely, invariably, rank at or near the bottom of…well…nearly every measure of civilized, industrial nation progress.  Literacy… education levels…  teenage pregnancy… STDs… domestic abuse… infant mortality…  the general health of both adults and children…   But on the other hand they don’t allow the gays to get married…so that’s a plus…right…?

It’s an article of faith among the kook pews that gays live half as long as heterosexuals, spread filth and disease, and cause the general breakdown of family and society.  I guess Vermont hasn’t figured that out yet.  Or Massachusetts.  Meanwhile the bible belt is killing itself with righteousness.  But what the heck, the world is coming to an end soon anyway…right?  Loose the bible belt, and the rest of the United States is right up there with the rest of the industrial world in all these measures.  Include them in, and they drag us into into third world territory…

The Jonah Goldberg complains that things are getting ugly.  No…not that cutting the ring fingers off of devoted couples is an ugly thing to do…but that those couples are fighting back is ugly…

An ugly attack on Mormons

Did you catch the political ad in which two Jews ring the doorbell of a nice, working-class family? They barge in and rifle through the wife’s purse and then the man’s wallet for any cash. Cackling, they smash the daughter’s piggy bank and pinch every penny. "We need it for the Wall Street bailout!" they exclaim.

No? Maybe you saw the one with the two swarthy Muslims who knock on the door of a nice Jewish family and then blow themselves up?

No? Well, then surely you saw the TV ad in which two smarmy Mormon missionaries knock on the door of an attractive lesbian couple. "Hi, we’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" says the blond one with a toothy smile. "We’re here to take away your rights." The Mormon zealots yank the couple’s wedding rings from their fingers and then tear up their marriage license.

As the thugs leave, one says to the other, "That was too easy." His smirking comrade replies, "Yeah, what should we ban next?" The voice-over implores viewers: "Say no to a church taking over your government."

Obviously, the first two ads are fictional because no one would dare run such anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim attacks.

The third ad, however, was real. It was broadcast throughout California on election day as part of the effort to rally opposition to Proposition 8, the initiative that successfully repealed the right to same-sex marriage in the state.

What was the reaction to the ad? Widespread condemnation? Scorn? Rebuke? Tepid criticism?

Nope.

This newspaper, a principled opponent of Proposition 8, ran an editorial saying that the "hard-hitting ad" was too little, too late.

It’s often lost on gay-rights groups that they and their allies are the aggressors in the culture war. Indeed, they admit to being the "forces of change" and the "agents of progress." They proudly want to rewrite tradition and overturn laws. But whenever they’re challenged democratically and peaceably, they instantly complain of being victims of entrenched bigots, even as they adopt the very tactics they abhor.

Here’s what I tried to post in the comments to his column at the LA Times…

Tell Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., who had to wait outside the hospital doors while his beloved partner Robert Lee Daniel, died at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center that he is the aggressor in the culture war.  Tell Janice Langbehn, who had the hospital door shut in her face while her partner Lisa Marie Pond died of a stroke in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars.  Tell Sam Beaumont, who was evicted from the ranch he shared with Earl Meadows, his partner of decades, by Meadow’s cousins, and then sued for backrent on top of that for back rent, that he’s the aggressor in the culture wars.  Tell all the loving, devoted cross-national couples who cannot marry their loved ones, and have to wave goodbye to them as their visas expire, that they’re the aggressors in the culture wars.  Tell Sharon Bottoms, whose son was taken from her because she is a lesbian, that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars.

Then look at yourself in a mirror, and ask the knuckle dragging lout you’re staring at what kind of person cuts the ring fingers off of devoted, loving couples, and then has the nerve to call Them aggressors?

…but the Times limits comments to 650 characters, so I had to whittle that down a tad.  It’s pending "approval".

Goldberg and his smarmy kind need to understand one thing if they understand nothing else…the days when we passively accept having our home lives torn to bits by gutter crawling bigots like him and then being spit on for good measure, are over.  No more Mr. Nice Gay.  Welcome to the morning after.  I’ll be your server today.  My name is Fuck You.

Sore losers won’t let go in California

Here’s what I don’t get about California and the recent Proposition 8 vote: Why all the commotion over yet another passage of yet another marriage amendment?

This was the 30th time a state has placed either a constitutional amendment proposal or its equivalent on its ballot, and the 30th time the amendment has passed.

Thirty straight wins is formidable. It’s downright Globetrotter-esque. The New England Patriots didn’t even go 30-0.

Nice.  Tens of thousands of loving, devoted couples have just been forcibly divorced, care of the tens of millions of dollars the Mormon church shoveled into California’s ballot initiative process, and this prize Mormon lout is comparing that trauma to a sports game.  I guess part of the process of becoming a god involves laughing at the humanity of those mere mortals who just happen to be your neighbors in this life too…

To: Lee Benson (benson@desnews.com), The Mormon Times.
Subject: Sore Losers

Sore losers Mr. Benson?  The thousands of loving, devoted same sex couples who’ve just had their ring fingers cut off by your church are sore losers are they?  Well…I reckon.  But count on more sore losers to come.  Sore losers like Richard Raddon, who just lost his job at the Los Angles Film Festival after his donation of 1500 dollars came to light.  And Scott Eckern, who lost his job at the California Musical Theater when his donation of a thousand dollars came to light.  Sore losers like Marjorie Christoffersen, owner of the El Coyote in Los Angles, who has lost customers and the respect of her neighborhood when her donation came to light.  Sore losers.  Election day has come and gone, and the votes have all been counted, and still the ranks of sore losers grow.  And grow.  And grow.  We were supposed to just go away now weren’t we?  Because it couldn’t possibly matter to us that our ring fingers had just been cut off.  Because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.

Eckern and Raddon, and all the sore losers still to come got exactly what they asked for, exactly what they worked so righteously to achieve.  A world without love, without sympathy, without kindness and trust.  A world where love grovels before the mob, and the human heart is something anyone can spit on if they have enough votes.  Your church spent millions to tell our neighbors, our co-workers, our parents and children, our brothers and sisters, our families and our friends, that their gay and lesbian companions in this life were invading their schools to molest their children, imprison their clergymen, and destroy western civilization.   And now we’re sore losers too.  Well…I guess if we can be destroyers of western civilization, we can be that too without too much additional burden.

Sore losers?  Okay.  Fine.  Whatever.  And you…may you spend every second of the rest of your life watching victory laugh in your face.  You reached for the poison.  Now drink it.

—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.
 

The more people look at what happened in California, the more the vast scope of Mormon involvement in anti-gay politics, both in terms of money and organizational prowess, becomes known.  In this article in Today’s New York Times, the bottom line is made perfectly clear: without the vigorous support of the Mormon church, Proposition 8 would have failed.  The Mormon church wrote its will into the constitution of the state of California though lies and stealth, and lots and lots of money that its members were ordered to contribute…

Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage

As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

…

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to “closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.

Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.

But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead…

…

…the “Yes” side also initially faced apathy from middle-of-the-road California voters who were largely unconcerned about same-sex marriage. The overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said, was “Who cares? I’m not gay.”

To counter that, advertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little further explanation.

Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.

“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said.

They lied through their teeth and they threw a torrent of hate and Mormon church money into it and they steamrollered over the rights of devoted loving couples so they could become gods in their own universe someday.  And now they’re upset that people are taking the fight back to them.

Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

And just what would you do, you gutter crawling bigot, if someone cut your ring finger off?   Laugh it off?  Shake the other guy’s hand?  No you wouldn’t.  But you expect us to roll over and play dead because we’re homosexuals and homosexuals don’t have feelings, and homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  There is no reason for us to be angry with you, because you didn’t take anything sacred away from us, because we don’t feel love the way you do, because we’re not human like you are.  We’re Satan’s followers, and we don’t have human emotions like you Future Gods In Training do.

Fruit…did you say?  Fuck you Ashton.  I’ve got your fruit right here.  You sow poison in the earth, you get poison back out of it.  Now eat it.  Or as another gay man, James Baldwin once said…

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

Baldwin wouldn’t have been allowed in one of your churches, even if he wasn’t gay, because according to your…prophets…black people were cursed by God and that’s why their skin is black.  Your church has been elevating the cheapshit prejudices of its barstool prophets into holy writ for generations and now and a reckoning is long overdue. This isn’t your private universe, it’s the United States of America and it belongs to all of us, not just you White And Delightsome Gods In Waiting.  The United States of America is not your private universe, and you are not gods, however highly you might think of yourselves.  So fuck off.

And the unsurprises just keep on coming.  You know the old story about how so many right wing anti-gay warriors turn out to have gay children?  Phillys Schlafly?  Alan Keyes?  Charles Socarides, late of NARTH?  Recall how the man who spear headed California Proposition 22, which was the first swing at same-sex marriages back in 2000, Pete Knight, turned out to have had a gay son?  

Isn’t it interesting how so many of the most vitirolic gay haters have gay children of their own?  Like…they’re punishing their kids, by waging war on the entire gay community?  Like…all of us have to bleed, because hating their own flesh and blood just isn’t good enough?  Isn’t it so very…unsurprising…that 67 year old Gary Lawrence, Mormon, California State LDS Grassroots Director, and prominent organizer of the Proposition 8 campaign, has a gay son?  Surprise, surprise, surprise.

It’s worth remembering in the wake of Proposition 8, that Mormon abuse of their own gay children has been well known for some time now.  If you thought it was tough growing up gay in a Southern Baptist household, just listen to the stories of gay Mormon kids.  And…(Via Pam’s House Blend), like all the children of the anti-gay culture war, this particular son has his own heartbreaking story to tell…

Matthew Lawrence, 28, of Santa Ana, California is just one of approximately 500 people who have contacted Signing for Something ( http://www.signingforsomething… )in the last few days to announce his resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of the Mormon Church’s handling of and involvement in the gay marriage issue.  Matthew is gay and is the son of Gary Lawrence, 67, who is the “State LDS Grassroots Director” for the state of California.  (See http://yesonprop8.blogspot.com… ).

Matthew Lawrence, in an e-mail interview with this diarist, said that although he is “extremely upset and frustrated” with his family and that he has “cut off communication with them,” that “at the end of the day, I do love them.”  The elder Lawrence was also the Mormon Church’s point man for the Prop 22 campaign in 2000.  Matt says, “I love my family so much, but it’s hard to not take this personally.  We had a brief falling-out over Prop. 22, but that got mended.  But two anti-gay initiatives in eight years, it’s impossible not to feel attacked.”

Matthew was particularly hurt when “my father said that opponents of Prop. 8 are akin to Lucifer’s followers in the pre-existence.”  (Printed in Meridian Magazine online, and reported in the Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_… and other newspapers). Matthew’s plea to his father and others is “We can all agree to disagree and respect each other’s informed opinions and decisions, but don’t put me and Satan in the same sentence please.” 

“This issue isn’t about gay marriage,” writes Matthew. ” This is about certain religious factions that believe homosexuality is disgusting, immoral and wrong and needs to be stamped out. . . .  It’s a problem to be ‘fixed.'” Matthew writes that his family sent him to multiple counselors during his youth, and even sent him to live with relatives in Utah which he writes was an attempt to “straighten me out” by living with what he describes as “homophobic cousins.”  He said while in Utah it wasn’t unusual for his cousin to call him a “faggot” at school and that his “aunt and uncle did nothing to discourage his behavior.” 

…don’t put me and Satan in the same sentence please.  Is this too much to ask?  Never mind the gay stranger down the street who wears horns every time you set eyes on them.  Never mind that same-sex couple you can casually condemn to eternal hellfire because they’re not part of your own family, but someone else’s, and it’s always easy to toss someone else’s children, someone else’s loved ones, into the fiery lake for all eternity.  Is it too much to ask you to stop demonizing your own children?  Is it too much to ask you to stop putting your righteous knives into their hearts too?  They want your love…they Need your love.  Can you stop putting them side by side with Satan in your eyes?  In your hearts?  At long last, is this too much to ask?

If you think it’s only marriage they want to take from us, you are sadly mistaken.  Note this exchange in the chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court, buried within a legal debate about monuments in public parks…

Justices Grapple With Question of Church Monument as Free Speech Issue

WASHINGTON — The hypothetical questions were flying at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and that was not a good sign for Summum, a small church that wants to place a monument to the Seven Aphorisms of its faith near a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah.

The questioning suggested that the justices were finding it hard to identify a principle that would compel the city to accept the Summum monument without creating havoc in public parks around the nation.

The justices start tossing out various examples of what can and cannot be excluded…and then this comes up…

Would it be all right, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, for the government to exclude the names of gay soldiers from the Vietnam memorial?

This was rhetorical on Stevens’ part.  Stevens is one of the sane justices on the bench.  But its prime fascist  jumped on it gleefully…

Mr. Joseffer had to be pressed to answer the question about excluding the names of gay soldiers. In the end, he said the First Amendment’s free speech clause, at least, places no limits on whom the government chooses to honor.

Justice Scalia agreed. “It seems to me the government could disfavor homosexuality,” he said, “just as it could disfavor abortion.”

This wasn’t even about homosexuality.  This was just an aside from Scalia…nothing more.  But dig it.  If the government wants to exclude the names of gay soldiers, who gave their lives for their country, from the Vietnam memorial, that would be fine by Scalia.  And never doubt it, this would also be fine with Roberts, Thomas and Alito.

There is no bottom here.  There is absolutely no bottom here.  You could say that gay people are to the religious right, as Jews were to the fascists…but that would be ignoring history.  In fact, gay people died right alongside of Jews in the concentration camps.  There were not as many of us, and it was harder to systematically round us up because gay is not an ethnicity.  We have always been, and always will be a diaspora…many of us hidden from view.  But we were just as hated back then, and clearly, sickeningly, frighteningly, we are just as hated by them now. 

If the day ever came when these modern day fascists achieve enough power to do with us as they have always wanted to, it will be a race to the bottom of the human gutter, and there is no bottom.

You gotta love it…

BYU graduate resigns position in Sacramento theatre over Prop. 8

Hundreds of people rallied outside a theatre in Sacramento today in support of the artistic director who resigned over his stand on Proposition 8.

After 25 years with California Musical Theatre, Scott Eckern, a BYU graduate and distinguished alumnus, has left his position as artistic director because of how he voted.

Ticket holders, donors and friends rallied outside the theatre supporting Eckern.

"Freedom should be respected, and they haven’t respected his freedom to do what he would with his funds," said supporter Jaynie Dufort.

Freedom?  Like…freedom to marry?  That freedom?

Look…it’s simple.  You kick me in the face, I will not work with you.  I will not shake your hand.  I will not walk in your door.  I will not patronize your business. I will not give you my hard earned money, just so you can take it and buy a knife to cut my ring finger off.  Don’t kick me in the face one day lady, and then expect me to forget you did it the next. 

And this prime jackass has it even worse:

"This is a witch-hunt," said Lance Christensen, who says he’s a regular patron of the theater and took off work to show his support for Eckern. 

Witch hunt…did you say?  Witch hunt?  Like telling everyone that homosexuals are going to storm the schools and start recruiting everyone’s kids?  That kind of witch hunt?  Like telling everyone that their ministers will be thrown in jail if they don’t marry same sex couples?  That kind of witch hunt?  Witch hunts like this …?

The woman continued to poke at my face with her sign and call me "nasty." Genuinely disturbed by the complete lack of rational behavior I’d seen up to this point, wanting to look into her face and possibly connect on some level with her as a fellow human being, I pulled a corner of the sign down away from my eyes and asked "why are you calling me nasty?"

That’s when she attacked, clawing, grabbing and then shoving. I didn’t fight back; she was much bigger than me. Calling me a "nasty fucker" and threatening to kick my ass, she pried my phone out of my hand and tried to break it in half while her friends egged her on.

Please note that I never touched or threatened her in any way (unless you want to consider my pulling the edge of her sign out of eye-poking territory a threatening gesture).

As she grabbed at my phone, I stood there stunned, not really sure what to do. One of the counter-protesters (the woman who you see saying "No on Prop 8" towards the beginning of this clip) quickly intervened and calmed the attacking woman down enough that I felt safe enough to try to take my phone back. After a second or two of grappling, she let go and went back to screaming at cars from a lawn chair near the side of the road.

(Big love and gratitude to the kindly counter-protester who pleaded for calm. I don’t think my phone would have survived without you!)

I stood there for another minute or two, checking the phone’s applications for damage. One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered "fuck you, dyke."

Even though I wasn’t hurt besides a small scratch on my hand, and my phone was okay, being attacked definitely shook me up. I was a bit tearful. Call me naive, but I never thought I’d actually be in physical danger just for shooting footage of their activity and pulling the edge of a person’s sign out of my eyes. Verbal insults, sure. But attacked by an anti-gay activist? In one of the most queer-friendly neighborhoods in the bay area? Yikes.

The man holding the "Vote No" sign noticed that I was in tears and approached me. We hugged to a chorus of jeers, exchanged some reassuring words, and I turned to leave. Someone called after me: "keep crying, and keep walking."…

Witch hunts…like this…?

Dobson Chokes Up Explaining God Wants Him in California to Save Marriage

James Dobson dedicated his radio program today to explaining his sudden decision, which we mentioned earlier, to go to California this weekend to join Lou Engel, Tony Perkins and others for a massive "The Call" rally of prayer and fasting in the name of saving "traditional marriage."

In the clip below, Dobson has just explained that he received a letter from Rev. Jim Garlow, one of the leading organizers of the "yes on 8" movement pleading with Dobson to attend and, after reading it, felt God’s hand on his back telling him to attend "The Call."  Dobson chokes up explaining that despite having been on the go for weeks and being exhausted, he knew God wanted him there.  Dobson had to call his son to tell him he couldn’t babysit for his grandson this weekend as planned and his son Ryan then confirmed that God wanted him in California instead.  Dobson could barely keep it together when he explained that "the Lord must be involved in this" and then hands over the program to Garlow, who also gets choked up and speaks of their level of spiritual desperation and their constant "crying out to God" to save California because they are "watching the destruction of Western civilization."

The destruction of Western civilization.  The destruction of Western civilization.  The destruction of Western civilization.  You people spewed a torrent of venom on people whose only crime was being in love and wanting to get married, and now you’re complaining that we’re angry.  Bullies always complain when their playthings start fighting back don’t they?   It’s so…unfair.  We’re supposed to just accept our station in life, as their punching bags.

I know…I know…  We were supposed to just keep crying and keep walking, weren’t we?  You didn’t think there would be any hard feelings the morning after, because homosexuals don’t have any feelings.  We’re all so…flighty.  We were supposed to just go back to cutting your hair, redecorating your homes and waiting on your tables.  Fine.  Hello…I’ll be your server tonight.  My name is Fuck You.

THIS! 

Proposition 8 fall out – Stop whining and stand behind your donations

No doubt we will be inundated by the religious right who will wax about evil intolerant gay folks but please spare us your usual twists in logic.

You are the same folks who boycotted McDonalds and Ford Auto because of their supposed support of the "gay agenda."

Nail.  Hammer.  Bang.  And…Disney…and Kraft…and many others, especially sponsors of gay friendly TV shows.  Every goddamned time some corporation steps forward as a friend to the gay community the gay haters are all over them threatening boycotts.  

Fine.  You don’t like our boycotts?  Fuck You.  You think our boycotts amount to religious persecution?  Fuck You.  You want us to respect your deeply held religious beliefs?  Fuck You.  Welcome to the morning after.  I’ll be your server tonight.  My name is Fuck You.