On the March 20 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage discussed a San Francisco Chroniclereport detailing the murder of a transgender woman whose body was found naked near a freeway outside San Francisco. Savage read a sentence from the article stating that "it appeared the victim had been in the process of becoming a woman," to which Savage replied: "Yeah, process of becoming a woman — psychopath. [She] should have been in a back ward in a straitjacket for years, howling on major medication." He went on to say, "And what’s this sympathy, constant sympathy for sexually confused people? Why should we have constant sympathy for people who are freaks in every society?" adding, "But you know what? You’re never gonna make me respect the freak. I don’t want to respect the freak." Savage concluded: "The freak ought to be glad that they’re allowed to walk around without begging for something. You know, I’m sick and tired of the whole country begging, bending over backwards for the junkie, the freak, the pervert, the illegal immigrant. All of them are better than everybody else. Sick. Everything is upside down."
There’s a link to the audio on the Media Matters page there, and to other gems of wit and wisdom from Michael Savage. And he is far from the only one out there inciting pure, unadulterated hate on the radio. Take a nice long cross country drive someday, through the heart of red state territory and listen. It’s why I got the satellite radio installed in my car; so I would have something to listen to besides hate, hate, and more hate. But you need to listen. This is the republican base. These are the people the republican party knows it cannot win elections without.
I’m On The Lord’s Side…And That Must Mean You’re Not.
So after a couple weeks of dodging questions about why he’s busy helping a bunch of gutter crawling bigots pass an anti same-sex marriage amendment in his state, Colts Coach Dungy has finally decided to make it clear just exactly where he stands. Fine.
CARMEL, Ind. — Colts coach Tony Dungy said he knows some people would prefer him to steer clear of the gay marriage debate, but he used a speech Tuesday night to clearly stake out his position.
Dungy told more than 700 people at the Indiana Family Institute’s banquet that he agrees with that organization’s position supporting a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.
"I appreciate the stance they’re taking, and I embrace that stance," Dungy said.
…
"IFI (The Indiana Family Institute) is saying what the Lord says," Dungy said. "You can take that and make your decision on which way you want to be. I’m on the Lord’s side."
Pisst…Hey…Tony… The Ku Klux Klan thinks they’re on the Lord’s side too. You think you’re not like them because you aren’t burning any crosses Tony? Think again…
The coach said his comments shouldn’t be taken as gay bashing, but rather his views on the matter as he sees them from a perspective of faith.
"We’re not anti- anything else. We’re not trying to downgrade anyone else. But we’re trying to promote the family — family values the Lord’s way," Dungy said.
Like hell you’re not trying to downgrade anyone. You just said there that anyone who supports equal marriage rights for same sex couples is a tool of Satan. Here’s what comes of that Mr. Righteous Man-o-god…
(New York City) Four men charged in the brutal homophobic assault on gay entertainer Kevin Aviance last summer pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court Wednesday.
Avaince was attacked as he left the Phoenix bar last June. The four beat him unmercifully, breaking his jaw, doing serious damage to one leg and leaving him with cuts and bruises over most of his body.
As they attacked him the four young men yelled homophobic slurs.
(Bartow, Florida) Two men charged with the brutal murder of a gay Winter Haven man have been ordered held without bail following a brief court appearance.
William David Brown Jr., 20, and Joseph Bearden, 21, are charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery in the killing of Ryan Keith Skipper, 25.
The prosecutor said he expects to argue for the maximum sentence on the grounds the killing was a hate crime.
Police had originally begun investigating the murder as a robbery gone wrong until associates of the accused said that Skipper had been killed after coming on to the men.
Skipper’s body was found last week on the side of a road. He had been stabbed more than 20 times.
…
Skipper is described by friends as outgoing and gentle. He was studying computer sciences.
On the Lord’s side. On the Lord’s side. Right. You and every segregationist who ever lived and claimed that mixed race marriages were against the Lord’s will.
I would really, really like it if someday some reporter got in this jackass’s face and asked him straight-up if he thinks that since he’s on the Lord’s side, are people who support same sex marriage on Satan’s side. And if they are, would his sport be better off if Satan’s followers stopped attending games. You want it to be a wholesome family experience, don’t you Tony?
Via The Stranger blog (SLOG)… The adventures of Reverend Ken Hutcherson, international man of theocracy…
March 16, 2007
Dear Prayer Warrior,
Thank you for praying for my call to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. It went very well.
I was honored to receive a commission by the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives as a Special Envoy in the following areas: Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief, which allowed me to meet with the Latvian government.
The purpose of the trip to Latvia was to support the Latvian government as they stand for Family Values and Religious Freedom in their country.
I met with all the Religious Leaders in Latvia except two. I also met with the Ministers of Integration, Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of Human Rights and Parliament.
The successful result of the meeting was to foster complete agreement to work together in the future to strengthen family values. All agreed to keep traditional values of marriage between a man and a woman and ensure that marriage remains an institution between a man and woman as well as ensure religious freedom within the country.
During my meeting with the American Embassy I expressed that many in the Latvian Parliament and many of the Latvian people believe that they in the American Embassy support the Homosexual agenda. I talked to them about their funding of many Homosexual groups against the wishes of the majority of the Latvian people.
Pray that my discussions will produce a change of policy. That is what we are expecting when we receive the full report that I requested from the Embassy.
Continue to pray that the new influence that God has granted through me serving as a special envoy for the White House will be effectively used as I deal with the adoption issue in the United States this next week.
Your Pastor,
Hutch
Hutcherson, you may recall, is the righteous man of the cloth who threatened Microsoft with a boycott if they didn’t stop supporting the inclusion of gay people in Washington State’s equal opportunity law. And now that it’s been passed, he’s leading a petition effort to get it repealed. He’s also been a vigorous fighter against gay marriage equality.
So the Bush administration gives him a Special Envoy commission from the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, and he uses that to take the fight against gay equality overseas.
"The average gay couple is not interested in equality," Hutcherson says. "The average gay couple is interesting in suppressing anyone who disagrees with them."
…And you have to know that they’re not just targeting former Soviet block states. I’m convinced that the uproar over gay equality in the Anglican Church has been largely orchestrated by the American right wing. If you don’t think so too, maybe this investigative series by Jim Naughton for the newsletter of the Washington Diocese will make you think again. If Europe, and the rest of the civilized world, think that the stomping of American religious kooks has nothing to do with them, they need to get a clue. They’re already stomping inside your territory too…you just aren’t paying attention yet.
The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and — though the principle was never clearly stated — permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful.
He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine, ten — nearly eleven years since they had parted. It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For days at a time he was capable of forgetting that he had ever been married. They had only been together for about fifteen months. The Party did not permit divorce, but it rather encouraged separation in cases where there were no children.
Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very straight, with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a face that one might have called noble until one discovered that there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it. Very early in her married life he had decided — though perhaps it was only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people — that she had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. ‘The human sound-track’ he nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living with her if it had not been for just one thing — sex.
As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen. To embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidlty of her muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but submitting. It was extraordinarily embarrassing, and, after a while, horrible. But even then he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain celibate. But curiously enough it was Katharine who refused this. They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So the performance continued to happen, once a week quite regulariy, whenever it was not impossible. She even used to remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two names for it. One was ‘making a baby’, and the other was ‘our duty to the Party’ (yes, she had actually used that phrase). Quite soon he grew to have a feeling of positive dread when the appointed day came round. But luckily no child appeared, and in the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards they parted.
…
He saw himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils, and in his heart a feeling of defeat and resentment which even at that moment was mixed up with the thought of Katharine’s white body, frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party. Why did it always have to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years? But a real love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime. Even to have awakened Katharine, if he could have achieved it, would have been like a seduction, although she was his wife.
"1984" – George Orwell
If the theocrats every take total control, this book will be one of the first to take the express ride straight in the bonfire, along with those of us who have taken it’s message about totalitarianism to heart. Never mind how Heather Has Two Mommies glorifies homosexuality…Orwell got it dead right about why totalitarians have waged war on that most elemental, essential part of the human experience: Desire…and especially desire which brings people together into a bond of human love. Reading it, you really see how theocracy is no different in kind from the Stalinism Orwell was warning against. For all their bellyaching about the primacy of the family, and so-called family values, the dirty truth is that the fundamentalism that animates the American Christianist movement hates the bond of human love that is the bedrock of family life, as much as any secular police state that ever existed. And there is no better place to see that hatred, ironically enough, then in the essential message of the ex-gay movement:
Sex is not about desire. It is not about love. Sex is about duty to God. Replace ‘God’ with, ‘The Party’ and you see it all, with sickening clarity.
There are many powerful stories out there about men and women whom God has delivered from the gay lifestyle. It touches the heart and certainly glorifies God when we see these people getting married and leading godly lives free of homosexuality.
But in all honesty, what about the rest of us who deal with this issue and haven’t come to our "happy ending" yet? What about those of us who continue to struggle with same-sex attraction (SSA), even after choosing to follow Christ? We’re caught in a sort of identity limbo, unsure whether we can or even should hope to experience heterosexual desire, get married and start a family someday.
Ensley has an answer for them…but first he has to slay a strawman…
"But, Mike," you might say, "they’re allowed to follow their feelings and urges, and marry whoever they want."
Um, no they’re not. Every man deals with feelings and urges that pull him away from God’s explicit will for our sexuality. Or did you think other Christian men’s sex drives always cooperate with them in abstaining until marriage, and then staying faithful? They too struggle with wandering and lustful eyes, curiosity about other people, the fleeting infatuations. They have to crucify the flesh daily, just like you and me.
But this is dishonest. The essential cruelty of the prison fundamentalism puts homosexuals into is that they are forbidden from having that intimate body and soul love that it seems to be willing to grant to heterosexuals. A heterosexual can at least marry and have sex with someone they are naturally attracted to sexually. Sure, they may be tempted to stray from the rigid boundaries imposed upon them by their church. But at least within those boundaries the possibility of intimate romantic love still exists…or seems to. But for homosexuals it is simply not a possibility.
In recent years, ex-gay rhetoric has seemingly come to a grudging acknowledgment of this fact. All the promises of change and healing via prayer just don’t work. Rather then continuing to beat these people over the head about their lack of faith, ex-gay rhetoric began to hold chastity (celibacy) as a virtue that gay people could aspire to, in lieu of the impossible change. But this is a barren promise. A life of struggle against ones inner nature, achieving nothing more noble then an empty desolate loneliness in exchange for, maybe, grudging acceptance in the pews.
Ensley wants gay youth to know that they’re not being singled out unfairly. The inner desolation they are experiencing is in fact, the price of admission that heterosexuals must pay too, for the glory of The Party God. Marriage is not about love…it is about duty. Go ahead and marry someone of the opposite sex Ensley tells them. The fact is that you shouldn’t expect to desire your mate.
Stop obsessing about how much you will (or won’t) enjoy heterosexual sex
You’ve thought about it, and so have I. What if I don’t enjoy sex with my spouse? What if I still want to have sex with other men (or women, if you’re a woman)? The skeptics certainly say all the time that we "ex-gays" only have sexually frustrated lives ahead of us.
We often say the opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality, it’s holiness. That means God is calling us away from a me-centered life, including a me-centered sexuality. We’ve spent a lot of time programming ourselves through fantasy, masturbation, pornography and encounters to be utterly selfish with our sexuality. Marriage is the absolute antithesis of that.
The Bible tells us that once we are married our body actually belongs to our spouse. If you haven’t lived with that attitude in singleness, it’s not going to come naturally once you say your vows. The best way to be ready is by following this other Biblical command: to offer your body as a living sacrifice to God, because it ultimately belongs to Him.
People often ask me if I have sexual fantasies about women now, because that’s what the world would consider change. But God wants me to change not into a man who still wraps himself up in self-absorbed fantasy, but one who’s ready to put my wife before myself — and put Him first.
Afraid you won’t enjoy the sex? Well, if your priority is your own satisfaction and the living out of your overly-developed obsessions, no, you won’t enjoy the intimacy of sex within marriage. You know what? Neither would an "ever-straight" with the same mindset. They might be able to marry according to their worldly desires, but it will never fulfill the endless hunger of selfishness. Real closeness grows out of commitment to a person, and following God’s will.
Don’t worry; sex God’s way will be the best.
Again…replace "God" with "The Party" there it is…in all its sickening, stomach churning human hating glory. The fundamentalist ideal of family life: two people having ritual sex for the sole purpose of making babies, without regard for the intimate needs of one another, or even their own feelings for the person they have in their arms. What does it mean to put your wife first, if the act of taking her into your arms is barren of any real desire for her? What does it mean for her to love you, if she’s supposed to regard your feelings as irrelevant? The grotesque answer is: the essential emptiness of the act is proof of their mutual devotion. But not to each other. By their willingness to fuck someone they have no desire for, or to be fucked by someone who has no desire for them, they are proving their devotion to The Party God. They are meat, enacting a few brief, barren orgasms utterly devoid of healthy human desire in a way that even the most random of sexual assignations in a gay bathhouse, or a highway rest stop, could not hope to sink to. The next time you hear a fundamentalist nutcase yap, yap, yapping about how homosexuality is barren, remember that this is what they consider righteous.
And this is the ideal, make no mistake, for heterosexuals too. Whether or not you actually desire the person in your arms does not matter. Time and again you hear this from the talking heads of the religious right. Marriage is not about love. It is not about desire. What matters is duty. To God. To the Party…
"I could have stood it if it hadn’t been for one thing," he said. He told her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to go through on the same night every week. "She hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing it. She used to call it — but you’ll never guess."
"Our duty to the Party," said Julia promptly.
"How did you know that?"
"I’ve been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it into you for years. I dare say it works in a lot of cases. But of course you can never tell; people are such hypocrites."
She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia, everything came back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness. Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:
"When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"
That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.
On the March 6 edition of Fox News Live, while discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-NY) March 4 speech and her participation in a commemorative civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, host E.D. Hill accused Clinton of affecting a "Southern drawl" during her speech and asked pollster Scott Rasmussen: "[W]ould it happen elsewhere, if she was attending, say, a GLAAD [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] convention, would she speak with a lisp?"
You just know they all think gays have limp wrists and walk with a swish too. Why the hell did Harry Reid agree to have a democratic presidential candidates debate hosted by Fox News? He going to ask Focus On The Family to host the one after that?
Speaking today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter said: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.” Audience members said “ohhh” and then cheered.
A 21-year-old man from Bayonne, New Jersey was followed off the PATH train in Hoboken and attacked by two men who had been harassing him on the train for, among other things, wearing pink pants.
Hobokenpath Police are calling the attack an anti-gay hate crime, according to the Jersey Journal:
"When the train pulled into the Hoboken station, the two men followed the Bayonne man off the train and up the stairs, then attacked him near a newsstand on the concourse in Hoboken Terminal, police said. The man required 12 stitches to close facial wounds, police said, adding that he also had a black eye and was temporarily blinded in one eye. Using video shot from security cameras, police were able to identify Hoboken High School student Andy Rivera, 19, of Marshall Drive. He was brought to the police station for questioning and arrested Tuesday at 2 p.m. on charges of bias intimidation and aggravated assault."
The other assailant is still at large, but a warrant has been issued for his arrest.
I’ll bet Couter’s audience would have cheered that beating too. Coulter, you’ll recall, is the well respected conservative pundit who said her only problem with Timothy McVeigh is he didn’t go to the New York Times building.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), prior to Coulter’s appearance: “I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!”
Police in Detroit released a sketch Thursday of the man suspected of killing Andrew Anthos, a 72-year-old disabled gay man whose dream was to light the Michigan State Capitol dome red, white and blue for Independence Day.
Anthos died Feb. 23, 10 days after a fellow bus rider, spouting anti-gay slurs, paralyzed him with a blow from behind with a metal pipe. Police have since questioned several people aboard the bus, including the wheelchair-bound friend Anthos was helping through the snow when he was struck.
Coming up…another lecture from David Broder and the other Wise Old Men of Washington, about how liberals are so hateful, and just too damn angry…
…I believe this is a vital issue in the life of the church. The hope of wholeness and holiness of life is integral to the Gospel message. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to save us from throwing gum wrappers on the sidewalk or using the wrong fork to eat our tofu, he died to save our deepest selves from our darkest sins. And, because we are created with human bodies full of hormones and fallen psyches full of what my friend Bill Stafford calls "disordered affections," many of those deepest sins will involve our sexuality. We are not given new life and new power in Christ so we can do what we darn well please. We are not our own, we are bought with a price, says St. Paul. Therefore, he says, we are to glorify God with our bodies.
…
In August of 21003, ECUSA’s General Convention created an uproar when it decided to endorse and bless the consecration to the office of bishop a man publically and proudly living a homo-erotic relationship. This unprecedented decision–made in the face of international pleas that it not take place–created an uproar in the whole Christian and, indeed, the entire mono-theistic world. The Anglican Communion, under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, created a commission to explore how the communion could and should respond to this provocative, unilateral action by one small branch of the Anglican Communion…
…
The Episcopal Church needs to be called to just the sort of repentance and humility it says it believes. Only that sort of clear, forthright repentance can lead to reconciliation…
Church ousts him after ‘inappropriate relationship’
An Orange Park priest and leading voice in the theologically conservative Anglican movement in America has been stripped of his clerical credentials after having "an inappropriate relationship" with an adult female church member, the parish’s top lay leader said Monday.
The Rev. SAMUEL C. PASCOE was removed Feb. 10 from his position as senior rector at Grace Church (Anglican) and lost his ministerial license as a result of the relationship, said David Nelson, senior warden of the former Episcopal congregation.
Pascoe, who is married with three sons, said he couldn’t comment on the situation and referred all questions to Nelson.
Pascoe, 56, for several years has been an outspoken critic of the Episcopal Church USA for what he and others see as the denomination’s increasingly progressive interpretation of Scripture and its growing acceptance of homosexuality.
When the denomination elected an openly gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, Pascoe helped lead a movement that resulted in his and several other parishes quitting the denomination and its Jacksonville-based Episcopal Diocese of Florida. He sharply criticized Florida Bishop John Howard for refusing to quit the national church.
"He’s known nationally, for sure, and he’s probably the biggest player in Florida," said David Virtue of Virtueonline.org, an Internet-based Anglican news and commentary site with about 4 million readers.
Pascoe led his parish into the Anglican Mission in the Americas, then orchestrated a $4 million fundraising campaign to build new facilities after the congregation left Grace Episcopal property in 2006, Virtue said.
Virtue said the tragedy isn’t for the Anglican movement but for Pascoe and his family.
"He is a godly evangelical who struggled for the faith, led his parish out … and started all over again, and then suddenly this," Virtue said. "It defies all reason."
The Rev. Kurt Dunkle, a spokesman for Howard and the newly installed rector at Grace Episcopal Church, said the diocese has no comment.
Nor did the Rev. Neil Lebhar, a spokesman for the Anglican Alliance of North Florida and another leader of the region’s Anglican movement.
Nelson said the parish was informed of the relationship and Pascoe’s status during Ash Wednesday services last week and again in services Sunday.
"It’s a painful thing that has taken place," Nelson said. "And it’s difficult for Sam given the comments he has made" on issues of sexual morality.
Ah…just blame the homos. That’s the routine in that glass house you call a church isn’t it? It isn’t Sam’s fault, whatever he did that was…inappropriate. It’s ours…right? Because Gene Robinson became a bishop poor Sam just lost all his moral bearings and he couldn’t help himself. Blame Gene Robinson. Sam’s a righteous man of God so it can’t be his fault he’s a jackass. It has to be the gays fault. Blame us. That’s what you think we were put on this earth for after all, isn’t it?
While the vast majority of Hillcrest’s gay population rejects the Bible, it may prove useful to them to at least consider what the Bible has to say about the self-destructive choices they are making. The Book of Deuteronomy reveals the high cost to a community or group of people who reject God’s commandments and laws:
"But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and laws I am giving you today, all of these curses will come and overwhelm you: You will be cursed with confusion and disillusionment in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and forsaking me. The Lord will send diseases among you until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, fever, and inflammation. These devastations will pursue you until you die. The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you."
…and so on. Ever get the feeling when you hear people reciting those verses that they’re not so much warning their neighbors about God’s wrath, as cheering it on…? Anyway, Hartline’s post is pretty long and rant-rambling as you might expect from a babbling bible thumper, but here’s a couple passages from it that I think get to the meat of it. First, Hartline recounts his crusade against the annual San Diego (his hometown) Pride Day festival, and how the defiant San Diego gays just kept listening to Satan rather then the prophet Hartline…
During the San Diego City Council hearing on July 25, 2006, over 90 gay activists and their supporters showed up to influence the council’s decision to issue a proclamation to honor the San Diego Gay Pride organization and its annual events. Rather than acknowledge the terrible decisions that the group had made the previous year when San Diego Gay Pride had hired the network of sex offenders, the multitude of gay activists used the city council hearing to lambast Christians opposed to the pornographic gay pride events. In speech after speech, gay and lesbian gay pride promoters attacked Christians and their beliefs. It had now become perfectly clear that there would be no repentence on the part of those gay leaders who have been so determined to continue their rabid quest to indoctrinate San Diego’s youth into their crusade of sexual anarchy.
Well of course they only have themselves to blame for what happened next…
Several days later, the San Diego Gay Pride Festival turned from a celebration of homosexuality and pornography into a tragic blood bath as several gay males were severely beaten outside of the gay pride festival grounds (www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=8193&issue=979). The assaults were so severe that one of the victims, Oscar Foster, remained in intensive care for two weeks due to a fractured skull and mutilple facial injuries. Baseball bats and a knife were used in the horrific attacks. James Allen Carroll received eleven years in prison for attempted murder on the victims after accepting a plea bargain with prosecutors. Two other adult attackers also received lengthy prison terms for their roles in the heinous attacks.
Yes…he’s saying their that God sent those thugs to beat the living crap out of the homosexuals to punish them. A little further down Hartline makes it specifically and abundantly clear:
While there may not be any apparent moral conviction for embracing such anti-christian discrimination, is it possible that these same gay leaders will ever consider that their actions are reaping a judgment from God on their community? Is it actually possible that God is angry with their mockery of the Bible that has become a cornerstone of the gay community in San Diego? If so, will there be any reconsideration by San Diego’s gay community for their anti-god, anti-christian behaviors? Is Hillcrest being warned by God? What will happen if they don’t heed such warnings?
Although leaders of the San Diego homosexual movement have rejected any Biblical references to homosexuality and lesbianism as being a sin, perhaps it is time for them to rethink their conclusions. The Bible teaches a premise that the wages for sin include death. While most in the gay community reject that premise, is it possible, that in doing so, they could be wrong? Is it possible that God does judge those that harm children? Is it possible that God is now judging San Diego’s homosexual community for its continued promotion of rebellion against the Bible?
The wages of sin are death… But it wasn’t God striking down peaceful festival goers that day, it was a gang of gay hating thugs acting out in an atmosphere that had been charged for months with Hartline’s venomous accusations that San Diego Pride was facilitating pedophilia, and indoctrinating children into homosexuality. Hartline stoked a climate of hate in San Diego in which violence toward homosexuals attending Pride Day became practically inevitable. And now that it’s happened, he’s telling gay bashers yet waiting in the wings that they’re not responsible. Even if the blood of gay people is literally on their hands, Hartline says as far as God is concerned, that blood is upon the gays themselves. That club isn’t in your hands…it’s in God’s hands…so swing away because you’re only doing God’s will…God smites them through you… Black market arms dealers selling explosives to terrorists for money probably give more thought to the human lives they’re putting at risk then Hartline does.
This is how the game is played below the radar of the mainstream news media, that accepts at face value the protestations of the main religious right celebrities, that they love the sinner, and only hate the sin. It isn’t true. To a man, they all believe what Hartline so blatantly shouts there in that blog post: that violent attacks on homosexuals represents God’s judgment upon them…that violent attacks on homosexuals fulfill the will of God.
From The San Francisco Chronicle… An evangelical Christian minister from Missouri, has come to San Francisco to teach gays and lesbians how to become straight. And how to lie for Jesus …
The Brodeurs — who do weekly outreach in the Castro to encourage gay people to re-evaluate their sexual orientation — said they invited Desert Stream to use their church for the seminar. It cost $35 and drew participants from congregations around the Bay Area.
"Their message is about bringing the love of Jesus into people’s hearts," she said. "It’s not ‘Don’t do this. You’re evil, you’re going to hell.’ "
Well that’s certainly a welcome change from the usual hellfire and damnation spew isn’t it?
Not…
But a workshop handout written by Desert Stream founder Andy Comiskey ticked off a list of "wickedness," including lesbianism, sexual violence and child molestation, and stated: "For those who overcome the darkness, a rich and eternal inheritance. For those who refuse to overcome, eternal judgment."
Feel the love. One of the protesters outside the seminar related his story of how he’d been in an ex-gay program for eight years and it nearly drove him to suicide. But what you have to understand about these ministries is that what happens to the people in them doesn’t matter.
"I went through depression, major anxiety, panic disorder and attempted suicide."
They didn’t take him in to cure him. They took him in to use him in their little dirty war on the ability of people to freely love and be loved with or without the permission of the tribal witch doctor. There is no reverence for the sacred that begins with a lie. That seminar wasn’t about letting love come into a human heart, whether it’s the love a same sex couple find in each other or the love of Christ or the love of God Almighty. Love knows no authority but itself. That’s the problem with it. That’s why they want it out of our hearts altogether. Our hearts have to be emptied. So that they can fill them with their will. If it kills a few of us…so what?
There are those who do not believe that the institution of marriage is under assault. There are those who do not believe that same-sex marriage is a knowing attempt to undermine the nature of marriage. There are those who do not believe that many homosexuals bear a particular animus for heterosexual marriage, and have designs beyond mere tolerance.
Then there are those of us who live in the real world.
You need to pay attention to what Shapiro is saying because it’s all there, plain as day. Gay people in his reckoning want the right to marry Specifically in order to destroy marriage. And because we hate it so much we’re willing to throw our very selves at it to destroy it. Dig it. According to Shapiro, our ultimate weapon of choice for destroying marriage is…us. Shapiro isn’t merely saying in his Human Events article that we want to destroy marriage, not merely that we hate the institution of marriage because we know that it represents a spiritual state that only heterosexuals can enter into, he’s saying that we know just how depraved and unfit our relationships are, so we want to have our relationships embraced by it, in order that our depravity will destroy it. If you still have trouble believing how thoroughly the gutter has demonized homosexual people in their own minds, read that article. It says it all. When Ben Shapiro looks at gay people, he simply does not see human beings. He can’t. He sees only monsters. This is how bigots think.
What provokes him is the initiative filed in Washington State recently, in the wake of the supreme court ruling last year that the state had a legitimate interest in restricting marriage to opposite sex couples for the welfare of children. Activists in the state have simply called the heterosexual majority on it, by filing a referendum of their own to make having children mandatory in order to be married. No children, no marriage. Of course no one expects it to pass, but that’s not to say there won’t be a lot of fun to be had watching the religious right argue that the ability to bear children is only a barrier to marriage for same sex couples.
Shapiro sees the weakness here. Basing the arguments against same-sex marriage on children makes no sense if you’re going to let opposite sex couples who will not or can not have children marry anyway. The exception disproves the rule, and makes it clear that the issue isn’t children at all, but homosexuality. The problem for Ben and his kind, is that in defending the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage simply because they are same sex couples, the argument then becomes chillingly honest in its core bigotry.
Shapiro’s article rises to almost Orson Scott Card levels of contempt for the inner lives of homosexual people in its matter-of-fact exaltation of heterosexual coupling as something sacred and divine. But as usual with the right, the rhetoric of the sacred is merely excusing not devotional. A squirt or two of Righteous Men Of God perfume sprayed over the stench of that open sewer they call their conscience, in the hope that it will be a tad less obvious to anyone with a nose…
Advocates of same-sex marriage argue that gender is literally meaningless. It is for that reason that they compare gender to race in legal contexts…
Well I don’t know anyone supporting same-sex marriage who thinks gender is literally meaningless, only that in this particular context, a legal, secular covenant of marriage, it’s irrelevant. There is just no factual basis for asserting otherwise.
It isn’t children…
If gender is meaningless, children do not need both mother and father; a father and a father, two mothers, six fathers and a mother — any or all may suffice. To homosexual marriage proponents, the fact that only the sexual union between men and women produces children is an unfortunate accident of nature.
But, this is exactly what Washington State referendum throws back in the faces of crackpots like Shapiro. In fact, children have no bearing whatsoever on the ability of a couple to marry or not. You are not required to have children, you are not required to be fit to raise children, you are not even required to be Capable of having your own biological children. All you have to be, is an opposite sex couple. And here Ben illustrates perfectly the reason why that’s purely an animus based form of discrimination…
Gender is not meaningless, of course. The radical individualism that denies all distinction between men and women is deeply pernicious. It denies the spiritual in mankind. It denies the obvious physical and spiritual bounty springing from traditional marriage…In one sense, Washington’s same-sex advocates do us a favor: They make clear that in order to deny homosexual marriage, we must uphold the beautiful and natural distinctions between men and women. They also make clear that we must uphold the value of heterosexuality over homosexuality. We must take up the gauntlet and, in doing so, vindicate the possibility of a higher spiritual elevation through the deepest possible human relationship.
(emphasis mine)
And there it is: Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex…
Shapiro’s position is that marriage is a sacred institution that same sex couples are simply incapable of entering into, not merely because they don’t have the right combination of genitals, but because they do not, Can Not, love one another as deeply, as wholeheartedly, as devotedly as heterosexuals do. Heterosexual love is spiritual. What homosexuals do is merely carnal.
This isn’t exactly the first time I’ve heard this argument. I’ve had people tell me to my face as far back as my teen years that they flat-out didn’t believe that a same sex couple could possibly be capable of loving each other as deeply or as wholeheartedly as a heterosexual couple. And this is the unspoken (sometimes spoken outright) premise behind ever dolled up statistic you’ve ever read about how promiscuous homosexuals are. Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex… Now…re-read that first part I quoted you…
There are those who do not believe that the institution of marriage is under assault. There are those who do not believe that same-sex marriage is a knowing attempt to undermine the nature of marriage. There are those who do not believe that many homosexuals bear a particular animus for heterosexual marriage, and have designs beyond mere tolerance.
Then there are those of us who live in the real world.
A particular animus for heterosexual marriage… So…follow the thinking here: Homosexuals are depraved. So depraved they cannot possibly enter into the kinds of loving and devoted intimate relationships that heterosexuals do. To even consider putting their dirty, brief, barren sexual assignations on the same plain as heterosexual love amounts to a despicable attack on the very human capacity to love and cherish, body and soul, ’till death do you part. Heterosexual love is spiritual. Homosexuality is just empty lustful rutting, utterly devoid of any deep spiritual meaning for the people involved.
But here’s the problem with all this: if homosexuals are incapable of feeling that kind of tender, cherishing human love, then why are they so damn insistent about having the right to marry? What is all this crap about securing their relationships, providing for one another, hospital visitation and all that? Why would homosexuals even care about all that? Why aren’t they all just laughing it off that they can’t get married? Oh…look at all those silly heterosexuals, going on about that love thing again…how boring and pointless… Why do they fight for their sterile relationships so fiercely? What could their cheap tricks, their empty, barren assignations, possibly mean to them?
It must be envy. It must be envy turned to hate. Homosexuals must be so utterly depraved that they want to drag everyone else down into their gutter too. Because they can’t bear to witness the sight of that higher spiritual elevation, that deepest possible human relationship that they can never enter into themselves.
Next time someone hears this little gutter crawling maggot use the phrase "Love the sinner, hate the sin", or something like it, please laugh in his face. If any side in this fight is incapable of experiencing the emotion of love, it’s the one that keeps insisting that love is something you feel for a gender, not a person. No Ben…lust is what you feel for a gender. It’s how we’re wired as sexual beings. And yes…most people mate to the opposite sex. But some of us mate to the same sex. Love is what transcends all that, and takes it to that higher plain that you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about, because you can’t see the person, for the gender.
Advocates of same-sex marriage argue that gender is literally meaningless.
That’s simply ignorant. What the right asserts is that gender is everything. What anyone with half a brain knows is that there is more to a person then their gender. But this kind of thinking past surface appearances has always been hard for right wingers to get their minds wrapped around. Consider the difficulty they’ve always had comprehending that there is more to a person then the color of their skin. Get one of these drooling morons started on The Bell Curve sometime. Go ahead. It’ll be fun.
It’s probably somewhat easier for a gay person to see the confusion here then a straight person. Because heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex, it’s all too easy for them to mistake the intimate and spiritual complementary nature of two lovers for their gender. But the complement isn’t the gender, it’s the person. Otherwise, any two random opposite sex pairs must be equally capable of experiencing that same spiritual intimacy and clearly that just simply isn’t true. Some people are not only incompatible, but explosively so. And most of us know all this from our day to day experience in that real world right wingers can’t bear to look at because their cheapshit conceits wouldn’t survive it. Some people just plain don’t get along. And some people…just can’t live without each other.
If homosexual sex wasn’t rewarding and satisfying to homosexuals then we wouldn’t do that. So much so goddamned obvious…right? Yes you babbling idiot, the parts fit. And I’m here to tell you they work very well in that configuration thank you. The first time I put my hands on a guy I desired, felt the muscle and bone under his skin, something deep down inside of me Just Lit Up. I had no idea what the word ‘passion’ meant before that. I sure as hell knew what it meant afterward. If homosexual sex wasn’t rewarding and satisfying to homosexuals then we wouldn’t do that.
But it takes more then sex to make a marriage. It takes more then a sexually compatible gender. Any couple, gay or straight, whose only common ground between them is sex, isn’t likely to last long. Sex can seal an intimate soul-to-soul bond between two people. It can join a couple together where there is love, and lift them both to that higher spiritual plain. But it cannot put love someplace where it isn’t. You cannot make sex the basis of a marriage, it simply won’t work. What makes it work, is the way two people complement each other deep down inside. It is the people, not their gender, that make a marriage.
It doesn’t take a radical individualist to see how this works, just someone with even a meager regard for the essential beauty and dignity of the human race. We are not ants in an anthill, or bees in a beehive, each of us predestined to live out the measure of our lives according to our biological caste. We are human beings, each of us endowed with our own unique personality and consciousness. That diversity among individuals is what has made us so successful as a species. But it also means that we have somewhat complicated love lives. It’s easy to jump in the sack for a one night stand with a willing date…that’s just an instinct that’s older then the fish, let alone the mammals, let alone the primates. It’s much, Much harder to find a soulmate and make a life together with them. If gender was all there was to it, that wouldn’t be true. The country music singers would have to find something else besides broken hearts and lonely nights to sing about.
But human cultures for generations and even today some cultures still, have tried to behave as if it Were true. Arranged marriages. Strict rules on marrying outside your faith, or your class, or your race. As if the human heart knows these things more then it knows the beloved person within. If anything destroyed marriage the way the Ben Shapiros of the world knew it, it was the Enlightenment, and Democracy. But then religious fanatics and secular totalitarians have long despise both of these human events.
The ironies here are monumental. You have a political movement that ostentatiously stands for individual freedom against big government and the so-called nanny state, that categorically rejects the fact that the most spiritual and intimate of all human relationships is between two individual people, and not a couple of faceless gender stereotypes. You have them arguing in all seriousness that this most intimate and spiritual of human relationships only exists to benefit society, rather then the two people whose lives are at the center of it. You have a political movement that stands squarely against Darwin, and puts on a really swell show of moral outrage at the very idea that human beings are part of the animal kingdom too, arguing that a biological fact we share with nearly every other vertebrate species on this good earth counts for more then the unique humanity of the individuals who make up a couple. And, most amazingly of all, here is a political movement that avails itself of every excuse it can grab to bellyache about the sexualization of America, telling us that it’s the sex a couple has that makes a marriage, not the love they feel for, and give to, each other. How much more of this do people have to see before they finally get it, that the religious right and their American conservative enablers are to marriage, as brothels are to chastity?
They don’t give a good goddamn about marriage. They care about power. They care a Lot about power. Here’s their spirituality: They want to tell us how to worship, what churches we can go to, and when and what God to believe in and how to pray to it. They want to tell us who we can marry, and why, and when we can have sex with them, and when we can’t and why. They want us to understand that how much we may love someone it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not we get their permission. Their permission to worship. Their permission of have sex. Their permission to love. And above all else they want us to understand that our fulfillment in life isn’t to be found in the arms of the one we love, but in how well we serve them.
Think I’m being overwrought here? Two Words: Radical. Individualism.
That’s not just how Ben is putting it these days, that’s a catch phrase now all throughout the kook pews. Radical Individualism. And a radical individualist is someone who holds…
…these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
It is not merely the human rights of gay people that are at stake here. It is not merely the intimate lives of gay people that are on the chopping block if these people get their final way.
Take one last look again, at how completely certain in his own mind Ben is, that same sex couples are incapable of loving as completely, as wholeheartedly, as opposite sex couples are. There is the unmovable prejudice. But you have to understand, it’s not just about homosexuals. We are not human beings in their regard. But most people who walk this earth aren’t either. Ben and his tribe are the True Humans. The rest of us are the mud people. Only True Humans feel. Only True Humans have needs. The rest of us have our place. That is what they believe. That is the world they inhabit. That is why appeals to basic human decency do not reach them.
NEWS ITEM: Bill Donohue Demands The Edwards Campaign Fire Two Liberal Bloggers For "Trash Talking"
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League demanded this week that presidential candidate John Edwards fire two liberal bloggers his campaign had hired. In a statement on Tuesday, Donohue accused Amanda Marcotte, a regular contributor to the blog Pandagon and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare’s Sister, of expressing "anti-Catholic opinions". "John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots", said Donohue.
"Name for me a book publishing company in this country, particularly in New York, which would allow you to publish a book which would tell the truth about the gay death style." [MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, 2/27/04]
"The gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done." [MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, 4/11/05]
Addressing former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) in a press release, Donohue said: "[W]hy didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?" [10/4/06] "We’ve already won. Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? And I’m not afraid to say it. … Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common. But you know what? The culture war has been ongoing for a long time. Their side has lost." [MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, 12/8/04]
Via The Daily Gotham… Are you a republican candidate facing a tight race? Well then play the gay bogyman card for a few quick last minute votes…
Note in particular, this comment from a poster in Wisconsin…
Be aware that above brochure is the exact same template used against several Democrats in campaigns around the country over the last several election cycles, including here in Wisconsin. I believe the "source" for the brochure template ("just add your name and you opponent’s one the respective dotted lines and print") is Donald Widemon’s AFA.
They probably have a print shop dedicated to turning out those, and other anti-gay pamphlets. When I refer to the anti-gay religious right as a hate machine I am not being melodramatic. I’m serious. It’s a big business with them, and they treat it exactly like a business would, complete with dedicated subsidiary operations that exist only to support the parent’s business operations. They have "think tanks" and publishing houses and consumer research operations that do nothing but work on demonizing gay people in order to bring money into their bank accounts, and votes to their chosen political candidates. And its all funded by the same handful of right wing billionaires. I often wonder if the Holocaust came to Germany and Europe via similar means.
Every time the homophobes put one of those all embracing anti-same sex marriage amendments forward, the ones that ban Any legal recognition whatsoever of same sex couples, they take pains to reassure the public that their amendment isn’t intended to strip everything away from same sex couples. Oh no…they say…it’s only about keeping marriage between a man and a woman. The gays will still have rights too, they claim. Just not the right to marry.
Public universities and governments can’t provide health insurance to the partners of gay employees without violating the state constitution, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Friday.
A three-judge panel said a 2004 voter-approved ban on gay marriage also applies to same-sex domestic partner benefits.
"The marriage amendment’s plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose," the court said.
The decision reverses a 2005 ruling from an Ingham County judge who said universities and governments could provide the benefits.
A constitutional amendment passed by Michigan voters in November 2004 made the union between a man and a woman the only agreement recognized as a marriage "or similar union for any purpose." Those six words led to a fight over benefits for gay couples.
Gay couples and others had argued the public intended to ban gay marriage but not block benefits for domestic partners.
But the court said: "It is a cornerstone of a democratic form of government to assume that a free people act rationally in the exercise of power, are presumed to know what they want, and to have understood the proposition submitted to them in all of its implications, and by their approval vote to have determined that the proposal is for the public good and expresses the free opinion of a sovereign people."
In Michigan, Citizens for Protection of Marriage repeatedly stated in its literature and in press interviews that a ban on same–sexmarriage would not affect domestic partnership benefits.
“This has nothing to do with taking benefits away,” Marlene Elwell, campaign director, told USA Today on October 15, 2004. “This is about marriage between a man and a woman.”
The campaign’s communications director was equally adamant. The proposal would have no effect on gay couples, Kristina Hemphill told the Holland Sentinel. “This amendment has nothing to do with benefits,” she said.
To secure and preserve the benefits of marriage for our society and for future generations of children, the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose."
And that’s standard operating procedure for the religious right: lie through your teeth…Jesus won’t mind if you’re doing it for him.
But look at what the judges decided. Even though the rhetoric coming out of the mouths of the amendment supporters was telling the voters one thing, the voters are assumed to have meant to vote for what they were repeatedly told they weren’t voting for anyway.
And, in a sense, you can’t blame the judges here, because it’s right fucking there in the text of the amendment: "…the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose." What part of "For Any Purpose" didn’t you understand when you voted?
And you have to figure that a lot of voters Did intend this result, even as they were nodding their heads and saying to themselves yes, yes, yes…this isn’t taking anything at all away from the homos… Hypocrisy is how you save face, when you’re busy putting a knife in your neighbor’s back. But given the results in Arizona, I expect that just enough people were fooled by the rhetoric, that the amendment might have failed if they saw clearly what it was they were voting for. Maybe.
And of course, that’s exactly why the religious right lies.
A 40-year-old former substitute teacher from Connecticut is facing prison time following her conviction for endangering students by exposing them to pornographic material displayed on a classroom computer.
Local prosecutors charged that the teacher was caught red-handed surfing for porn in the presence of seventh graders. The defense claimed the graphic images were pop-up ads generated by spyware already present on the computer prior to the teacher’s arrival. The jury sided with the prosecution and convicted her of four counts of endangering a child, a crime that brings a punishment of up to 10 years per count. She is due to be sentenced on March 2.
I had a chance this week to speak with the accused, Windham, Conn., resident Julie Amero. Amero described herself as the kind of person who can hardly find the power button on a computer, saying she often relies on written instructions from her husband explaining how to access e-mail, sign into instant messaging accounts and other relatively simple tasks.
Read the entire article, clickthrough to its links. You will find that in this case, as in so many others, the jury believed the police over a computer forensics expert and the testimony of the teacher. Said the expert:
This was one of the most frustrating experiences of my career, knowing full well that the person is innocent and not being allowed to provide logical proof.
If there is an appeal and the defense is allowed to show the entire results of the forensic examination in front of experienced computer people, including a computer literate judge and prosecutor, Julie Amero will walk out the court room as a free person.
You know what? I’ll bet that prosecutor kept anyone in the jury pool who was a computer professional from sitting on that jury.
"Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."
–Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
I’m reading about the big blow-up at ABC over Isaiah Washington’s insults to fellow Grey’s Anatomy actor T. R. Knight. Knight is gay and Washington called him a faggot on the set. Then during the Golden Globe award ceremonies Washington announced to all the assembled reporters that he’d never called Knight a faggot. You have to admit, the guy has a certain deft charm when it comes to his co-workers. Seems like now everyone is calling for Washington’s head…
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 21 — Executives at ABC and its parent, Disney, are mulling the future of the actor Isaiah Washington, a star of the hit series “Grey’s Anatomy,” after Mr. Washington last week publicly used an anti-gay slur for the second time in roughly three months, a Disney executive said Friday.
…
The executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because company officials were instructed not to go beyond a prepared statement, said that Mr. Washington’s behavior could be considered grounds for dismissal under Disney’s corporate antidiscrimination policy.
ABC and Touchstone, Disney’s television studio, called Mr. Washington’s behavior “unacceptable” in a statement issued on Thursday, three days after Mr. Washington’s most recent remark, which occurred in the backstage press room at the Golden Globes ceremony last week.
The situation has potentially great implications for ABC, which is reaping millions of dollars in advertising revenues from a show that, in its third season, is among the highest rated on television.
If you piss on the grave of a dead gay kid and it gooses your tabloid news show’s ratings…that’s good business. But if a fag baiting actor’s antics start cutting into your multi-million dollar profits on your high rated prime time TV series…well, that’s just plain unacceptable.
And…by the way…I hear the right wing shock jocks at ABC/Disney’s San Francisco talk radio station who called Barack Obama a "halfrican" still have their jobs.
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