At Saturday night’s Republican debate, Mike Huckabee used a word he emphasizes quite a bit: “vertical.”
“I think we also ought to recognize that what Senator Obama has done is to touch at the core of something Americans want,” Huckabee said. “They are so tired of everything being horizontal — left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican. They’re looking for vertical leadership that leads up, not down. He has excited a lot of voters in this country. Let’s pay respect for that. He’s a likable person who has excited people about wanting to vote who have not voted in the past.”
A few hours earlier, Josh Marshall noted that “vertical” is a Huckabee favorite, with the former governor’s website arguing, “I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical.”
Can anyone explain what the hell that means? Vertical? I guess if you’re main opponent was Fred Thompson you might push the fact that you spend most of your time standing up. But seriously, is there something I’m missing here? Or is this the weirdest campaign I’ve ever heard?
What Marshall was missing was one of the current fundamentalist tropes. He wouldn’t know, because he doesn’t live in that stifling environment…
This probably won’t come as too big a surprise given Huckabee’s faith-based campaigning, but this “vertical” talk seems to have dog-whistle implications.
This is definitely dog-whistle politics — that is, a message delivered in coded terminology and targeted to a particular subcultural group. Conservative evangelicals often talk about the need to prioritize their vertical relationships with God first and foremost before worrying about horizontal relationships among people. It’s the individualized “get right with God” approach of conservative Protestantism.
In contrast, progressive people of faith reject the vertical-horizontal dichotomy as a false one, saying that in interpersonal relationships one’s faith and spiritual teachings are made manifest. Such an outlook is wishy-washy, watered-down liberal theology in the minds of conservative evangelicals. Southern Baptist minister Huckabee knows this, and speaks evangelical-ese with his words. In fact, he’s got it up on his website as well.
I know this is so because I’ve been present a number of times when “vertical” rhetoric — the exact word — has been used in evangelical circles. It’s indeed a way of speaking one hears in many churches, part of the faith vocabulary of the evangelical and fundamentalist subculture.
And from “The God Strategy: How Religion Became A Political Weapon in America”:
That’s the power of narrowcasting. Targeted, under-the-radar messages denote who is part of the club. It’s like a secret handshake, writ large and electoral: politicians who narrowcast religious cues are assigned considerable credibility by voters in the targeted constituency.
Something to keep an eye on.
Andrew Sullivan, who is no Huckabee fan, was quoting Rod Dreher, who admits now that he was bamboozled by Bush and is ready to be bamboozled now by Huckabee…
I don’t get why Andrew calls Huckabee’s rise a sign of "the perils of fundamentalist politics." For one, Huckabee is not a fundamentalist. He’s more of a Rick Warren Evangelical…
No, and No. If he’s not actually a theocrat, he’s certainly willing to give actual theocrats everything they want so long as they get him elected. Jim Burroway, as always, has done some homework on his past, and the folks he likes to hang out with…
We reported earlier on Southern Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s fundraising event at the home of Houston multimillionaire Steven Hotze, a well-known Christian Reconstructionist. Pastor Rick Scarborough, who also maintains Reconstructionist beliefs, was there as well. Since then, we’ve learned that Huckabee’s ties go far deeper than mere acquaintances and financial backers. He has a history of working very closely with some very well-known Reconstructionists over the years. In this report, we will examine two of Huckabee’s closest Reconstructionist colleagues.
Go read the whole thing. There is no mistaking Huckabee for what he is. It’ll be interesting to see if the corporate news media, which is horrified at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination, actually delves into any of this…
Delegates at the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin voted Saturday in Fresno to withdraw from the U.S. Episcopal Church. With the decision, the diocese is the first to leave the U.S. Episcopal Church, which has 110 dioceses and 2.4 million members.
Delegates said they voted to break away from the church because it allows the blessing of same-sex unions, the ordination of gay bishops and the ordination of women.
Women and Gays and Liberals Oh My! Women and Gays and Liberals Oh My! That’s San Joaquin as in San Joaquin Valley…the sullen and resentful red heartland of California. If the California coast and its coniferous mountain north are laid back, progressive wonderlands, the San Joaquin valley is Rush Limbaughville. Agrarian, xenophobic, insular, it’s the Antebellum South, only with lots and lots of irrigation and Hispanics playing the part of the darkies picking in the fields. The only surprising thing about this is they didn’t bolt back when women got the robe. Oh…and they’re aligning with the South American church instead of the murderous Bishop Akinola. But he was probably a shade too dark for them.
A mysterious group calling itself Iowans for Some Semblance of Christian Decency has begun waging a campaign against former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, insinuating that not only is the Republican presidential candidate not a true conservative, he’s not a real Christian.
In fliers put under the doors of reporters at the Marriott in Des Moines, where Huckabee was staying Monday night, the organization, whose members are unknown, lays out its interpretation of how the former Baptist minister’s views run contrary to the Bible.
Huckabee’s support of educational opportunities for the children of illegal immigrants is portrayed, for instance, as "justification for violating the 8th commandment (stealing from U.S. citizens)." A lighthearted video clip where he pretends to talk to the Lord (watch HERE) is portrayed as "sacrilegious mocking of God for political gain."
From this cesspool the republicans will pick their presidential candidate. The one who wins will be the one that floats to the top.
From Box Turtle Bulletin. I’ve mentioned before how Paul Cameron is often stealth-cited in right wing anti-gay propaganda, by citing someone else, who in turn cites Cameron. But this is a first …
As I went about organizing my library over the weekend, I re-opened the book, Staying the Course: Supporting the Church’s Position on Homosexuality (Maxie D. Dunnam & H. Newton Malony, editors). And as I often do, I take a quick glance through the bibliographies, and among the many things I look for is whether they cite Paul Cameron or not. Nope. His name was nowhere to be found.
Then, I skimmed through H. Newton Malony’s chapter, “Homosexuality In the Postmodern World.” And there it was:
Longevity is another area in which homosexuality has been a determining factor. A 1991-92 survey of newspapers available to homosexual communities found that among homosexuals not suffering from AIDS, the median age of death for 5,371 persons to be 42 years of age, [sic] with only 9 percent living to old age. Among lesbians, the average age at death was 45 years. Both these figures are dramatically below the life expectancy of the population in general.22
Footnote 22 was this:
22. Malony, Perspectives on Homosexuality, 37.
See? No Cameron. Unless of course, you happened to have access to Malony’s 1998 Perpsectives on Homosexuality: The Transforming Point of View from Integration Press. And if you could find access to that obscure and now out-of-print book, you would eventually discover that this nugget came from an earlier version of Cameron’s pamphlet, “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do.”
There’s no doubt here about this one. Obviously, that you’re citing yourself to hide the fact that Cameron is the source of your "facts", means you know full well what you’re doing is deceitful. Now take another look at that title… Staying the Course: Supporting the Church’s Position on Homosexuality. A faith that needs lies to support it, is a faith that is already dead.
Via Molly I over at Eschaton… The Kenosha Kid says it’s not that Rudy had an extramarital affair that will cost him the wingnut vote. It isn’t even that he billed it to the tax payers. It’s that he conducted his affair in the Hamptons, that hated den of filthy Jews Liberals. They’ll never forgive him for it.
I think he’s on to something there. The moral posturing of the hard right, especially the southern contingent, has always been a nothing more then a thin veneer over the bedrock of their prejudices.
I’m headed for bed, and not even going to bother watching the republican debate. But scanning the blogs that are following it live, I’m seeing that a gay (former) general asked a question concerning gays in the military and he was apparently roundly booed by the audience…
…so I just want to re-emphasize something I put up on my Twitter bar a few hours ago, for the sake of a few certain someones I no longer speak to, and one who I’m still very much holding at arm’s length: If you can still vote republican after all the gay bashing they’ve been doing, then we are not friends. It really is that simple.
Someone put a fork in the party of Lincoln, it’s done. And…I’m going to bed now…
In case you haven’t been following it…Time Magazine, courtesy of its columnist Joe Klein, has been giving the nation a textbook example of the problem with American corporate journalism. Some days ago Time columnist Joe Klein huffed that, basically, the democrats were once again coddling terrorists.
Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.
Note that this verbiage has now been…altered…on their website since the netroots started blasting Klein and Time over the original text’s blatant, in-your-face-falsehood. In fact, the bill did no such thing as even a child with third grade reading skills could clearly comprehend. Glenn Greenwald has been on it relentlessly since Klein’s bullshit column hit the newsstands…
"Well beyond stupid" is a good description for what Klein wrote here. "Factually false" is even better. First, from its inception, FISA did not "protect the rights of U.S. citizens only." Its warrant requirements apply to all "U.S. persons" (see 1801(f)), which includes not only U.S. citizens but also "an alien lawfully admitted [in the U.S.] for permanent residence" (see 1801(i)). From 1978 on, FISA extended its warrant protections to resident aliens.
But Klein’s far more pernicious "error" is his Limbaugh-copying claim that the House bill "require[s] the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court." It just does not.
The only reason why Congress began considering amendments to FISA in the first place was because a FISA court earlier this year ruled that a warrant was required for foreign-to-foreign calls incidentally routed through the U.S. via fiber optics. Everyone — from Russ Feingold to the ACLU — agreed that FISA never intended to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign calls that have nothing to do with U.S. citizens, and thus, none of the bills being considered — including the bill passed by the House — requires warrants for such foreign-to-foreign calls. Here is Rep. Rush Holt, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the key architects of the House bill, explaining what the House bill actually does:
* Ensure that the government must have an individualized, particularized court-approved warrant based on probable cause in order to read or listen to the communications of an American citizen. . . .
The RESTORE Act now makes clear that it is the courts — and not an executive branch political appointee — who decide whether or not the communications of an American can be seized and searched, and that such seizures and searches must be done pursuant to a court order.
Under the House bill, individualized warrants are required if the U.S. Government wants to eavesdrop on the communications of Americans. Warrants are not required — as Klein falsely claimed — for "every foreign-terrorist target’s calls."
While the government (in order to prevent abuse) must demonstrate to the FISA court that it is applying its surveillance standards faithfully, the warrant requirement is confined to the class Rep. Holt described. Klein’s shrill condemnation of the House FISA bill rests on a complete falsehood (that’s not surprising; the last time Klein wrote about FISA, he said that "no actual eavesdropping on conversations should be permitted without a FISA court ruling" and then proceeded to defend a FISA bill which, unbeknownst to him, allowed exactly that).
What Time Magazine did, essentially, was smear the democrats as terrorist coddlers in the minds of millions of Time Magazine readers, and if you think that was accidental or merely a case of slipshod journalism you are not paying attention.
Klein’s broader point is even more odious. Along with most of the "liberal" punditocracy, Klein has been singing the same song for years and years and years now. The salvation for Democrats lies in following Republicans on national security issues. He’s been warning Democrats from the very beginning of the NSA scandal that they had better stop condemning Bush’s illegal spying on Americans or else they will justly suffer the consequences, and he issues similar lip-quivering warnings about Iraq: Democrats better stop opposing the Leader’s War or else they will lose.
The big joke here you have to realize, is that Klein is Time’s Liberal columnist. The corporate news media has been playing this game for decades…dragging the American political dialogue ever further and further to the right, by pitting hard core movement conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and outright lunatics like Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter against ersatz liberals like Joe Klein. Democrats and progressives are never represented in the corporate news media dialogue, and indeed are usually portrayed as extremists, while the likes of Ann Coulter are given plenty of time to spread their venom in the name of "Balance".
And in that environment, where the playing field is relentlessly tilted toward the right, actual policy differences between the republicans and the democrats have been consistently represented in a "he said, she said" format, where actual facts are never discussed, never even sought. For years now, the republicans have been able to push any damn lie they wanted into the public discourse, with absolutely no fear of being contradicted by the press. And this latest Joe Klein column has been a perfect example of how that not only works, but how the corporate news media remains doggedly determined to keep it working that way. After days and days of being raked over the coals for the blatant in-your-face factual inaccuracies in the Klein column, Time Magazine finally prints a…correction…but not…
Time Magazine has done a superb service for the country by illustrating everything that is rancid and corrupt with our political media. After I emailed Time.com Editor Josh Tyrangiel asking why the online version of Joe Klein’s column remains online uncorrected given that — as Managing Editor Rick Stengel now says — the article contains a "reporting error," this is the "correction" Time has now posted to the article. Seriously — this is really it, in its entirety:
In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.
Leave aside the false description of what Klein wrote. He didn’t say "that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets." He said that their bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court" and "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." But the Editor’s false characterization of Klein’s original lie about the House FISA bill is the least of the issues here.
All Time can say about this matter is that Republicans say one thing and Democrats claim another. Who is right? Is one side lying? What does the bill actually say, in reality?
That’s not for Time to say. After all, they’re journalists, not partisans. So they just write down what each side says. It’s not for them to say what is true, even if one side is lying.
In this twisted view, that is called "balance" — writing down what each side says. As in: "Hey – Bush officials say that there is WMD in Iraq and things are going great with the war (and a few people say otherwise). It’s not for us to decide. It’s not our fault if what we wrote down is a lie. We just wrote down exactly what they said." At best, they write down what each side says and then go home. That’s what they’re for.
That our typical establishment "journalist" conceives of this petty clerical task as their only role is not news. But it is striking to see the nation’s "leading news magazine" so starkly describe how they perceive their role.
After watching our corporate news media passively allow the election of 2000 to be stolen by the republicans, after watching them cheer Bush on as he lied this nation into a war that has killed hundreds of thousands, ruined our economy, and thoroughly trashed our moral capital, after watching them help Bush cover up the outing of one of our CIA agents in an act of cold, calculating political retribution, none of this should surprise anyone. Journalism is dead and rotting in America, everywhere but in the alternative press, and on the Internet, which, not coincidentally, is the one place corporate America cannot dictate the rules of the game.
You should go read Glenn Greenwald’s evisceration of this whole sorry episode, starting Here, and then moving on Here, Here, Here, and Here. You need to see, all Americans need to see, how the news media many of us grew up reading and watching, has bellyflopped itself into the gutter.
Going into the home stretch in in the Kentucky gubernatorial election, the Republicans appear to have brought out one last card: Paranoia against gays.
The state GOP is now sending a robo-call throughout the state featuring none other than Pat Boone, warning that as a Christian he is concerned that Democratic nominee Steve Beshear, who has been way ahead in the polls, will work for "every homosexual cause."
"Now do you want a governor who’d like Kentucky to be another San Francisco?" Boone asks. "Please re-elect Ernie Fletcher."
And at a campaign stop last night, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor made a direct attack upon the Democratic ticket: "Do you want a couple of San Francisco treats or do you want a governor?"
(Emphasis mine) So the republican candidate gets way behind in the polls and he starts waving the Gay Menace. This is what republicans do to win elections, and never mind how many gay Americans it gets killed. Talking Points Memo has a recording of Fletcher’s robo call. You may recall that on April 11 of last year Fletcher, declared Diversity Day in Kentucky, and on the same day eliminated anti-discrimination protections for gay state and local government workers.
I wrote a post a few days back about wanting a door I could walk through from time to time. Don’t assume that means I’m not just as pissed off at all of you as I was. In fact, I might even be More pissed off now then I was. Because it just never stops with the republicans. It just never stops.
I don’t expect everyone who knows me to agree with me on every political issue. But if you can vote republican while they’re doing this to gay people to win elections then you are not my friend. It really is that simple. I’ve got a bullseye on my back, along with ever other gay American citizen, and it’s not gutter crawling maggots like Ernie Fletcher who put it there, it’s all of you who told the republicans they can incite passions toward gay people as often and as crudely as they like and you’ll still vote for them.
So don’t ask. Just…don’t.
When the roll call of the gay bashed for this election cycle is read and I’m lucky enough not to be on it that’ll be no thanks to the likes of any of you.
(Union City, New Jersey) Two workers at a Burger King in Union City have been charged with assault and a hate crime in connection with the beating of a gay couple outside the restaurant.
Christopher Soto and Angel Carbaballo, who have since been fired by the chain, are scheduled to appear in court this week.
The victims, both in their 40s, have not been named.
When the couple asked for a refund for a menu item that the counter person discovered was not available, another counter person then asked who wanted the refund – “The faggots over there?”
The couple left the restaurant, but a group of Burger King employees allegedly followed them to a side street and beat them mercilessly, though not fatally.
The employees made repeated anti-gay slurs during the beating according to the indictment.
Atrios points to this post on Lawyers, Guns and Money with the comment, Tiny Penis Syndrome…sadly, it does explain a lot. Yes, but not everything…
I just finished teaching an upper-division US history course in which my students read — and I swear I’m not making this up — Kim Du Toit’s repellant 2003 essay on "The Pussification of the Western Male". The class had just finished Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization (1995), a marvelous examination of the cultural transformations of gender between the 1880s and World War I. We used du Toit as a companion piece to the chapters on Teddy Roosevelt and the psychologist G. Stanley Hall — each of whom were, in their own ways, as anxious as du Toit about what they perceived to be the devaluation of masculinity.
…
Hall, for his part, was preoccupied not with adult masculinity but rather with the incipient manhood of youth. Believing that developing children rehearsed the cultural evolution of the human race, he insisted that young boys should not be deterred from expressing "the instinct of the savage."
Boys are naturally robbers; they are bandits and fighters by nature. A scientific study has been made of boys’ societies . . . . In every instance these societies have been predatory. All of the members thirsted for blood, and all of their plans were for thievery and murder
Allow the young boy to beat the shit out of his companions, Hall suggested, and his mental and physical development will proceed in a smooth and healthy fashion. Divert him from his natural course Hall warned, and you will produce "a milk-sop, a lady-boy, or a sneak." Such a child "lacks virility, [and] his masculinity does not ring true." Perhaps he will — as Hall himself did — grow up to be a chronic masturbator, a helpless slave to "the lonely vice."
That passage of Hall’s rang familiar in my ear. Not so much for the words, as the sensibility that male youth is by its nature savage and brutal and that cultivating that savage, brutal nature is the task of every great civilization. I’d heard all that somewhere before. So I did a little digging and it wasn’t long before I found it…
"My teaching is hard. Weakness has to be knocked out of them. In my [elite schools] a youth will grow up before which the world will shrink back. A violently active dominating, intrepid, brutal youth – that is what I am after". Youth must be all those things. It must be indifferent to pain. There must be no weakness or tenderness in it.I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey. Strong and handsome must my young men be. I will have them fully trained in all physical exercises. I intend to have an athletic youth – that is the first and the chief thing. In this way I shall eradicate the thousands of years of human domestication. Then I shall have in front of me the pure and noble natural material. With that I can create the new order.
"I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin to my young men. I would have them learn only what takes their fancy. But one thing they must learn – self-command! They shall learn to overcome the fear of death, under the severest tests. That is the intrepid and heroic stage of youth. Out of it comes the stage of the free man, the man who is the substance and essence of the world, the creative man, the god-man. In my [elite schools] there will stand as a statue for worship the figure of the magnificent, self-ordaining god-man; it will prepare the young men for their coming period of ripe manhood."
Emphasis mine. I’d heard these words of Hitler’s first in my own youth, sitting in a junior high school history class watching a documentary produced in 1956 titled, The Twisted Cross. I was a bookish little kid even back then, and when the scenes of Nazi mobs burning books came on screen I was completely horrified. When the scenes of the concentraton camps came on screen later I felt that, yes, the one led right to the other. Where books are burned, people are soon after. But the scenes of Htiler and Himmler inspecting the ranks of young soldiers, while the narrator intoned those words from Hitler Speaks, chilled me to the bone. My junior high school years were when I experienced the worst bullying of my life, and I didn’t have to think hard about what living in Hitler’s Third Reich was like when I heard that. Great if you were part of the ruling thug caste…not so much if you were everyone else. I remembered that documentary so vividly that decades later when I saw a videotape of the if for sale and took it home to watch, I was amazed at how detailed my memory of it actually was after all those years.
Maybe it really is all about penis envy. But I don’t recall any of my childhood bullies feeling their threatened manhood by me. What I saw in their faces was contempt. Contempt for anyone they could beat the crap out of, whether by themselves or with the help of their gang. When you have no brains to speak of, when even a cinderblock could add 2 plus 2 more accurately then you, all you have left is brute force to live by, and for some that is the only standard of value they know for taking their measure, and everyone else’s too. The contempt for effete intellectuals is no envy. It really is contempt. So what if you can grow food. So what if you can turn dirt into steel. So what if you can cure disease. If I can beat the crap out of you, then I’m the better man. Because then I can simply take everything you have. That really is the thinking going on there.
And never mind that no amount of force, no advantage in weapons, no military superiority ever gave a single penny’s worth of value to a dollar. The criminal mindset, unable to distinguish between creating wealth and stealing it, regards all creation as theft, all theft as creation. All that matters in the end, is can you take it away from someone else. If you can, then it’s rightfully yours. If the other guy can’t hold onto it, then it was never his to begin with. Might makes right. Any other standard of morality is literally incomprehensible to them. When you’re too stupid to know how modern civilization really works, you’re also too stupid to know it.
That is the essential fascist mindset. When you hear some moron babbling on and on about…
The feminization of males
Effete Intellectualism
Military glory
…all rolled together in one tightly packed little ball of bitterness, you can be pretty sure of what you’re dealing with. What dimwits like Du Toit and all the other right wing kultar kampfers think they’re selling America is this…
…but what what you always get is this:
There’s what not deterring young men from expressing "the instinct of the savage" gets you, right there. Look at it. There’s your savage manly man’s promise land.
BALTIMORE – A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.
The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.
Snyder’s attorney, Craig Trebilcock, had urged jurors to determine an amount "that says don’t do this in Maryland again. Do not bring your circus of hate to Maryland again."
…
The church and three of its leaders — the Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebecca Phelps-Davis, 46 — were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.
Even the size of the award for compensating damages "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants," according to financial statements filed with the court, U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett noted.
Yes, but those financial statements are almost certainly bullshit. I’ve seen Fred’s compound…he and his family own an entire neighborhood block’s worth of property. And their forays around the country to picket everything from Funerals to high school plays are being paid for with something.
Their attorneys maintained in closing arguments Tuesday that the burial was a public event and that even abhorrent points of view are protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion.
And Fred is still free to spread his message of hate. Just not at funerals. The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to come into my house and scream in my face. Goodness knows telephone solicitors, door to door salesmen and politicians every election year would be in heaven if it did. There are public and private spaces and if a funeral isn’t a private space I don’t know what is.
Fred’s known all these years what he’s doing isn’t about anything more righteous then how much he hates the world he lives in and how badly he wants to make it suffer for making him hate it. It’s not that God Hates Fags, but that Fred does. It’s not that God Hates Fag Enablers, but that Fred does. It’s not that God Hates America, but that Fred does. And nothing gets a hater’s goat more then knowing that the objects of their contempt also happen to be a lot smarter then they are. Fred could out hate anyone, but he couldn’t out think a brick, and he knew it and it must have turned the worm inside of him all the more knowing it. You need brainpower, you need audacity and nerve, to really destroy your enemies. But Fred knew the most he could ever manage was pissing people off and he settled for doing that because at least making people angry gave him a small measure of power over them. It’s the chickenshit’s revenge, as befitting the chickenshit pulpit thumper of a congenital congregation. When the only people you see in your pews are your own family, that’s a message straight from God Almighty Himself that it’s time to close your book of sermons, walk out the door and go look for some honest work. But Fred didn’t have it in him to wield a mighty sword against his enemies, let alone raise a mighty voice to God from his pulpit. So he settled for mooning the world he hated, and everyone in it possessing that half a brain he himself had never been blessed with, just out of range. Well, today he got his ass kicked…
Snyder sobbed when he heard the verdict, while members of the church greeted the news with tightlipped smiles.
That’s how people who are perpetually constipated look. Fred isn’t a prophet, he’s Kaopectate for the soul.
Elections Must Be Coming Up…I See The Republicans Are Dusting Off Their Gay Menace Fliers
Via Pam’s House Blend… What does a vulnerable republican politician do when a gay challenger threatens to unseat him…? Why…make him look like he’s a predatory homosexual child molester of course…
In the neighboring state to the north, the District 39 race in Virginia is getting ugly, thanks to Republican State Senator James J. "Jay" O’Brien Jr. In a desperate bid to pander to the wingnut vote, he decided that sending out a flyer that says, among other things, that his Democratic opponent
"George Barker wants to take time away from core academic subjects like math, science, and reading to teach children to accept the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lifestyle (GLBT)."
It’s no surprise that this flyer (PDF) was paid for by the Republican Party of Virginia.
What would have surprised me is if the republicans hadn’t stooped to it. This is the party that simply cannot win elections without the bigot vote.
It’s clear that the right wing is ratcheting up the homo-hate as Barker has received the endorsement of the Washington Post.
Republican Sen. James J. "Jay" O’Brien Jr. is an affable incumbent, but his scant command of policy and legislative issues has failed to impress. His Democratic rival, George L. Barker, a health-care planner, would make a far more able, detail-oriented and effective senator in this district straddling the Fairfax-Prince William line.
Barker also has strong support from educators (I’m sure O’Brien feels they are part of the Homosexual Agenda anyway).
More from the heinous mailer — he certainly telegraphs his priorities:
George Barker went on to say that he would vote for legislation that would teach Virginia students about the "GLBT" lifestyle during school hours — regardless of their family’s own beliefs. Barker also said he would "guarantee" his support for "GLBT" clubs in public schools.
…George Barker worked very hard in terms of opposing the marriage amendment, and be strongly in favor of gay rights, be [sic] he shouldn’t impose his values on elementary school children.
A question for O’Brien – I suppose that kids in your state don’t need to know about tolerance and families that are different, you know — like that of little Samuel Cheney, a resident of Virginia and son of loyal Republican Mary Cheney.
Here’s what the republican party is sending to voters in Virginia, to make sure they get the message that the homo running against their boy wants to molest their children…
They’re not calling the gay candidate a child molester outright, but look at the imagery in that flier and tell me that they’re not fear mongering a gay man and child sexual abuse there, right there, with that close up image of the back of that small boy and that shirt collar pulled down the back of his neck, right up in the reader’s face.
It’s despicable. But that’s how republicans win elections these days. From the gutter. Problem is, that’s also how they govern. The party that thinks the only way it can win elections is fear mongering, also seems to think it can eavesdrop on Americans at will, without all that rule of law stuff getting in the way. The party that thinks the only way it can win elections is to appeal to the lowest prejudices within us, also seems to think that it can govern just fine thank-you, in complete secrecy and without any accountability. The party that thinks the only way it can win elections is to call gay men child molesters, seems to think George Bush unilaterally drag the country into whatever war he likes, and shovel your kids into it. You get the government you vote for. You vote your fears, you get a government that makes sure you have lots to be afraid of.
You’d think that the managers of a gay bar would understand that the climate of violence toward gay people can make their establishments seem to gay bashers, as a waterhole to a leopard…somewhere they know their prey will be. You’d think that they’d keep the safety of their customers (you know…the folks who pay their bills) in mind. You’d think that, at minimum, when a gay man is bashed right at their doorstep, that they’d give the man shelter inside and not have their bouncers throw him back out to the wolves. You’d think…
Two guys stood in front of us hugging. The usual New York traffic passed without dismay until the white Mercedes C-class appeared. The tall bald guy leaned out of the window yelling and screaming obscenities that no one would be proud of—the usual clichés spit towards gay men. It seemed like an incident that could easily be brushed off until he got out of the car. He came toward us, still yelling. He was angry, as if we had personally offended his entire being.
All I saw was a tall muscular man coming toward my friend and these other unsuspecting guys in the path of what seemed to be a disaster. He continued to yell, the couple broke their hug.
My instinct told me that I was the most beefy of all of the guys standing in the breezeway—a silly notion seeming I only stand 5 foot 6. He came within inches. I tried to ward him off by telling him that no one is trying to mess with him. I pleaded for him just to go away. He spit in my face and I knew that I was no match for him. I immediately ran toward the bouncers of the gay club. I got behind the huge door man. The guy was quickly in pursuit behind me, fired up. Out of nowhere a punch landed on the right side of my face. It was the basher’s friend from the passenger seat. I swung, at which point the basher kicked me in the stomach. The bouncers quickly yelled at me to get in the club.
I tried to keep my composure, but ended up in the bathroom stall, crying, ashamed that I wasn’t able to protect myself, my friend or my fellow gay brothers. And then the worst happened…
To my dismay, one of the bouncers found me and told me I had to leave. Leave, I said. I’ve been gay bashed by a stranger. I was protecting my friends and in turn was socked and kicked in the stomach. He stayed firm to his orders. As I walked up the stairs of Splash Bar NYC, I saw one of the managers. I pleaded with him not to kick me out because I was afraid the guy and his friend were still out there. His response: "I don’t know anything about that!"
Before I knew it I was outside and I started to tremble at the sight of a white Mercedes parked down the street. And then a hand grabbed my back and pushed me toward a cab. "Get in, I’m taking you home," my friend said. I hurried inside trying not to cry before the driver pulled off.
As I write this I don’t know what hurts worse: My stomach or my eye or the fact that a gay bar kicked me out and refused to help me. I’ve spent the past five years trying to empower gay men, hoping with all my heart that we can one day roam the streets without being afraid, and here I sit at my computer, hurting physically and psychologically. If we can’t protect ourselves who will? In five years I’ve managed to post nothing but positive comments about any establishment or gay product. During this time my mindset was that there is enough negativity out there for me not to join in and down other gays. Yet I sit here wondering why I even bother when a gay bar (albeit a tragic one called Splash Bar NYC) threw me out to the wolves.
Dig it. A gay basher vomits a string of obscenities at a couple he sees hugging…a thing opposite sex couples do in public every fucking day…and when doing that doesn’t fulfill him enough he and his passenger jump out of their car and one of them proceed to beat the crap out of the a gay guy who tried to protect the couple from being attacked. The gay guy takes refuge in the Splash Bar, only to be almost immediately thrown out back out the door. Luckily for him the attackers were gone by then.
The Splash Bar website has an "Under Construction" page up. No word yet on whether or not their conscience is still under construction too, or when it might be completed. But they have a MySpace profile Here. This reminds me of the contemptible indifference the bathouses gave to the safety of their customers during the initial AIDS outbreak in the early 1980s. But more then that, the history of the institution of the gay bar is more one of preying on the gay community, rather then catering to it, and that’s something we all need to keep in mind as we choose which businesses to patronize, where to spend our hard earned 23 percent less income then the average heterosexual makes.
Back before Stonewall, before the modern gay rights movement, most gay bars were run by organized crime gangs who payed off the local police in order to stay open and serve alcohol in a day when most states and cities had laws forbidding bars from serving known homosexuals. Back when any same sex dancing on the premises could get a bar closed down and it’s patrons arrested, the only gay watering holes that could stay open for very long were the ones run by mobsters who knew which hands to grease and when. Those bars basically treated their gay customers like dogshit, because they knew there were no other places where we could gather, other then back alleys. They served watered down bathtub booze and charged premium prices for it. The bars were pest holes, but they were all we had, and their owners couldn’t have cared less about the people who spent their money there. They didn’t have to. We had nowhere else to go.
Times have changed. I’m sure many gay establishments now are operated by people who feel a close connection to the community, and want us all to prosper and have the good life and enjoy ourselves together. Chasing the Almighty Dollar doesn’t necessarily mean treating your customers like rubes. In fact, that’s always a short sighted path to nowhere. Just ask Detroit. We have come a long way from the days of the seedy mob run bar. But it’s worth remembering that the people who serve us drinks, don’t necessarily give a rat’s ass about us, about our safety, about our basic human dignity. Some of them just want our money. If they could pluck dollar bills off our cold dead gay bashed bodies they would, and spend it the next day on their own cheap thrills without a twinge of remorse or care. You don’t throw someone who’s just been gay bashed back out the door to face his attackers again if you have a single solitary shred of conscience in you. However, if you’re afraid that giving refuge to a gay bashing victim inside your establishment might spoil the atmosphere you’ve so carefully worked to create, and maybe make people spend less money, or even worse, go somewhere else where they might feel safer, then out the door he goes like yesterday’s trash, and your conscience before it.
[Update…] From the comments to Ramone’s blog post…
I am so sorry about the bashing aspect of your story, but the only thing that I wanted to add is that SBNY has a tendency to REMOVE any drama from the bar at first glance. They did it to my partner who slipped on the steps and cut his had on a glass. The wrapped his hand up and told us to get in a cab. In retrospect – they never gave us an apology nor and sympathy or compassion, they just wanted us out. SBNY is lacking compassion and the days where is used to be a good ole neighborhood bar are gone. Now they just want gay dollars for shitty small watered down drinks, and they have no sense of community.
He is the nicest right-wing evangelical powerhouse you’ve never heard of. Jim Daly grew up the last of five children in what anyone would call a broken home. His mother died when he was 10 and he lived with, in turn, a stepfather, a foster family, his own alcoholic father and his divorced brother. He came to Jesus in high school, under the guidance of a football coach. His recent memoir, "Finding Home," has barely made a dent on the best-seller lists. Nevertheless, in 2005, Daly got the job of president and CEO of Focus on the Family, and although he denies this, it’s clear that he was picked to be the yin to James Dobson’s yang. While Dobson continues to threaten in the press, Daly chats amiably with a reporter about the fall weather. He sticks to the hard line on policy issues—gay marriage is bad for families, he says—but his presentation is all soft edges. "I’m sure there are wonderful gay parents out there; there’s a poster child for everything." If one of his boys turned out to be gay, he says, "I’d love him."
Sure he would. He’d love him right into an ex-gay camp. It’s telling of the relentless animus the religious right has toward gay people, that Miller considers a Pew study showing opposition to gay marriage has crept down a tad among white evangelicals under 30, to 76 percent, as a sign of growing tolerance. Yes. And mount Everest is still growing too but I wouldn’t try watching it.
But there’s this little tidbit also…
According to a new study by the Barna Research Group, 80 percent of churchgoers between the ages of 16 and 29 believe that the term "anti-homosexual" describes Christianity, and they complain that they don’t get enough guidance from their pastors in how to apply Christ’s message of love to their gay friends.
I’ve seen this statistic cited elsewhere recently. Well I just can’t imaging why young people would describe Christianity as "anti-homosexual"…
One of the Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights gatherings was held on October 8 in Greenville, South Carolina, and Faith in America has passed on photos and coverage of what transpired there, as those at the vigil faced protesters from a local church.
When the voices of straight allies unite with those of their gay and lesbain friends, family and co-workers, the shrill voices of religion-based bigotry can’t stand up against reason and heart-felt conviction. That’s what happened last Monday in downtown Greenville, S.C.
It was a beautiful night for Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights in Greenville, S.C. on Oct. 8. But when a van full of anti-gay protesters from a Greenville community church showed up, the special event’s celebratory mood was maligned by the anti-gay group’s attitudes of intimidation and confrontation.
The good men and women of faith arrived at the protest bearing signs that read God Abhors You. There’s a video over at Pam’s House Blend.
Strolling back and forth yelling out that gay and lesbian people were doomed to hell, one of the leaders of anti-gay protesters continued his booming tirade of hate toward gay and lesbian citizens.
After the initial intimidation – which is what the protesters were all about – several of the people gathered for the Seven Straight Nights event approached the protesters and began questioning the message and their tactics.
Jon and Dawn Kennedy were two of those people at the celebration. Their brother, Sean Kennedy, died May 16, 2007 in Greenville, S.C., after being struck by a man who reportedly called Sean a faggot before striking Sean with such force that it crushed the bones in his face. Sean died from the one fatal blow.
Sean’s mother was present at Seven Straight Nights and was one of the event’s several speakers, including Faith In America Executive Director Jimmy Creech.
When Sean’s brother and sister politely told the leader of the anti-gay protesters that their brother was killed and that their hateful speech promotes violence toward gay and lesbian people, the protester flatly and unemotionally told Jon and Dawn Kennedy that their brother "was burning in hell right now."
I realize that these people are not representative of the whole of Christianity. But the silence in the pews toward this kind of thing is telling.
If you have friends who seem to think that violence against gay and lesbian citizens isn’t pervasive in our society, you need to introduce them to Erin Davies and her Fagbug.
Erin Davies, a student at Sage College in New York, was targeted by anti-gay vandals when her VW Beetle was sprayed with the words "U R gay" and fag" in mid-April, most likely because the vehicle has a rainbow sticker affixed to its bumper. The incident occurred on the national "Day of Silence" in which students across the country use silence as a means to bringing awareness to intolerance and homophobia.
Instead of having the car cleaned up, Davies says she plans to use it to spread a message of tolerance and take it on a cross-country trip this summer with the hateful messages still emblazoned across its windows.
Erin attended the Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights in Greenville, S.C. last week and it was there that she reported the awful news that she had been the victim of another painful – and potentially serious attack – in her hometown of Tampa, Fla.
On Oct. 4, just a week before arriving in Greenville, S.C., someone threw a brick through the window of her home in Tampa and the back window of her car parked there.
This is what Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin buys you. Not tolerance for the homosexual, but tolerance for bigotry. You cannot arouse religious passions against couples in love, without giving license to hate. This isn’t murder we’re talking about here. It isn’t violence. It isn’t theft. To denounce acts of violence, crimes of greed, the hurtful, harmful, things people to To their neighbors, is to condemn hatefulness. To denounce couples in love is to condemn love itself and that gives hate free reign to do what it will, because only love can stand against hate. Once you have destroyed love, you have unchained hate and hate obeys no one. It throws the brick through Erin Davies automobile. It laughs in Jon and Dawn Kennedy’s faces, and tells them their brother is burning in hell. It ties a 112 pound college student tied to a fence, tortures him, then leave him to die alone on the cold Wyoming plains. That is what Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin buys you. Not absolution, but blood. On your hands.
I’m terribly sorry if all this puts you in a theological bind. But the bible says… Yes. And it says we shouldn’t suffer witches to live either. And then it turns around and says Love Thy Neighbor. Over here is God flooding the earth, killing everyone and everything on it, including by the way, all its little children. Over there is Jesus, warning people not to harm a hair on a little child’s head or face the wrath of God. The bible can have its cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, you can’t. Those people vitriolically condemning homosexuals and their families and friends, Are the face of Christianity in America, until you give it a better, more loving one. And you can’t. Not until you start loving your gay neighbor. And as long as you hold to the belief that the love between same sex couples is a sin, you don’t. All you can do is watch impotently, while they are eaten by wolves you cannot speak out wholeheartedly against. Or you can wash, wash your hands of it all, and look the other way.
Brown County GOP Chairman Donald Fleischman has resigned his post, says a spokesperson, after being accused of enticement and fondling of an underage boy, reports the Green Bay Press-Gazette Saturday.
Fleischman, 37, is free after posting a $20,000 bond on September 28. "My client is innocent of the charges," says attorney Jeff Jazgar, who "declined to discuss specifics."
"Our plan is to get some witnesses to testify and present enough information to dismiss the case."
The boy was found by police in Fleischman’s home on two occasions in late 2006 while being sought as a runaway from Ethan House, a home for at-risk youth. Now 17, he says he stayed with Fleischman at his house and a cabin, where he was provided with alcohol and cannabis, and regularly fondled.
On November 19, 2006, according to a September 7th complaint obtained from the WisPolitics Courtwatch Blog, the boy in question was found hiding in a bedroom closet, and a pipe was found in the house, which tested positive for THC. Shortly after, on December 8, 2006, Fleischman said he was trying to convince the boy, discovered again in the home, to turn himself in as a runaway.
Fleischman faces two counts of child enticement, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child, and one count of exposing himself to a child. He returns to court on October 29.
It’s been like a week doesn’t go by that some GOP operative or religious right nutcase turns up in the middle of some kind of sex scandal. And they’re lecturing us on sexual conduct?
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