Via SLOG… Oh look..the wingers are all going to go live on a commune…
From The National Review, we have the Republican version of “I’m moving to Canada if their side wins”:
Canada or Galt’s Gulch? [Lisa Schiffren]
So, what happens if McCain really does pull it out and win? After the urban riots, might this be the year that all those libs with Bush derangement syndrome actually make good on their threat to leave the country? What if Canada had a special policy to lure them in? (Win-win-win situation —them/us/Canada )
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Of course conservatives don’t threaten to leave the U.S. as a rule. However, on more or less the same subject, I haven’t heard so much about John Galt since …well, ever. (And objectivists were thick on the ground in D.C. during the Reagan administration.) I suppose, with all the projections of the Obama administration and its confiscatory tax rates on people and businesses, subordination of the productive to the dependent, public schools turned into training camps for radicals and legions of speech/thought police — i.e. — the end of liberty as we knew it — it might be time to start thinking about the mechanics of Galt’s Gulch. Actually, this is probably a great time to buy property in the Rockies. Love to see the video for that…
For those of you who are unaware, Galt’s Gulch is where all the world’s libertarian intellectuals flee to in the novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. In the novel, the resulting lack of intellectuals and competent businessmen causes the rest of the world to nearly die in an apocalypse of mediocrity. I’m willing to take the gamble that it’s not going to work out that way in the real world, and I implore the conservatives to move to the Rockies and start working on their conservatopia. I’ll even donate to a fund in their honor.
Rand’s idea of a strike against totalitarianism by society’s business and engineering elite only works if you believe that only completely moral and rational people excel in business and engineering and that isn’t true. Both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were full of engineering geniuses who happily worked for them, and in Nazi Germany corporations thrived. Totalitarian states can eventually collapse for a lot of reasons, but a lack of smart people willing to lend their minds to the Omnipotent State isn’t one of them. Werner Von Braun happily worked for both Adolph Hitler and John F. Kennedy.
Rand simply had no curiosity, and it severely limited her imagination. She was a romantic in the worse sense, the ivory tower sense, not the enraptured by life sense. And you really see that, in the Galt’s Gulch chapters of Atlas Shrugged. Question: in the utopia of the mind that is Galt’s Gulch…where are the laborers…?
When he put her plate before her, she asked. "Where did you get that food? Do they have a grocery store here?"
"The best one in the world. It’s run by Lawrence Hammond."
"What?"
"Lawrence Hammond, of Hammond Cars. The bacon is from the farm of Dwight Sanders – of Sander’s Aircraft. The eggs and the butter from Judge Narragansett – of the Superior Court of the State of Illinois."
The Country Club set puts down their golf clubs and takes up farming. Except these aren’t hobby farms…they’re trying to be self sustaining here. So the automobile executive, the aircraft company CEO and the Superior Court Judge also happen to be able to run production farms too because…well…because they’re The Men Of The Mind and farming really isn’t all that hard after all. You just get a few pigs and chickens and cows and the whole operation pretty much just runs itself…right? I mean…how hard could running a farm be anyway…all those country bumpkins manage to do it after all. And we are Men Of The Mind. This is, seriously, Rand’s thinking here.
And it gets worse. A couple pages later the two heroes of the novel, Galt and Dagny Taggart, encounter the former CEO of Sander’s Aircraft, who says he can fix her small airplane…the one she crashed and nearly totaled. On his pig farm. In between slopping the hogs I guess…
He pointed across the road. Glancing through the tops of the pine trees, she saw the concrete rectangle of an airfield on the bottom of the valley.
"We have a few planes here and it’s my job to take care of them," he said. "I’m the hog farmer and the airfield attendant. I’m doing quite well at producing ham and bacon, without the men from whom I used to buy it. But those men cannot produce airplanes without me – and without me, they cannot even produce their ham and bacon."
Okay…first of all…who poured the concrete for that airfield? And…where did the concrete come from? The town brain surgeon?
Hey…it’s just concrete. Anyone can pour concrete…right? I mean…look at the low class dimwits who do it for a living. And we’re The Men Of The Mind. We can do that…piece of cake. We can pour whole runways and taxiways and parking pads of concrete level enough for aircraft to safely use that won’t crack apart here in the Rocky Mountain winters because we’re The Men Of The Mind. Hell…just mix and pour and it’s done. Er…who makes the cement mixers around here? And those…things…concrete workers use…trowels I think they’re called. Who makes that stuff. I know…the town philosopher! No…wait…he runs the diner…
Hey…same thing with raising pigs. Anyone can raise pigs. No…wait…even pig farmers can’t raise pigs without help from The Men Of The Mind…
But wait…there’s more. Are you wondering where the tractors come from for all these farms The Men Of The Mind are running? Well wonder no more…
"…Since the time I saw you last, I have designed and manufactured just one new tractor. I mean one – I tooled it by hand – no mass production was necessary. But that tractor has cut an eight hour workday down to four hours on" – the straight line of his arm, extended to point across the valley, moved like a royal scepter; her eyes followed it and she saw the terraced green of hanging gardens on a distant mountainside – "the chicken and dairy farm of Judge Narragansett" – his arm moved slowly to a long, flat stretch of greenish gold at the foot of the canyon, then to a band of violent green – "in the wheat fields and tobacco patch of Midas Mulligan" – his arm rose to a granite flank striped by glistening tiers of leaves – "in the orchards of Richard Halley."
Behold Moses showing the promise land to the faithful. No wait…that’s a Royal Scepter there. Never mind where he got the tools to work the steel to make tractor motor, let alone a tractor. Hey…this guy’s not only an aircraft maker and a hog farmer. He’s a lathe maker and foundry operator…And a tool and die maker. And a tire maker. He can build motors and transmissions and differentials. From just the simple everyday raw materials you find just laying around in the middle of the Rocky Mountains for the taking, Dwight Sanders can make gaskets and seals and sealing compound and springs and rubber. He can manufacture gauges and radiators and hoses and belts. Or someone else there can. Possibly the town dentist. But look at it closer. Rand here seems to think that running a farm or an orchard, consists of running a tractor back and forth all day long and if you build a better tractor you can cut the farmer’s workday down by half.
I mean…because farmers work an eight hour day just like everyone else don’t they? When they’re not running the local airport. Ask a tobacco farmer how long their day is.
But it’s gets better. A page or two on and they meet the man who produces the oil for Galt’s Gulch. And presumably, the gasoline, the kerosene, the motor oil, all the lubricants, and the petroleum-based plastic grocery bags for the grocery store Lawrence Hammond runs…between building the automobiles the folks in Galt’s Gulch drive…
There were two other men working with him: a big muscular roughneck, at a pump halfway up the wall, and a young boy, by the tank on the ground. The young boy had blond hair and a face with an unusual purity of form. She felt certain that she knew his face, but she could not recall where she had seen it. The boy caught her puzzled glance. grinned, and as if to help her, whistled softly, almost inaudibly the first notes of Halley’s Fifth Concerto. It was the young brakeman of the Comet.
She laughed. "It was the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley, wasn’t it?"
"Sure," he answered. "But do you think I’d tell that to a scab?"
"A what?"
"What am I paying you for?" asked Ellis Wyatt, approaching; the boy chuckled, darting back to seize the lever he had abandoned for a moment. "It’s Miss Taggart who couldn’t fire you, if you loafed on the job. I can."
"That’s one of the reasons why I quit the railroad, Miss Taggart," said the boy.
There is so much there to unpack, not the least of which is the delicately beautiful, artistic youth in a book by the notoriously homophobic Rand. Who…ah…quits his job on the railroad so he can work where common laborers have absolutely no legal rights. I hope you like working for 1/10th of a living wage in Galt’s Gulch kid. Maybe Lawrence Hammond gives him a place in the alley behind his grocery store to spend the night after he sweeps the floors. Or maybe he has a night job cleaning the hog pens at Dwight Sanders’ farm.
But wait…there’s more…
The roughneck was watching them from above, listening with curiosity. She glanced up at him, he looked like a truck driver, so she asked, "What were you outside? A professor of comparative philology, I suppose?"
"No, ma’am," he answered. "I was a truck driver."
Oh look…a touch of humor in an Ayn Rand novel. But wait for it…
He added, "But that’s not what I wanted to remain."
Because…you know…only a looter would want to earn a living as a truck driver. So…who transports the goods in this Utopia Of The Mind? I know, I know…! Dwight Sanders runs goods around from all the farms to Lawrence Hammond’s grocery store on his new super tractor. In half the time. When it’s not saving Judge Narragansett time on his chicken farm, and Midas Mulligan time on his tobacco patch and Richard Halley time in his orchard. Between working on his hog farm and running the town airport.
So. Who is growing the cotton here, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, for the textile mill that somebody is running, to produce the cloth that somebody who is making everyone’s clothes there needs? Who made the textile mill? Who made the tools to make the textile mill? Who made the lumber but build the textile mill? Who made the saws for the lumber mill to make the lumber for the textile mill? Who transported the lumber? Wait…Sanders again… Who makes the soap that the blond-haired delicate of face artistic but not gay really he isn’t gay no way is he gay kid uses to clean himself off after working in Ellis Wyatt’s oil field? Assuming he can afford the luxury of soap on the slave labor wages Wyatt is perfectly free to pay him? Or maybe soap isn’t needed in Galt’s Gulch, because the Men Of The Mind just will their bodies not to get dirty.
The right wingers yap, yap, yapping now about starting their own Galt’s Gulches are the same hypocrites who are fond of saying "There is no free lunch." Meanwhile, Atlas Shrugged is about a man who invents a motor that’s powered by atmospheric static electricity. Hey everyone…free energy! Its pivotal moment is when the heroine discovers Galt’s Gulch, and sees for herself that the work of producing the basic necessities of life that modern civilization depends on is so easy even the CEO of an aircraft company can do it…in his spare time. And machine an entirely new tractor out of raw materials with the rest of his spare time. Who needs actual farmers? Or truck drivers? Some day, the heartlanders, the blue collar workers, the Joe The Pumbers, should really take a look at the depth of the contempt the brains of the republican party view them with. Nobody really needs you worthless morons…er…now give us your votes praise Jesus or the homos will sodomise your children…
Rand claimed to idolize New York City. Pity she never actually took a stroll through its streets to watch what makes it all work.
So…I’m with Paul Constant on SLOG. Let them try it. By all means. Every little upper middle class rebel child needs their go live in a commune period. Who knows…when they come straggling back ragged and hungry from their adventure, maybe they’ll consent to give the people who pick their cotton, keep their grocery store shelves stocked, make their clothes and keep their floors clean a livable wage then. Yes, as a matter of fact, there is no free lunch. So pay your server enough to make them want to keep feeding you.
I wrote earlier that Obama’s favorabilities have surprisingly survived this election intact, given the amount of shit that has been flung in his direction. Part of the reason is that the GOP overreached in their attacks. While arguing that he was inexperienced could’ve gained traction pre-Palin, the stuff about being a Muslim Marxist Manchurian candidate was simply, well, ludicrous.
If you want to take a look at their reasoning, I recommend the work of Stanley Kurtz over at the National Review…
Stanley Kurtz being the guy who doctored up marriage statistics from Scandiavian countries so he could claim that legal same-sex marriage resulted in the decline of heterosexual marriages and that children were being raised mostly by unmarried parents now. Over at Slate, associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, M. V. Lee Badgett shows how Kurtz did it…
Despite what Kurtz might say, the apocalypse has not yet arrived. In fact, the numbers show that heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia, where same-sex couples have had rights the longest. In Denmark, for example, the marriage rate had been declining for a half-century but turned around in the early 1980s. After the 1989 passage of the registered-partner law, the marriage rate continued to climb; Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they’ve been since the early 1970’s. And the most recent marriage rates in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland are all higher than the rates for the years before the partner laws were passed. Furthermore, in the 1990s, divorce rates in Scandinavia remained basically unchanged.
Of course, the good news about marriage rates is bad news for Kurtz’s sky-is-falling argument. So, Kurtz instead focuses on the increasing tendency in Europe for couples to have children out of wedlock. Gay marriage, he argues, is a wedge that is prying marriage and parenthood apart.
The main evidence Kurtz points to is the increase in cohabitation rates among unmarried heterosexual couples and the increase in births to unmarried mothers. Roughly half of all children in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are now born to unmarried parents. In Denmark, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose by 25 percent in the 1990s. From these statistics Kurtz concludes that " … married parenthood has become a minority phenomenon," and—surprise—he blames gay marriage.
But Kurtz’s interpretation of the statistics is incorrect. Parenthood within marriage is still the norm—most cohabitating couples marry after they start having children. In Sweden, for instance, 70 percent of cohabiters wed after their first child is born. Indeed, in Scandinavia the majority of families with children are headed by married parents. In Denmark and Norway, roughly four out of five couples with children were married in 2003. In the Netherlands, a bit south of Scandinavia, 90 percent of heterosexual couples with kids are married.
That’s a higher rate then some states here in America. Mostly bible belt states. But look at this. First Kurtz gerrymanders the marriage statistics in Scandinavia by including time frames when it was declining Prior to the passage of same sex civil unions, to prove that those civil unions had an adverse affect on heterosexual marriage. In fact, after civil unions passed heterosexual marriage rates Improved. But that wasn’t enough. Kurtz also pointed out the fact that many heterosexual couples have their first kid out of wedlock, deliberately omitting the fact that they almost always marry afterward, in order to lead people to believe that there was some sort of massive population of kids living with unmarried parents in Scandinavia now. That this conclusion is absolutely false, that you can only arrive at it by concealing the fact that most parents do in fact marry after their child is born, mattered nothing to Kurtz. He had something to prove, and damn the evidence. This is what passes for virtue and morality among social conservatives.
Now he’s peddling the Obama is a marxist and/or muslim terrorist claptrap. How…unsurprising…
Rod Dreher, who thinks that same-sex marriage will destroy not only marriage itself, but civilization, posts today in an article titled, Newsom & Truth About Gay Marriage that…
Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown law professor, lesbian and pro-gay marriage activist, writes in the new book "Same Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts", that there is an irreconcilable conflict between civil marriage rights for gays and religious liberty for traditionalists. "[G]ay rights leaders are trying to deal with the conflict by simply wishing it away. That is neither possible nor intellectually honest."
And what is the nature of this conflict? Well…one commenter on Dreher’s blog sums it up thusly…
We have been over this ground hundreds of times, as Rod has pointed out. Why should the government care if Kate and Angela want to throw a party to celebrate their alternative lifestyle, which has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage?
But forcing my children to witness the lie that the relationship of two lesbians or two gay men (or three or four or twelve people of assorted genders) is *exactly the same* as the relationship of two people of opposite genders who not only can produce their own biological children but are expected to be completely responsible for them for eighteen years or so is an affront to my civil liberties, not just my religious ones.
Heaven forfend that he should be Forced to witness anything that contradicts his religion. I suppose he’s all for outlawing Jewish holidays too. But let it be said…he has given it a lot of thought…
The only way gay marriage and heterosexual marriage can be truly equal is if we require the sterilization of all heterosexual couples before they can marry. Otherwise, we’re creating a fiction that these two totally and radically different types of relationships, one of which has an overwhelming tendency to produce new citizens and the other of which has an overwhelming tendency not to–and *can never* do so in the same way, e.g., where each partner is equally the biological parent of each child–are exactly the same.
And if that’s not enough…
Since "marriage" as a civic concept has already been made completely meaningless by the advent of gay "marriage," and will only become more so as time goes on, I have a modest proposal: abolish it. End it altogether. Make "marriage" as important a secular concept as baptism and confirmation are–that is, not at all.
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So, legally speaking, we’ll all be glorified cohabitators
Which is where I foolishly decide to jump into the discussion. Here’s my comment, being held for moderation last I looked…
Since "marriage" as a civic concept has already been made completely meaningless by the advent of gay "marriage," and will only become more so as time goes on, I have a modest proposal: abolish it. End it altogether.
That’s probably coming, but it won’t be same-sex marriage that makes it happen. When marriage in the United States becomes the moral equivalent of a whites only or gentiles only country club, heterosexual couples, good decent heterosexual couples, the very sort you really want to keep bought into it, are going to start abandoning it.
Not many certainly…not at first. But it’s already starting to happen. Opposite-sex couples are resorting to other forms of "civil union" or contracts or what-have-you more and more these days. Some think marriage is "old fashioned." Some dispute its relevance to couples in this day and age. Do you really think putting that Heterosexuals Only notice on the marriage license is going to change people’s minds about that? No…I don’t think you do.
How many couples with gay family and neighbors and friends are going to sign that document? Probably many, even so. But fewer and fewer, as people, good people, decent people, at long last get sick to death of watching loving, devoted same sex couples fighting constantly for rights they themselves can take for granted. You may not appreciate how the feeling of being privileged can make some people feel ashamed. Try.
So in addition to heterosexuals getting drive-in married and drive-in divorced, Plus all the heterosexual couples who just live together because they couldn’t care less about marriage to begin with, now you’ve got committed couples opting out of marriage because they don’t want their union, their mutual love, their devotion to each other and their kids, tainted by prejudice. And so that special place of honor marriage has in society, that I keep hearing folks babbling about in the same breath as "love the sinner…" just sails off, off into the sunset along with things like antisemitic homeowner covenants. Good job folks. Mission Accomplished.
It’s been well said that homosexuals can’t possibly do nearly the damage to the institution of marriage that heterosexuals already have. Orson Scott Card, who thinks homosexuality is a threat to the survival of the human race, said so in a recent column of his. Call it a testament to its power, and its essential truth, that marriage in the U.S. hasn’t been utterly finished off by now. A lot of big guns have been aimed at it over the course of my lifetime alone, and yet it still stands. But the righteous aren’t through with it either.
If the religious right finally convinces the rest of America that they can and will block same-sex couples from achieving marriage equality for generations, if ever, what will almost certainly happen is a faster movement away from marriage and toward other forms of coupling. Co-habitation is already a fact of life for a lot of young opposite-sex couples. Turning marriage into an instrument of discrimination is hardly going to change that. It’s just going to make decent people feel uncomfortable with the whole thing. Call it a win for the sexual radicals, with an assist by the sexual theocrats.
Mark Weigel reads a note from the kook pews, and takes it apart…line by line…
Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.
What evidence? We have a newspaper announcement of Obama’s birth in Hawai’i from 1961, and we have a Hawai’ian certificate of live birth. Obama did have Kenyan citizenship until he turned 21; as the son of Barack Obama, Sr, it was automatic. And it did not negate his American citizenship.
There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian.
Here’s the document. It does identify Obama as a Muslim and identifies Indonesia as his "nation of citizenship," but that’s what his parents wrote down on their seven-year old son’s school form. If Gaffney thinks this negates Obama’s American citizenship, he doesn’t understand the law.
If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.
Completely false. The document lists Honolulu as Obama’s "place and date of birth."
Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.
False. I’ll link it again. Unless Gaffney believes that the state of Hawai’i is forging documents for Obama, this is proof that he was born in Honolulu.
This is fever swamp, Vince Foster-was-murdered, Bush-blew-up-the-WTC stuff…
Yes…isn’t it. Oh…but look…it isn’t some babbling nutcase churning this stuff out from his parent’s basement…
Neoconservative pundit Frank Gaffney, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, has bid adieu to polite society with this column on "the Jihadist vote."
Let me repeat that: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Of Defense. These are the folks who have been running the country for the past, oh, Eight Years. The debacles that are Iraq, Katrina and the national economy starting to make sense now? Here…let me explain something to you… No…Wait… Let Them explain something to you…
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
This isn’t just the heart of the Bush presidency…it’s the heart of the republican grassroots. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore”… Actually…yes it is…
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own facts. Lies have consequences. The erosion of trust has consequences. You can’t just keep on making things up and expect nothing to come of it… When stocks become worthless, markets fail. When the word of the people becomes worthless, democracy fails.
UPDATE: Later in the column Gaffney cites Pennsylvania attorney Philip Berg, who’s filed a frivolous lawsuit against Obama on this citizenship conspiracy theory. That would be this Philip Berg.
Now, it is time for world leaders to take the lesson learned from Iraq and issue a warrant for the arrest of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney; arrest them; take them to a neutral country; try them for the murder of over 2,800 people from more than 80 countries on 9/11/01 and, when found guilty, sentence them appropriately. Jurisdiction would be proper in any of the more than 80 countries whose citizens were murdered on 9/11.
I compared Gaffney’s nonsense to 9/11 trutherism for a reason.
UPDATE II: This is pathetic: a Toledo station runs a "local hero"-type story on Berg, which puts legal documents from Hawai’i on equal footing with his fact-free claims. It’s mind-boggling. On the one hand you have a government certificate that says Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. on 8/4/61 in Honolulu. On the other you have Berg’s claim, from his lawsuit:
Obama’s grandmother on his father’s side, his half-brother and half-sister all claim Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Reports reflect that Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya during her pregnancy; however, she was prevented from boarding a flight from Kenya to Hawaii at her late stage of pregnancy (which, apparently, was a normal restriction, to avoid births during a flight).
Notice the distinct lack of quotes and sources? It’s because the "Obama’s African family members claim he was born in Kenya" story is an internet myth. They have never claimed that. There is no such story. Go ahead and try to find it.
An internet myth. Note that. It’s what the grassroots are saying. To each other. Among other things. Over and over. Obama is a Muslim. Obama has ties to al Qaeda. Obama is a traitor. Obama is a terrorist. So it is, that the republican grassroots take their collective consciences around behind the barn and shoot it. Anything to win, even if it means taking a running bellyflop into the gutter. But it’s not just Obama they are hurling bullshit shit at. They are taking a dump on the very flags that they are busy waving.
It’s one thing to oppose the other party’s candidate on the basis of their record. It’s one thing to oppose them on the basis of their beliefs. It’s one thing to oppose them just because you don’t like their looks, the cut of their clothes, or because the sky is blue. Fine. It’s your right. But when you spread lies you are not opposing the man. You are hating on democracy. You are giving it the middle finger. A democracy is the sum of its citizens. Corrupt yourself, and you corrupt your country. It’s one thing for the politican on your TV screen to do it, it’s one thing for the talk radio host you tune into every day to do it, but when You lie to your neighbor for political gain, you are shitting on America.
This precious democracy we all share, that was bestowed us with the blood and treasure of so many of our forebears, asks only that you treat its core value, the election, with care and attention, and give to it whatever honest consideration you can, to the best of your ability. We all make mistakes sometimes in the ballot booth. Some votes we cast we long live to regret. But the important thing is we try and are honest. With ourselves. With our neighbors. Disagree we may. Vehemently. Fine. So long as it’s honest. That is what so many good people in so many generations past have died for, so that we could do. Speak freely and honestly to each other. Persuasively. Bluntly. Calmly. Angrily. Whatever. But honestly. Because you can. Because people died to give you that freedom. That’s all American is obliging you to do every election year. Instead, you are feeding it poison.
America is dying from that poison. I hear you speak of your patriotism, your love of flag and country. Over and over again I hear it. I see you wave the flag. I see it on your front doors. I see it on your bumpers. I see you wearing it on your lapels. Fine. Swell. Whatever. You love America? Then Stop Lying. Stop. Your motherfucking lies are killing it.
[Update…] Here’s a link to Factcheck.org on Obama’s birth certificate, since the one Weigel linked to isn’t enough for the kook pews. As if…anything could be…actually… I’m sure they have a way of explaining away this too…
In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961…
Dig it. They went looking through the newspaper archives and found the birth announcement. Of course…it’s all part of the consperacy you see…
By All Means, Let Me Know How You Feel. I WANT To Know. Really.
There are many reason why I do not regard myself as a Christian anymore. Probably chief among them is I am no longer convinced that God even exists. But even so, fundamentalism notwithstanding, I think you can still regard yourself as a Christian nonetheless. If you think God worship is all there is to Jesus’ message, then you weren’t listening.
Forgiveness. Here is why I just can’t call myself Christian anymore:
Over at Box Turtle Bulletin, Jim Burroway posts that he received a phone call from a reporter saying that many proposition 102 (the Arizona anti same-sex marriage amendment) yard signs are being damaged.
I got a phone call last night from a reporter from Phoenix’s ABC15, telling me that a spokesperson for the ’Yes” side for Prop 102 says that more than a hundred of their campaign signs were vandalized. Obviously, everyone here at No on Prop 102 condemns such vandalism. While we are happy to engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, vandalism has no place in rational debate.
Oh…good grief. Look…if some people are willing to spread the open sewer that is their conscience out on their lawns for everyone in the world to see, then by all means leave the fucking things alone. Seriously. Leave them alone.
Photograph them. Document it. We are living through a moment in history, however these votes turn out. Document it. Document it. Document it. And later, if the thing passes, should these fine God fearing folks feel the need to pretend that they never supported it (and they will, many of them, never doubt it), remember how you felt seeing those signs waved in your face, remember how it felt to have your ring finger cut off while they praised God, and wave their signs right back in their faces. Yes…yes you did…
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches,
that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress.
Progress is healing the wound… -Malcolm X
It’s good to know the names on that knife in your heart.
Jesus would say that I have to forgive. I can appreciate how anger can turn into hate. I can appreciate how it can corrode your soul, turn it to rust. There is a reason why we have to forgive. Jesus was right. But there are some things I simply cannot forgive. Just…can’t. Ironically my Baptist grandmother was exactly like me in this regard. Neither one of us could let go of a grudge. It’s a dangerous combination I’ve lived with all my life: dad’s loaded gun temper, grandma’s ability to hold onto a grudge forever. If I didn’t have some small smidgen of mom’s endless capacity for love and sympathy I’d be some kind of absolutely legendary asshole. I have grudges from back in elementary school I still take out and polish every now and then.
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better. -Edgar Watson Howe
Forgiveness. Hopefully after November gay couples in California will still have their ring fingers, and those in Arizona and Florida will still have hope. But if not, don’t ask me to forgive. Ever. I’ll laugh in your face.
I’ve said it before. Over and over. The shit doesn’t really start hitting the fan, until the republicans start loosing power…
LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) — Some of the anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is mostly letting it flare. A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Barack Obama. They’re making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of “traitor,” “terrorist,” “treason,” “liar,” and even “off with his head” have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them.
Everyone is starting to notice now, the frenzy of hate the republicans are whipping themselves into. From Sullivan:
To some, a president Obama is simply unimaginable. From a McCain supporter in Wisconsin yesterday:
"We’re all wondering why Obama is where he’s at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we’re in this position."
There was always going to be a point of revolt and panic for a core group of Americans who believe that Obama simply cannot be president – because he’s black or liberal or young or relatively new. This is that point. As the polls suggest a strong victory, the Hannity-Limbaugh-Steyn-O’Reilly base are going into shock and extreme rage. McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a "secret" terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word.
But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies – not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.
For God’s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.
But Garrison Keillor was right…they’re republicans first, and Americans second. And they have a history of this, which goes right back to Kennedy. When King was assassinated in Memphis, they were calling him a traitor too…
And really the unsayable. But I’ve been thinking about this McCain-Palin Obama "palling around with terrorist" idea more lately. The saddest thing about many Republicans isn’t just that they disagree with liberals on race–it’s they are largely ignorant on race. When the McCain campaign cast the spell of diabolical jingoism, they have no idea of the forces they are toying with. We remember Martin Luther King’s murder as a sad and tragic event. Less remembered is the fact that ground-work for King’s murder was seeded, not simply by rank white supremacy, but by people who slandered King as a communist.
This was not some notion bandied about by conspiracy theorist, but an accusation proffered by men who were the pillars of the modern Republican Party:
As late as 1964, Falwell was attacking the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "civil wrongs" legislation. He questioned "the sincerity and intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations." Falwell charged, "It is very obvious that the Communists, as they do in all parts of the world, are taking advantage of a tense situation in our land, and are exploiting every incident to bring about violence and bloodshed."
Falwell was not alone. These men didn’t kill Martin Luther King, but they contributed to an atmosphere of nationalism, white supremacy and cheap unreflective patriotism that ultimately got a lot of people killed. Confronted with Aparthied South Africa, men like Helms and Falwell used the same "communist" defense. While Mandella wasted away in prison, they dismissed the whole thing as a communist plot.
Let me be clear–This is the ghost that McCain Campaign is summoning. This is the Ring Of Power that they want to wield. The Muslim charge, the "Hussein" thing is nothing more than today’s red-baiting, and it is what it was then–a cover for racists. You may say I’m overreacting, and I really hope you’re right. 999,000 out 1 million times we’ll go on like normal and proceed to Election Day. But if some shit pops off, the thug and thug-mongers will not be able to throw up their hands and say "How could I have known?" Ignorance will not save them. Their stupidity is a scourge on us all.
Let me smack the subtext here out into the open: they’re trying to get him killed. As recently as a few days ago I was content to believe they just wanted to lay the groundwork for the scorched earth campaign against President Obama and a democratic congress. But that’s naive and anyone of my generation should know better…really…
I still remember vividly the day president Kennedy was assassinated. I was home from school, very very sick with a flu and a high fever. I was drifting in and out of sleep with the bed stand radio on, playing soft music. I woke up, to the sound of a man’s voice saying over and over again, "The president has been shot…The president has been shot…The president has been shot…"..
Two days before President Kennedy’s trip to Dallas, right-wingers began circulating around the city some 5,000 anti-Kennedy handbills. Entitled “Wanted for Treason,” these leaflets were designed to look like a police “wanted” poster, with front and profile photographs of Kennedy’s head.
The handbills shrieked:
“This man is wanted for treasonous activities against the United States:
1. Betraying the Constitution (which he is sworn to uphold):
He is turning the sovereignty of the U.S. over to the communist controlled United Nations.
He is betraying our friends (Cuba, Katanga, Portugal) and befriending our enemies (Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland).
2. He has been WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the U.S. (United Nations-Berlin wall-Missile removal-Cuba-Wheat deals-Test Ban Treaty, etc.).
3. He has been lax in enforcing Communist Registration laws.
4. He has given support and encouragement to the Communist inspired racial riots.
5. He has illegally invaded a sovereign State with federal troops.
6. He has consistently appointed Anti-Christians to Federal office:
Upholds the Supreme Court in its Anti-Christian rulings.
Aliens and known Communists abound in Federal offices.
7. He has been caught in fantastic LIES to the American people (including personal ones like his previous marriage and divorce).”
On the very day JFK visited Dallas and died, the local newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, featured a full page, black-bordered anti-Kennedy advertisement prepared and paid for by persons affiliated with the John Birch Society, one of the most infamous right-wing extremist organizations of the 1960’s. The ad claimed to be the work of “The American Fact-Finding Committee,” in reality a nonexistent organization. Bernard Weissman, listed on the ad as the chairman of the Committee, however, did exist; he was the person who actually placed the ad. Weissman later testified before the Warren Commission. He was one of the few witnesses before that body who deemed it prudent to appear accompanied by an attorney.
The ad began with a sarcastic “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas,” a city which had been the victim of “a recent Liberal smear attempt” and which had prospered “despite efforts by you and your administration to penalize it for non-conformity to ‘New Frontierism’.” The ad then posed a series of belligerent, insulting loaded questions, including:
“Why has Gus Hall, head of the U.S. Communist Party, praised almost every one of your policies and announced that his party will endorse and support your re-election bid?”
“Why have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?”
“Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the ‘Spirit of Moscow’?”
Later that morning there were disparaging protests by right-wingers against JFK along the route of the presidential motorcade as it traveled from the airport to downtown Dallas. As the motorcade drove through the suburbs, with President Kennedy only minutes from death, an unfriendly-looking man in a business suit stood on a sidewalk in an aggressive posture holding a protest sign which screamed: “Because of high regard for the presidency I hold you JFK and your blind socialism in complete contempt.” (A photograph of this right-wing protester with his sign, taken by Dallas newspaper photographer Tom Dillard, is reproduced on p. 438 of Richard B. Trask’s Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy (1994).)
In Dealey Plaza, at the time of the actual assassination, there was at least one right-winger present publicly expressing his scorn for the president. On the sidewalk near the Stemmons Freeway traffic sign, only a few feet from the slow-moving presidential limousine during the very moments rifle bullets were slamming into JFK’s body, a mysterious man stood wearing a suit and, unlike anyone else there, holding up an open, black umbrella on this warm, sunshiny day. (The “Umbrella Man,” as this enigmatic character soon was dubbed, is visible in the Zapruder film. He also can be seen in a famous still color photograph of the assassination taken by amateur photographer Phil Willis. The Willis photo is reproduced on p. 190 of Robert J. Groden’s The Killing of a President (1993).)
The identity of the Umbrella Man remained a secret for 15 years. Then, in September 1978, a man named Louie Steven Witt appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations and admitted that he was the Umbrella Man. He told the Committee that he been there in Dealey Plaza to heckle JFK, and that he displayed the umbrella because he was under the impression that brandishing an umbrella would irritate JFK. He testified: “I was going to use this umbrella to heckle the President’s motorcade. … Being a conservative-type fellow, I sort of placed him [JFK] in the liberal camp, and I was just sort of going to kind of do a little heckling. … I just knew it was a sore spot with the Kennedys. … I was carrying that stupid umbrella, intent [on] heckling the President.” Witt denied that the umbrella he had in Dealey Plaza symbolized the appeasement practices of English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who often sported a black umbrella), or that the umbrella was intended to suggest that JFK was appeasing Communism the way Chamberlain had appeased Hitler. This denial is not credible. Among right-wingers, it was an article of faith that JFK’s supposedly soft, weak-kneed policies against the threat of Communism were the equivalent of Chamberlain’s futile attempts to appease Adolf Hitler.
Not even Kennedy’s death at 1 p.m. at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas stopped right-wingers from publicly displaying their loathing of JFK. As William Manchester notes in his classic The Death of a President (1967): “At 3:05 p.m., when 80 percent of the American People were in deep grief, an NBC camera panned toward a group of spectators outside Parkland’s emergency entrance and picked up a young man with a placard that read, ‘Yankee, Go Home.’” (In a wealthy Dallas suburb, Manchester reminds us, “pupils of a fourth-grade class, told that the President of the United States had been murdered in their city, burst into spontaneous applause.”) -JFK Blown Away-Hooray! – D. Wilkes, University of Georgia
If you think the McCain campaign is playing with fire you are sadly mistaken. They Are of the fire. America, and the American Dream, lives or dies depending on how many of us are left, who still believe in it, and will defend it against the mob. Democracies don’t die at the hands of foreign enemies. They die when the mob overwhelms the dream of freedom and liberty and justice for all. The gutter cannot tolerate and will not willingly endure a world, where they have to witness what free men and women are capable of when the chains are cast off, and their dreams take wing. They will burn it all down if they have to, so they don’t have to know what humanity is capable of, that they might have been…
The recap: McCain was supposed to stop by Letterman’s show Wednesday. But Dave explained to his audience that McCain "was nice enough to call me on the phone and said that he was racing back to Washington." But part of the way through his late-afternoon taping, Dave learned that Johnny Mac was still a few blocks away in New York — taping an "excloo" with Katie Couric.
…
Dave’s anger gradually built through the show. He got truly incensed when he showed his audience the internal CBS News feed of McCain getting his makeup dabbed on before his Couric interview. "He doesn’t seem to be racing to the airport, does he?" Letterman said. Then he shouted at the television monitor: "Hey, John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?"
Okay…so he blows off a late night talk show host. Big deal…right? On the other hand, Mr. Straight Talk Express could have given Letterman a little…you know…straight talk. Something like, "I’m sorry to have to do this to you Dave, but with this terrible economic crisis developing I can’t really be doing late night comedy shows now. I’m going to be talking with Couric on CBS news instead…
Straight talk. Letterman would have accepted that. He might not have liked it, but he would have accepted it. But that’s not what he got, and if you think the busting he gave McCain that night was pique you are sadly mistaken. In her novel The Charioteer, Mary Renault wrote that "some events are crucial from their very slightness; because circumstances have used no force on them, they are unequivocally what they are, test-tube reactions of personality." McCain just flat out lied to him and the casually unnecessary nature of it shocked him.
You get the feeling that the sight of this…indifference…to telling lies…on the part of so many conservative moralists is starting, finally, to shock a lot of people…
Yesterday, we learned that not only does McCain own thirteen cars, but that the McCain fleet includes imports, a VW from Germany and a Honda from Japan. (His wife drives a Lexus, but that car is owned by her beer distributorship.)
And now it turns out that earlier this month he lied to Michigan voters about his car purchases, telling them "I’ve bought American literally all my life" during a September 7 interview with Detroit’s WXYZ-TV. Earlier in the interview, he had told the interviewer "Cindy and I own an automobile that’s American-made" which was about best an extremely misleading statement.
Q: Will privatizing Social Security be a priority for you going forward?
…
McCAIN: Without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.
I’m not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be.
As Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler once tersely said, "This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative."
Your gay and lesbian neighbors have been witnessing this behavior on the part of the kook pews for decades. Decades. We’ve watched them grow in power from the backwater gutters to the heights of power. And they’ve never changed their spots. What’s happened is that the republican party has been utterly corrupted by them, by their holy war, by their Kulturkampf. It got them votes. It won them elections. But the price was their souls…
Bob Sith, the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC’s) National Strategist for Gender Issues, has recently misrepresented the scientific conclusions of Dr. Francis Collins (of the Human Genome Project) in the Baptist Press‘s Did God create Ray Boltz gay?. Here’s how he described Dr. Francis Collins’ conclusions:
…For example, in 2003, the International Human Genome Consortium announced the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, which, among other things, identified each of the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. The press release read: "The human genome is complete and the Human Genome Project is over."
While this accomplishment was widely reported, almost no one reported the words of Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the project. Collins, arguably the nation’s most influential geneticist, said, "Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality."
Somehow the major media missed that little tidbit. Collins and others acknowledge that genetics can predispose but not predetermine. This supports other studies that clearly document the possibility of change for people who struggle with unwanted homosexual desire.
Dr. Collins apparently never actually said this; this quote is taken from a OneNewsNow article by Jim Brown — Brown quoted self-identifed former homosexual Greg Quinlan, who appears to have made up the statement whole cloth. Bob Sith apparently quoted the statement verbatim — putting quotation marks around the statement that Jim Brown hadn’t put around the statement — without checking to see if the quote had any veracity. Apparently, it didn’t have any verasity at all.
David Roberts of the Ex-Gay Watch has been following the repeated twisting of Dr. Collins’ words for awhile. As Roberts documented in his post Major Geneticist Francis Collins Responds to NARTH Article, this isn’t the first time Dr. Collins words have been twisted by conservative Christians…
It would hardly be the first time the religious right has built carefully crafted deceptions with the material provided to it by science. Some weeks ago Jim Burroway debunked a beaut from the Family Research Council , purporting to show that statistics gathered by the CDC on domestic violence proved that same sex relationships were much more violent then heterosexual ones…
The third point the brochure is built on is this:
Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women
They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.
On page 29, you will find that when you only look at victims with a history of same-sex cohabitation and compare them with those with a history of opposite-sex cohabitation, then it’s true, gays and lesbians experience higher levels of intimate parter violence. But that’s not true for gay and lesbian couples.
To see this, go to the next page. Among women with a history of same-sex partnership:
30.4% were raped, assaulted or stalked by their husband/male partner
11.4% were raped, assaulted or stalked by their wife/female partner.
And among men with a history of same-sex partnership:
10.8% were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their wife/female partner.
15.4% were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their husband/male partner.
So here is what it all means. Many women with a history of same-sex partnership also have a history of opposite-sex partnership. Because of that, they are far more likely to report being raped, assaulted or stalked because it is the men in their lives who are doing the raping, assaulting or stalking, not the women. Same-sex cohabiting women were nearly three times more likely to report being victimized by a male partner than a female partner.
And here is where the statistic gets really interesting: 20.5% of women in opposite sex relationships were raped, assaulted or stalked by their husband or male partner. That compares to 15.4% of men who were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their male partners. In other words, gay men are safer around their same-sex partners than straight women are around their husbands or opposite-sex partner.
For decades now…decades…your gay and lesbian neighbors have watched the moralists of the religious right, in the name of virtue, in the name of fighting amoral secularism, in the name of decency and family values, in the name of the man on the cross who they claim to venerate as their holy savior, lie through their teeth every chance they get, and then lie again, and then lie again, and then lie again, Amen. We have watched their hatred of ecumenicism, their hatred of secularism, their hatred of the American Dream of liberty and justice for all and especially their vitriolic hatred of gay and lesbian people, eat everything within them that could ever have been good and decent and noble, rot every moral fiber that was ever inside of them, that might once have kept them from looking their neighbor in the face, and lying through their teeth. All that’s left of them now, are the slogans, and the bellicose religiosity. And the hate. If you ever need to know what hate will do to you, to your soul, and why you need to fight it more then any other enemy you will ever face, behold Sarah Palin. If you ever need to know why you have to look hate in the face directly, unflinchingly, and see it for what it is, and never, Never, grant it any excuse or pity, behold John McCain and the party that is now owned by America’s multitude of Sarah Palins.
These are not moral warriors. They say they are, but they are not. They are runts. Cowards. Not even rising to the level of gangsters, because a gangster knows what he is, and embraces it with a smirk. The culture warriors are hollow shells, who discarded virtue and morality long, long ago, at the first touch of shame. And the last thing on earth they want now is for the rest of us to embrace morality, reach for the higher purpose, be virtue. Because that would mean we’d have to hold them accountable for all their pathetic lies, all their squalid cheats, all the damage they’ve done to America all these years.
For decades we’ve watched this movement of cheats grow into a political powerhouse, and take the republican party down into its gutter. And we’ve been speaking out, trying to warn the rest of America what was happening. But in the end, people really can’t be expected to believe a betrayal of this magnitude without seeing it for themselves.
"Hey, John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?"
Morality. Values. The soul of a nation isn’t in its leaders, but in its grassroots. The soul is in the millions and millions of us who wake up every day and choose whether to cheat our way to tomorrow or try and make the best of it, as best as we can, as best as we can understand what the good is, and how to get ourselves there. It’s not making the grand gesture for Truth, Justice and the American Way. It’s not declaring your devotion to God. It’s flinching away from the easy lie, because for better or worse you still need to look at yourself in the mirror the next day. It’s not wearing your moral values on your sleeve, or putting a little halo around your head. It’s keeping a little nugget of pride deep down in your heart, that simply won’t let you cheat a friend or a neighbor, because the trust in their eyes matters to you.
Picture someone for whom cheating a friend is less important then winning an election and you have what the religious right has done to the republican party in a nutshell. They fought for the soul of the party. They got it. Look at what they did with it. Look at it. They have said for decades that they are fighting for the soul of America. Think of what they did to John McCain, the man who wouldn’t leave Vietnam without his brother soldiers, as an example of what they think winning means.
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 22 (UPI) — Film director David Zucker says conservatives are so uncomfortable in Hollywood that being a Republican is "the new gay."
"You sort of feel like you have to hide it," Zucker — director of "Airplane!," "Top Secret" and "The Naked Gun" — told EW.com. "When you meet, you give each other a secret look, ‘Are you a Republican, too?’ It’s the new gay."
OKLAHOMA CITY — Democrat Andrew Rice has a divinity degree and has worked as a missionary, but he is being called to account over social values in his Senate race against Republican incumbent Jim Inhofe, who is known for tough campaign tactics.
An Inhofe ad being carried on Oklahoma television stations contains anti-gay overtones, showing a wedding cake topped by two plastic grooms and a photo of Rice as a young man, curly haired and wearing a leather jacket.
Inhofe said the ad is accurate. He pointed to news stories that Rice, before he became a state senator in 2006, founded a group that opposed a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriages.
Ask the Old Gay to show you around the place Zucker… You might recognize the brand name on some of the furnishings…
Preserving Traditional Marriage
Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. In the absence of a national amendment, we support the right of the people of the various states to affirm traditional marriage through state initiatives.
Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children. Children are our nation’s most precious resource. We also salute and support the efforts of foster and adoptive families.
Republicans have been at the forefront of protecting traditional marriage laws, both in the states and in Congress. A Republican Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of states not to recognize same-sex “marriages” licensed in other states. Unbelievably, the Democratic Party has now pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which would subject every state to the redefinition of marriage by a judge without ever allowing the people to vote on the matter. We also urge Congress to use its Article III, Section 2 power to prevent activist federal judges from imposing upon the rest of the nation the judicial activism in Massachusetts and California. We also encourage states to review their marriage and divorce laws in order to strengthen marriage.
As the family is our basic unit of society, we oppose initiatives to erode parental rights.
– From the 2008 Republican Party Platform
Esprit and cohesion are necessary for military effectiveness and success on the battlefield. To protect our servicemen and women and ensure that America’s Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture, and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service.
– From the 2008 Republican Party Platform
Homosexuality – We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, refuse to recognize, or grant special privileges including, but not limited to: marriage between persons of the same sex (regardless of state of origin), custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values
Texas Sodomy Statutes – We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.
– From the 2008 Texas Republican Party Platform.
The New Gay is it? The New Gay? Rot in Hell Zucker. Go fuck yourself with a Big Tent. Republicans have turned the lives of gay Americans into a scorched earth battleground. They pushed anti same sex marriage amendments in swing states, turning gay Americans into second class citizens because they knew voting for president Nice Job Brownie might not be enough to drive their grassroots to the polls. They’ve been using the lives of gay Americans as a baseball bat to smack democrats over the head with ever since Antia Bryant showed them how well the issue played at the polls. So you and your fellow republicans are…uncomfortable…in the glamorous Hollywood social scene are you? How painful that must be sometimes…
Allegations of a sixteen-year-old high-school student beating another because he was perceived as gay have shaken up a small Kansas town.
Police officers in the small town of Tribune, Kansas – population 800 – responded to a report of an intruder at the home of a sixteen-year-old student. When they arrived they found the teen was badly beaten and his attacker had fled.
Dustin Myers was arrested Sunday and charged with attempted murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed explosive, reports the Hutchinson News Online.
Authorities say that after hearing rumors that his classmate was gay, Myers went to his home with a small explosive device with the intention of killing the teenager.
Jenna, one of the victims who requested that South End News withhold her name for safety reasons, said that she and her friends heard a group of men shouting at them from a parked white sedan. The four friends, who were walking home from a night of clubbing at the Roxy, kept walking, but before long, the four men got out of their car and started coming towards them.
According to Jenna, the perpetrators said, "Fuck you, your fucking friends are faggots," before punching her in the face. When two of her friends came to her aid, two the attackers began beating and kicking them in the face, repeatedly yelling, "Fuck you, faggots."
NEW YORK – A fugitive has been convicted of second-degree murder in the beating death of a gay man on a New York City street in 2001.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown says John McGhee was convicted Wednesday. He says McGhee fled to London after 35-year-old Edgar Garzon died on Sept. 4, 2001, of injuries suffered in a street assault.
Garzon was attacked after leaving a gay bar in Queens on Aug. 15, 2001. Trial testimony showed the victim and McGhee had exchanged words before the assault.
On Thursday, a judge upheld the first-degree murder charge against the man accused in the July 16 bludgeoning death of 18-year-old transgender woman Angie Zapata, née Justin.
Allen Ray Andrade, 31, faces various felony charges in Zapata’s death. Public defender Annette Kundelius argued that the murder charge should be reduced to second-degree, saying that Andrade was driven to kill Zapata after she smiled at him, saying "I’m all woman," after he discovered her male genitals.
"At best, this is a case about passion," Kundelius said. "When [Zapata] smiled at him, this was a highly provoking act, and it would cause someone to have an aggressive reaction."
Phone calls between Andrade and his girlfriend show anti-gay bias and disregard, though he did acknowledge making "a mistake." "All gay things need to die," Andrade said in one conversation, adding that there was "no use crying over spilled milk" in trying to put the murder behind him.
All gay things need to die… Sorry to hear that it’s hard to be a republican in Hollywood Zucker. Try being a gay teenager in Kansas during an election year you gutter crawling maggot.
Damn…and I used to like some of your comedies too. Especially Airplane. But you just stopped being funny. You’re really just an asswipe aren’t you? And asswipe comedy has its own special flavor…
Zucker and some of his fellow Hollywood Republicans — including Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper — collaborated on the upcoming movie, "An American Carol" EW.com characterized the movie as "Hollywood’s first unabashedly right-wing comedy."
"An American Carol" — written by Zucker, Myrna Sokoloff and Lewis Friedman — is the story of an anti-American filmmaker who tries to abolish the July Fourth holiday, and is visited by the ghosts of famous Americans who try to get him to drop his plan.
Dickens would have ripped you and your republican fat cats a new one Zucker. Oh…wait…he did…in that story of his you’re plagiarizing for laughs…
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I’m very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can’t go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides-excuse me-I don’t know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It’s not my business," Scrooge returned. "It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
And a bit more emphatically…
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his wn words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child."
…
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, "but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw!"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man’s," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
So let me get this straight Zucker… You’re going to take A Christmas Carol and turn it into a right wing comedy. About an "anti American" (that would be a liberal and/or democrat…right Zucker?) film maker who wants to abolish the Forth of July. Oh Ha ha ha… And Republican is the new Gay. They say that all comedy holds within it a nugget of pain. But watching a man rot away from the inside isn’t funny.
“I just wanted to take a second to come by and pay my respect and the campaign’s respect to your organization and to your group,” said Schmidt, who many view as the new architect of the Republican Party. “Your organization is an important one in the fabric of our party.”
In his brief remarks, Schmidt weaved in a personal anecdote about his lesbian sister and her relationship to him, his wife, and his children. “On a personal level, my sister and her partner are an important part of my life and our children’s life,” he said. “I admire your group and your organization and I encourage you to keep fighting for what you believe in because the day is going to come.”
The Log Cabin members there in attendance immediately began questioning him on McCain’s record on gay equality, pressing him repeatedly on his stance on same sex marriage. Finally concluding that they’d come there looking to see a leader and they didn’t.
Hahahahaha…. No. Actually, that was a high school student in Concord New Hampshire, speaking directly to McCain himself…
William Sleaster, a student at Concord High School rose to ask McCain a question about gay rights and, ultimately dissatisfied by the answer he received from McCain, told the Republican presidential contender that he’d come looking to see a leader and didn’t.
McCain first answered the high school student by talking about his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the military’s policy regarding gays, and about his belief in the sanctity of marriage.
“Discrimination in any form is unacceptable in America today,” McCain said.
“I understand the controversy that continues to swirl around this issue,” McCain said. “That debate needs to be continued.”
Sleaster pressed on. “Do you support civil unions or gay marriage?”
“I do not,” McCain answered. “I think that they impinge on the status and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.”
“So you believe in taking away someone’s rights because you believe it’s wrong?”
“I wouldn’t put that interpretation on my position, but I understand yours,” McCain said diplomatically.
Sleaster went on to ask another question about how to help the working class in America, which McCain fielded by talking about the country’s need to figure out education and health care, and to secure the environment.
Sleaster indicated that he wanted to follow up again.
“You have one more? Go ahead you’re doing good,” McCain encouraged.
“I came here looking to see a leader,” Sleaster said. “I don’t.”
The assembled students murmured, and a teacher started to step in.
“I understand,” McCain said. “I thank you. That’s what America is all about.”
…and Homeland security immediately began tapping his family’s phones and intercepting their emails. I sure hope that poor kid doesn’t need any student loans to get himself through college. Anyway…here’s what the Log Cabin members actually did. They…uhm…cheered as Schmidt rose to the defense of Sarah Palin…
“You saw one of the great speeches in the history of political conventions last night by an accomplished governor of a state who has just announced herself as a major force in the Republican Party in her own right, and I think the other side this morning, when you consider the backlash that is likely to occur after all the vile filth that’s been thrown at her, they ought to be sitting on the other side saying, Oh – My – God,” Schmidt said to the cheers of some 50 attendees.
Vile filth…??? You mean…like this…?
Like…this…?
This…maybe…?
That kind of vile filth? Meanwhile the Log Cabin cheered for the lady who tried to eliminate domestic partner benefits in her state by referendum when she couldn’t get it via the courts, and told the Eagle Forum in a 2006 questionnaire that her No. 2 priority as governor would be "preserving the definition of ‘marriage’ as defined in our constitution." They cheered.
If sixteen year old William Sleaster had been there to see it, he might not have bothered challenging McCain on his gay rights positions. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, no one will stand with us.
The Log Cabin Republicans: Breathing new life every election year into Truman Capote’s saying, that a faggot is the homosexual gentleman who just left the room.
You Knew What He Was When He Clawed His Way Back Into The Senate With Republican Support
So…Joe Lieberman, the Last Honest Man In The Senate, gives a speech at the GOP convention, in which he says, among other things…
When others were silent, John McCain had the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq. When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, when Barack Obama was voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground,
John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion and support the surge, and because of that, today, our troops are at last beginning to come home, not in failure, but in honor!
To support the charge, the McCain campaign has cited Obama’s vote of May 24, 2007, against an appropriations bill that included funding for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and passed, 80-14).
So was that a vote "to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield"?
Not primarily.
Obama was fighting at the time for a requirement that President Bush begin to bring the troops home from Iraq. The bill in question did not include such a requirement, and that is why Obama voted against it. Obama said at the time that he wanted to fund the troops, he just didn’t want to fund the particular military strategy that the bill would enable.
“We must fund our troops," Obama said at the time. "But we owe them something more. We owe them a clear, prudent plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else’s civil war."
Clearly Obama wanted to provide funding for the troops — just not the president’s military strategy.
If, by voting against funding for a strategy he opposed, Obama voted to "cut off funding for the troops," then so did almost every Republican in the Senate — and Lieberman himself — when they voted against a $124-billion appropriations bill on April 26, 2007, that would have funded operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but also required Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. (McCain missed the vote on that bill, which passed 51-46 and was subsequently vetoed by Bush.)
What part of honor involves lying through your teeth Joe?
This from Glenn Greenwald, who is on fire here. Maybe you are aware, if not utterly disgusted, at how abjectly the democrats capitulated on telcom immunity for illegally spying on American citizens. Maybe you’re aware of how the immunity bill not only gave the telcoms immunity for illegally spying on us, but made it even easier for Bush to keep spying on us without having to bother with all that getting a warrent and other forth amendment do-wah. Maybe you’re wondering how democrats can be such absolute wusses when it comes to fighting Bush’s abuses of power. Maybe your wondering why democrats don’t really seem to care much about protecting and preserving our precious democracy. Maybe this will enlighten you…
Last night in Denver, at the Mile High Station — next to Invesco Stadium, where Barack Obama will address a crowd of 30,000 people on Thursday night — AT&T threw a lavish, private party for Blue Dog House Democrats, virtually all of whom blindly support whatever legislation the telecom industry demands and who also, specifically, led the way this July in immunizing AT&T and other telecoms from the consequences for their illegal participation in the Bush administration’s warrantless spying program. Matt Stoller has one of the listings for the party here.
Armed with full-scale Convention press credentials issued by the DNC, I went — along with Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Stoller and others — in order to cover the event, interview the attendees, and videotape the festivities. There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter — notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation’s largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.
Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party’s purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they’re part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of — or at least eager to conceal — their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.
It was really the perfect symbol for how the Beltway political system functions — those who dictate the nation’s laws (the largest corporations and their lobbyists) cavorting in total secrecy with those who are elected to write those laws (members of Congress), while completely prohibiting the public from having any access to and knowledge of — let alone involvement in — what they are doing. And all of this was arranged by the corporation — AT&T — that is paying for a substantial part of the Democratic National Convention with millions upon millions of dollars, which just received an extraordinary gift of retroactive amnesty from the Congress controlled by that party, whose logo is splattered throughout the city wherever the DNC logo appears — virtually attached to it — all taking place next to the stadium where the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming he will cleanse the Beltway of corporate and lobbying influences, will accept the nomination on Thursday night.
Sometimes I wonder if things really are getting more corrupt these days, or if we’re just seeing more of the corruption because of the grassroots media that has emerged during the Bush years. In any case, the above isn’t to my mind so much an argument against voting for democrats too, as for paying more attention to local elections, because congress is an aggregate of many local elections. I strongly doubt that the voters in the districts represented by the Blue Dogs approve of having their phones tapped, let alone giving the tappers a free pass in exchange for millions of dollars to run a convention.
We need to break the republcan grip on power in Washington, so they can’t do any more damage then they’ve already done to the courts, to the economy, to civil liberties at home and America’s moral stature abroad. But we also need a grassroots effort to get more people elected who want to serve the people, not the corporations. Because the corporations don’t give a good goddamn about democracy, let alone about America. All they see is their bottom line. We need better democrats.
Brandon McInerney Shot Larry King. The News Media Will Now Bury Him.
What She Said…
When the kids were killed in the Columbine High School shooting, no one asked what they did to get themselves killed. Every moment of the press coverage was dedicated to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Do we know what Brandon McInerney wore that day? Do we know how he got the gun into school? Do we know what created such rage in this boy of 14 to have him take a gun at point blank range and shoot? Do we know who his friends were, what pushed his buttons, what kind of movies he watched or internet sites he visited?
After all the stink the news media has been raising about the clothes Lawrence wore in school, you’d think he was dressed to go see Rocky Horror when McInerney walked up behind him and shot him in the head. In fact, the day he was killed he was wearing tennis shoes, baggy pants and a loose sweater over a collared shirt.
As a parent, I cannot understand the King’s lawsuit. They are blaming lipstick and glitter instead of the gun and the hand that held it. The message, loud and clear, is the dominant culture can wield a gun and shoot at will at anyone who doesn’t conform. And our Schools should enforce that conformity.
In doing so, they put my son, and anyone like him, at risk. And that really makes me want to scream: How can you miss the point?
It’s the killer, not the killed.
Emphasis mine. And it’s not just King’s parents who are content to put other people’s kids at risk. It’s McInerney’s lawyer, William Quest, who promised out of one side of his mouth, shortly after the first tendrils of his gay panic defense began to appear in the newspapers, that he wouldn’t put Lawrence on trial. Hahahahahaha. It’s a safe bet he’s been behind the media rush to portray 14 year old Lawrence King as a transvestite sexual predator, and taint the jury pool in McInerney’s favor. Even if he doesn’t succeed, without a doubt there will be other dead gay kids because of it.
And perhaps more dead gay adults too. The bedrock of the gay panic defense is that homosexuality is so revulsive that acting violently toward homosexuals is a normal and reasonable reflex. From there it is a simple step to conclude that homosexuals must assume responsibility for violence against them to the degree they are openly homosexual. The gay panic defense is another way of saying Their blood is upon them…
Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the ministries of Bible Belt televangelists in the 1970s-80s. But these fortunes would never have materialized without a secular weapon from the North–a Massachusetts marketing outfit begun by a group of twenty-something Harvard business school grads called Epsilon Data Management. Falwell began using the company in 1976; he was the first televangelist to sign up. When his contributions exploded, other preachers like Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard contracted with Epsilon and made a pile, too.
Before Epsilon, Oral Roberts used punch tape-driven Friden Flexo-writers. Billy Graham handwrote every homespun fundraising appeal himself. "You could see the buckwheat flying off the paper," recalls Gaylord Briley, one of the top religious fundraisers of the era. In a few years Epsilon was doing work for 7 of the top 10 televangelists in America.
Two threads joined together in the 1970s to produce the political machine we now know as the religious right. In the early 1970s, the feds began challenging the tax exemption of many fundamentalist schools over their race segregation policies. I’ve blogged about that previously Here…
But the spark that lit the roaring fire that eventually consumed the republican party wasn’t integration specifically…
In a recent interview broadcast on CNN the day of his death, Falwell offered his version of the Christian right’s genesis: "We were simply driven into the process by Roe v. Wade and earlier than that, the expulsion of God from the public square." But his account was fuzzy revisionism at best. By 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled on Roe, the antiabortion movement was almost exclusively Catholic. While various Catholic cardinals condemned the Court’s ruling, W.A. Criswell, the fundamentalist former president of America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, casually endorsed it. (Falwell, an independent Baptist for forty years, joined the SBC in 1996.) "I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person," Criswell exclaimed, "and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed." A year before Roe, the SBC had resolved to press for legislation allowing for abortion in limited cases.
While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the "pre-born." For Falwell and his allies, the true impetus for political action came when the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. Connally to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools in 1971. Their resentment was compounded in 1971 when the Internal Revenue Service attempted to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which forbade interracial dating. (Blacks were denied entry until that year.) Falwell was furious, complaining, "In some states it’s easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school."
Seeking to capitalize on mounting evangelical discontent, a right-wing Washington operative and anti-Vatican II Catholic named Paul Weyrich took a series of trips down South to meet with Falwell and other evangelical leaders. Weyrich hoped to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc. In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His implorations initially fell on deaf ears.
"I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. "What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."
Dig it. It wasn’t abortion. It wasn’t militant homosexuality. It wasn’t rampant sexual hedonism. It wasn’t the secularization of America’s schools. It wasn’t even racism, that lit the fire the brought the fundamentalist leadership charging into our political system in a blind destructive frenzy. It was their tax exemption. It was money.
The second thread is the advent of computerized direct marketing. Richard Viguerie was a pioneer in its use for the republican party. Viguerie had more then a mailing list. His genius was in applying computerized database analysis techniques to it, tracking the giving patterns of the names in his database. He paired that with a ruthless analysis of which marketing campaigns worked, and which did not. Viguerie, a right wing extremist, wasn’t interested in informing the republican base so much as in pushing their buttons so they would open their wallets and go to the polls. And he got results. With his database and direct mailing technique, Viguerie almost single-handedly turned around the fortunes of the Republicans after Watergate.
Remember, this was a time before the Internet, before the widespread use of cable TV and the appearance of 24 hour cable news, before even talk radio as we know it today, with its national audiences and personalities. Viguerie showed the republicans how they could bypass the news media of that day, and not only get their their message out on their own terms, but do it below the radar of the popular culture. His mail appeals were Targeted. The message was tailored and precise, and didn’t have to appear in any newspaper or television ad where the rest of the country could see it too.
Falwell saw the success of Viguerie’s technique, and revamped his own direct mailing effort…
Computerized database marketing turned the late 1970s into an era known as the golden age of direct mail prospecting. Direct mail was still an almost clandestine medium. The content of such correspondence was rarely exposed to media scrutiny. Falwell crafted his letters with theological abandon, hitting his mortal enemies with blunt force. Epsilon led Falwell to discover that the secret to steady income is consistency; getting lots of donors to give a little, but regularly. Epsilon also taught Falwell that most donor lists contain "compulsive contributors"–usually amounting to four percent of the list, says Briley.
These twin threads of course, have a common root. Money. It was all about the money. That is why there is a religious right today. And that is why they’ve made common cause with the corporate world, the world of Caesar, the world of mammon, that they once disdained. When Carter went after their tax exemptions, they found had a lot in common with those kings of business after all.
And how do you push the rube’s buttons enough so they’ll give you money, over and over and over again? Well…here’s one way…
Besides Epsilon, Falwell had the formidable talent of Jerry Huntsinger. Then 45, he was a former minister who lived on a farm near Richmond who had been taking advertising concepts from the for-profit world and applying them to nonprofit religious ventures. Huntsinger brought a novelist’s touch to direct mail. He considered every fundraising letter a first cousin to the short story. "A short story has a problem that seems insurmountable, a sympathetic character that is a victim of the problem, complications and obstacles, but finally, a resolution." He advised his clients that emergency appeals work best because they give donors a feeling of "excitement at coming to the rescue."
Huntsinger was also a master at fine tuning the mechanics: the color of the envelope, the position of the address window, which paragraphs to indent, which sentences to underline. He knew how to lure a reader’s eye just to where he wanted.
Huntsinger encouraged Falwell to focus on wedge issues in his mailings, excoriating the feminist movement and attacking homosexual rights, often equating both with the dangers of communism. As one letter stated: "Dear Friend: Homosexuals are on the march in this country. Homosexuals do not reproduce, they recruit, and many of them are after my children and your children….This is one major reason why we must keep "The Old Time Gospel Hour" alive…So don’t delay. Let me hear from you immediately. I will be anxiously awaiting your reply."
The sense of impending doom the letter conveyed fit perfectly with Huntsinger’s operating credo. It turned a pitch into a storyline (gays on the the march) with sympathetic characters (children) under threat from sex offenders (gay pedophiles). It was an emergency appeal that sought to panic his audience into coming to the rescue.
The Forbes excerpt ends on the note that the gay bashing appeals actually raised very little money. Given the history of the religious right’s move into politics, I don’t believe it. Before Anita Bryant showed them that waving the gay menace at people could practically stampede them to the polls, the Falwells and the Robertsons actually did very little gay bashing. But on the day Falwell stood by her side in front of reporters and declared that "a homosexual will kill you, soon as look at you", he knew she was on to something.
Falwell and his kind didn’t create the climate of fear and contempt toward gay people. But in the 1970s they began to whip it into a frenzy. For money. Never mind all that love your neighbor as yourself crap. The harder you push their buttons, the more they open their wallets. And the best button of all was the Homosexuals Are On The March And They Want Your Children button. It worked. The money came rolling in. For Falwell. For Robertson. For Dobson. And for all the other crusaders for Christ. The money came rolling in.
The Difference Between Helping Children And Kicking Them In The Face
PFOX, (Parents and Friends of eX-Gays), would have you believe it’s different from P-FLAG, (Parents and Friends of Gays), in that PFOX supports people who are "struggling with homosexuality" and P-FLAG does not. But that’s not it.
Take a look at this story at OneNewsNow, which begins:
Quoting a recent study, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) is warning of the increased risk of suicide that is linked with young people who identify themselves as homosexuals before achieving full maturity — a process encouraged by many homosexual high school clubs.
The study in question, as it turns out, is a seventeen year old work published in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, back in June 1991. Not exactly recent…but never mind. What PFOX is saying there is that supporting gay teens as they come out to themselves puts them at risk of suicide. Their solution?
Schools should not be encouraging teens to self-identify as gays, bisexuals or transgendered persons before they have matured. Sexual attractions are fluid and do not take on permanence until early adulthood. Rather than affirming teenagers as ‘gay’ through self-labeling, educators should affirm them as people worthy of respect and encourage teens to wait until adulthood before making choices about their sexuality. If teens are encouraged to believe that they are permanently ‘gay’ before they have had a chance to reach adulthood, their life choices are severely restricted and can result in depression.
So says PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs. Note the doublespeak there about affirming them as "people worthy of respect". But how much respect is it, to tell a kid gay kid they don’t have to be gay if they don’t want to? Look again, at what came slyly out of the other side of her mouth there…
Sexual attractions are fluid and do not take on permanence until early adulthood.
Thats religious rightspeak for There Is No Such Thing As A Homosexual. Don’t believe me? Look again…
If teens are encouraged to believe that they are permanently ‘gay’ before they have had a chance to reach adulthood, their life choices are severely restricted and can result in depression.
Permanently ‘gay’. Note both the quotes around the word gay and the word permanently preceding it. You don’t have to be gay if you don’t want to. Change is possible. This is what PFOX wants teachers to tell the gay kids that come out to them, and/or to their peers. Griggs is sliding that under the radar their, in a cotton candy cloud of PFAUX respect. But in today’s hostile school environment, where the word Gay has itself become a generic put-down among school kids, a kid who comes out, almost certainly already knows how impossible change actually is for them.
And that has consequences.
But leaving aside the fact that a 17 year old study was cited as "recent" and was cited as evidence against the existence of GSA clubs, which didn’t exist at the time of the study, this argument also makes a causal claim that can’t be justified by the study itself (see the full text of the study here).
First of all, they make no distinction at all between correlation and causation. If a higher percentage of those who self-identify as gay or bisexual early attempt suicide compared to those who self-identify later, is that a causal relationship or might both factors be effects of some other cause? Griggs makes no attempt to analyze this, it is enough for her that there is a correlation.
It never occurs to Griggs that those who attempt suicide soon after self-identifying as gay do so because that is when they first become aware that their identity is in such stark conflict with societal expectations. As any gay person can tell you, the initial coming out period is the most difficult because it often leads to serious conflicts with friends and family (and that was even more true in 1991 than it is today). She also ignores all of the other far more important risk factors that are obviously more likely to be causal. The study notes:
In 44% of cases, subjects attributed suicide attempts to "family problems," including conflict with family members and parents’ marital discord, divorce, or alcoholism. One third of attempts were related to personal or interpersonal turmoil regarding homosexuality. Almost one third of subjects made their first suicide attempt in the same year that they identified themselves as bisexual or homosexual. Overall, three fourths of all first attempts temporally followed self-labeling. Other common precipitants were depression (30%), conflict with peers (22%), problems in a romantic relationship (19%), and dysphoria associated with personal substance abuse (15%).
There are far more serious risk factors for suicide in the study, all of which are ignored by Griggs and PFOX. For instance, 61% of those who attempt suicide were sexually abused, while only 29% of those who did not attempt suicide were sexually abused. There’s an obvious causal factor. Those who attempted suicide also reported much higher rates of friendship loss due to being gay, drug use and having been arrested. Again, these are far more rationally viewed as causal factors in suicide than the age at which one self-identifies. Griggs ignores all of this because it doesn’t fit her ideological preferences.
But to call it ‘ideological’ ennobles it. This isn’t ideology, it’s hate. A hate so bottomless it will cheerfully let children kill themselves rather then allow them to have the support they need at that critical moment in their lives. What Griggs is saying there to kids, stripped of its PFAUX respect, is that thinking you are gay will make you kill yourself. That is, seriously, the message they want kids who are just coming into puberty and feeling same sex desire for the first time in their lives to hear, and internalize. These feelings are going to make me kill myself. And when they can’t stop themselves from having those feelings, feelings they’ve never had before, feelings that seem to come out of nowhere whenever an attractive classmate walks by, feelings that they have no control over whatsoever, what do you think is going to happen?
Here’s what: Griggs will cheerfully blame those of us who want gay kids to feel good about themselves when those kids take Griggs message, that thinking you are gay makes you want to kill yourself, to heart and actually do it.
And there is the essential difference between P-FLAG and PFOX. One group supports gay people. The other, ex-gays. And it doesn’t get any more ex then dead.
Paul Cameron’s Real Gift To The Anti-Gay Industrial Complex
Every time someone mindlessly parrots the notion that gay people have shorter lifespans then heterosexuals, the religious right gives a nod of thanks to Paul Cameron. Ever since the Reagan years, Cameron has been chugging out a torrent of bogus research aimed at demonizing gay people in the public mind. Where Falwell, Dobson and Robertson waved the bible at gay people, and social conservatives waved family values, Cameron became a fountainhead, a one-stop shopping center for anti-gay junk science. From his often used claim that gay people have shorter lifespans, to his claim that lesbians are more likely to be involved in car accidents, Cameron gave their cheapshit hatreds a gloss of dispassionate science.
Cameron was eventually thrown out of the American Psychological Association for distorting the work of other legitimate researchers. But to the anti-gay right, which builds museums to creationism and attacks the teaching of science in schools, real science was always the enemy. Cameron is gold coin to them. But in recent years, as more and more of mainstream America learns what a charlatan Cameron is, they’ve had to take more care not to put Cameron’s name in their pamphlets. Some years ago, William Mr. Book Of Virtues Bennett got caught parroting Cameron’s lifespan claim he had to backtrack. First he claimed someone else had said it too, but when it turned out that person had cited Cameron too, Bennett mumbled something about not trusting that figure anymore and went back to his favorite casino. I’ve heard though, that lately Mr. Book Of Virtues has been citing it again.
But in the end, Cameron’s biggest contribution to the Kultur Krieg may well be not his bogus statistics, but his method. Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has uncovered a new scam by the Family Research Council in their fight to repeal California’s same sex marriage law, that has the trademark Cameron technique but apparently was entirely a homegrown effort.
They cite the "Dutch Study" Stanley Kurtz bastardized some years ago for their claim that gay relationships don’t last very long and are never monogamous. Burroway did a wonderful job some time back of debunking this, and all I’ll say about that now is that when you look at the data from a study that excludes monogamous couples, don’t be surprised when you don’t see any monogamy in the data.
But it’s the follow-up claim that’s interesting here. FRC is claiming that same sex couples are inherently more violent, more prone to domestic abuse…
The third point the brochure is built on is this:
Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women
They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.
It is. You should go read Jim’s entire debunking of it to get the whole stinking rotten smell of it. But I’ll give you the executive summary here. Basically, they took the data for individual victims of domestic violence who were in, or had ever been in, same sex relationships and compared that to the data for victims in opposite sex relationships. But much of the violence against people who were in same sex relationships was committed by an opposite sex partner. In the case of the men who were or had been in a same sex relationship, almost half of the incidents were attacks on them by wives, former wives or girlfriends. In the case of the women who had been or were in same sex relationships, as I read the figures, about three out of four incidents were attacks on them by husbands or boyfriends.
Dig it. The FRC took incidents of straight on gay violence, and included them in its total figure for gay domestic violence. In point of fact, if you look at the data for Couples, as opposed to individuals, what you find is that a gay man is statistically safer living with a male partner, then a heterosexual woman is living with a male partner.
This is what passes for traditional values over at the Family Research Council. If there is a devil in Hell below, then he is smiling proudly at the runt at FRC who came up with that one. And Paul Cameron is probably smiling proudly too. He taught them how.
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