The Idaho Values Alliance–"Making Idaho the Friendliest Place in the World to Raise a Family"–is going to have a hard time swallowing the latest news about its beloved Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for lewd conduct in an airport restroom.
Here’s one page of the group’s site, a news update where it praises Craig for his "pro-life" vote on stem cell research, followed by a "Bonus Byte" on the perils of homosexuality and airport restrooms:
One of the tragic characteristics of the homosexual lifestyle is its emphasis on anonymous sex and multiple sexual partners. It is a little-acknowledged secret that many active homosexuals will have more than 1,000 sex partners over the course of a lifetime…
Figure at age 53 I should have had at least 6 or 7 hundred of those by now. I’ve laid down with exactly six guys in my entire lifetime. That’s one less then these kooks claim is the average for heterosexuals, and I figure one of those times really shouldn’t count because nothing really happened. So somebody, some royal son of a bitch, took my share of all that fabulous gay sex I keep hearing about…and when I get my hands on him I’m going to throttle him…
This sordid fact of homosexual life surfaced yesterday in an AP article yesterday that reports on the number of arrests police have made for indecent exposure and public sex acts in the restrooms at Atlanta’s airport, the busiest in the world. The increased restroom patrols, begun to apprehend luggage thieves, instead uncovered a rash of sex crimes. Airport restrooms have become so popular that men looking for anonymous sexual trysts with other men have advertised their airport availability on Craigslist. One such ad was from a man saying he was stuck at the airport for three hours and was looking for “discreet, quick action.”
He wouldn’t have been from Boise…by any chance…?
This Idaho Values Alliance was (until lately one would have to suppose) a big supporter of Larry Craig’s. Point of fact, according to Marshall…
What are the odds of a piece on airport restroom trysts appearing below a picture of Larry Craig in a conservative group’s newsletter, not to mention the reference to Craigslist?
See…this is what I meant in that last post, when I said that Craig was only behaving the way the right wing culture he was swimming in told him homosexuals behave. I won’t deny that there are gay people who are into the quick anonymous hooking up sex scene…but that’s no more the whole of gay life then Baltimore’s Block amounts to the whole of heterosexual life. Don’t tell me that there aren’t a lot of heterosexuals who get into all that crap too. Back in the 70s the only places where I could find copies of the local Washington gay paper (The Blade) and The Advocate, were seedy adult bookstores. I got an eyeful in those days of what heterosexuals were up to.
But crackpots like The Idaho Values Alliance aren’t saying merely that having sex in toilets is something most homosexuals do…they’re saying that To Be Homosexual, Is To Have Sex In Bathrooms. Or in other words, Homosexuals Don’t Love, They Just Have Sex. And tragically, a lot of gay people grow up believing that of themselves. Homosexuality doesn’t drag people into the gutter. Homosexuals are pushed into it. By…you know…decent god fearing people. Morally righteous people who have no trouble whatsoever teaching gay kids that homosexuality is nothing but cheap random empty sex in toilets, and then congratulating themselves on their heterosexuality when those kids grow up acting like they were taught to act.
Senators aren’t the only folks these days with their reputations in the toilet. American journalism is also looking pretty squalid. The chatter around the net, after Senator Larry Craig’s arrest and guilty plea for lewd conduct, was that reporter Dan Popkey of The Idaho Statesman had been working on a pretty explosive investigation into Craig’s past sexual conduct, and uncovered the arrest and guilty plea for lewd behavior last June, and that Popkey’s story got trashcanned after Craig’s lawyers sat down and had a little chat with the editor and the publisher of his home state newspaper.
Well…I guess on the principle that there’s no point in sitting on the story now, The Idaho Statesman has finally gone ahead and published what looks like a slightly updated version of Popkey’s story. Here it is:
Idaho senator pleads guilty to disorderly conduct after incident at Minnesota airport that echoes previous allegation of homosexual conduct.
…
In an interview on May 14, Craig told the Idaho Statesman he’d never engaged in sex with a man or solicited sex with a man. The Craig interview was the culmination of a Statesman investigation that began after a blogger accused Craig of homosexual sex in October. Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.
The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington’s Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig "cruised" him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. The Statesman also explored dozens of allegations that proved untrue, unclear or unverifiable.
Craig, 62, was elected to Congress in 1980. Should he win re-election in 2008 and complete his term, he would be the longest-serving Idahoan ever in Congress. His record includes a series of votes against gay rights and his support of a 2006 amendment to the Idaho Constitution that bars gay marriage and civil unions.
The article is lengthy and pretty detailed and reading it you get a better grasp of the rest of the iceburg that was lurking under the news reports of Craig’s airport men’s room arrest. It starts with his sudden and head turning pre-emptive denial back in 1982 that he’d ever had sex with a congressional page, and flits from one men’s room to another…with a brief detour back to his college fraternity days.
Craig told the Statesman he was unaware of rumors about him being gay going back to his college days. Craig had about 150 fraternity brothers at Delta Chi during his U of I years.
The Statesman interviewed 41 of them. Of those 41, three said there were jokes about him being effeminate and possibly gay. Most said that had Craig been thought to be gay, he would have never become a leader in the fraternity and the student body.
As president of Delta Chi, Craig secured a $100,000 loan to remodel the fraternity house, instituted study hours, and blackballed members for drug use. They called him "Mother Craig" for his officiousness.
…
Most of Craig’s college friends say he was disciplined, studious and serious, even if he was awkward with women.
One woman who dated him off and on for a year asked not to be named, but said, "I don’t imagine that he ever held my hand. He was into the gotta-hold-the-door-for-the-woman sort of thing. But I always felt like I was an accessory. I might as well have been his briefcase."
Lady…the word is ‘beard’. One student who had been considering pledging with Craig’s fraternity told the reporter that Craig had taken him back to his room and made a pass at him. Craig denied it, as he denied the story of the man who said he cruised him at the REI store in Boise, and the man who said he’d had sex with Craig in the men’s room at Union Station in Washington D.C.
I want to feel some sympathy for Craig…the religious right’s long war on human sexuality has left a lot of Americans with twisted up sex lives…but I can’t. He made himself as much a part of the right wing machine as any Dobson or Falwell and whether that was his way of transferring his own self loathing onto everyone else, or he really does hate humanity as much as his neighbors in the kook pews, it doesn’t matter. While he was cruising the toilets for sex, he was busy bashing gay people who were trying to make something fine and decent and whole out of their lives. He tried to cut off our wedding rings, at the same time his own was peeping out from under toilet stall walls. It’s unforgivable.
But Craig is what you get when you apply the religious right’s teachings on homosexuality. He was everything the religious right said a homosexual should be. Self-loathing and dedicated to maintaining a heterosexual pretense regardless of the cost to himself, or to others.
In the May 14 interview, Craig and his wife listened to a four-minute excerpt of the Statesman’s interview with the 40-year-old man who first spoke to Rogers. At first, Craig objected to the man’s anonymity, but agreed to listen. The man’s voice was disguised.
Craig said the man is an activist. "The gay movement, we know it for what it is. It’s now aggressive and it’s liberal and it’s naming people to try to put them in compromising, difficult situations."
Suzanne Craig’s eyes reddened and filled with tears as she listened. After her husband’s denial, she said, "I’m incensed that you would even consider such a piece of trash as a credible source."
To which Craig added, "Jiminy God!"
I hope she saves a bit of the blame for all of this, for all the fundamentalist pulpit thumpers that keep screaming at Americans that sex is a shameful and dirty thing, and that there is nothing more shameful and dirty and perverted, then to be a homosexual. Craig was only doing that day in that men’s room, what they’d told him all his life that homosexuals do.
Roll Call is reporting that Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, was arrested earlier this summer in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport by an undercover officer investigating complaints about sexual activity. The Capitol Hill newspaper says it obtained the arrest report.
…
According to the incident report, Sgt. Dave Karsnia was working as a plainclothes officer on June 11 investigating civilian complaints regarding sexual activity in the men’s public restroom in which Craig was arrested.
Airport police previously had made numerous arrests in the men’s restroom of the Northstar Crossing in the Lindbergh Terminal in connection with sexual activity.
Karsnia entered the bathroom at noon that day and about 13 minutes after taking a seat in a stall, he stated he could see “an older white male with grey hair standing outside my stall.”
The man, who lingered in front of the stall for two minutes, was later identified as Craig.
“I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes,” the report states.
Craig then entered the stall next to Karsnia’s and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door.
“My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,” Karsnia stated in his report. “From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me.”
Craig was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes.
“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot.
I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.
Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”
Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it. “With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. … Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”
In a recorded interview after his arrest, Craig “either disagreed with me or ‘didn’t recall’ the events as they happened,” the report states.
Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the report states. Craig also told the arresting officer that he reached down with his right hand to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor.
“It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper,” the arresting officer said in the report.
* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)
I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.” If there’s one image you can take away from the George Bush years, one defining moment that sums up perfectly the condition of the right wing gutter, the moral compass of the William Bennett’s, James Dobsons, Jerry Falwells and Charles Krauthammers of the American right…here it is: the hand of a senator who voted for the federal marriage amendment, furtively moving under a toilet stall wall, the gold wedding band on his ring finger glinting in the pale florescent light as he tries to proposition the vice cop in the stall next to his. You could write volumes about the degeneracy of the American right wing, and not capture it as utterly, as elegantly, as that one profoundly sickening image does. It is perfect.
Marriage is a sacred thing the right insists…and so it is. For couples in love the wedding band is a symbol of one of this life’s most perfect joys. But to the right it is no more then a cheap status symbol…like owning a Bentley, or having white skin. Something to denote privilege, status, rank. Certainly nothing to do with love and desire, trust and devotion. Whether Larry Craig is a homosexual, or a heterosexual man with some pretty major sexual issues, it makes no difference. When he consigned the sex lives of his gay neighbors to the toilet, he consigned his own sex life there too. Love keeps no balance sheet, acknowledges no rank, bows to no prejudice. The one who doesn’t know this, has either never loved, or never loved anyone more then they loved rank and status. The ring knew where it belonged.
Tragically, not all of my fellow boomers made it out of the 60s and 70s sane. Many of them are stumbling through life now, middle aged pathetic burned out shells of their former selves. One case in point being the drooling jackass who wrote this last week in the Wall Street Journal…
The Summer of Drugs
Forty years ago, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in and drop out."
BY TED NUGENT
Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.
Irresponsible lifestyle of random sex…did you say Ted…?
The first time that I got it
I was just ten years old
I got it from some kitty next door
I went and see the Dr. and
He gave me the cure
I think I got it some more
They give me cat scratch fever
Cat scratch fever
It’s nothin dangerous
I feel no pain
I’ve got to ch-ch-change
You know you got it when you’re going insane
It makes a grown man cryin’ cryin’
Won’t you make my bed
I make the pussy purr with
The stroke of my hand
They know they gettin’ it from me
They know just where to go
When they need their lovin man
They know I do it for free
Do it for free do you Ted? Got it from a lady next door when you were just ten did you Ted?
That Nadine, what a teenage queen
She lookin’ so clean, especi’lly down in between; what I like
She come to town; she be foolin’ around
a puttin’ me down as a rock-and-roll clown
It’s all right
Wang Dang Sweet Poontang
Wang dang, what a sweet poontang
a shakin’ my thang as a rang-a-dang-dang in the bell
She’s so sweet when she yanks on my meat
Down on the street you know she can’t be beat
What the hell
Wang dang Ted…
I don’t wanna hand nothin’ to ya
I just wanna sit back and do ya
Dontcha make me stand up and chase it
I just wanna lay back and taste it
Come and get it right here for you
I would never want to bore you
No
Come and get it
Come and get it
Come on girl and sit down beside me
Let me tell ya whats burnin’ inside me
I want you to take it
I know that you’ll like it
Sit right down and grab it and bite it
Come on girl its right here for you
Yes…I think we can see what’s burnin’ inside of you Ted…
Looking for trouble, looking for sex
Walking on the wild side, she’s so complex
She’s on fire, the heat is coming on
The girl’s on fire, she burns all night long
High hell sneakers
Head to toe in lace
Such a dangerous body
With a little girl’s face
Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, was it? Well I’m sure there wasn’t a father anywhere in this country back then Ted, who wouldn’t have felt completely at ease letting you be alone with their little girl. No random irresponsible sex for you. With…little girls…
I with you Ted, when you morn the deaths of all those amazing talents back then. They died way too young and it was a tragedy. Just think where they’d be now if they had lived on. For one thing, I don’t think Hendrix or Joplin or Morrison would be writing editorials for the Wall Street Journal. I mean…just try to picture it. Would John Lennon be writing for the Wall Street Journal? Would the Wall Street Journal let John Lennon fucking anywhere near it’s pages? But then it wasn’t drugs that killed Lennon…it was some burned out lunatic with a gun.
I was in Chicago last week I said, "Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk?" Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, "Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch." Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.
I can understand why you’re so pissed off Ted. I can understand why you hate all the dirty hippies. Hendrix…Joplin…Cass Elliot…Jim Morrison…John Lennon… They’re still taking the spotlight away from you, aren’t they? Their music lives on generation after generation…long after their pointless deaths. Kids who were born long after they’d died are still groovin’ to their music…and you still can’t raise your act much higher then the gutter trash crowd.
You understand why that is…don’t you Ted. In a world where Hendrix can still sing Foxy Lady to us, why would anyone want to listen to a burned out lunatic belching Kiss My Ass…
I believe in animal rights
I let my dog hump on my shin
Right. Whatever. You’re howling out abuse at the hippies so you won’t have to face the fact that if it wasn’t for the greats who took rock and roll from the back streets to Woodstock you wouldn’t have a stage to prance around with your…machine gun. You’d be just another long haired weirdo with a guitar and an open guitar case on the sidewalk in front of him with a little card in it asking for spare change. I mean…it certainly isn’t your music your audience comes to you for now is it…?
Oh look…a naked woman tied up and served on a platter like a pig, with a hand grenade in her mouth. So nice of the Wall Street Journal to give you a forum to bitch about hippies, drugs, cowardly irresponsible lifestyles of random sex, and…soulless music.
There is a saying that if you can remember the 1960s, you were not there. I was there and remember the decade in vivid, ugly detail. I remember its toxic underbelly excess because I was caught in the vortex of the music revolution that was sweeping the country, and because my radar was fine-tuned thanks to a clean and sober lifestyle.
So tell us Ted, what this clean and sober lifestyle has to do with naked ladies bound on silver platters and gaged with hand grenades. And…does being clean and sober help much for getting on stage and announcing to the world that you want a black man and three white women to suck on your…machine gun? Wow…it must have been awful…simply awful…getting all caught up in that toxic underbelly of excess back then. Good thing you made it out of there clean and sober. Every father would want his son to grow up clean and sober…
It’s really cute how the Wall Street Journal ends your editorial with "Mr. Nugent is a rock star releasing his 35th album, "Love Grenade," this summer." Perhaps they should have put a photo of the cover art there too. Or one of these souvenir stickers they’re selling now on eBay…
I’m picturing you looking at the cover art for your new album, and thanking your lucky stars that you weren’t caught up in any toxic underbellies of excess…
…and I’ll take what all those Haight-Ashbury hippies gave the world over this ugly shock jock crap any day. See…the hippies shocked the establishment, but they weren’t About shocking the establishment. They rejected the empty values and broken promises of the 50s…they were reaching for something they really thought was a better place. You just want to shock. And the problem with shock is that it gets old. People get used to it. So to stay in the spotlight, you have to keep ratcheting it up…increasing the dose.
…which makes you the drug Ted. You and all the other shock jocks who’ve been busy ever since the Reagan years, dragging America into the gutter for money. Rush Limbaugh…Michael Savage…Don Imus… You. You’re no Hendrix. You’re no Morrison. You’re no Joplin. You’re sure as shit no John Lennon. Drugs may have killed some of the best musical talent of my generation Ted, but they left behind a little beauty and wonder for the rest of us and for generations to come, and that’s something you’ll never be able to say on your deathbed. You’re the symptom of cultural decay Ted. You’re one drop of the heroin coursing through America’s veins now. You give your customers a quick little high, a cheap little thrill, and when you’re done with them they’re a little less then they were before.
Wang dang, what a sweet poontang…
I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns…
…and your wallet is a little bigger. How fitting that you’re in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, so soon after Rupert Murdoch bought it.
[Update…] Via Harp I learn that Nugent’s new album has a cover of the old Amboy Duke’s psychedelic hit Journey To The Center Of The Mind. A quick visit to the CD listing on Amazon.Com confirms it. This is rich…
The Amboy Dukes, some of us still recall, was the 60s band Nugent made a name for himself in. Sweet. Here we have Nugent bellyaching in the Wall Street Journal about the 60s drug culture, and hippies and LSD and how "the bodies of chemical-infested, brain-dead liberal deniers continue to stack up like cordwood"…and the album he’s releasing this month has a cover of one of the quintessential songs of that period, and that culture. Christ…I’ve heard of playing both sides of the street, but this is really brazen.
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)
Regarding This Post I did a little while ago, on the Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon media bullshit circus….it gets even better…or the stench much worse depending on whether you feel more like laughing or crying. Glenn Greenwald has the goods …
But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented — both by Pollack/O’Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military — a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them.
…
The entire trip — including where they went, what they saw, and with whom they spoke — consisted almost entirely of them faithfully following what O’Hanlon described as "the itinerary the D.O.D. developed."
But to establish their credibility as first-hand witnesses, O’Hanlon and Pollack began their Op-Ed by claiming, in the very first sentence: "VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel. . . . " Yet the overwhelming majority of these "Iraqi military and civilian personnel" were ones hand-picked for them by the U.S. military:
Dig it. Two war supporters go over to Iraq on a trip planned, shaped and controlled by the Pentagon, and when they come back to the U.S. to present their pre-packaged findings they’re lauded by our feckless corporate news media as former war critics who went to Iraq to see for themselves what the conditions there were and then became believers in Bush’s policies. It isn’t just that not a word of it was true…it’s that everyone writing those editorals about how Bush’s policies were winning over the war critics knew goddamned well that none of it was true.
We gay folk have friends among the heterosexuals. Never doubt that. Never, never, never. And because they are beautiful people…decent…good hearted…good people…they don’t really understand what it is we’re all facing. They just don’t…
When I saw Angels in America, I thought the closeted gay Mormon character was a little too heavy handed, but in retrospect I’ve come to realize that Tony Kushner understood something about the world that I did not.
Yeah. He does. Yeah…it looks a tad heavy-handed… But no…it isn’t…
We’re Not A Political Organization…We Just Lobby Against Any And All Gay Rights Legislation…
Some weeks ago, Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin noted this comment from Exodus’ Mike Ensley on Warren Throckmorton’s website…
Mary, honestly I don’t think you understand Exodus’ political involvement at all. Do you think all (or even most) pro-homosexual activist groups are adopting a “live and let live” policy toward people with different beliefs? Hardly.
My focus is entirely on youth and education, and believe me, the lobbying in that field is nothing like “live and let live.” In California, for instance, pro-gay advocates have exclusive rights to what children are taught in public schools regarding these issues. Parents are explicitly kept out of the loop–and if they somehow get in the loop, they have no right to opt their children out of instruction that undermines their values.
As for “ending people’s rights,” I would just like to know what rights Exodus is helping to end, and for whom?
Your comment about a “you must live our way” stand really doesn’t have any basis, either. Opposing thought-crimes legislation and education law that excludes every view except a gay-centric one is hardly forcing others to live the way we do.
…which was in response to this one, directed at Randy Thomas:
Randy,
I can say that Exodus’ “policy” or “position” has not helped. Had they taken a live and let live stand rather than a you must live our way stand then perhaps this would not be happening?? Politicking against a group has certianly thrown smoke into a hornet’s nest. We should not be trying to end anyone’s rights and instead be working towards an agreement that respects both sides. Even when threatened now, I can say – I understand how gays have become so angry, defensive, and strong. I don’t like the idea that my rights are threatened – but that does not mean I would agrue to destroy the rights of others with whom I disagree.
Well…no. I mean…yes Exodus’ political activism probably factors into it…but that’s not where this is coming from. Where it came from was all the attention the ex-gay movement got after a gay teenager who was content just the way he is was seen being dragged into a horrific reparative therapy program by the entire fucking world. That one incident got the attention of a lot of people, and without a doubt it radicalized many against the ex-gay movement. The increased scrutiny that reparative therapy suddenly came under was eminently predictable. That’s what has brought this all on.
Throckmorton in his post raises the specter of reparative therapy doctors quacks being tossed into the slammer after the gay militants who dominate the APA have reparative therapy banned…
AOL’s GLBT community blog Queersighted has an article by Richard Rothstein this morning that marks tomorrow’s first meeting of the APA Sexual Orientation Task as an important date in gay history. Why? Because he hopes the task force will suggest to the APA that all reparative/conversion therapy should be banned. And what if the APA bans reparative therapy (never defined in this piece)? Well, round up the posse, boys, Mr. Rothstein has the answer:
If the APA does in fact ban reparative or conversion therapy, we will at long last have a solid legal argument for shutting down such groups as Exodus International and Homosexuals Anonymous. This will also mean that under standard and existing malpractice laws, psychologists and therapists who continue to advocate and practice such therapy would be subject to license revocation, hefty fines and even imprisonment.
So if Mr. Rothstein’s vision is realized, reparative therapists and maybe the Exodus crew will be answering questions like: “Hey, doc, what are you in for?”
And maybe the other guy is in jail for selling capsules full of dry cleaning fluid to people as a cure for insomnia. Or maybe he was selling crack cocaine to teenagers. As a matter of fact, doc, people who harm others for money really do need to be held accountable for that. People who sell cures that don’t really do anything at best, and do terrible harm to the patents at worst, really do need to be held accountable for that. It’s not religious persecution to hold people accountable for the harm they do to others.
To his everlasting credit, Throckmorton condemned the practice of giving ex-gay therapy to unwilling teens when the protests at Love In Action broke out a couple summers ago. And there were others like him in the ex-gay movement who were absolutely appalled at what they saw being done to kids in these so-called ministries. But there were many others who doggedly defended the practice and you best believe that I’d like to see every one of those mother fucking bastards that pushed sexual self loathing and fear of intimacy into a gay teenager’s heart locked up for a long, long time, with all the other sex offenders. Because that’s exactly what it is…child sexual abuse.
Now, as predictably as the rising sun in the east, the priests of the ex-gay movement are bellyaching that their sincere religious beliefs are under attack. The problem is, it’s hard to reach a place of mutual respect with people who constantly lie through their teeth. The leaders of Exodus may claim their actions are only motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, but their word on just about anything isn’t worth spit. They lie about homosexuals. They lie about homosexuality. And they lie…brazenly…about themselves.
Banks described the process they go through in deciding which political issues to get involved in. The chief consideration was “policy proposals that would infringe on the ministry that we do.” And in deciding whether to get involved, she said they ask themselves two questions: 1) Does the issue affect our ministries or members, and 2) Do we have an opportunity to offer a unique perspective and opportunity to influence? And on this second point, the role of Exodus’s “door to our stories” becomes very clear: if “change is possible” then laws granting equality and protections for gays and lesbians are unnecessary.
Banks also talked about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which she falsely claims would require religious organizations to hire people who would threaten their mission. In fact, section six of the bill specifically exempts religious organizations from the act.
You need to read Burroway’s post to grasp the scope of Exodus’ interest and involvement in anti-gay politics. I’ve been saying for years now that these groups, and Exodus in particular, are only ex-gay as a facade. They are, in fact, Anti-Gay political groups, nothing more, nothing less, that only exploit ex-gays and reparative therapy in order to score political points and provide the religious right with moral cover for gay bashing. Gays choose to be gay…therefore they also choose to be discriminated against… We are not discriminating against homosexuals…it is the homosexuals who choose to be discriminated against, because they could always choose not to be homosexuals if they wanted to… In fact…there is No Such Thing as a homosexual…so how could we be discriminating against them…
You have to understand the agenda here is anti-gay political action, not saving souls for Christ, not freeing people from the chains of homosexuality, not curing people of their homosexual addictions, not healing people of their same sex attractions. Exodus, and other ex-gay ministries like them, are about one thing and one thing only: waging the political war against gay people. That’s why there is no follow-up when people leave counseling and therapy. That’s why they keep no statistics on success and failure rates, do no quality assurance activity, don’t…let’s be honest here…give a rat’s ass about whether they’re doing their clients any goddamned good at all. That’s not what they are about. The clients are the window dressing. The real work is the anti-gay political activity.
Via Pam’s House Blend… You could just about predict the reaction from the kook pews when several democratic candidates for president announced they’d participate in a debate on Logo about gay issues…
After all who could argue with the intellectual, philosophical, economic, national security, and social conscience expertise of a network that prides itself on the number of different ways a human being can have engage in sexual behavior while at the same time avoiding good old fashioned marital sexual intercourse?
…
What will happen is that each of these candidates will have to also later face the same "faith-based" audiences that they have been attempting to woo in recent weeks. Heaven forbid, but Obama might even have to make a follow up appearance in Rick Warren’s pulpit to announce the results of his most recent AIDS test. And what will they have to say then?
See here is the unrelenting truth, put as plainly as humanly possible:
Homosexual behavior and Christianity do not mix. From the standpoint of theory, theology, doctrine, and practice the two are totally and completely incompatible; as are adultery, pornography, bestiality, pedophilia, pre-marital sex, incest, cross dressing, multiple partner orgies and the list goes on. So the candidates can not have it both ways.
The truth is Democrats are not now nor have they ever been interested in seriously committed faith based voters.
So says Kevin McCullough over at TownHall.Com. Meanwhile…back on the side of all that is Godly and Righteous, the republicans are showing the rest of the nation just what it means to be morally upright…
NEW ORLEANS — New allegations tie Sen. David Vitter to a high-priced brothel in his hometown, days after he publicly apologized for his connection to an alleged prostitution ring in Washington, D.C.
Vitter (R-La.) acknowledged being involved with a D.C. escort service that federal prosecutors say was a prostitution ring.
On Tuesday, former madam Jeanette Maier said Vitter was once a client of her Canal Street brothel. She pleaded guilty to running the operation in 2002. Vitter won his seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Maier described Vitter as a "decent guy" who appeared to be in need of company when he visited the brothel.
"As far as the girls coming out after seeing David, all they had was nice things to say. It wasn’t all about sex. In fact, he just wanted to have somebody listen to him, you know," Maier said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Tonight I got confirmation from a solid inside source who has no ideological ax to grind. The source said [Sen.] Vitter was a client at Canal Street, and provided some additional details that shed light on Maier’s comment that there was “more to the business than sex”. [Update: Based on her comments about Vitter not having “unusual predilections”, I would interpret this comment to mean something like companionship and social interaction rather than fetishes… etc.] These details are not for the faint of heart, either.
We’re talking about, among other things, Diaper Fetishism. That’s right folks, according to a trusted inside source, Vitter was well known among other Canal Street Brothel patrons to like diapers as well as other bizarre “fetishes”. I don’t have much more info than that from my source, except that some of the other patrons at the brothel included a well known business-minded New Orleans Republican and a well known Democratic ex-governor. There are many other well known patrons who never held public office, too. You’ve probably heard various names floated about.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love that New Orleans has more than its share of sex fetishists and preeverts who can’t come missionary. This ain’t a vanilla town, kids.
But the thought of Vitter prancing around in a dipey is a bit jarring, especially since I’m changing those nasty things every day.
During the Clinton impeachment scandal, Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt placed an article in his magazine offering up to $1,000,000 for information on sexual indiscretions by Republican officials. Flynt received evidence that Livingston had strayed outside of his marriage and he was preparing to publish this information. Livingston got word that the article was pending. During debate over the impeachment resolution on December 19, 1998, Livingston surprised everyone by stepping down as Speaker-elect and announced he would resign from the House in May1999. He was succeeded by David Vitter…
The writings of the Founding Fathers are very instructive on this issue. They are not cast in terms of political effectiveness at all but in terms of right and wrong — moral fitness. Hamilton writes in the Federalists Papers (No. 65) that impeachable offenses are those that "proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
In considering impeachment, Vitter asserted, Congress had to judge Clinton on moral terms. Decrying the law professors’ failure to see this, Vitter observed, "Is that the level of moral relatively [sic] and vacuousness we have come to?" If no "meaningful action" were to be taken against Clinton, Vitter wrote, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture."
You don’t say, David. Gosh…three cheers for moral leadership. And…prostitutes who are worth every penny they charge. Especially the ones who know how to dress a man in diapers.
Today, looking back, Jeanette is not the least bit ashamed of the business she built. "There is a need for prostitutes," she says. "We balance everything out. We let a guy live out his fantasies."
Some of the fantasies at the Canal Street Brothel got a little rough. For those who liked that kind of stuff, there were whips, chains and a lot of leather. Jeanette says that most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans. She cracks a smile, then adds, "They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings–and these are the people who run our country."
"We’ve got 20-some investigations that all look good," Flynt said during a news conference at his Beverly Hills office.
"We have got some high-ranking Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and the House," he told reporters. "If I get just a couple of those phonies out of there, maybe it will be a step forward."
I’m laughing in your face Kevin McCullough, and all the rest of you pusillanimous sexual perverts over at Town Hall. Sex is a beautiful, thrilling, wonderful part of being alive and being human, and it isn’t Godlessness that’s writing all these sordid headlines now, and it isn’t moral relativism and wasn’t the dirty hippies and all their free love. This is what you get when you drag this vital part of the human identity into the gutter like it was dirty laundry, not one of this life’s pure and perfect joys. When you teach people that sex is a sordid, squalid, dirty thing, don’t be surprised when they act it out in sordid, squalid, dirty ways.
The author Mary Renault once said that politics, like sex, is an expression of the person within. If you’re mean and selfish and cruel it will come out in your sex life and it will come out in your politics when what really matters is that you’re not the sort of person who will behave like that. So what have we here? The party of Greed Is Good, and Sex is 90 Percent Evil, Except When It’s Between A Married Man And Women For Making Babies. And the brothel owners are saying they like to be dominated and spanked and tortured. And…wear silk stockings. And…diapers. And I’ll not endure lectures on how unnatural my sex life is from the likes of your kind Kevin.
You have to think that there are people in Washington, almost certainly among the punditboro, now thinking to themselves that Nixon should have just pardoned the Watergate Burglars immediately…then he wouldn’t have needed to worry about burning his secret White House tape recordings because the investigations would have ground to a halt.
But back then Nixon would have still had to worry about impeachment in a way Bush never will. The republican party hadn’t yet sunk into the depths it has today. Today, if Bush was caught stuffing money he’d just stolen from a bank into the g-string of a 12 year old pole dancer (of either sex) on the White House lawn the republicans wouldn’t impeach him. If Bush walked out of the White House and shot a random tourist in the head the republicans wouldn’t impeach him. There’s no way they’re going to let him be impeached over the Scooter Libby affair.
Many others will note this but I feel obliged to do so for the record. The real offense here is not so much or not simply that the president has spared Scooter Libby the punishment that anyone else would have gotten for this crime (for what it’s worth, I actually find the commutation more outrageous than a full pardon). The deeper offense is that the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.
The president’s power to pardon is full and unchecked, one of the few such powers given the president in the constitution. Yet here the president has used it to further obstruct justice. In a sense, perhaps we should thank the president for bringing the matter full circle. Began with criminality, ends with it.
Here on the Times Oped page you’ll see David Brooks column claiming that the information Joe Wilson brought before the public four years ago turned out to all be a crock, a bunch of lies. And we’ll let Brooks’ scribble be a stand-in for what you will hear universally today from the right — namely, that just as Scooter Libby was charged with perjury and not the underlying crime of burning an American spy, the deeper underlying offense, the lie about uranium from Africa, didn’t even exist — that at the end of the day it was revealed that Wilson’s claims, which started the whole train down the tracks, were discredited as lies.
You’ll even hear softer versions of this claim from mainstream media outlets not normally considered part of the rump of American conservatism.
There aren’t many subjects on which I claim expertise. But this is one of them. I think I know the details of this one — both the underlying story of the forgeries and their provenance and the epi-story of Wilson and Plame — as well as any journalist who’s written about the story. The Fitzgerald investigation is probably the part of it I know the least about, comparatively. (It is also incumbent on me to say that in the course of reporting on this story over these years I’ve gotten to know Joe Wilson fairly well. And I consider him a friend.)
And with that knowledge, I have to say that the claim that Wilson’s charges have been discredited, disproved or even meaningfully challenged is simply false. What he said on day one is all true. It’s really as simple as that.
Really. The entire Wilson/Plame affair is a textbook example of how the republican party Mighty Wurlitzer operates, hand in glove with the Washington press and the Washington punditboro. Never mind talk radio. This was an inside job. The beltway cool kids have been as unanimous in calling for Scooter’s pardon for obstructing justice in the case of outing a CIA agent as political retribution, as they were in calling for Clinton’s head for obstructing justice over a blow job.
There’s a tendency, even among too many people of good faith and good politics, to shy away from asserting and admitting this simple fact because Wilson has either gone on too many TV shows or preened too much in some photo shoot. But that is disreputable and shameful. The entire record of this story has been under a systematic, unfettered and, sadly, largely unresisted attack from the right for four years. Key facts have been buried under an avalanche of misinformation. The then-chairman of the senate intelligence committee made his committee an appendage of the White House and himself the president’s bawd and issued a report built on intentional falsehood and misdirection.
No one is perfect. The key dividing line is who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. Wilson is on the former side, his critics the latter. Everything else is triviality.
Garrison Keller was right: they’re republicans first and Americans second. Not just the men in power, but their courtiers in the news media and the punditboro. When they tell you that the break president Junior gave Scooter Libby is no big deal they are looking you right in the eye and lying through their teeth. It is exactly as Joshua Marshall says it is: "…the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was." And that crime wasn’t a blow job in the White House, it was damage to our intelligence gathering abilities, done for the sake of silencing a critic, sending a warning to others, and bringing the intelligence community to heel. When you see one of these gutter crawling thugs solemnly saluting the flag this Forth Of July, and speaking of the patriotism, and their love for America, remember it.
The prosecutor in the Plame case, Fitzgerald, issued the following statement regarding Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentance…
We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.
We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.” The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.
Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.
Bush, through his press secretary, has indicated he may pardon Libby outright. Look for that to happen if Libby keeps loosing his appeals. Expect the Washington press to rejoice if he does.
The Pentagon, in a policy obtained by The Advocate, has indicated that lesbian and gay military personnel who are discharged under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law are qualified to continue to serve the nation. A copy of the Pentagon policy, included in a statement released by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, now states, "These separated members have the opportunity to continue to serve their nation and national security by putting their abilities to use by way of civilian employment with other Federal agencies, the Department of Defense, or in the private sector, such as with a government contractor."
We can do the work, we just can’t have the dignity and the honor of bearing arms in our nation’s defense. And it’s not because these braying jackasses are uncomfortable working side-by-side with homosexuals. That’s bullshit. It’s because they just can’t bear to see the stigma removed from people they personally loath, yet know godammned well their country needs too.
For sure the Pentagon’s Jack D. Ripper’s are all feeling very evolved now that they’re willing to let us do the work of keeping America secure, so long as we don’t actually get the recognition for it. Some of them might even think they’re doing us a favor, since life as a highly paid DOD contractor is probably a higher calling in George Bush’s America then being in uniform anyway.
Republicans have long tried to exploit masculinity images and depict Democrats and liberals as effeminate and therefore weak. That is not new. But what is new is how explicit and upfront and unabashed this all is now. And what is most striking about it is that — literally in almost every case — the most vocal crusaders for Hard-Core Traditional Masculinity, the Virtues of Machismo, are the ones who so plainly lack those qualities on every level.
There are few things more disorienting than listening to Rush Limbaugh declare himself the icon of machismo and masculinity and mock others as "wimps." And if you look at those who have this obsession — the Chris Matthews and Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldbergs and Victor Davis Hansons — what one finds in almost every case is that those who want to convert our political process and especially our national policies into a means of proving one’s "traditional masculine virtues" — the physically courageous warriors unbound by effete conventions — themselves could not be further removed from those attributes, and have lives which are entirely devoid of such "virtues."
Not that I’m saying homosexuality is incompatible with masculinity, of course. Consenting biweekly to having one’s duodenum battered with the manic hydraulic fury of a tricked-out V-12 jackhammer manned by an epileptic Con-Ed worker with an ancestral oath of vengeance against asphalt would, I think, tend to butch one up, at least as regards one’s pain threshold.
The post Yglesias links to also has this little gem…
Is Instapundit A Homo? Well, I think I met him three times or something, and he never tried to pork me. Given the fact I’m 180 pounds of rompin’-stompin’ Clydesdale-clompin’ 180 proof sex, I’d say he successfully passed that test.
Or maybe Reynolds isn’t into drunken horse asses. Three times or something. Good thing he didn’t have to use two hands to count them on or he’d probably still be trying to write that post. There’s an old joke about how God gave men brains and dicks and not enough blood to operate them both at the same time. Somehow I don’t think this guy has that problem.
Have you ever wondered how men who feel such a profound contempt for anyone who would allow themselves to be fucked, treat their women during sex? The Ex-Gay barkers generally link male homosexuality to a broken sense of one’s own masculinity. But isn’t it staringly obvious that a broken sense of masculinity is what’s behind male homophobia, and misogyny?
Oh…and this…
Pam at Pam’s House Blend riffs on a column in the right wing World Net Daily from Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, who according to his Wikipedia entry is the founder of a group called The Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, a group which is dedicated to promoting responsible fatherhood amongst African Americans. His column is a pathetic diatribe against the opposite sex…
Many women I counsel with and have interviewed on my radio and TV shows are quick to point out everything their man is doing wrong, but it’s rare to find one who will honestly admit that she’s screwed up the kids or that she’s driving her mate crazy.
It’s time that we look at the role women play in driving men out of the home and separating them from their children. That’s not to say that men don’t bear the brunt of the responsibility for their weakness. Men need to learn how to deal with women with strength and patience – this is love.
…
Most women themselves don’t understand why they provoke and agitate their spouse to lash out or run away. They don’t understand the subtle control they have over weak men.
Men typically marry for love and to raise children. The mistake they make is that they’re looking for love from the wrong source. Men shouldn’t look for love from women. Rather they should find God’s love and pass that love down to the wife and children.
WTF?? As a gay man, this contempt for the opposite sex you regularly see from the ersatz "manly man" crowd is really striking. The shibboleth is that they’re thumping their manly chests to prove they’re not homosexuals. I think they’re thumping their chests because it’s the only way they know how to prove they’re somebody. Because they’ve lost the person within. There is no there inside them anymore. That’s probably why they don’t know how to love anyone outside of themselves. Sex is a reflex, and they still understand it when it tugs at them. But love is utterly beyond this kind of guy. You need a heart for that, and all he’s got is his…masculinity.
There’s an order to life: God in Christ, Christ in man, man over woman, and woman over children. When this order is broken or violated you have "hell" on earth.
…
There’s been a deliberate plan to wipe out masculinity in society. When you wipe out the man you wipe out God, because the man represents God on earth. Then there’s no truth – no light – and no hope for the family.
The man represents God on earth… Well there’s a little Christian modesty for you. None of this meek shall inherit the earth claptrap for this guy. No, no. All you need to do to be the very embodiment of God on earth in his good book, is to be born with that there ‘Y’ chromosome and you’re set. And…to attack masculinity is to attack on God.
And I could almost buy that, in the sense that to demean and degrade anything that is a part of this wonderful universe is an attack on its creator, on existence. To attack femininity is to attack God. To attack sexuality is to attack God. To attack any part of our shared humanity is an attack on God. But I don’t think that’s what this creep has in mind. He thinks his ‘Y’ makes him something. But all it makes him is male. Now to this gay boy, and I’m sure most heterosexual women will agree, that is no trivial thing. But you need to be more then simply male to be attractive. You need to be decent. And the ‘Y’ won’t make you that. You have to make yourself that. That’s the part people like Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson miss.
I would ask the Reverend what the difference is, between holding yourself above women simply because you’re a man, and holding yourself above others simply because of the color of your skin. You can make a case for the proposition that the genders view the world around them in their own way, but that’s not to say that one gender is better then another, let alone that being male makes you God on earth. This is the cop out people take, when the struggle for character becomes too much. Instead of reaching beyond themselves, for that better person they could become, they buy the cheap seat to self esteem. Why bother making yourself a better person, when you’re already the embodiment of God on earth?
And the problem with that is that it leaves an empty spot, a barren patch deep down inside, where a conscience is supposed to develop. The Reverend may think he’s preaching a message of strength to his male flock, but he’s just making them weak. "…what one finds in almost every case is that those who want to convert our political process and especially our national policies into a means of proving one’s "traditional masculine virtues" — the physically courageous warriors unbound by effete conventions — themselves could not be further removed from those attributes, and have lives which are entirely devoid of such "virtues."
As Frank Lloyd Wright said, "No stream rises higher then its source" The cult of masculinity, is more of a dildo. A grandiose substitute for something that’s all well and good just for what it is, but that shouldn’t be made into any more then what it is. A masculinity that feels itself threatened by gay men, let alone the opposite sex, is one that’s probably broken to start with. Your own maleness is a good thing to understand if you’re a guy. But it isn’t what matters. It’s what you make of yourself that matters. The higher ground, the exalted status, is possible to all of us, regardless of our gender, or our sexuality. But so is this:
You need a really good set of brakes to avoid finding yourself in this place. The ancient passions of our tribal past, of the long march of life on earth from the sea to our human existence, can sweep us off our feet in an instant, and deliver us into unmitigated evil before we even know where we’re going. The flesh of our existence is an amazing, wonderful, glorious thing. But to see your personal salvation in it is to walk away from everything fine and noble a human being can be, and bellyflop into the jungle of our past. Real men, like real women, have brains, and hearts, and a conscience that knows where the lines are you cannot cross, without renouncing your humanity.
The whole point of Holsinger’s paper is to draw a sharp contrast between gay relationships and heterosexual relationships. But to do so, he he culls his evidence largely from papers which describe injuries from nonconsensual intercourse to denigrate consensual relationships, he describes odd sexual practices that are enjoyed by heterosexual couples to denigrate the minority of gay couples who indulge in those same practices, and he misleads his readers by padding his bibliography with more references to papers explicitly describing injuries experienced by heterosexual men and women to imply that they describe gay men instead.
In other words, to describe gay sexual acts, more often than not he turned to papers which describe injuries sustained through heterosexual activity. And then he used this evidence from heterosexual activity to say that “when the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur as noted above.” But what does this evidence suggest about “complementarity” in heterosexual relationships? Holsinger doesn’t answer.
Burroway, as he has done previously with other religious right bigots, most notibly Paul Cameron, illuminates again and again the casual and deliberate deception in Holsinger’s anti-gay tract. For example, how Holsinger used a study of 365 male patients of a single urban STD clinic in Copenhagan so prove that homosexual sex is more likely to result in disease. As Burroway dryly notes…
This of course means that if you study people with STDs, whether they are gay or straight, you will find people with STDs. Holsinger uses the behavior of one particular sample of men who expose themselves to the risk of STDs to denigrate all gay men (and lesbians!). This study says nothing of those whose “lifestyle” choices do not lead to contracting STDs. And of course, Holsinger’s arguments don’t address whatever responsibility heterosexuals overall have for the 64% of this particular Copenhagen sample who were exclusively straight and were treated for STDs.
This was what Evelyn Hooker understood back in the 1950s when she did her landmark study of the psychological adjustment of gay men. If all you study are sick homosexuals, then all you’re going to see in homosexuality is sickness. But that’s all that some people want to see. Holsinger uses data on injuries to the rectum gleaned from emergency room treatment of people who had been raped, to smear the sex loving same sex couples have as physically damaging. Perhaps in his own mind, Holsinger really cannot see the difference between love and rape when it involves homosexuals. Or perhaps he’s just trying to make sure that nobody else can. Either way, it speaks volumes about that open sewer he calls a conscience.
And here, Burroway nails it:
But worse, Holsinger made the fatal error of ignoring the bonds of affection and devotion that arise in gay and lesbian couples. He reduced the rich complexity of their relationships to pipe fittings and how they interlock with each other. But the interlocking parts that fit together in relationships are those parts that fit sublimely. They have absolutely nothing to do with pipes or connectors or any other analogies drawn from the local Ace Hardware store.
But the interlocking parts that fit together in relationships are those parts that fit sublimely. Yes. Just so. But that is the part of an intimate romantic relationship, that the right reliably fails to grok. I think the reason why is obvious.
We have needed a Jim Burroway in this movement for a long, long time. Someone to actually take the time and effort to rigorously dig below the surface of these religious right anti-gay tracts and show, point by point, how they are looking you in the face and lying through their teeth, confidant that their ostentatious religiosity will keep you from questioning their facts. Surely men of God wouldn’t deliberately lie to us. They may be uptight moral prudes and cranks, but at least they believe in and live by their own moral values and we can trust in that. They are merely zealots, blinded by their prejudices, not conniving con artists. No. There is no mistaking this kind of thing for what it is. You cannot pick and choose your data to suit your purposes, without knowing that you are picking and choosing your data to suit your purposes. It is calculated, it is deliberate, and it is to virtue and morality as Al Capone was to law and order.
Some years ago, long before I’d ever ventured out into the Internet, I wrote an essay on my own coming out to myself experience, to post on a gay FidoNet echomail board. It’s been through many iterations since…mostly to edit unclear or awkward passages and add a bit of clarifying text here and there. I’ve taken it down from my web site here for the moment, while I give it an update. But I’ve posted it in response to many arguments I’ve had over the years with online bigots.
I saw early on that the personal computer enabled us as a people, for the first time in human history, to tell our own stories to the world, in our own words, completely bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of culture. Ever since I’ve been taking every opportunity to tell these little slice of life stories out of my own life, and encouraged other gay people to do the same. If we don’t tell our stories, the only people who will are the ones who hate us…the ones who cannot see the people for the homosexuals. For generation upon generation, the haters were the only ones who were allowed to speak on the subject of homosexuality. Our voices were silenced, often brutally, so their lies could be told without any fear of being contradicted by the truth of our lives. No more. For all the same reasons the totalitarians in China couldn’t massacre thousands of their own people in Tiananmen Square on a Sunday evening, and then tell the rest of the world Monday morning that it never happened, the homophobes can no longer insist that Homosexuals Don’t Love, They Just Have Sex and expect everyone to just nod their heads and accept it as a given.
But insist they will, because that’s all their cheapshit hatreds allow them to see. My own personal favorite example of that, happened when I once again posted my coming out to self story on a Usenet message board, in response to a bigots assertion that every homosexual that ever lived got that way because they were molested as a child. I said I wasn’t…I said that the first sex I’d ever had was with another guy about my own age, and that I was in love, and I reposted my essay, which reads in part…
Slowly and deliberately we drew ourselves closer together. One summer afternoon we arranged to go hiking. There was a place we’d both never been to that we wanted to explore.
At a shop where I once worked one of the guys there described, a little too graphically for my taste, the loss of his virginity. A guy never forgets his first woman, he said. Actually he didn’t say woman he made a reference to a woman’s organ. What I’ll never forget that day when I was 17: the moment he put his hands on me. That gentle tentative touch was electric.
I woke up that instant from the dream of childhood. We laid down and took each other all that green warm golden afternoon across the threshold, into the land of adults. My gym teacher’s ravings and everything else I’d ever been told about what homosexuals were and what it meant to be one disappeared in my first passionate embrace of another male. And after, breathless and exalted, we looked into each others eyes for, I don’t know, minutes, hours… To this day I can still remember quite vividly things like the sounds of birds calling each other in the trees above us, the scent of his skin, the feel of his hands on me, the sunlight drifting over his hair in the warm breeze…
I had been an instrument sitting idly on the maker’s shelf, watching curiously the work around me, hearing the first tentative notes of the others along side of me, and not knowing that I too had been created to make this music until that moment when the maker took hold of me, and I felt myself lifted up, and I sang.
Sure as the sun rises in the east, the very next day that gutter crawling bigot posted back, accusing me of putting pornography on the message board. I’d written a story he said, about "two pervs feeling each other up."
I was gratified to see that I wasn’t the only one reading that message board, who thought the man in question was nuts. But you need to pay attention to this: All I’d said was that he touched me, and Instantly this man read that as we were feeling each other up. I never actually described the sex we had, because that detail wasn’t important. I was writing about my state of mind, about how it felt to be in love for the very first time, and to find yourself one lovely summer afternoon in the arms of the one you love. And this prize pervert took what I wrote about being in love, and his twisted little mind turned that into some graphic and satisfyingly disgusting homosexual sex scene that he could not take his eyes off of. And he had to make sure no one else could either.
The very idea of “Gay Conjugal Visits” for prisoners sounds like a bad joke, but officials of the California penal system are to worried to laugh. Because of the state’s new “civil unions” law, the gay convicts who linked themselves to partners before incarceration are now entitled to scheduled sessions of intimacy, just like their married counterparts. This means that prison staffers who spend their time in desperate efforts to prevent behind-bars gay conduct, including rape, must now assist selected prisoners with trysts involving their “domestic partners.” This absurd innovation exposes the true nature of the so-called gay rights agenda: it’s not about equality, it’s about governmental promotion of behavior that many Americans still consider disgusting and immoral. Gay conjugal visits should cause the public to look past platitudes about love to focus on the raw actuality of male-male eroticism. Is this practice – with all its hygienic, physiological harm—really deserving of governmental (and prison system) support?
Now…read this part again: Gay conjugal visits should cause the public to look past platitudes about love to focus on the raw actuality of male-male eroticism. Sure Michael. Sure. Just like the sight of a gay male couple walking down the street holding hands makes you focus on the raw sexuality of their relationship. Just like the sight of a gay male couple sitting together at a restaurant peacefully eating lunch, content simply in each other’s company, makes you focus on the raw sexuality of their relationship. Just like the sight of a gay male couple standing bored out of their minds in a grocery store checkout line makes you focus on the raw sexuality of their relationship. And that’s because you don’t see human beings when you look at homosexuals Michael. You see monsters. The monsters your cheapshit bar stool prejudices have always told you they are. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…
They have Sex…they have Sex…they have Sex…they have Sex…they have Sex…!!!!!
Anyone whose mind functions normally might otherwise be able to see the sense in this new prison policy. First of all, if opposite sex couples can have them, then it’s just a simple matter of human decency to allow it to same sex couples as well. It may actually serve to Reduce the incidence of prison rape, by lowering the sexual tensions inside prison. It can serve as an incentive toward good behavior. And helping to keep couples together while one is in prison, means that when they are eventually released, they still have something to go home to. Or would you rather dump them back out on the streets with nothing at all left in their lives Michael? Oh never mind…of course you would. The emotion of love registers inside your dark little heart about as much as a candle in a blizzard, doesn’t it Michael? That gray, sterile, brutal toxic human wasteland where love never was, and can never be, and where no inhumanity is impossible, is your beloved homeland, isn’t it Michael? That’s why all you can see, when your eyes behold a couple, is the sex they’re probably having, isn’t it Michael? Because that’s the only thing about how couples feel about each other that you Can understand, deep down inside that dark little heart of yours, isn’t it Michael? And it isn’t just the feelings same sex couples have for each other that completely mystify you…is it Michael?
In support of President Nice Job Browine’s Surgeon General nominee, the religious right web site Lifewatch (Your Life, Family and Culture Outpost), tells half a truth, and carefully hides the whole, so they and their readers can feel righteous…
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 8, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A doctor tapped by President George Bush for the position of Surgeon General has been attacked by homosexual activist groups for saying homosexual activity is unnatural and unhealthy.
…
Homosexual activists and their supporters have expressed outrage that a doctor who has warned of the physical dangers associated with homosexual activity would be considered for the position of Surgeon General. Holsinger’s article has been condemned as a scientifically outdated piece of political ideology expressing a “very narrow view” of homosexuality, according to an ABC News report.
Studies continue to emerge, however, showing the grave health risks of engaging in homosexual activity. A report in the February issue of the International Journal of STD & AIDS found that “HIV-positive men who have sex with men are up to 90 times more likely than the general population to develop anal cancer.”
A study released in 2005 in Psychological Reports confirmed earlier findings that homosexual men have on average a 20-year shortened life span. “[U]nder even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men…are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871,” said the authors of the Canadian research team. The team was supportive of the homosexual lifestyle and conducted the study in order to assist health planners with estimating the impact of HIV infection on homosexual men.
(Emphasis mine) Note that alarmist quote "[U]nder even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men…are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871…" Psychological Reports, some of you may recall, is the outfit that uncritically published a bit of Paul Cameron’s razzle-dazzle and have yet to admit that they were bamboozled. But this time the religious right is using another study by a different group to demonize homosexuals.
In fact, they began bending this particular study to their own ends earlier in the year. In an article that seems to have first surfaced on the right wing site World Net Daily, David N. Bass, a self-described 20 year old homeschool graduate, wrote:
A 1997 study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found that even under “the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban center are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.” The same study estimated that homosexual behavior reduces the lifespan of males by eight to 20 years. Comparatively, the CDC has found that male and female smokers lose an average of 13.2 to 14.5 years of life, respectively.
The problem with the IJE study is that while the researchers (unlike Cameron) may have been credible and while the number may have had some kind of original validity, it is no longer valid and citing as if it were is akin to lying.
The IJE figure was derived from one study, never replicated, taken from one Canadian urban enclave (so it probably never had a representative sample of gays, but rather disproportionately drew from sub-culture oriented urban gays). More importantly, the study was done during the worst of the AIDS crisis, just before the newer, groundbreaking meds were introduced. And those meds greatly impacted and reduced mortality rates within the gay community. In 2006, whatever validity the statistic originally may have had, it has not been valid for many years and the authors of the study attest to this. They wrote in 2001:
In our paper, we demonstrated that in a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 21 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality continued, we estimated that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years would not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre were experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by men in Canada in the year 1871. In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.
(emphasis mine) So these righteous, upstanding, so very very Moral men of God are deliberately citing a study whose own authors know was only representative of a single moment in the history of a single population of gay men, at a time when AIDS was claiming its greatest number of victims in that one particular population. The quote they’re waving in everyone’s faces now, no longer applies, and never did in fact apply to all gay men in Canada, let alone all gay men everywhere.
The authors of the study have protested the misuse of their work, but of course to no avail. The operators of Lifewatch know that whatever their sins, God forgives them.
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