Your Stereotypes About California Are Probably Wrong
I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland. But I was born there, and half my family tree is there. So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state. I see it from both within and without. The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland. Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.
One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years. And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California. This, from Box Turtle Bulletin…
We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.
Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.
In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:
“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.
…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death.
Dig it. The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples. Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state. It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America. Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.
There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California. But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander. The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose. The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys. The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton.
It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head. But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate. My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant. During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law. H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun. But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew. California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages. It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world. In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology. There is Hollywood and Disneyland. There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop. The human potential never had it better then in California. It is a place of magic. But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Well Lookie Here…A Visit From Jackson Memorial Hospital…
First…a little GLBT history…
A gay man dies alone in an unfamiliar hospital while his longtime partner tries fruitlessly to get permission to be by his side. It’s a too-common scenario that documents such as living wills, powers of attorney, and domestic-partnership registration are supposed to prevent. But in the death of Robert Lee "Bobby" Daniel, 34, at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000, none of that mattered, according to a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on February 27. San Franciscan Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., 34, had power of attorney for Daniel, his registered domestic partner, but was barred from his room and from consulting with physicians because Flanigan was not considered "family" by the hospital, charges the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The couple had been driving to meet family in northern Virginia when Daniel became ill. He died without being able to say goodbye to his partner. "I have a huge hole in my heart, and my soul, because I wasn’t allowed to be with Bobby when he needed me most," Flanigan said in a statement.
Hospital officials denied any wrongdoing. "We deliver compassionate care to every patient, with sensitivity to the wishes of our patients and their loved ones," spokesperson Ellen Beth Levitt, told The Baltimore Sun.
Flanigan and Daniel, both residents of San Francisco, signed a legal document giving Flanigan the power to make medical decisions for Daniel in expectation that doctors might not recognize Flanigan. Daniel confided to Flanigan that he did not want to go on life support at the end of his life.
Daniel was transferred to the Shock Trauma Center from the Harford Hospital in Havre de Grace, Md. That night, Flanigan sat in the waiting room for four hours while they worked on Daniel but was never consulted about medical decisions, according to the claim. When Daniel’s sister and mother arrived at the hospital, Flanigan was allowed to see Daniel for the first time.
When Flanigan and the family saw Daniel, he was unconscious with his eyes taped shut, and a breathing tube had been inserted, contrary to Flanigan’s requests, according to the claim.
I did this cartoon about the tragedy back in 2002…
I’d only just started adding the political cartoons to my web site back then, and my drawing skills were stunted from years of neglect, but unlike a lot of the other cartoons I did at that time, this one still holds up I think. Reading the story of Flanigan and Daniel had made me livid, and probably that anger lifted my limited drawing skills up a notch or two. I also blogged about it over and over. Flanigan later found the cartoon while searching the web and I’m happy to say sent me a very heartfelt email thanking me for it.
Later, when an all heterosexual jury excused Maryland Shock Trauma for what they did to Flanigan, I did a follow-up cartoon that was pretty lame and I’ve since removed it from the cartoon site. I guess by that time my anger had turned into a weary contempt. Maryland Shock Trauma had finally found a way to give straight juries an excuse to let hospitals stick a knife in the hearts of same sex couples without having to acknowledge their own bigotries. Oh…we were just too busy to let the Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual…
All of this is to say that if you google the case of Flanigan and Daniel you will likely run across one or more of the pages here on my web site, either in the cartoon pages or the blog pages. Hold that thought for a moment. Because the case of Flanigan and Daniel is not, alas, unique. It’s still happening to same sex couples, who thought, like Flanigan and Daniel did, that their power of attorney documents might actually mean something to gay hating hospital staff…
The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple’s 18 years together.
But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond’s hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an "anti-gay city and state."
Langbehn filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging the Miami hospital with negligence and "anti-gay animus" in refusing to recognize her and the children as Pond’s family, even after a power of attorney was faxed to the hospital within an hour of their arrival.
…
Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.
"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.
…
Jackson officials declined to comment, except to say that the hospital follows state and federal laws on patient privacy that can forbid releasing health information to those outside the patient’s immediate family.
The hospital also may limit visitors if a patient is being treated for a trauma, emergency or serious infection, said Valda Clark Christian, an assistant county attorney representing Jackson.
That last statement there from the ironically named Valda Clark Christian is Jackson Memorial Hospital picking up the knife that Maryland Shock Trauma gave it, and anti-gay hospital staff everywhere. Oh…we were just too busy to let that Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual… Power of Attorney? You homosexuals have no power here…this is an anti-gay city and state…
What Jackson Memorial Hospital is going to do now is play the Maryland Shock Trauma trump card. In the case of Flanigan and Daniel, first they said Flanigan wasn’t family. Then they told him that the power of attorney document had been misplaced. Somehow none of that mattered when Daniel’s Legitimate Family arrived at the hospital because they were let right in and that was when Flanigan was, purely as a matter of coincidence surely, also allowed to see his beloved. When Flanigan sued the hospital finally came up with the excuse that they were just too busy to let Flanigan in. Never mind that they could have still respected his medical directives anyway. They didn’t have to let him into the room to do that. Daniel had a fear of dying with tubes stuck down his throat and that was precisely what the hospital staff did to him. When Flanigan and Daniel’s family were finally allowed to see him, not only were there tubes shoved down his throat, the hospital staff had put Daniel into restraints when he tried to take them out.
That was how Daniel spent his last moments on earth, in the tender care of Maryland Shock Trauma. Because they didn’t give a good goddamn about the faggot in the waiting room and his so-called power of attorney. First they openly told Flanigan that he wasn’t being allowed in because he was "not family". Then they said the power of attorney documents had been misplaced. Then when Flanigan sued they told the jury they were too busy taking care of Daniel to deal with Flanigan too. Probably they were too busy putting the tubes down Daniel’s throat. In any case, the "too busy" excuse allowed the all heterosexual jury to acquit the hospital of any wrong doing. If gay ain’t shit you must acquit…
Jackson’s lawyers surely have their own resources to look up how the case of Flanigan and Daniel went down. But the hospital is covering all its bases apparently. Someone there is doing a little research on the web regarding that case, probably to get a sense of just how the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse card is played. According to my site meter logs, someone at Jackson paid me a little visit the other day…
Nice. Note the search string: "lambda legal flanigan daniels court findings ruling judgement" Too bad you can’t search for your missing sense of human decency on Google. What the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse does is give hospitals the absolute right to disregard anything anyone tells them about patients in their care, whether they’re the "legal" family of the patient or not, whether they are legally married or not, have a power of attorney or a medical directive document. The Maryland Shock Trauma excuse gives hospitals free reign to do to your loved ones as they damn well please, so long as they die of it quickly enough that they can claim they were performing emergency procedures. Nobody’s family rights have to be respected now in any way. But of course everyone understands that it’s only the homosexuals who have no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect.
This is why the fight for same sex marriage is so important. Not that a marriage ring will give bigots any more respect for same sex couples, but that the system will never see our relationships as being equal to those of heterosexuals unless we fight for equality, not some separate but equal civil union status. It’s not about the legal paperwork. Langbehn and Pond had the same legal paperwork that Flanigan and Daniel did, and it conferred nothing. It’s not about the paperwork. It’s about respect. Heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex. Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That’s it. There is nothing more to it then that. If that’s all it takes to make care givers treat loving and devoted couples with less compassion then they’d grant to laboratory rats then the moral problem here isn’t with us. They were a lesbian couple. If the word ‘lesbian’ negates the word ‘couple’ for you then You are the one with the moral problem not Langbehn and Pond. Langbehn, in her struggle to care for her beloved, had more integrity and virtue then any of the runts at Jackson Memorial, who spit on their family while Pond was dying. That’s what this is about. We are not fighting over a word. We are not fighting for a piece of paper. We are fighting for the human status. For the righteousness of love.
A hospital can be a place of hope against all the odds. It can be a place where the human heart takes its ultimate stand against the finality of death. We all die. That we still fight anyway, still love anyway, is either to our glory or just a pathetic conceit. A hospital can be a monument to our capacity to love one another, that even the taint of death cannot take from within us. Or it can be a place of despair, of the end of all things, even love. Yes, sometimes, in the heat of battle, hospital staff have to be left alone to do their jobs. But why even bother, if not for love?
Those were just a few of the terms hurled my way in 2003 when I said that the Supreme Court’s Texas sodomy decision opened the door to the redefinition of marriage.
When I wasn’t ducking the epithets, I was being laughed at, mocked, and given the crazy-uncle-at-the-holidays treatment by the media. Or I was being told I should resign from my leadership post by some Senate colleagues.
Five years later, do I regret sounding the alarm about marriage? No.
I’m just saddened that time has proved right those of us who worried about the future of marriage as the union of husband and wife, deeply rooted not only in our traditions, our faiths, but in the facts of human nature: as Pope Benedict said, "The cradle of life and love," connecting mothers and fathers to their children.
So sad… So sad… So tell us how were you proven right Rick…
The latest distressing news came last week in California. The state Supreme Court there ruled, 4-3, that same-sex couples can marry.
No kidding? Wow…
Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s. In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won’t have a dad around, but we can’t let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation, can we?
OSLO, Norway (AP) – Two Norwegian opposition parties on Thursday backed the rights of gay couples to marry in church, adopt and have assisted pregnancies, effectively assuring the passage of a new equality law next month.
The ruling three-party government proposed a law in March giving gay couples equal rights to heterosexuals but disagreements within the coalition cast doubt on whether it would receive enough votes to pass.
But two opposition parties announced Thursday they were backing the proposals, a move welcomed by gay rights groups, which should ensure a parliamentary majority and allow the law to be passed.
Okay…in other words… Norway suffered a staggering rise in out of wedlock births and an equally staggering decline in heterosexual marriages since it began allowing same-sex marriages in the 1990s, and just one week after your column warning us about that Norway’s parliament announces it is ready to give same sex the right to marry. No you drooling sack of Santorum, Norway hasn’t had same-sex marriage since…it was 1993 since you couldn’t be bothered to check the actual date either. It’s had a form of civil unions.
Okay…fine…so it was civil unions that caused the decline in Norway then…right? Erm…no… You’re waving Stanley Kurtz’ claptrap years after it was debunked you moron. Here…let some fellow republicans slap some wake up upside your head…
Some on the far right claim that the experiences with same-sex marriage in the international community prove that same-sex marriage destroys the institution of marriage. This claim, however, is unsupported by the facts. Stanley Kurtz, of the Hoover Institution, insists, in an article for The Weekly Standard, that same-sex marriage has undermined the institution of marriage in Scandinavia. (Scandinavia includes the countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Much debate on this issue also has included the Netherlands.) An examination of the facts severely undermines Kurtz’s assertion. Professor M.V. Lee Badgett from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently authored a study examining Kurtz’s conclusion. Click here to read the entire study. Among the report’s key findings:
"There is no evidence that giving partnership rights to same-sex couples had any impact on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. Marriage rates, divorce rates, and non-marital birth rates have been changing in Scandinavia, Europe and the United States for the past thirty years. But those changes have occurred in all countries, regardless of whether or not they adopted same-sex partnership laws, and these trends were underway well before the passage of laws that gave same-sex couples rights."
"Divorce rates (in Scandinavia) have not risen since the passage of partnership laws and marriage rates have remained stable or actually increased."
"Non-marital birth rates have not risen faster in Scandinavia or the Netherlands since the passage of partnership laws. Although there has been a long-term trend toward the separation of sex, reproduction, and marriage in the industrialized west, this trend is unrelated to the legal recognition of same-sex couples."
"Non-marital birth rates changed just as much in countries without partnership laws as in countries that legally recognize same-sex couples’ partnerships."
"The legal and cultural context in the United States gives many more incentives for heterosexual couples to marry than in Europe and those incentives will still exist even if same-sex couples can marry. Giving same-sex couples marriage or marriage-like rights has not undermined heterosexual marriage in Europe, and it is not likely to do so in the United States."
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.
Emphasis mine. And you can be sure Kurtz knew that when he published his dire warnings about the effect of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia. After all…he had to have poured over the data in his search for evidence damning gay people. He’d have looked at the entire marriage rate data, never doubt it, and he had to have seen that part. He withheld it because it effectively took away his ammunition.
But more specifically with respect to civil unions, look at what the data tells us:
Before 1993, the percentage of births outside of marriage grew steadily by an average of about 9% per year.
After civil unions were enacted in 1993, the growth of that birth rate slowed dramatically. The the growth rate fell from 9% per year to an average of less than 1.5% per year between 1993 and 2006.
Which means that if there were a cause and effect between Norway’s birth rate outside of marriage and providing civil unions for same-sex couples, the data suggests that civil unions actually had a dramatic affect in slowing the rate of births outside of marriage.
The chart Burroway provides shows the rate climbing since the mid-70s, and then suddenly tapering off after civil unions were enacted. Of course, coincidence is not causality, and the plain fact is that civil unions were probably of utterly no consequence in any sense. Since when did heterosexuals decide how to live their intimate lives based on what homosexuals do with theirs? Is this rocket science?
What happened to change how heterosexuals lived their lives in the 1970s wasn’t gay liberation, but women’s. The pill happened. Women became more independent of men. They could have their own lives. Marriage wasn’t a foregone conclusion for them, the home not the only life they were allowed to have anymore. Given all that, of course the patterns of marriage would change. Opposite sex couples still marry…they just go down a different road to it now…both of them, together, as equals.
And make no mistake…that’s what Santorum and his kind want to change. This isn’t about same-sex marriage. It’s about the prerogative of powerful males. It’s about taking us all back to a day when certain males of a certain class had power and status simply by virtue of their being males of a certain class, and the rest of us, women, minorities, laborers, heathens, knew our place and our lives only had context in service to them. It was once their world, and the rest of us just lived in it. That’s why they fight. Because in this world of ever expanding knowledge, freedom and justice, they are the biggest losers. Where status doesn’t count, you actually have to be something, and all they know how to be, is 18th century privileged males.
Actually Rick, the voters of Pennsylvania gave you a wake-up call when they booted your ass out of office last election. And you’re still walking though life half-asleep, half comatose, aren’t you?
Therefore, the ruling to impose homosexual "marriages" upon California was tyrannical, unconstitutional, and immoral. Like many state legislatures that refused to accept the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision saying slaves were property not persons, Californians must not accept the California Supreme Court’s edict that marriage is no longer only for a man and a woman.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the right invoke Dred Scott. They’ve done it routinely over abortion too. They’re calling for massive resistance to the courts and claiming as moral justification the ruling upholding the legality of slavery.
Ever see them invoke Plessy v. Ferguson? No? Me either.
Good catch by Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin. Gary Glenn, President of Michigan klavern of the American Family Association, waves the Homosexual Menace scarecrow over at Peter LaBarbra’s Americans For Truth. Beware the gays! Beware the Gays! Beware the Gays! Glenn is warning us about the Homosexual Menace. Can you spot the problem with this passage about the Homosexual Menace…?
Michigan’s largest homosexual activist group says once marriage is legally redefined to include homosexual couples, business owners and even news media outlets who refuse to recognize such marriages should be jailed or sued and “publicly slapped,” a Jewish and openly bisexual columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News reported Monday.
They call them Freudian slips. And hey…wasn’t Freud a Jew too…
It is astonishing, though, how quickly gay marriage went from being something as unthinkable by most people as legalized polygamy is today, to being considered a constitutional right by high courts, and accepted by roughly half the populace. I was thinking today that there’s a parallel between what happened to the Catholic Church, especially in Europe, in the 20th century — how it went from being apparently strong and vital to facing all kinds of crises in the blink of an eye. As those familiar with the arguments know, there is a tendency among the right to blame the Second Vatican Council, but the truth is if the Church were as strong as she seemed, things wouldn’t have fallen apart so rapidly.
So it is with the institution of marriage. Gay marriage is and is not a sudden shift in the meaning of marriage. It started with the Reformation. The reason I think gay marriage cannot be stopped, only delayed, is because it is only the latest manifestation of deep social trends in the West going back centuries. These currents run so deep in our civilization they carry us all along without many of us being aware of how far from shore we’re receding.
Ah…for the good old days, when heretics, witches and homosexuals were burned at the stake. Dreher has tried, oh so hard in recent months, to seem like a decent man. A love the sinner, hate the sin kind of man. Not a bigot…just someone who has very strong moral values. And then California goes and does this to him. One good thing to come from the California Supreme Court ruling the other day is that reflexive release of stench from that open sewer Dreher’s kind like to call a conscience. We don’t hate homosexuals…honest…really…we just don’t want THEIR PRESENCE DEFILING OUR SACRED INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE!!! We need to get these from time to time, so we don’t start believing all that crap about them kind actually being anything other then somewhat more publishable in family newspapers then the Westboro Baptist Church.
And Much more verbose. Fred could distill Dreher’s entire column of crap down to a single poster sign that reads: GOD HATES FAG AMERICA. No kidding…go read the damn thing. Dreher is literally calling same-sex marriage a symptom of the inevitable destruction of the west that began with the Protestant Reformation. Take that all you Christian fundamentalists who oppose gay rights. You’re just as much a threat to western civilization as homosexuality as far as Dreher is concerned.
This is why I don’t see any hope of stopping gay marriage. It did not come out of nowhere, but emerged as the working-out of the logic of our civilization and its exaltation of individualism.
You know…all that American stuff about freedom and liberty and justice for all. Why Dreher doesn’t come right out and say that the very existence of United States Of America is a symptom of the inevitable decline of the west too I’ve no idea, other then he likes having that stars and stripes thing on his passport. Oh…and the standard of living in a free country is kinda swell too.
I think the most common, and superficially common-sensical, questions that comes up in discussions of this issue is, "How does Jill and Jane’s marriage hurt Jack and Diane’s?" The idea is that unless you can demonstrate that a gay marriage directly harms traditional marriage, there is no rational objection to gay marriage.
But this is a shallow way to look at it. We all share the same moral ecology. You may as well ask why it should have mattered to the people of Amherst, Mass., if some rich white people in Charleston, SC, owned slaves. Don’t believe in slavery? Don’t buy one.
Look at that carefully. Dreher may seem to be throwing moral relativism back in the face of liberals, but what he’s actually doing is employing it as a weapon. What mattered about slavery was the wrong done to slaves, regardless of who did or did not choose to own any. The question remains, what is the wrong done to Jack and Diane if Jill and Jane are free to marry. But Dreher has an answer for that too…
Redefining marriage to include same-sex partners within its definition radically changes the institution, reinforcing the idea that it has no transcendental meaning, but can be changed at will.
Transcendental meaning. Same sex marriage destroys marriage, by depriving it of its Transcendental meaning. And whatever that Transcendental meaning is, it’s something that only heterosexuals can bring to it. By virtue of their being…well…heterosexual. Whatever it is that same sex couples bring to a marriage, it cannot be marriage because it cannot have that Transcendental meaning. Only heterosexual coupling can possess that Transcendental meaning. Which means that only heterosexual families possess that Transcendental meaning. Because only heterosexual love possesses that Transcendental meaning.
Here…let me decode that: Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Only now the thinking is we don’t even have that. We only have make-believe sex. Mere genital stimulation. Nothing more then that. Certainly nothing Transcendental. We are shallow, empty beings. Creatures who only resemble true humans. Our hearts can hold none of that Transcendental Meaning that heterosexuals wake up to and regard favorably in the bathroom mirror every morning. Our brief barren assignations are just pitiful imitations of true heterosexual love. And by demanding that our pseudo unions be regarded in marriage as being on the same Transcendental plane as the rich and noble and truly human heterosexual unions are, we do more then mock their genuine human capacity to love…we destroy the institute that enriches and sustains it. And take down western civilization with it. And thus, the Protestant Reformation finally achieves its goal. Praise Satan.
That pretty much sum it up Rod?
Over at Box Turtle Bulletin and Ex-Gay Watch the discussion is about how to reach out to the other side. But you can’t. Not to the other side. To your neighbor…yes. Even if they oppose gay rights bitterly. Neighbors must always be reached out to. But you need to understand this…the other side isn’t the anti-same sex marriage side. Listen to Dreher again. Here is the other side:
This is why I don’t see any hope of stopping gay marriage. It did not come out of nowhere, but emerged as the working-out of the logic of our civilization and its exaltation of individualism.
This is the side that has been bitterly opposed to everything fine and noble a human being could ever become since the caveman days. This is the side that would rather make you bow down to the gods and beg forgiveness for being born with a heart and a brain, then live in a world where the human spirit can soar. Because the sight of everything a human can be, that they cannot, is more offensive to them, more frightening, then a landscape of beaten bent and broken humans in chains. When Rod Dreher accuses liberals of using the rhetoric of slave masters, he’s laughing in your face, and then spitting in it.
It is one thing to reach out to a neighbor, and another to reach out to the one who presumes to be your master. They get only the finger, and that so long as they keep their hands to themselves. So…in the spirit of dialogue…Go Fuck yourself Rod…
You and all the other haters of humanity, and everything fine and noble human beings are capable of, and all the beauty they are capable of making, and giving to one another. I’ve got your decline and fall of western civilization right here you gutter crawling bigot…
And if this image frightens you less then the sight of a devoted loving same-sex couple being joined in marriage in the eyes of the law, never mind your Nazi Pope’s, then you can just go fuck yourself because it isn’t the death of western civilization you are worried about because western civilization isn’t anything to you but a perch to shit and squawk on. You never had to go through anything like this to marry the one love of your life…
…so save your pusillanimous rhetoric about the Transcendental Meaning of marriage for someone who thinks you really give a flying fuck about it more then pissing on the courage of lovers who would walk through fire for the sake of their love. Would you go through the gauntlet gay couples have to go through for the woman you married? Would you hold her hand in public if it meant the two of you might get your skulls bashed in? Would you take her hand in marriage if it meant that someday some fanatic might decide to kill both of you to avenge the institution of marriage and prevent the fall of western civilization? Would you have the nerve to love, if you had to have the nerve gay couples do? I doubt it. Because only cowards try to incite passions toward minorities.
And that’s what bothers you isn’t in Dreher. Not that in our struggle for equality people come to see our humanity after all, but that they’ll finally see what a bunch of runts your kind are. It isn’t the end of western civilization that keeps you awake nights. It’s the end of pretense.
When Vito J. Fossella Jr., the soon-to-be boy congressman, stood beside the young girls of a cheerleading squad at the Excelsior Grand catering hall in 1997, it seemed a particularly vivid version of Staten Island pageantry. Mr. Fossella — 32 and with Al Pacino looks — was on his way to becoming the sole Republican in New York City’s Congressional delegation at a spirited party billed as an evening of “pasta and politics.”
George H. W. Bush and Senator Bob Dole were there that night, strolling past the steaming trays of ziti and charging donors $1,000 each to pose for pictures. Sonny Bono was on his way from California to stump with them the next day. Mr. Fossella, the man of the hour, raised his hands, quieted the crowd, then launched into a rousing speech on cutting taxes and championing school choice.
…
Mr. Fossella, victorious with 62 percent of the vote, was so intent on getting to Congress that, according to The Staten Island Advance, he flew to Washington from Newark carrying the morning papers proclaiming his own victory only 10 hours after it was announced.
Once there, he established himself as a reliable member of his party. He voted to impeach President Clinton, followed President Bush’s war policies in Iraq, voted to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood and supported a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
And yet many of his Democratic colleagues did not regard Mr. Fossella as an ideological warrior…
Vito Fossella built a career as a staunch "family values" pol, polishing his image in his predominantly Catholic district with a string of anti-gay votes.
He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said.
…
As congressman, Fossella voted to prohibit any funding for joint adoptions by gay couples.
He has voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, a federal prohibition on gay marriage.
He also demanded housing funds be held back from San Francisco unless it repealed its domestic partnership law.
Nice family republican values kinda guy wouldn’t you say?
Oh yes…definitely…
In the nine days since the 43-year-old Mr. Fossella, who has served five terms in Congress, was arrested and charged after running a red light in Alexandria, Va., things have gone from not-so-good to pretty bad, with only a slender thread still staving off the worst.
Within days of his admitting that he was on his way to visit “some friends in Virginia” when he was stopped by the police, the New York tabloids began raising questions about the woman who came to retrieve him from custody, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel named Laura Fay. Then, on Thursday, he released a clipped statement from his office, saying that he had fathered a daughter, now 3, in an extramarital affair with Ms. Fay.
Democratic and Republican Congressional officials are reportedly looking into Fossella’s mysterious and expensive trip to France in 2003 with his mistress, Laura Fay.
It was called a fact-finding mission to La Hague’s nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, according to the Daily News.
However, the Staten Island Republican was the only lawmaker authorized to go. And according to one committee member, it may have been less about nuclear power and more about fueling his relationship with the Air Force legislative liaison officer, the retired colonel who subsequently bore the congressman’s love child.
Should Fosella repay taxpayers for his travel expenses if investigators find he mixed pleasure with business?
Listen for the right wing ‘phobes who bellyached about Tammy Baldwin’s domestic partner being allowed to fly with her, to blast Fossella for flying with his mistress to France on the government’s dime in, 3… 2… 1… Never.
If you have time to manage you’re neighbor’s personal lives it probably means you aren’t paying enough attention to your own. Well adjusted heterosexuals don’t seek validation by trashing the lives of their gay neighbors. When you see someone going on a crusade against homosexuality it’s probably because the stench of their own intimate lives has become too terrifying for them to contemplate. Nobody goes looking for scapegoats if they don’t need any.
As 14-year-old Brandon McInerney prepares to be arraigned today in the slaying of 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, his lawyer is advancing a defense that at least partly blames school officials for the tragedy.
Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys, which began when King openly flirted with McInerney, said Deputy Public Defender William Quest.
No. The tensions pre-existed that. The flirting was Kings way of dealing with the abuse he was getting from the other kids. But look at this carefully. Quest is hanging a dead skunk on a sliver of truth obvious to everyone in hindsight. Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys… Yes. And right here is the poison Quest is trying to slip in along with that…
Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus, Quest said.
You’d think the boy was going to school in drag…which is exactly the image Quest is creating there. Quest is slyly turning a murdered 15 year old gay kid into a drag queen exploring his sexuality on other terrified teenagers. He’s pushing all the usual buttons there. But look past that. King’s behavior was creating turmoil on campus. Quest has probably figured out that blaming a 15 year old gay kid for his own murder isn’t going to play well…at least with California juries. He might get away with it, but considering Matthew Shepard’s killers couldn’t even in Wyoming, it’s a risk. So what to do? Simple. Blame the school for not blaming the victim.
Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus…
Isn’t that a neat trick? The school was siding with the gay kid, which left the other kids in turmoil, which caused Brandon McInerney to bring a gun to school and shoot Lawrence King in the back of the head. Poor Branden was so traumatized over having a gay classmate, and even worse being flirted at, that he couldn’t even look him in the eye when he pulled the trigger. And it’s all the school’s fault. For nurturing the gay kid. When they should have been keeping him under control. So the other kids wouldn’t be in turmoil. So Branden McInerney wouldn’t have been in turmoil.
You have never seen the gay panic defense so slickly inserted into a murder trial.
In fact, since the American Psychological Association says homosexuality is not a choice, some have even labeled sexuality an “undebatable” topic. While the APA did indeed make this claim, I prefer to go straight to the evidence itself rather than rely on the authority of the APA, the only professional institution to be censured by Congress by a unanimous vote.
He’s probably referring to This little bit of manufactured outrage…but never mind. Science holds no sway that a reasoned and considered vote of the impartial members of congress cannot overrule. If congress voted to make the value of Pi three exactly, then of course that would be its value…right?
…let’s jump straight into the facts, starting with Spitzer.
No, not Eliot Spitzer, Dr. Robert Spitzer of Columbia University. Some may recognize him for his role in removing homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973, and while many have praised his willingness to reject the dogma of the day in the name of science, few know the sequel to his story. 30 years later, Spitzer published a surprising paper based on his research, one which suggested that therapy can change the orientation of an individual. Spitzer still had the same commitment to follow the evidence, but many of his colleagues who vigorously supported him in 1973 had a sudden change of heart. In fact, in the most ironic twist of fate, Spitzer, an atheist, interviewed with Christianity Today in April 2005, elaborating on the consequences of his rigorous and scientific studies. “Many colleagues were outraged,” said Spitzer, later adding, “I feel a little battle fatigue.”
"…his rigorous and scientific studies." Sometimes you don’t know whether the winger children are laughing in your face or whether they’re really the gullible sheep they seem to be. If anything about Spitzer’s study was rigorous it was how meticulously rigged it was. In part and unforgivably with Spitzer’s willing consent, but also right under his nose, to produce a particular outcome. And nobody understands better how the rigging was accomplished then participants like Arana…
In fact, I know Dr. Robert Spitzer’s study well. Dr. Nicolosi asked me to participate in it, but instructed me not to reveal that he had referred me; while he wanted his organization’s views represented, he did not want to bring into question the study’s integrity. Wacker must not have read Dr. Spitzer’s study, or perhaps he has a naïve understanding of scientific inquiry. Otherwise he would know that the study consisted of informal interviews with ex-gays and those still in therapy; it was merely a report of what they had said. The APA and the psychological community have criticized the ex-gay movement for not providing controlled, long-term studies — to date, none exist.
Arana went into ex-gay therapy willingly, and left it feeling cheated. It’s a part of his life he says now that he does not revisit, "…not because it hurts especially but because it has become increasingly irrelevant." Thankfully, he was willing to share some of it in his article. For those of you who think the ex-gay movement isn’t about demonizing homosexuals so much as lovingly helping them with their same sex attraction disorder, read this:
Disgust with what was termed the “gay lifestyle” was implicit in therapy. I remember Dr. Nicolosi telling me, in response to the question of whether one could easily contract HIV from semen, that if this were the case then gays would be “jerking off in hamburgers all over” to infect people.
There’s the mindset right there that animates the pews in this particular congregation from one end to the other. And it’s why the patients ultimately don’t matter, and why the leaders of this movement don’t give a good goddamn about what happens to the people they treat or to their families after they leave therapy. You can’t harm someone who isn’t really fully human to start with. And you can’t destroy a family where no Real family exists as far as you are concerned…
I learned to be a man: I was encouraged to play catch with my father, work out, watch football. At one point Dr. Nicolosi assigned me a therapy partner who was my age. Ryan and I used to speak by phone (he was in Colorado, I in Arizona), gossiping about school, at one point promising to send each other pictures of ourselves (the canker was already on the rose). After not hearing from him for a few weeks I called his family, who told me that Ryan had gone to court and emancipated himself from them. His father, in tears, told me this had ruined his life.
Presumably, that father didn’t get a refund on his son’s ex-gay treatments either.
The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the demands of the Iraq war, allowing sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats, and child abusers into the military, new records released yesterday showed.
The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.
The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-cannabis-related drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and nine sex offenders.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., April 21 (AScribe Newswire) — New information released today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee shows that in 2006 and 2007 Americans who were convicted of serious crimes including sexual offences, manslaughter, "terrorist threats including bomb threats", burglary, kidnapping or abduction, aggravated assault and sexual assault were allowed into the military under moral waivers granted by the services.
According to the data given to the committee by the Department of Defense, the Army allowed the most waivers in 2006 and 2007. During this period, moral or felony waivers were given to 3 soldiers who had been convicted of manslaughter. One soldier was allowed in following a kidnapping or abduction conviction, 11 were convicted of arson, 142 convicted of burglary, 3 who were convicted of indecent acts or liberties with a child, 7 who were convicted of rape, sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, incest or other sex crimes and 3 who were convicted of terrorist threats including bomb threats.
So…let me get this straight. Letting gay people serve will harm the moral and readiness of our armed forces…but allowing child molesters and rapists to wear the uniform won’t. Look at this. No…really look at it. The leaders of the armed forces of the United States of America would really rather be saluted by rapists and child molesters then by a homosexual.
Well…this explains why Iraq is pretty much FUBAR doesn’t it? It wasn’t just Rumsfeld and Bush. They had help running our military into the ground from all the country club thugs in the pentagon executive suites. And it explains all this too…
All the culture warriors, all the fine culture warriors who fought to keep gay people out of the armed forces… All the righteous men and women of high moral standards and values… And in the end they turned out to be nothing more then a pack of street thugs, dragging America into their gutter…into that open sewer they call virtue…
David Roberts, over at Ex-Gay Watch, observes the kook pews falling over each other to excuse Sally Kern’s calling gay people a greater threat to the nation then terrorists, and writes…
I’m beginning to realize that, in at least some cases, what I thought was a more civil, sincere change in the hearts and minds of those who have opposed gay rights and equality in this society, perhaps was only a thin veneer which they feel has been imposed upon them.
Welcome to bigotville David. Yes…now they hate our guts even more for making them pretend to love us.
Sometimes a news article just jumps off the screen and laughs in your face. Via Box Turtle Bulletin… If you have any doubts about the depth anti-gay hate in this country, read this:
The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public schoolchildren to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life’s mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
It passed the Senate on a voice vote and the House by a vote of 83-12. It now goes to Gov. Steve Beshear.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The material would be part of the Kentucky Program of Studies, which has state approval but is not required.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He said the pupils began lobbying for legislation that would give students in public schools access to opportunities to study the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
Not powerful enough for some, apparently…
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Dig it. It took them Four Years, just to get the Kentucky statehouse to agree that school kids should probably learn something about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the twentieth century…Maybe. We’ll suggest they learn about it, but not require it. And then someone spies a clause in the bill suggesting that school kids learn that there were other victims besides Jewish folk, and that would have been fine too except for the homosexuals. You know…these guys…
But the republican majority leader tut, tuts, any suggestion that they wouldn’t have been fine…really…with including the gay victims of the holocaust in their Completely Optional Curriculum…
But Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, said in an interview that was never an issue for Senate leadership.
He said he had no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust as long as it’s "age-appropriate."
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can’t study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
You know goddamned well you can. For decades after World War Two nothing, Nothing was ever said about the pink triangles, until gay scholars started digging into it based on rumors and stories they’d heard from survivors. I started learning about the Holocaust in Junior High schools (middle school these days) and it figured in every lesson on that period of time for the rest of my grade school years and Not Once did I ever hear mention of the pink triangles, or how the Nazis had toughened Germany’s seldom enforced anti-gay laws, even before they enacted the brutally antisemitic Nuremberg laws, or how when the death camps were finally liberated, the surviving Jewish prisoners were released, as well as the gypsies, the Slavs, the intellectuals, the opposition party members…hell, even the communist prisoners were let go…but not the pink triangles. They were considered vermin by both the Nazis, and the American liberators.
Yes Mr. Republican Majority Leader Sir, you can goddamned well teach about the holocaust and not once mention the fact that gay men were rounded up by the Nazis too and shoveled into the death camps. That was the status-quo all during both our school years wasn’t it? And you’d like very much to go back to that status quo wouldn’t you? Because you know most of your voter base doesn’t think the Nazis did anything wrong when it came to exterminating homosexuals don’t you? And you know goddamned well you’ll loose votes if you do anything to suggest otherwise don’t you? If you have no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust, then why didn’t you have that line put back into the bill?
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
You did a great job of putting the knife into it Kelly. You had your boys whisper that the bill Whitaker and Marzian worked on four four years was dead unless they deleted the line about gay victims of the Holocaust and they did it and now you can look at the cameras and claim you’re shocked, shocked, that anyone would bother caring about all that. This is why you’re majority leader isn’t it. You could have had it fucking put back in and insisted to your caucus that it stay there and you didn’t, and make no mistake, everybody knows who ripped that little page out of the history books and why.
And one other thing they’ll always know… In 2008, over sixty years after World War Two, Kentucky school children still aren’t routinely taught about the Holocaust, and won’t be because after four years of trying all the Kentucky state house could do was pass a bill that suggests they learn about it. That was about as far as you could go without loosing the bigot vote, wasn’t it Kelly? And now you get to play civilized man for the cameras.
Whitaker said he regretted that Marx, who died last year at age 81, didn’t live to see passage of the bill.
If it’s too much to ask that your schools teach about what happened to six million Jews I suppose it’s way too much to ask that it also mention the unknown thousands of gay victims too. Especially when you and your fellow republicans need to be able to gay bash for votes every few years.
Traditional Values = Forced Abortions And Prostitution
Bob Schaffer, Republican senate candidate for Colorado, is having his little vacation jaunts with convicted briber Jack Abramoff exposed on the pages of the Denver Post today. It’s smarmy for more reasons then the photos of him and his wife enjoying the lap of luxury on the dime of a group of Mariana Island sweat shop owners…
That’s Schaffer and his wife doing a little parasailing. Supposedly they’re investigating the conditions in the island sweat shops pending legislation to bring them under tighter U.S. regulation. The Mariana Island sweat shop owners were Abramoff’s biggest contributors. They’re about as sorded a bunch of republican bankrollers as you’re likely to find. As Joshua Marshall writes over at Talking Points Memo…
The Marianas program is notorious around the world for forced abortion, slavery, child prostitution, beatings and having the overwhelmingly female foreign workers houses in shacks with no plumbing surrounded by barbed wire.
And here’s Schaffer on his whirlwind tour of the sweatshops…
Schaffer later reported that the workers there all seemed happy. How…unsurprising. The Denver Post reports…
At the time, those alleged abuses and a push by the Clinton administration led to a flurry of congressional action. Several bills passed the Senate that would have brought the islands’ factories under stricter American laws, but the legislation failed in the House.
Hired by factory owners and the government of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, Abramoff and his firm were paid more than $11 million over nine years to fend off those efforts, according to reports.
In a 2001 memo to the Marianas governor meant to justify millions in fees, Abramoff singles out the relationships built with members of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. protectorates. He points to the lavish trips for dozens of lawmakers and family members to build goodwill. And he says his connections ultimately scuttled dangerous legislation like the bill proposed by then-Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, which would have toughened the islands’ labor and immigration laws.
"We then stopped it cold in the House," the memo boasts.
"In the end, this all-out public relations and lobbying blitz brought the (Mariana Islands) back from the brink of legislative disaster," the lobbyist wrote.
Never mind for a moment, that these congressional representatives of The Party Of Moral Values had to know where the money was coming from. Never mind that they cheerfully turned a blind eye to forced abortions and prostitution in exchange for a good time on the dime of highly successful businessmen whose business model only happened to include forcing their employees to have abortions and go into prostitution. They’re congressmen after all. And…republicans. Is there a lower form of life then that? Actually…yes there is. Does the human gutter go any deeper? Actually, yes it does. And does it wear it’s righteousness on its sleeve? Tsk, tsk…Need you ask… Why…of course!
Abramoff for obvious reasons, had to conceal his payoffs to Schaffer. It would never do to have it look like the very sweatshops he was investigating paid for his trip…and parasailing lessons. So a third party payment was arranged. Guess who served as Abramoff’s willing frontmen?
Yes…those morally righteous bible believing god fearing Jesus loving save marriage from the homosexuals folks over at the Traditional Values Coalition…
In some cases, Abramoff — who is now in prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, none of it related to the Mariana Islands — took efforts to obscure the scope of that effort and his firm’s involvement.
Values Coalition paid for trip
Schaffer’s $13,000 trip was paid for by the Orange County, Calif.-based Traditional Values Coalition, which Schaffer described as a religious group "concerned with human rights."
"Whatever involvement (Abramoff) had with Traditional Values Coalition wasn’t known at the time," Wadhams said.
Later investigations have shown that in many instances, TVC — which claims to represent 43,000 churches — acted virtually as a political arm of Abramoff’s lobbying operation.
In one 2000 case investigated by The Washington Post, TVC lobbied heavily against a bill restricting online gambling that would have hurt one of Abramoff’s clients, eLottery Inc. In return, the report said, TVC received a check from the client for $25,000. Abramoff and TVC head Louis Sheldon had cooperated successfully so often that the now-jailed lobbyist began referring to him as "Lucky Louie," the newspaper reported. A TVC official didn’t return a phone call requesting comment.
What Are Traditional Values? While other pro-family groups may have their own specific definitions of what "traditional values" means, here’s what we consider to be traditional values:
A moral code and behavior based upon the Old and New Testaments. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that the Lord has given us a rule book to live by: The Bible. We are committed to living, as far as it is possible, by the moral precepts taught by Jesus Christ and by the whole counsel of God as revealed in the Bible.
Moral precepts…did you say…? Oh…lookie here…
Right To Life: We believe that every human deserves the right to life—from conception to death—and that we do not have the right to kill unborn children nor to murder the elderly through active euthanasia.
You don’t say…
Homosexuality, Bi-Sexuality, Transgenderism, And Other Deviant Sexual Behaviors: The Bible clearly condemns all sexual behaviors outside of marriage between one man and one woman. Homosexual behavior is explicitly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination and a violation of God’s standards for sexuality. We oppose the normalization of sodomy as well as cross-dressing and other deviant sexual behaviors in our culture.
You don’t say…
A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.
And you helped a bunch of Marianas sweat shop owners to pay off enough U.S. congressmen that their sweat shops could escape being regulated and thereby keep operating business as usual, which meant forcing their workers to get abortions and become prostitutes, and god knows what else. My, my…what traditional values you have there…
The Homosexual Movement And Pedophilia
The homosexual activist movement and organized pedophiles
are linked together by a common goal: To gain access to children for seduction into homosexuality.
How many of the women you’ve helped sweatshop owners force into prostitution were underage I wonder?
You can tell a lot about the people in the boardroom by how well they treat the workers who are the public face of their business. I think I just learned today everything I need to know about Starbucks: they steal tip money from their servers.
Thousands of Starbucks employees got a personal message from their upset boss, who said the company was being “grossly mischaracterized” in the media over a recent tip pool controversy that could cost the company more than $100 million.
Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz, in a voice-mail message to employees Wednesday night, called last week’s ruling by a California judge "extremely unfair and beyond reason" and said he wanted employees to know the truth.
"I want to personally let you know that we would never condone any type of behavior that would lead anyone to conclude that we would take money from our people," he said.
In a separate statement, the company also said, "Contrary to some reports, Starbucks has not taken money from any of its partners, and nor is there money to be refunded or returned from Starbucks." A spokeswoman said Thursday that Starbucks Corp. has no intention of ending the practice of sharing tips among baristas and shift supervisors in California while it seeks an injunction.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett, in her ruling last week, said there was "uncontroverted testimony that Starbucks continues to utilize the distribution of tips from the tip pool to compensate shift supervisors as well as baristas." Cowett ordered Starbucks to pay thousands of California baristas $86.7 million plus interest for breaking the law.
Now…read that again, particularly that second to last paragraph. Starbucks is saying that "contrary to some reports" they don’t take money from their "partners"…and then in the next breath they insist they’ll keep on doing it. The weasel word there is "partners". Starbucks doesn’t take any money from its "partners". But "partners" isn’t the issue, however Starbucks chooses to define who is and who is not a "partner". The issue is, are they taking tip money from their servers. And…yes as a matter of fact, they are. That’s what, specifically, they were found guilty of doing, and that’s what, specifically, they’re insisting they’ll keep right on doing.
The tips belong to the servers. Customers aren’t tipping the business, they’re tipping their servers. In most cases, the tips are what the servers depend on for a decent income. Taking their tip money is not only immoral, it also happens to be illegal in many states, including California. Now…it’s one thing to insist you weren’t breaking the law. It’s another to insist that the law is unconstitutional and you’ll fight it all the way to the supreme court. And it’s another still to insist that you didn’t do it, in the same breath as you assert that you’re going to keep right on doing it. Starbucks isn’t just giving the finger to it’s servers and customers here, it’s laughing in the face of anyone who can read plan English.
A dear friend of mine works as a waiter, but that’s not the only reason this behavior makes me angry. I never worked for tips in my life…I’m just not outgoing enough to make a go of that kind of work. You have to have a bit of the stage in you I think to be good at that and I am more stage crew then stage. But I know very well what it’s like to work in the service sector and it’s many hours of of hard, thankless work for mostly uncaring, rude and overbearing bosses, usually for not enough money to make ends meet. From what I hear, most folks who work service sector jobs these days need two jobs to earn a bare bones living. And a lot of those businesses nowadays do their damndest to avoid having to pay their service people a decent wage…from limiting their hours so they don’t qualify for full time benefits (and federal protections), to creatively placing them into pseudo-management positions so they don’t have to pay them overtime.
I guess stealing your employee’s tip money is just another way of lining your pockets being a successful businessman in Republican Party Of Moral Values America. How Howard Schultz can live as well as he does and take his servers’ tip money and still look at himself in a mirror every morning and think he sees a decent man looking back at him and not a slimeball is beyond me. Thankfully.
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