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April 8th, 2007

Miscellaneous…(continued)

So you’re a 53 year old gay man. You remember coming out to yourself in the early 1970s, when the only places you could go to buy a copy of The Advocate or the Washington Blade were seedy adult bookstores. You remember Antia Bryant. You remember when you heard Dan White had shot and killed Harvey Milk. You remember the first time you saw The Quilt. You remember making your first panel for it. You remember all the friends you lost. You remember the first March on Washington. And the Second. And the Third. You remember the day the Warren Court upheld the sodomy laws. You remember Rush Limbaugh bellyaching that Bill Clinton had allowed “human garbage” into his inaugural parade because the Gay Men’s Choral was in it. You remember Sam Nunn posing in a submarine bunk while congress debated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. You remember the Hawaiian Supreme Court saying we could marry, and then 70 percent of Hawaiians passing a constitutional amendment saying we could not. You remember when Matthew Shepard was murdered. You remember Justice Kennedy’s words, overturning Hardwick v. Bowers…

And one Easter Sunday evening you find yourself writing a Go To Hell letter to that old friend, that once close friend, that once upon a time best friend you loved so very, very dearly, and who just sent you Yet Another EMail insisting that you need to stay discreetly closeted, and respect other folk’s cheapshit prejudices (cheapshit prejudices he’d never tolerate if they were racist ones directed at him) in order to get by in this world…and I should really shut up about my issues and stop being such a self-centered bore…

…what better song to compose that letter to then…

This One….

(This video alas does Not do the song justice…but you can stillDance to it…)

Okay…I have a temper. I admit it. But…swear to God…if some (x) friends of mine are going to keep acting like it’s still the late 70s and the only goddamn thing they know about gay people is what they learned in gym class or when they watched Richard Burton and Rex Harrison act like a couple of faggots in Staircase…well then…(ahem) I’m Not The Fucking One With A Listening Problem!

I never thought of myself as a Disco queen. There’s maybe four or five songs from the period I like at all. Thing is…music won’t make your heartaches go away, but sometimes it lets you dance over them…

We were born…born…Born to be Alive! (Born to be Alive) Yes we were born…born…born… Born to be Alive!

by Bruce | Link | React!

March 23rd, 2007

And Now For Something Completely Different…

And I mean, completely different.  Leper colonies for Sodomites anyone…?

You get the distinct impression he is only marginally less offended by Catholics then by sodomites. I think he’d probably fill in the chunnel too if he could. And it sounds like there was at least one other person in there, possibly more, while he was venting for the camera. I wonder if they’d all just been drinking or something.

Oh…and he used to be a policeman. Good thing for British gays that’s in his past isn’t it?

by Bruce | Link | React! (7)

March 21st, 2007

I’m Going To Wake Up…

…and discover that most of my adult life was all a dream and it’s still 1974

Shades of Rose Mary Woods? An 18 day gap?

I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.

(Our commenter saw it late on the evening of the dump itself — see the comment date-stamped March 20, 2007 02:19 AM in the research thread)

The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.

Mike Allen spotted it this evening in the Politico.

— Josh Marshall

Let me guess…they were answering the phone and working the shredder at the same time and the documents accidentally got sucked in. 

Talking Points Memo, has pretty much been the go-to place to learn about the Justice Department Attorney firing scandal…

by Bruce | Link | React!

March 19th, 2007

Cakewalk. Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Cakewalk.

A last thought on the anniversary of the cakewalk…from one of the chefs….

Rumsfeld: No. There comes a mike! Just take a second.

Maybe if people who have questions stick their hand up now, someone will get a mike to you and then the mike will be right there with you. There’s one in the back, good.

Go ahead.

Q: Thank you, sir. First, it’s a pleasure to hear you and to be this close to you and see you in person. We’ve seen you on TV a lot, and it’s a neat experience for us.

I’m part of an AEF rotation here, a part of a group that is deployed for AEF 7 and 8, and this is a great place to be deployed, no doubt. But many of us are asking, how long will we be frozen? But my question is, on the behalf of some of our Guard and Reserve men who are here, we know that some units have been mobilized, partially mobilized. Their question is, do you — are we going to go to a full mobilization of Guard and Reserve? And if we are, when will that decision be made?

Rumsfeld: Well — (laughter) — let me say this about that. (Laughter.) It is highly unlikely that we would go to a full mobilization. We — I have been signing a great many deployment orders and mobilization orders and alerting orders. The forces have been flowing now for a good number of weeks, and that has had its intended effect. There is no question but that the world’s focus is on the fact that the Iraqi regime, now for some 12 years, continues to ignore and disagree with the now 17 resolutions of the United Nations. The world understands that; they are looking for cooperation and hoping that the force flow will bring about cooperation, but thus far, it has not.

We don’t talk about deployments in the specific, but we have brought a good many Guard and Reserve on active duty. Fortunately, a great many of them were volunteers. We have been able to have relatively few stop losses. There are some currently, particularly in the Army, but relatively few in the Navy and the Air Force. And it is not knowable if force will be used, but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

Like…you know…six days…six weeks…you know…  Whatever.  You know.

If you click on the link I’ve provided, to this U.S. Department Of Defense DefenseLink News Transcript, you might notice that it’s a page from the Google cache.  Click on the link at the top of the cache page.  You know.  Where it says, Click here for the current page without highlighting.  Go ahead.  The original page is gone.  We have always been at war with Eastasia…

 

by Bruce | Link | React!

March 16th, 2007

Pissants Of The Caribbean

Another fun-in-the-sun Caribbean island I’ll probably never visit now…

Elton John faces ‘gay church ban’

First it was the liberal Bishop of Chelmsford, John Gladwin. Now Sir Elton John is the latest to be hit by trouble over plans to visit the Caribbean island of Tobago. As we reported, Gladwin had to cancel a diocesan visit to Trinidad and Tobago after opposition from conservative Anglicans. Church leaders are now trying to ban Sir Elton from visiting in April, when he is due to play in the Plymouth music festival. According to reports running on agency wires today, it is feared that if the musician, pictured here with his partner David Furnish, even sets foot on the island his presence there might tempt local people to become gay. The Jamaican Gleaner is reporting however that the singer will be allowed to take to the stage. Apparently, a clause in Tobago’s immigration laws bans self-confessed gays from entering the country, although it is thought that none has actually been turned away.

The Archdeacon for Trinidad and Tobago, the Ven Philip Isaac, said the star’s openly gay lifestyle and the fact he had a partner did not conform to ’biblical teachings’. He said Christian principles dictated that a ‘man should not lie with a man’. The Anglican Archdeacon said: ‘The artist is one of God’s children and while his lifestyle is questionable he needs to be ministered unto.  His visit to the island can open the country to be tempted towards pursuing his lifestyle.’

What a jackass.  And let it be said, the man’s another Anglican Bishop on a crusade against homosexuals.  I wonder if he’s so much as uttered a single breath of censure toward the violence against homosexuals now sweeping the Caribbean.  Or is that just another stupid question on my part.  Whatever the Episcopalians decide to do regarding the ultimatum gutter crawling haters like Ven Philip Isaac have given them, the damage is already done, the wounds already carved into the hearts of thousands of gay Christians and their families, and their friends.  It’s not the Episcopalians who need to repent.  The Anglican church will be repenting for this for generations.

by Bruce | Link | React!

March 7th, 2007

Well I Don’t Know Edith…Would You Lisp, Or Just Brey Like A Jackass?

From Media Matters

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?

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 28th, 2007

Well I See The Blue Noses Haven’t Won Yet…

The following opening sentence, taken from a genuine newspaper story, is brought to you as a public service of the Society For Laughing In Robert Bork’s Face:

A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi.

As long as there is Jazz there will always be an America…

by Bruce | Link | React! (2)

February 27th, 2007

Remember, It’s “Thou Shalt Not”, Not “I Shalt Not”…

Homosexuals are destroying the moral fabric of society and the church…Part I:

…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…

– 

Part II

Anglicans fire conservative Clay priest

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?

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 23rd, 2007

Why My Irony Buffer Keeps Overflowing

I should just stop reading the news first thing in the morning…

Gay Marriage Critic Tried on Lewdness

The lawyer for a former Baptist church leader who had spoken out against homosexuality said Thursday the minister has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman.

The Rev. Lonnie W. Latham had supported a resolution calling on gays and lesbians to reject their "sinful, destructive lifestyle" before his Jan. 3, 2006, arrest outside the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City.

Authorities say he asked the undercover policeman to come up to his hotel for oral sex.

His attorney, Mack Martin, filed a motion to have the misdemeanor lewdness charge thrown out, saying the Supreme Court ruled in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas that it was not illegal for consenting adults to engage in private homosexual acts.

"Now, my client’s being prosecuted basically for having offered to engage in such an act, which basically makes it a crime to ask someone to do something that’s legal," Martin said.

Both sides agree there was no offer of money, but prosecutor Scott Rowland said there is a "legitimate governmental interest" in regulating offers of acts of lewdness.

Latham’s lawyer has a point.  And as a card carrying member I am happy to see that the ACLU filed a brief on his behalf.  But if the government is poking its nose where it doesn’t belong, its louts like Latham who’ve made that inevitable.  The pulpits bear a heavy responsibility for our culture’s dysfunctional attitudes toward sex and sexuality.  I can see where people might not like having to navigate through a gauntlet of men out looking for sex when they’re just trying to walk down a street or though a park but that’s what you get when you treat sex like its something that’s radioactive, instead of a normal part of our flesh and blood lives.   Here in America sex is either dirty or its cheap, but it isn’t allowed to be wonderful.  And it’s mostly pulpit thumping jackasses like Latham who are to blame for that.  They’re the ones who’ve made sex another three letter word for sin.  They’ve taken what should be a wonderful, playful, joyful, part of our lives, and tainted it with guilt and shame.  Then they cash in on the damage that does.  It’s unforgivable.

I remember watching Phyllis Schlafly on TV babbling about how all you need to teach teenagers about sex is don’t touch anything inside your bathing suits.   Well if that’s all you teach them, then don’t be shocked, shocked, when they grow up to be adults who troll the streets at night for random cheap anonymous sex, because an instinct they never learned how to deal with honorably, that’s hundreds of millions of years older then the human race itself, is dragging them out there by the cords on their bathing suits and they don’t have clue one why they can’t stop themselves.  Just on principal I hope Latham wins his case, but I don’t feel sorry for him in the least.  So called men of God like him have a lot of human misery to answer for.

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 18th, 2007

Profiles In Virtue Trading Cards…Collect Them All…

Card 19 – Mitt Romney’s vote for Paul Tsongas…

Romney explains ’92 vote for Tsongas

ABC News’ Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.

That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary.  He told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on "This Week," that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

"In Massachusetts, if you register as an independent, you can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary," said Romney, who until he made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 1994 had spent his adult life as a registered independent. "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I’d vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican."

But 12 years ago, the Boston Globe reported that Romney was giving a different explanation for his vote for Tsongas. 

"Romney confirmed he voted for former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the state’s 1992 Democratic presidential primary, saying he did so both because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and because he favored his ideas over those of Bill Clinton," the Boston Globe’s Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips wrote on Feb. 3, 1994. "He added he had been sure the G.O.P. would renominate George Bush, for whom he voted in the fall election."

(Emphasis mine)  Some folks unaccountibly find this a bit hard to believe… 

Romney’s contention that his vote for Tsongas was a vote for the weakest opponent for Bush – a phenomenon that political scientists refer to as "raiding" – surprised Professor William Mayer of Northeastern University in Boston.

"That would have been a strange election to have done that in, in the sense that Paul Tsongas was obviously going to carry his home state" of Massachusetts, said Mayer. Tsongas won the Massachusetts primary with 66 percent of the vote.

Doubter.  What’s not to trust in this fine upstanding man of God?  See…he voted for the hometown candidate, whose ideas he liked.  Except he didn’t.  And that was then and this is now.  I’ll say this for Romney…you seldom see a politician so blatantly telling the public that his word doesn’t mean a goddamned thing.

by Bruce | Link | React!


Be Yourself. Just Don’t Let People Know.

Gay vague comes to Hallmark Cards…

Hallmark Cards… with a gay twist

Buying a greeting card for someone’s birthday, anniversary or if they’re feeling under the weather is pretty straightforward. But what if they’re undergoing chemotherapy or struggling with depression? "Get Well Soon" probably won’t cut it.

Likewise, most cards lining the store shelves don’t work on occasions as someone leaving an abusive spouse, undergoing drug rehab or declaring their sexual orientation.

Hallmark Cards Inc., which has built its $4.2 billion empire on sentiments for life’s happier times, is releasing a new line of cards that will speak to those and other situations that the company says have either been ignored by greeting card companies or received only a smattering of attention from niche players.

Well I just know I’m going to enjoy reading the "declaring my sexual orientation" card that’s somewhere between the So Sorry You Have Cancer and Congratulations On Your Drug Rehab cards…

No topics were off-limits, said company spokeswoman Rachel Bolton, noting two cards that could be sent to gay people who have disclosed their sexuality. The cards don’t directly refer to homosexuality, only extolling the person to "Be You" or "This is who I am" or featuring a rainbow, a symbol of gay pride.

Bolton said the writing is general enough for other uses, however, with one focus group member saying they would send it to a friend starting a new job.

"Our findings determined that people didn’t want to be labeled or identified,’’ Bolton said. "We want to be inclusive and not exclusive."

Coming from the company that was protecting the sanctity of stuffed bear family life a few years ago (more about that Here), I’m probably expected to regard this as progress of sorts.  Except it isn’t.  Hallmark isn’t merely trying to grab a piece of the gay dollar here, they’re trying to position themselves as "inclusive and not exclusive".  That card isn’t for gay customers.  You don’t market a card that’s too scared to utter the word "gay" to gay people who’ve taken that difficult, nerve wracking, terrifying step of coming out to family and friends.  Who the hell sends a card that can’t even utter the word "gay" to a gay person, congratulating them on coming out of the closet?  Be Who You Are…Just Don’t Say It…  That’s crap.  The card is PR, nothing more.  Here’s what’s going on…

The $7 billion greeting card industry already brims with tiny niche players who make and sell cards dealing with such things as serious illness or thanking caregivers, said Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Greeting Card Association.

But she said none of them have the ability to reach customers searching for those types of cards across the country.

Oh yes they do, if they want to exploit it.  It’s called the Internet lady.  It’s been four years since a Hallmark store had security escort a same sex couple out the door for trying to buy a pair of boy bears they’d discovered kissing, even though the magnets weren’t supposed to allow that, and now all of a sudden the company is a tad concerned that all those little niche players are going to run away with a big chunk of their market while they’re busy appealing to the lowest common denominator.  Having a Hallmark store in shopping malls from one end of the country to the other won’t keep the piles of cash coming, in an age where people can make or buy their cards online and print them out at home.  Yet even in the face of that, Hallmark can’t bring itself to reach out to that potential market, to actually be "inclusive and not exclusive".  On the other hand, that’s probably exactly why Hallmark gets it so right with their core market.

This isn’t progress, it’s window dressing.  Cheap, insincere sentiment from your one stop shopping center for all-purpose cheap, insincere sentiment.  What you send when how you feel about yourself is more important then what the person you’re sending it to is feeling.  Why is it not surprising that it’s a Hallmark moment.

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 6th, 2007

Well That Was Fast…

Even John Smid says he needs at least eight weeks…

Haggard says he is not gay

The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is "completely heterosexual" and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.

[Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur] said three weeks of counseling at an undisclosed Arizona treatment center helped Haggard immensely and left Haggard sure of one thing.

"He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting- out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing."

Why Haggard chose to act out in that manner is something Haggard and his advisers are trying to discern, Ralph said.

I’ll hazard a guess…because he’s gay. This is the guy after all, who said he didn’t even know the guy he was paying for sex, right up to the moment the answering machine tapes came out. Not your most trustworthy source, this guy.

On the other hand, this could also just be the usual ex-gay double-speak too. Haggard isn’t gay, because according to ex-gay dogma nobody really is anyway. He’s just in therapy to control his acting out behavior. But the human identity isn’t a blackboard anyone can scribble their will upon. His acting out was on the order of seeking sex under less then wholesome circumstances. But that was because of denial, not homosexuality.

Sex is one of the strongest of all instincts, and you can’t bottle it up inside a person without damaging consequences. Haggard’s adventures with the prostitute were eminently predictable. You see that kind of behavior all the time in married, closeted homosexuals. The ex-gay solution is merely to bottle it up even more. So it looks like Haggard’s first step out of therapy is taking him right down the same old road he was on before he got caught with his back being rubbed. No wonder they were encouraging him to stay out of the ministry.

by Bruce | Link | React!

January 26th, 2007

McHale’s Nay

From our Letters To The Editor Department…

To: editor@365Gay.com
Subject: Really Swell Ernest Borgnine Profile

Why the hell is a 365Gay giving space to an AP puff piece about the man who said of Brokeback Mountain the night of last year’s Academy Awards Ceremony: "I didn’t see it and I don’t care to see it…. If John Wayne were alive, he’d be rolling over in his grave"???  Has John Wayne stopped rolling now or something?


Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

  

by Bruce | Link | React!

January 22nd, 2007

Remember…It’s THOU Shalt Not. I’ll Do As I Damn Well Please.

So it seems that now you can go to jail for life for committing adultery in Michigan…

Footnote on adultery turns into a spotlighted affair

In Michigan, adultery has long been a felony.

But when a judge warned that unfaithful spouses could technically be sentenced to life in prison, an obscure and seldom-used provision of the state’s criminal law became the subject of international scrutiny.

It’s unclear how serious Judge William Murphy of the Michigan Court of Appeals was when he pointed out the possible consequences of extramarital sex. Some observers say the liberal judge was making a political point by taking a strict interpretation of the law to an absurd conclusion.

Others have suggested Murphy was trying to embarrass Michigan Atty. Gen. Mike Cox, whose office triggered the ruling by appealing for a harsher sentence for a man who traded drugs for sex. In 2005, Cox acknowledged having an adulterous relationship.

Murphy’s adultery bombshell was a footnote in a November ruling on a drugs-for-sex case. But since a Detroit Free Press columnist wrote about the footnote last week, blogs and radio talk shows have debated the pros and cons of life sentences for cheating spouses.

The ruling came in the case of Lloyd Waltonen, 43, a man from Charlevoix in northern Michigan, who supplied a cocktail waitress with the prescription painkiller OxyContin in exchange for sex. Last year, Charlevoix Circuit Judge Richard M. Pajtas sentenced Waltonen to four to 20 years in prison, but dismissed four counts of firstdegree criminal sexual conduct, punishable by a life term, on the basis that the sex was consensual.

The state attorney general’s office successfully appealed Pajtas’ ruling, citing an obscure provision of Michigan’s criminal law, which states that a sexual act committed at the same time as a felony constitutes criminal sexual conduct.

An appellate panel found Waltonen guilty of criminal sexual conduct. He has asked the state Supreme Court to consider an appeal.

In the opinion, Murphy wrote that although legislators may have drafted the law conceiving of scenarios in which there was a violent felony involving forced sex, he was "curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."

Murphy wrote that a person was technically guilty of firstdegree criminal sexual conduct any time he or she "engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship."

He noted that state law defines first-degree criminal sexual conduct as sexual penetration involving another felony. Because adultery is a felony, he wrote, adulterous sex could result in life imprisonment.

So…dig it.  A wingnut prosecutor on an anti-drug jihad piles a sex charge on top of a drug charge, in order to get a stiffer sentence handed down.  The law he’s trying to bend out of shape here was only intended to apply to violent sex crimes, but never mind…he thinks he can use it any damn way he pleases, because he’s on a mission to clean up what consenting adults do in private.  And it works.  Even better then he probably wanted it too.  See…one of the big jokes here in all this, is that this prosecutor has admitted to having an adulterous affair in his own past…

No one in Michigan has been charged with adultery since 1971.

Nevertheless, defense attorneys across the state are snickering and speculating about the prospect of life in prison for the attorney general.

From his office in Lansing, criminal defense attorney Hugh Clarke Jr. chuckled as he contemplated the idea — apparently raised by colleagues — of setting up a special prosecution team to charge Cox.

"It’s all so silly," he sighed. "I only wish Judge Murphy would have used a different example. The judiciary in Michigan shouldn’t be held up to ridicule because of his use of that analogy."

Cox declined to speak to reporters about Murphy’s ruling. His spokesman, Rusty Hills, said Cox’s adultery was not relevant to the case.

He is trying to get a man sentenced to life in prison for trading drugs for sex, with a completely willing partner, and he thinks his own immorality isn’t an issue.  Well of course not.  Morality laws are for the peasants…to keep them in line.  The authorities live by their own rules, up in Valhalla. 

But this is what happens when the law starts treating purely moral issues as criminals ones.  It’s what happens when the law is reduced to panty sniffing by puritan nutcases who are outraged over the possibility that somewhere someone is having a good time.  Suddenly, we’re all criminals.  Every one of us.  And that’s the point.  All have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God…and especially fallen short of the glory God’s right hand men…  If we weren’t here to tell you how to live your lives…who knows what you’d do with them…

But the real belly laugh here isn’t the prospect of a jackass prosecutor getting hung by his own petard.  Here’s the belly laugh, proudly posted on the right wing news site, World Net Daily, and thanks to Pam’s House Blend for catching it…

What do you think of the possibility of life in prison for adultery?

Sex between consenting adults should not be a matter for any criminal court, period 32.43% (1248)
Leave it up to civil courts for monetary damages like alimony, but not jail time 15.75% (606)
Come on, if everyone who committed adutery were jailed, there’d be hardly anyone left on the street 12.16% (468)
Stiff jail time is needed, we have to do something about rampant infidelity 10.63% (409)
A little jail time is proper, but life is preposterous 9.98% (384)
Old Testament laws call for executions, so let’s get back to the Bible 7.28% (280)
Other 4.96% (191)
I agree, life in prison is appropriate 2.60% (100)
Any jail time for adultery is ridiculous in this modern age 2.31% (89)
Life sentence is too light, should be execution according to Sharia law 1.90% (73)

TOTAL VOTES: 3848

This is the same crowd that was screaming for blood when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas.  This is the same crowd that thumps the bible like a machine gun constantly on issues of gay rights.  They can cite you chapter and verse each passage in the bible that they believe condemns homosexuality. 

Never mind that Adultery is condemned right in the fucking ten commandments not just once…but if you read it broadly enough, twice:

7. Thou Shalt Not Break Wedlock.

10. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s House; Neither Shalt Covet Thy Neighbor’s Wife, His Manservant, His Maid, His Ox, His Ass, Or Ought That Is His.

-Translated by William Tyndale

Suddenly it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame when it’s a matter of…er…your own balls.  Listening to the American right wing bellyaching about morals and values, right up to the moment the finger turns around and starts pointing right back at them, you really begin to see why Jesus didn’t much like hypocrites.

by Bruce | Link | React!


A Question

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…

Anatomy of an Insult: ABC Is Stung by an Actor’s Anti-Gay Slurs

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.

Unacceptable.  Unacceptable.  I have a question.  Why is Mr. Washington’s calling Mr. Knight a faggot unacceptable to ABC, but not whitewashing the murder of Matthew Shepard by 20/20?

Ah…here’s why…

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. 

by Bruce | Link | React! (2)

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