You may have heard that an Australian named Matthew Mitcham won the gold in the 10 meter diving event. You may have heard that in doing so, he broke the Chinese sweep of the diving events. You may have heard that a string of disappointments some years ago caused him to drop out of the sport briefly and that his comeback this year was the end result of a lot of very hard and determined work. What you might not have heard, if your only exposure to the China Olympics was our mainstream news media, is that Mitcham is openly gay…
According to OutSports.com, of the 10,708 athletes at the Olympics this year, just 10 have identified themselves publicly as being gay. Of the 10, Australian diver Matthew Mitcham is the only male gay athlete.
NBC did not mention Mitcham’s orientation, nor did they show his family and partner who were in the stands. NBC has made athletes’ significant others a part of the coverage in the past, choosing to spotlight track athlete Sanya Richards’ fiancee, a love triangle between French and Italian swimmers and Kerri Walsh’s wedding ring debacle.
As Atrios said the other day: love triangle okay…gay, not so much.
There are two parts to the culture of violence toward gay people. The first is the relentless demonization of gay people. By churches, by religious leaders, by politicians and their parties, by bigots with a platform. The public is told we are a threat to children, to families, to society, to the very existence of the human race. We are portrayed as sexual predators, disease spreading sociopaths, self-centered narcissistic parasites on society. We are said to be shallow, vain, self-centered and interested only in self gratification on the one hand, and self-hating, self-destructive and miserable on the other. When we are not dangerous sociopaths we are contemptible faggots. The other part is the silencing of gay voices. Where we are not allowed to tell our own stories, in our own voices, where social invisibility is imposed upon us, as though we are a dirty secret best kept away from view, the only voices that are heard, are the voices of those who hate us. The hatemongers go unanswered, and this is what happens…
Oh…and this…
I now feel very fortunate that I was able to spend some private time with Matt last summer during my vacation from Saudi Arabia. We sat and talked. I told Matt that he was my hero and that he was the toughest man that I had ever known. When I said that, I bowed down to him out of respect for his ability to continue to smile and keep a positive attitude during all the trials and tribulations that he had gone through. He just laughed. I also told him how proud I was because of what he had accomplished and what he was trying to accomplish. The last thing I said to Matt was that I loved him, and he said he loved me. That was the last private conversation that I ever had with him.
Impact on my life? My life will never be the same. I miss Matt terribly. I think about him all the time—at odd moments when some little thing reminds me of him; when I walk by the refrigerator and see the pictures of him and his brother that we’ve always kept on the door; at special times of the year, like the first day of classes at UW or opening day of sage chicken hunting. I keep wondering almost the same thing that I did when I first saw him in the hospital. What would we have become? How would he have changed his piece of the world to make it better?
Impact on my life? I feel a tremendous sense of guilt. Why wasn’t I there when he needed me most? Why didn’t I spend more time with him? Why didn’t I try to find another type of profession so that I could have been available to spend more time with him as he grew up? What could I have done to be a better father and friend? How do I get an answer to those questions now? The only one who can answer them is Matt. These questions will be with me for the rest of my life. What makes it worse for me is knowing that his mother and brother will have similar unanswered questions.
Impact on my life? In addition to losing my son, I lost my father on November 4, 1998. The stress of the entire affair was too much for him. Dad watched Matt grow up. He taught him how to hunt, fish, camp, ride horses, and love the state of Wyoming. Matt, Logan, dad, and I would spend two to three weeks camping in the mountains at different times of the year—to hunt, to fish, and to goof off. Matt learned to cook over an open fire, tell fishing stories about the one that got away, and to drive a truck from my father. Three weeks before Matt went to the Fireside Bar for the last time, my parents saw Matt in Laramie. In addition, my father tried calling Matt the night that he was beaten but received no answer. He never got over the guilt of not trying earlier. The additional strain of the hospital vigil, being in the hospital room with Matt when he died, the funeral services with all the media attention and the protesters, [and] helping Judy and me clean out Matt’s apartment in Laramie a few days later was too much. Three weeks after Matt’s death, dad died. Dad told me after the funeral that he never expected to outlive Matt. The stress and the grief were just too much for him. Impact on my life? How can my life ever be the same again?
Excerpt of Dennis Shepard’s Statements to the Court
November 4, 1999
There are two parts to the culture of violence toward gay people…and to all minorities. The first is hate. The second is that silencing of the voices of the hated, which allows hate to go unchallenged and unquestioned. Last week a young Australian diver, after a difficult struggle to come back from burnout and defeat, won a gold medal for the 10 meter dive, beating out the best of the Chinese diving team. You were allowed to know that. He is openly gay, and his parents and his lover were there to support him in his quest for the gold. He said his boyfriend was part of the support network that made his dream possible. You weren’t allowed to know that. Because then you might start wondering about all those things you were taught about homosexuals.
And then you might start wondering why the news media doesn’t give a damn.
The Holmes County School District, which was the site of a court battle over the right of students to declare their support for their gay and lesbian peers, has begun court ordered sensitivity training classes for it’s teachers and staff.
Can you spot the difference between these two news stories on this topic?
First, the local TV News station…
Fla. principal accused of gay ‘witch hunt’
Employees of 1 rural Florida school district are starting the new school year by attending sensitivity classes.
A federal judge’s ruling prompted the classes at the Holmes County School District. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district when a principal banned students from wearing rainbow-colored clothing or other items that he said showed support for homosexuality.
Principal Davis enacted the ban, and suspended students who violated it, after one student told him she was taunted for being gay. Davis told the girl that it was wrong to be gay, order her to stay away from younger students and called her parents. The girl’s friends wore gay pride T-shirts and other clothing in support.
A federal judge ruled that Davis and the district violated the students’ free speech rights by banning the clothing.
Next…365Gay.Com…
Florida school at center of GSA battle begins sensitivity training
Teachers and staff in a Florida school district which was at the center of a long legal battle over gay/straight alliances are back in the classroom – this time as students in sensitivity classes.
The Holmes County School District set up the training sessions after losing a federal court battle in which the judge blasted the principal of Ponce de Leon High School principal David Davis for leading a “relentless crusade” against homosexuality.
U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak said in his ruling last month that principal David Davis “embarked on what can only be characterized as a witch hunt. The ruling also said that Davis led “morality assemblies” that ignored the First Amendment.
Davis has since been replaced as principal.
During the two-day trial in May, Davis testified that he believed clothing, buttons or stickers featuring rainbows would make students automatically picture gay people having sex.
He went on to admit that while censoring rainbows and gay pride messages, he allowed students to wear other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag.
Heather Gillman, a 16-year-old junior at the high school, sued the district with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union after she was told she could not wear buttons, stickers or clothing that supported LGBT civil rights.
After she received the warning, the ACLU last November sent a letter to the school board’s attorney on behalf of Gillman, asking for clarification as to whether a variety of symbols and slogans, such as the rainbow flag or “I support my gay friends,” would be allowed at the school.
The school district replied that it would not allow any expressions of support for gay rights at all because such speech would “likely be disruptive.”
The district then said that such symbols and slogans were signs that students were part of a “secret/illegal organization.”
The problems began in September 2007 when a lesbian student tried to report to school officials that she was being harassed by other students because she is a lesbian. Instead of addressing the harassment, students say the school responded with intimidation, censorship, and suspensions.
Prior to the release of his written ruling, Smoak issued an order that forces the school to stop its censorship of students who want to express their support for gay people. The judge also warned the district not to retaliate against students over the lawsuit.
The AP went one better too…running a story all about how the locals support the principle that started all this, headlined, FL. Town Backs Principle In Gay Student Case. It mentions nothing about the morality assemblies, the fact that confederate flags were allowed to be worn but not t-shirts supporting the gay students, or that Davis said students wearing gay supportive messages would make people think of gay sex, or that the district declared gay supportive students to be part of an illegal secret organization. It did say however, that the townsfolk were sincerely baffled about the judge’s "scathing rebuke", and why the principle had done anything wrong.
The AP also says that "Many in the community support Davis and feel outsiders are forcing their beliefs on them." That would be as opposed to forcing dissenters to keep their mouths shut while they force their piss ignorant beliefs about homosexuality on gay people, their parents and their friends.
Ecuador is debating a new draft constitution and Pope Ratzinger doesn’t much like it. The new constitution, which goes to the voters on September 28, among other things guarantees the rights of same sex couples. Consider that here in the land of the free and the home of the brave we’re busy taking those rights away one state at a time. Some say the new Ecuadorian constitution also concentrates too much power in the office of the current President, who is a socialist. But that’s not what Ratzinger’s men are busy complaning about…
Archbishop Antonio Arregui Yarza of Guayaquil criticized the draft charter for including what he called ambiguous abortion laws and granting the same benefits to same-sex couples and married heterosexual couples.
"A union between homosexuals is not a family," Arregui said in a news conference Monday. "We’re going to request that the entire Christian conscience takes note of the nonnegotiable incompatibilities of this constitution with our faith." He also said the proposed document is "leaving the door open to the deletion of a new baby."
Just ignore that little bit of translation awkwardness…the new constitution doesn’t explicitly ban abortion outright and that’s a problem for the Archbishop. But what’s unacceptable to him, is that it gives same sex couples the same rights as opposite sex couples. To him that is a nonnegotiable incompatibility with his faith.
Luckly for Ecuadorian gays, their president isn’t afraid to throw the religious argument right back at the haters…
President Rafael Correa has defended a new draft Ecuadorean constitution that grants same-sex couples the rights of marriage, El Telégrafo reported Aug. 1. The document faces a popular vote Sept. 28.
Speaking in the city of Monteverde, Correa said: “Jesus of Nazareth never preached hatred, homophobia or segregation; instead he knew to say, ‘Love one another.’
“It is false that (the draft) is recognizing as family the union of homosexuals. What we are doing is recognizing the dignity of all people without discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.”
“Let’s hope, now that there’s been so much talk about moral incompatibilities between the new constitution and the Gospel, sometimes utilizing falsehoods, that we also can talk with equal force about the profound incompatibility of the social situation — of that inequality, of that existing social injustice — with the Gospels,” Correa said.
Emphasis mine. This is why John-Paul furiously tried to stamp out liberation theology in South America. It’s one thing to preach to the poor and the outcast. It’s another thing entirely when they start preaching back at you.
It’s a hopeful sign to see more mainstream liberal pundits finally waking up to the fact that the moral argument is actually their friend. This from Slate, in an article on Reclaiming The Morality Of Abortion…
Liberals have never won anything by reframing moral questions as pragmatic ones; they end up looking shifty and evasive.
And…cowardly. Here’s why the moral argument matters…
The gay-rights movement best illuminates the need to emphasize the role of morality in politics. In 1986, the Supreme Court decided Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding the constitutionality of criminal penalties for gay sodomy. Choice, said the five-justice majority, although available for a wide range of decisions (including abortion), was not available for conduct we consider really, really icky. (They didn’t say that explicitly; they put the words in the mouth of the "Judeo-Christian" tradition and let the priests say it for them.) Just as Bowers was decided, however, the AIDS epidemic motivated and enabled gay people to tell the world why their behavior was moral. As gay men began to die, they and their loved ones began to write about their relationships, their shared homes, and their desire—going back to Homer—to bury those they loved. At the same time, lesbians, who had been fighting for their children after divorces and for the families they were creating with donor insemination—publicly told the story of their own moral commitments.
By the time the Supreme Court faced the previously sinful gay litigants again in Lawrencev.Texas, 17 years later, the decision went the other way. It is impossible to read the two opinions and ignore the change in moral climate that produced the legal shift. And although recent polling fails to reveal a majority supporting gay marriage, the numbers have been steadily improving.
To fight for your own part in the American Dream, you must first fight for the American Dream. That, Liberty And Justice For All thing. Eight years of George Bush, and the collapse of America’s moral stature among the nations of the world, right as one of the world’s great tyrannies rousts itself from a short slumber to start eating its neighbors again, is the price we are paying now for ceding the moral ground to the human hating Right. There is a pragmatic human potential and productivity side to the fight for democracy and freedom. But it should never replace the moral struggle for liberty and justice, for the human status. The struggle for freedom has always been a profoundly moral struggle.
The Times editorial board formulates its positions on ballot measures not only by research, but by inviting representatives of both sides to (separate) meetings with the board. It’s a good forum for probing an issue, and the results sometimes are surprising.
Here is where we win. When the only people who were engaging the gay haters directly were us, they were able to hide the depth of their hate from the rest of straight America. They could claim they were only motivated by a desire to protect children. They could claim that they were only out to protect the institute of marriage in a time of every increasing divorce rates. They could claim they were only motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, and not merely animus. That love the sinner hate the sin was always just a thin coat of paint over God Hates Fags was something the rest of America never really got much of a chance to see, as long as most heterosexuals kept their distance from the fight. Now, as more sons and daughters, more friends and co-workers come out to them, they are taking a closer look…
So it went with the supporters of Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution so that gay and lesbian couples no longer could marry. The board already has published its stand on the measure, but the editorial left out some interesting turns in the conversation.
The measure’s supporters are generally careful to avoid appearing anti-gay, probably because they realize that, for all the voter split on same-sex marriage, Californians generally support gay rights. They professed in our meeting to have no ill will toward gay people…until the talk went deeper.
And I expect it didn’t have to go very much deeper…
At one point, the conversation turned to the "activist judges" whose May ruling opened the door to same-sex marriage, and how similar this case was to the 1948 case that declared bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. According to one of the Prop. 8 reps, that 1948 ruling was OK because people are born to their race and thus are in need of constitutional protection, while gays and lesbians choose their homosexuality. So much for the expert opinions of the American Psychological Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics that people cannot choose their sexuality. Oh, those activist doctor types.
In any case, one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children’s rights, and it’s obvious that same-sex couples who married would "recruit" their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments.
Emphasis mine. As Molly Ivins would have called it, a "whoa moment". It isn’t so much the myth that children can catch homosexuality like a goddamned cold. It’s the image of gay people as almost a separate parasitic species that shocks the conscience. But for these people, it’s just common knowledge. Homosexuals aren’t human.
Aside from this notion of a homosexual recruitment plot — making it understandable where the word "homophobia" came from — this made no logical sense at all. Same-sex couples. whether married or not, already have children. Marriage wouldn’t change a thing about this picture except, perhaps, to model for children that parents tend to be married.
Exactly. But it’s not about insuring that children have stable family lives. It’s not about imparting the virtues of marriage to them. It’s about cutting gay people out of the human family tree. That’s it. There is nothing more noble about their cause then that. If you don’t believe that, spend some time talking to them. Enough time for them to get all their spiels about loving the sinner out of the way, so they can get down to brass tacks.
Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the ministries of Bible Belt televangelists in the 1970s-80s. But these fortunes would never have materialized without a secular weapon from the North–a Massachusetts marketing outfit begun by a group of twenty-something Harvard business school grads called Epsilon Data Management. Falwell began using the company in 1976; he was the first televangelist to sign up. When his contributions exploded, other preachers like Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard contracted with Epsilon and made a pile, too.
Before Epsilon, Oral Roberts used punch tape-driven Friden Flexo-writers. Billy Graham handwrote every homespun fundraising appeal himself. "You could see the buckwheat flying off the paper," recalls Gaylord Briley, one of the top religious fundraisers of the era. In a few years Epsilon was doing work for 7 of the top 10 televangelists in America.
Two threads joined together in the 1970s to produce the political machine we now know as the religious right. In the early 1970s, the feds began challenging the tax exemption of many fundamentalist schools over their race segregation policies. I’ve blogged about that previously Here…
But the spark that lit the roaring fire that eventually consumed the republican party wasn’t integration specifically…
In a recent interview broadcast on CNN the day of his death, Falwell offered his version of the Christian right’s genesis: "We were simply driven into the process by Roe v. Wade and earlier than that, the expulsion of God from the public square." But his account was fuzzy revisionism at best. By 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled on Roe, the antiabortion movement was almost exclusively Catholic. While various Catholic cardinals condemned the Court’s ruling, W.A. Criswell, the fundamentalist former president of America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, casually endorsed it. (Falwell, an independent Baptist for forty years, joined the SBC in 1996.) "I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person," Criswell exclaimed, "and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed." A year before Roe, the SBC had resolved to press for legislation allowing for abortion in limited cases.
While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the "pre-born." For Falwell and his allies, the true impetus for political action came when the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. Connally to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools in 1971. Their resentment was compounded in 1971 when the Internal Revenue Service attempted to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which forbade interracial dating. (Blacks were denied entry until that year.) Falwell was furious, complaining, "In some states it’s easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school."
Seeking to capitalize on mounting evangelical discontent, a right-wing Washington operative and anti-Vatican II Catholic named Paul Weyrich took a series of trips down South to meet with Falwell and other evangelical leaders. Weyrich hoped to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc. In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His implorations initially fell on deaf ears.
"I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. "What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."
Dig it. It wasn’t abortion. It wasn’t militant homosexuality. It wasn’t rampant sexual hedonism. It wasn’t the secularization of America’s schools. It wasn’t even racism, that lit the fire the brought the fundamentalist leadership charging into our political system in a blind destructive frenzy. It was their tax exemption. It was money.
The second thread is the advent of computerized direct marketing. Richard Viguerie was a pioneer in its use for the republican party. Viguerie had more then a mailing list. His genius was in applying computerized database analysis techniques to it, tracking the giving patterns of the names in his database. He paired that with a ruthless analysis of which marketing campaigns worked, and which did not. Viguerie, a right wing extremist, wasn’t interested in informing the republican base so much as in pushing their buttons so they would open their wallets and go to the polls. And he got results. With his database and direct mailing technique, Viguerie almost single-handedly turned around the fortunes of the Republicans after Watergate.
Remember, this was a time before the Internet, before the widespread use of cable TV and the appearance of 24 hour cable news, before even talk radio as we know it today, with its national audiences and personalities. Viguerie showed the republicans how they could bypass the news media of that day, and not only get their their message out on their own terms, but do it below the radar of the popular culture. His mail appeals were Targeted. The message was tailored and precise, and didn’t have to appear in any newspaper or television ad where the rest of the country could see it too.
Falwell saw the success of Viguerie’s technique, and revamped his own direct mailing effort…
Computerized database marketing turned the late 1970s into an era known as the golden age of direct mail prospecting. Direct mail was still an almost clandestine medium. The content of such correspondence was rarely exposed to media scrutiny. Falwell crafted his letters with theological abandon, hitting his mortal enemies with blunt force. Epsilon led Falwell to discover that the secret to steady income is consistency; getting lots of donors to give a little, but regularly. Epsilon also taught Falwell that most donor lists contain "compulsive contributors"–usually amounting to four percent of the list, says Briley.
These twin threads of course, have a common root. Money. It was all about the money. That is why there is a religious right today. And that is why they’ve made common cause with the corporate world, the world of Caesar, the world of mammon, that they once disdained. When Carter went after their tax exemptions, they found had a lot in common with those kings of business after all.
And how do you push the rube’s buttons enough so they’ll give you money, over and over and over again? Well…here’s one way…
Besides Epsilon, Falwell had the formidable talent of Jerry Huntsinger. Then 45, he was a former minister who lived on a farm near Richmond who had been taking advertising concepts from the for-profit world and applying them to nonprofit religious ventures. Huntsinger brought a novelist’s touch to direct mail. He considered every fundraising letter a first cousin to the short story. "A short story has a problem that seems insurmountable, a sympathetic character that is a victim of the problem, complications and obstacles, but finally, a resolution." He advised his clients that emergency appeals work best because they give donors a feeling of "excitement at coming to the rescue."
Huntsinger was also a master at fine tuning the mechanics: the color of the envelope, the position of the address window, which paragraphs to indent, which sentences to underline. He knew how to lure a reader’s eye just to where he wanted.
Huntsinger encouraged Falwell to focus on wedge issues in his mailings, excoriating the feminist movement and attacking homosexual rights, often equating both with the dangers of communism. As one letter stated: "Dear Friend: Homosexuals are on the march in this country. Homosexuals do not reproduce, they recruit, and many of them are after my children and your children….This is one major reason why we must keep "The Old Time Gospel Hour" alive…So don’t delay. Let me hear from you immediately. I will be anxiously awaiting your reply."
The sense of impending doom the letter conveyed fit perfectly with Huntsinger’s operating credo. It turned a pitch into a storyline (gays on the the march) with sympathetic characters (children) under threat from sex offenders (gay pedophiles). It was an emergency appeal that sought to panic his audience into coming to the rescue.
The Forbes excerpt ends on the note that the gay bashing appeals actually raised very little money. Given the history of the religious right’s move into politics, I don’t believe it. Before Anita Bryant showed them that waving the gay menace at people could practically stampede them to the polls, the Falwells and the Robertsons actually did very little gay bashing. But on the day Falwell stood by her side in front of reporters and declared that "a homosexual will kill you, soon as look at you", he knew she was on to something.
Falwell and his kind didn’t create the climate of fear and contempt toward gay people. But in the 1970s they began to whip it into a frenzy. For money. Never mind all that love your neighbor as yourself crap. The harder you push their buttons, the more they open their wallets. And the best button of all was the Homosexuals Are On The March And They Want Your Children button. It worked. The money came rolling in. For Falwell. For Robertson. For Dobson. And for all the other crusaders for Christ. The money came rolling in.
The Difference Between Helping Children And Kicking Them In The Face
PFOX, (Parents and Friends of eX-Gays), would have you believe it’s different from P-FLAG, (Parents and Friends of Gays), in that PFOX supports people who are "struggling with homosexuality" and P-FLAG does not. But that’s not it.
Take a look at this story at OneNewsNow, which begins:
Quoting a recent study, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) is warning of the increased risk of suicide that is linked with young people who identify themselves as homosexuals before achieving full maturity — a process encouraged by many homosexual high school clubs.
The study in question, as it turns out, is a seventeen year old work published in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, back in June 1991. Not exactly recent…but never mind. What PFOX is saying there is that supporting gay teens as they come out to themselves puts them at risk of suicide. Their solution?
Schools should not be encouraging teens to self-identify as gays, bisexuals or transgendered persons before they have matured. Sexual attractions are fluid and do not take on permanence until early adulthood. Rather than affirming teenagers as ‘gay’ through self-labeling, educators should affirm them as people worthy of respect and encourage teens to wait until adulthood before making choices about their sexuality. If teens are encouraged to believe that they are permanently ‘gay’ before they have had a chance to reach adulthood, their life choices are severely restricted and can result in depression.
So says PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs. Note the doublespeak there about affirming them as "people worthy of respect". But how much respect is it, to tell a kid gay kid they don’t have to be gay if they don’t want to? Look again, at what came slyly out of the other side of her mouth there…
Sexual attractions are fluid and do not take on permanence until early adulthood.
Thats religious rightspeak for There Is No Such Thing As A Homosexual. Don’t believe me? Look again…
If teens are encouraged to believe that they are permanently ‘gay’ before they have had a chance to reach adulthood, their life choices are severely restricted and can result in depression.
Permanently ‘gay’. Note both the quotes around the word gay and the word permanently preceding it. You don’t have to be gay if you don’t want to. Change is possible. This is what PFOX wants teachers to tell the gay kids that come out to them, and/or to their peers. Griggs is sliding that under the radar their, in a cotton candy cloud of PFAUX respect. But in today’s hostile school environment, where the word Gay has itself become a generic put-down among school kids, a kid who comes out, almost certainly already knows how impossible change actually is for them.
And that has consequences.
But leaving aside the fact that a 17 year old study was cited as "recent" and was cited as evidence against the existence of GSA clubs, which didn’t exist at the time of the study, this argument also makes a causal claim that can’t be justified by the study itself (see the full text of the study here).
First of all, they make no distinction at all between correlation and causation. If a higher percentage of those who self-identify as gay or bisexual early attempt suicide compared to those who self-identify later, is that a causal relationship or might both factors be effects of some other cause? Griggs makes no attempt to analyze this, it is enough for her that there is a correlation.
It never occurs to Griggs that those who attempt suicide soon after self-identifying as gay do so because that is when they first become aware that their identity is in such stark conflict with societal expectations. As any gay person can tell you, the initial coming out period is the most difficult because it often leads to serious conflicts with friends and family (and that was even more true in 1991 than it is today). She also ignores all of the other far more important risk factors that are obviously more likely to be causal. The study notes:
In 44% of cases, subjects attributed suicide attempts to "family problems," including conflict with family members and parents’ marital discord, divorce, or alcoholism. One third of attempts were related to personal or interpersonal turmoil regarding homosexuality. Almost one third of subjects made their first suicide attempt in the same year that they identified themselves as bisexual or homosexual. Overall, three fourths of all first attempts temporally followed self-labeling. Other common precipitants were depression (30%), conflict with peers (22%), problems in a romantic relationship (19%), and dysphoria associated with personal substance abuse (15%).
There are far more serious risk factors for suicide in the study, all of which are ignored by Griggs and PFOX. For instance, 61% of those who attempt suicide were sexually abused, while only 29% of those who did not attempt suicide were sexually abused. There’s an obvious causal factor. Those who attempted suicide also reported much higher rates of friendship loss due to being gay, drug use and having been arrested. Again, these are far more rationally viewed as causal factors in suicide than the age at which one self-identifies. Griggs ignores all of this because it doesn’t fit her ideological preferences.
But to call it ‘ideological’ ennobles it. This isn’t ideology, it’s hate. A hate so bottomless it will cheerfully let children kill themselves rather then allow them to have the support they need at that critical moment in their lives. What Griggs is saying there to kids, stripped of its PFAUX respect, is that thinking you are gay will make you kill yourself. That is, seriously, the message they want kids who are just coming into puberty and feeling same sex desire for the first time in their lives to hear, and internalize. These feelings are going to make me kill myself. And when they can’t stop themselves from having those feelings, feelings they’ve never had before, feelings that seem to come out of nowhere whenever an attractive classmate walks by, feelings that they have no control over whatsoever, what do you think is going to happen?
Here’s what: Griggs will cheerfully blame those of us who want gay kids to feel good about themselves when those kids take Griggs message, that thinking you are gay makes you want to kill yourself, to heart and actually do it.
And there is the essential difference between P-FLAG and PFOX. One group supports gay people. The other, ex-gays. And it doesn’t get any more ex then dead.
Paul Cameron’s Real Gift To The Anti-Gay Industrial Complex
Every time someone mindlessly parrots the notion that gay people have shorter lifespans then heterosexuals, the religious right gives a nod of thanks to Paul Cameron. Ever since the Reagan years, Cameron has been chugging out a torrent of bogus research aimed at demonizing gay people in the public mind. Where Falwell, Dobson and Robertson waved the bible at gay people, and social conservatives waved family values, Cameron became a fountainhead, a one-stop shopping center for anti-gay junk science. From his often used claim that gay people have shorter lifespans, to his claim that lesbians are more likely to be involved in car accidents, Cameron gave their cheapshit hatreds a gloss of dispassionate science.
Cameron was eventually thrown out of the American Psychological Association for distorting the work of other legitimate researchers. But to the anti-gay right, which builds museums to creationism and attacks the teaching of science in schools, real science was always the enemy. Cameron is gold coin to them. But in recent years, as more and more of mainstream America learns what a charlatan Cameron is, they’ve had to take more care not to put Cameron’s name in their pamphlets. Some years ago, William Mr. Book Of Virtues Bennett got caught parroting Cameron’s lifespan claim he had to backtrack. First he claimed someone else had said it too, but when it turned out that person had cited Cameron too, Bennett mumbled something about not trusting that figure anymore and went back to his favorite casino. I’ve heard though, that lately Mr. Book Of Virtues has been citing it again.
But in the end, Cameron’s biggest contribution to the Kultur Krieg may well be not his bogus statistics, but his method. Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has uncovered a new scam by the Family Research Council in their fight to repeal California’s same sex marriage law, that has the trademark Cameron technique but apparently was entirely a homegrown effort.
They cite the "Dutch Study" Stanley Kurtz bastardized some years ago for their claim that gay relationships don’t last very long and are never monogamous. Burroway did a wonderful job some time back of debunking this, and all I’ll say about that now is that when you look at the data from a study that excludes monogamous couples, don’t be surprised when you don’t see any monogamy in the data.
But it’s the follow-up claim that’s interesting here. FRC is claiming that same sex couples are inherently more violent, more prone to domestic abuse…
The third point the brochure is built on is this:
Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women
They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.
It is. You should go read Jim’s entire debunking of it to get the whole stinking rotten smell of it. But I’ll give you the executive summary here. Basically, they took the data for individual victims of domestic violence who were in, or had ever been in, same sex relationships and compared that to the data for victims in opposite sex relationships. But much of the violence against people who were in same sex relationships was committed by an opposite sex partner. In the case of the men who were or had been in a same sex relationship, almost half of the incidents were attacks on them by wives, former wives or girlfriends. In the case of the women who had been or were in same sex relationships, as I read the figures, about three out of four incidents were attacks on them by husbands or boyfriends.
Dig it. The FRC took incidents of straight on gay violence, and included them in its total figure for gay domestic violence. In point of fact, if you look at the data for Couples, as opposed to individuals, what you find is that a gay man is statistically safer living with a male partner, then a heterosexual woman is living with a male partner.
This is what passes for traditional values over at the Family Research Council. If there is a devil in Hell below, then he is smiling proudly at the runt at FRC who came up with that one. And Paul Cameron is probably smiling proudly too. He taught them how.
We Didn’t Say “Heterosexual Couples Only” Because That Would Be Obvious
Via Good As You… It’s not that Hollywood can’t come up with any new ideas, it’s that it would rather not pay for the creative talent to come up with them. Thus, the "reality" shows. But on MTV’s pioneering Real World the point really was to have a dispassionate camera eye view on how people interact with each other. Most "reality" made since Real World are really just another kind of game show. And in fact, Real World has itself added some game show elements in recent years.
But with TV audiences getting bored with all the "reality" out there, the Networks are trying to revive some actual game shows. From Good As You I read that they’re now making The Newlywed Game once more. Can you spot the "Heterosexuals Only" sign buried in the game show eligibility rules…?
Eligibility Requirements
The following are the eligibility requirements for contestants ("Contestants") on the television show currently entitled "The Newlywed Game" (the "Program"), which is being produced by Manhouse Productions, Inc. (“Producer”). In order to be selected as a Contestant on the Program, and to be eligible for any prize ("Prize"), you must meet the following eligibility requirements:
A. Employees, officers, directors and agents of Manhouse Productions, Inc., Diplomatic, Embassy Row LLC, Sony Pictures Television Inc., Game Show Network, LLC (“GSN”), Liberty Media Corp. and/or of any of their respective licensees, assigns, parents, affiliated and subsidiary companies and the immediate family (spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son, regardless of where they live) or members of the same households (whether related or not) of such employees, officers, directors and agents are not eligible to be Contestants on the Program. In addition, any person closely acquainted with any person connected with the production or administration of the Program is not eligible, if in the Producer’s sole discretion, the person’s participation could create the appearance of impropriety.
B. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of application.
C. Contestants must be legal residents of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.
D. Each newlywed team of Contestants must be legally married to each other (legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States) and, upon Producer’s request, must be able to provide proof of marriage (i.e. a marriage certificate) that shows that Contestants are legally married to each other. As of the tape date of the Program, Contestants must still be newlyweds (which is defined as the period of two (2) years after the date of Contestants’ original marriage to each other).
E. Contestants may not be candidates for public office and may not become candidates before the broadcast of their appearance on the Program, or until one year from the date of their taping of the Program.
F. Producer reserves the right to change any of the eligibility requirements at any time and is the sole judge of the eligibility criteria.
Here…let me help you with it: "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
It’s a safe bet that clause wasn’t in the old rules. You see…same sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and California, and even if California’s same sex couples are divorced-by-referendum come November, there will still be at least one state in the Union where same sex couples can legally marry. So in order to keep the homos off the set you can’t just say the contestants have to be legally married anymore.
The last game show I ever really enjoyed was the old Concentration. Way back when I was a kid I’d watch that thing raptly whenever I was home that it was on (it was a daytime show). It was a memory game…you had to build a mental image of where all the little prize pairs were inside a grid and at the same time figure out a rebus as it was slowly being revealed. I think part of the appeal to my budding young geek self was also trying to figure out how the mechanical game board worked. That thing just fascinated me. It was the only game show I ever really paid attention to…although these days I’ll watch Jeopardy whenever I happen across it. I glanced at a few episodes of The Newlywed Game in the 1970s and every time I did I quickly became uncomfortable with it.
Something about the idea of watching young couples in love being made to embarrass each other on TV where the entire nation could watch just didn’t appeal to me. And for each couple that won, three others lost. Part of the intended fun for the audience was to watch the loosing couples have fights during the show. It was horrible. Even the Roman Circuses weren’t that gratuitously cruel. I’ve often wondered how many divorces resulted from that show.
So, in a sense, I’m not altogether unhappy that same sex couples are banned from this atrocity. A couple’s love should be nurtured, not humiliated for laughs and ratings. And same sex couples have it hard enough in this country. But on the other hand, here’s how prejudice will keep its claws in our lives to the absolute very end. Year upon year, decade upon decade, inch by inch by painful bitter inch, we have worked to get it’s taint out of our lives. And for every inch it looses, hate adopts, adapts and improves, and keeps working with what it has to work with. Okay…so now you can be legally married….Ha!…but Not In All Fifty States…! Got you There didn’t we!
If same sex marriage was legal all across the Union they’d find some other way to cull out the homos. Perhaps recasting the show as a contest between genders…er…Birth Genders…who incidentally and merely to heighten the excitement of the game play, have to be newly married also. As I said, I’m not all that unhappy that same sex couples are being kept off this atrocity of a game show. But I emphatically object to the name. It is not The Newlywed Game. There are gay newlyweds, and have been even before same sex marriage was legal. Same sex couples have been getting married for ages, whether or not their government or their communities recognized them. Our relationships exist. Our households exist. Our unions exist. We exist. It is not The Newlywed Game if only heterosexual couples are allowed to be contestants. It is The Heterosexual Newlywed Game.
At the same time I’m reading this…I also came across this little news item from The Netherlands, which has had same sex marriage now for years…
The Dutch civil service has developed a new name for "maiden name" so married gay men won’t feel awkward.
"Geboortenaam" translates to "birth name". It will replace maiden name on official forms, radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday.
The Dutch Language Union hopes it will save married gay men from any embarrassment when taking their spouses surname.
Despite its liberal reputation, Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands have been facing a rise in homophobic attacks over the last few years.
The government has committed to millions of Euros to fighting homophobia in the country.
A recent European poll found the Dutch to be the strongest supporters of same-sex marriage in the EU, with 82% in favour
I’m a tad surprised they didn’t already have a term for "birth name" in Dutch. But never mind. Over there they are trying, really trying, to be inclusive of same sex couples. And this was such an easy one. Just say "birth name" on the form instead of "maiden name". That works too, and doesn’t deny anyone, gay or straight, the dignity of taking their spouse’s name if that’s what they want. Meanwhile, over here in the land of the free and the home of the brave it’s "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
Your Stereotypes About California Are Probably Wrong
I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland. But I was born there, and half my family tree is there. So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state. I see it from both within and without. The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland. Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.
One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years. And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California. This, from Box Turtle Bulletin…
We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.
Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.
In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:
“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.
…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death.
Dig it. The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples. Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state. It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America. Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.
There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California. But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander. The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose. The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys. The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton.
It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head. But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate. My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant. During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law. H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun. But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew. California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages. It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world. In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology. There is Hollywood and Disneyland. There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop. The human potential never had it better then in California. It is a place of magic. But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
I HAVE RESIGNED myself to the fact that the abuse of the word "intolerant" is a permanent fixture in this dear country of ours. Intolerant is now almost always (mis)used as a synonym for disagree.
I am "labelled" [sic] as "intolerant" if I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle (or the idea that all roads lead to Rome).
Has a catchy ring to it doesn’t it? Sorta like "I am labeled as antisemite if I disagree with the international Zionist conspiracy." "I am labeled as racist if I disagree with the Negro’s lazy shiftless watermelon eating way of life." "I am labeled sexist if I disagree with feminazis who should just shut the fuck up when a man is talking."
I am labeled as intolerant if I lump homosexual people into one big idiotic stereotype that I can easily feel superior to. I am labeled as intolerant if I’d rather talk about homosexuals as if they were a bunch of empty dancing scarecrows then living breathing human beings who have the same human needs I do. I am labeled as intolerant if all I want to see when I look at teh gay are stereotypes that stroke my pathetic bar stool conceits. I am labeled as intolerant if I just don’t want to see the people for the homosexuals. Woe is me. Woe, woe is me.
Oh…and he goes on in his editorial to cite NARTH junk science as proof that homosexuals can change. And he concludes with a brief but rousing pulpit thumping diatribe about godlessness and evil and atonement. How anyone could think he’s an intolerant asswipe is beyond me.
No Adrian, all roads don’t lead to Rome. Some of them lead straight into the gutter. Yours, for instance.
Well Lookie Here…A Visit From Jackson Memorial Hospital…
First…a little GLBT history…
A gay man dies alone in an unfamiliar hospital while his longtime partner tries fruitlessly to get permission to be by his side. It’s a too-common scenario that documents such as living wills, powers of attorney, and domestic-partnership registration are supposed to prevent. But in the death of Robert Lee "Bobby" Daniel, 34, at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000, none of that mattered, according to a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on February 27. San Franciscan Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., 34, had power of attorney for Daniel, his registered domestic partner, but was barred from his room and from consulting with physicians because Flanigan was not considered "family" by the hospital, charges the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The couple had been driving to meet family in northern Virginia when Daniel became ill. He died without being able to say goodbye to his partner. "I have a huge hole in my heart, and my soul, because I wasn’t allowed to be with Bobby when he needed me most," Flanigan said in a statement.
Hospital officials denied any wrongdoing. "We deliver compassionate care to every patient, with sensitivity to the wishes of our patients and their loved ones," spokesperson Ellen Beth Levitt, told The Baltimore Sun.
Flanigan and Daniel, both residents of San Francisco, signed a legal document giving Flanigan the power to make medical decisions for Daniel in expectation that doctors might not recognize Flanigan. Daniel confided to Flanigan that he did not want to go on life support at the end of his life.
Daniel was transferred to the Shock Trauma Center from the Harford Hospital in Havre de Grace, Md. That night, Flanigan sat in the waiting room for four hours while they worked on Daniel but was never consulted about medical decisions, according to the claim. When Daniel’s sister and mother arrived at the hospital, Flanigan was allowed to see Daniel for the first time.
When Flanigan and the family saw Daniel, he was unconscious with his eyes taped shut, and a breathing tube had been inserted, contrary to Flanigan’s requests, according to the claim.
I did this cartoon about the tragedy back in 2002…
I’d only just started adding the political cartoons to my web site back then, and my drawing skills were stunted from years of neglect, but unlike a lot of the other cartoons I did at that time, this one still holds up I think. Reading the story of Flanigan and Daniel had made me livid, and probably that anger lifted my limited drawing skills up a notch or two. I also blogged about it over and over. Flanigan later found the cartoon while searching the web and I’m happy to say sent me a very heartfelt email thanking me for it.
Later, when an all heterosexual jury excused Maryland Shock Trauma for what they did to Flanigan, I did a follow-up cartoon that was pretty lame and I’ve since removed it from the cartoon site. I guess by that time my anger had turned into a weary contempt. Maryland Shock Trauma had finally found a way to give straight juries an excuse to let hospitals stick a knife in the hearts of same sex couples without having to acknowledge their own bigotries. Oh…we were just too busy to let the Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual…
All of this is to say that if you google the case of Flanigan and Daniel you will likely run across one or more of the pages here on my web site, either in the cartoon pages or the blog pages. Hold that thought for a moment. Because the case of Flanigan and Daniel is not, alas, unique. It’s still happening to same sex couples, who thought, like Flanigan and Daniel did, that their power of attorney documents might actually mean something to gay hating hospital staff…
The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple’s 18 years together.
But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond’s hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an "anti-gay city and state."
Langbehn filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging the Miami hospital with negligence and "anti-gay animus" in refusing to recognize her and the children as Pond’s family, even after a power of attorney was faxed to the hospital within an hour of their arrival.
…
Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.
"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.
…
Jackson officials declined to comment, except to say that the hospital follows state and federal laws on patient privacy that can forbid releasing health information to those outside the patient’s immediate family.
The hospital also may limit visitors if a patient is being treated for a trauma, emergency or serious infection, said Valda Clark Christian, an assistant county attorney representing Jackson.
That last statement there from the ironically named Valda Clark Christian is Jackson Memorial Hospital picking up the knife that Maryland Shock Trauma gave it, and anti-gay hospital staff everywhere. Oh…we were just too busy to let that Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual… Power of Attorney? You homosexuals have no power here…this is an anti-gay city and state…
What Jackson Memorial Hospital is going to do now is play the Maryland Shock Trauma trump card. In the case of Flanigan and Daniel, first they said Flanigan wasn’t family. Then they told him that the power of attorney document had been misplaced. Somehow none of that mattered when Daniel’s Legitimate Family arrived at the hospital because they were let right in and that was when Flanigan was, purely as a matter of coincidence surely, also allowed to see his beloved. When Flanigan sued the hospital finally came up with the excuse that they were just too busy to let Flanigan in. Never mind that they could have still respected his medical directives anyway. They didn’t have to let him into the room to do that. Daniel had a fear of dying with tubes stuck down his throat and that was precisely what the hospital staff did to him. When Flanigan and Daniel’s family were finally allowed to see him, not only were there tubes shoved down his throat, the hospital staff had put Daniel into restraints when he tried to take them out.
That was how Daniel spent his last moments on earth, in the tender care of Maryland Shock Trauma. Because they didn’t give a good goddamn about the faggot in the waiting room and his so-called power of attorney. First they openly told Flanigan that he wasn’t being allowed in because he was "not family". Then they said the power of attorney documents had been misplaced. Then when Flanigan sued they told the jury they were too busy taking care of Daniel to deal with Flanigan too. Probably they were too busy putting the tubes down Daniel’s throat. In any case, the "too busy" excuse allowed the all heterosexual jury to acquit the hospital of any wrong doing. If gay ain’t shit you must acquit…
Jackson’s lawyers surely have their own resources to look up how the case of Flanigan and Daniel went down. But the hospital is covering all its bases apparently. Someone there is doing a little research on the web regarding that case, probably to get a sense of just how the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse card is played. According to my site meter logs, someone at Jackson paid me a little visit the other day…
Nice. Note the search string: "lambda legal flanigan daniels court findings ruling judgement" Too bad you can’t search for your missing sense of human decency on Google. What the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse does is give hospitals the absolute right to disregard anything anyone tells them about patients in their care, whether they’re the "legal" family of the patient or not, whether they are legally married or not, have a power of attorney or a medical directive document. The Maryland Shock Trauma excuse gives hospitals free reign to do to your loved ones as they damn well please, so long as they die of it quickly enough that they can claim they were performing emergency procedures. Nobody’s family rights have to be respected now in any way. But of course everyone understands that it’s only the homosexuals who have no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect.
This is why the fight for same sex marriage is so important. Not that a marriage ring will give bigots any more respect for same sex couples, but that the system will never see our relationships as being equal to those of heterosexuals unless we fight for equality, not some separate but equal civil union status. It’s not about the legal paperwork. Langbehn and Pond had the same legal paperwork that Flanigan and Daniel did, and it conferred nothing. It’s not about the paperwork. It’s about respect. Heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex. Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That’s it. There is nothing more to it then that. If that’s all it takes to make care givers treat loving and devoted couples with less compassion then they’d grant to laboratory rats then the moral problem here isn’t with us. They were a lesbian couple. If the word ‘lesbian’ negates the word ‘couple’ for you then You are the one with the moral problem not Langbehn and Pond. Langbehn, in her struggle to care for her beloved, had more integrity and virtue then any of the runts at Jackson Memorial, who spit on their family while Pond was dying. That’s what this is about. We are not fighting over a word. We are not fighting for a piece of paper. We are fighting for the human status. For the righteousness of love.
A hospital can be a place of hope against all the odds. It can be a place where the human heart takes its ultimate stand against the finality of death. We all die. That we still fight anyway, still love anyway, is either to our glory or just a pathetic conceit. A hospital can be a monument to our capacity to love one another, that even the taint of death cannot take from within us. Or it can be a place of despair, of the end of all things, even love. Yes, sometimes, in the heat of battle, hospital staff have to be left alone to do their jobs. But why even bother, if not for love?
When Your Own Cheapshit Prejudices Start Laughing At You…
So as it turns out, One News Now, the so-called Christian News Service which is actually an American Family Association front group, gets newsfeeds from various real news wire services for its "service" which it then feeds back out to its subscribers in a Family Friendly sorta way. As it turns out, that means filtering the copy it gets from all those secular news sources to make the text more Family Friendly.
Their filtering software is about as doggedly single-minded about fighting The Gay Agenda as they are it seems. Even if it means also fighting the Tyson Gay Agenda…
This is the problem with auto replace. Here’s the article fetched from Google Cache. Go grab yourself a nice cold drink, sit a spell and have yourself a thoroughly enjoyable read…noting how the OneNewsNow auto-replace got all the instances of "Gay", but missed "Gay’s"…
Homosexual breaks Greene’s US record in 100 at trials
Homosexual broke Maurice Greene’s American mark in the 100 meters by running 9.77 seconds in his quarterfinal at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.
"It tells me I’m in pretty good shape," Homosexual said. "We’ve got two more rounds left."
He tied the fourth-fastest time in the history of the event, despite clearly easing up a tad over his final few strides. Still, that was nothing compared what he did in his opening heat earlier in the day, when Homosexual came awfully close to a monumental blunder.
After building a big lead, the reigning world champion eased up a lot with about 30 meters left-so much that the rest of the field began to catch him. Homosexual was forced to accelerate again and he lunged across the finish line in fourth place, good enough to advance.
"The first round I was scared. I almost started crying. I didn’t know if I made it," Homosexual said after bettering the record Greene set in 1999. "This round I felt good."
As well he should. The performance had to be a big boost of confidence for Gay, who was a distant second-a spectator, really-in New York on May 31, when Jamaica’s Usain Bolt broke the world record by clocking 9.72.
Gay’s had to answer plenty of questions about how much of a challenge he’ll present at the Beijing Olympics to Bolt and another Jamaican, previous world record-holder Asafa Powell.
Could Homosexual challenge Bolt’s mark in Sunday’s semifinal or final?
"Anything’s possible," said Wallace Spearmon, who sneaked into the semifinals by running 10.07. "Tyson’s fast."
So is the track at Hayward Field, which already has produced two U.S. records in running events and is serving up the sort of dry, hot weather-the temperature hit 95 degrees Saturday-conducive to quick sprinting.
The runner-up in Gay’s quarterfinal was Jeffery Demps of Okahumpka, Fla., who got out of the blocks a bit ahead of the favorite and wound up setting a national high school record at 10.01. In other words, this was a very fast race.
Between the heats, Homosexual blamed his mistake in his opener on misjudging the lines on the track. It was hardly a veteran move from a man who has won the past two U.S. titles in the dash. He also completed a 100-200 double at the 2007 world championships.
When Homosexual spoke to his coach, Jon Drummond, before the quarterfinal, there was something of a talking-to.
"He told me champions don’t do that," Homosexual said, "and I had to make up for it."
Indeed, had he not recovered, an exit by Homosexual in the first round of qualifying would have been a major surprise at this 10-day meet to determine the American roster for the Beijing Games. His time of 10.14 seconds tied for the 11th-fastest among the 30 starters in the 100. That stuck him in lane 2 for his quarterfinal, a less-than-ideal position.
But it didn’t matter, and after Homosexual crossed the finish line, well ahead of everyone else, he looked up at the scoreboard briefly. Then the trailing runners approached to offer pats on the back and palm slaps.
Walter Dix, the 2007 NCAA champion from Florida State, Xavier Carter and John Capel were among others advancing to the 100 semifinals.
In the women’s 100 semifinals Saturday, Torri Edwards used a perfectly timed start and down-the-stretch speed to win her heat in 10.78 seconds-the fastest legal 100 time in the world this year, by a whopping 10th of a second.
That time also makes Edwards, the 2003 world champion, the eighth-fastest woman in history. She had no desire to discuss that showing, however, with the event final coming later Saturday.
"Finals, please," she said to reporters, and kept walking.
Saturday’s schedule at Hayward Field also included the conclusion of the heptathlon and the men’s shot put final.
Some Google search screen shots from Right Wing Watch showing how One News Now has been doing this to poor Tyson for quite some time now and nobody there seems to have noticed. Certainly none of their readers seem to have. You have to figure there aren’t all that many sports fans in the batshit crazy pews.
This is instructive, in a kind-of Road Runner verses Coyote sense. Chuck Jones once said that his Coyote fit the classic definition of a zealot as being someone who doubles their effort after they’ve forgotten what their original goal was. If the anti-gay fanatics over at OneNewsNow were just a tad little less fanatical, they’d have thought their brilliant plan to automatically replace "gay" with "homosexual" through a little more carefully. But we’re the bell to their Pavlov’s dog and they couldn’t even think to think. They just jerked their knees, and out came one headline after another, about how Tyson Homosexual set a record at the 100 yard dash.
"It tells me I’m in pretty good shape," Homosexual said. "We’ve got two more rounds left."
Hate destroys you from within and it laughs at you while it’s doing it.
Heller. Yes. I know this bothers some of my friends but I completely agree with yesterday’s supreme court decision regarding D.C.’s gun ban. But this kind of rhetoric, from McCain’s campaign, really bothers me…
Today’s decision is a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom in the United States…
Blah…blah…blah… Here’s the part I mean…
Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today. Today’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans. Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right – sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.
But…see…this is what bothers me…this elevating of guns to the status of religious objects. They aren’t. If there is any fundamental right here at all it’s the right to self preservation, and even that isn’t sacred or else you’d have to condemn soldiers, policemen, firemen, and anyone and everyone who ever sacrificed their own lives for others. The sacred thing here, if anything, is life itself. And even that isn’t always a black and white thing.
I know…I know… McCain is just pushing buttons. But it’s this kind of thing that has dragged the conversation about morality in this country down into the gutter. It cheapens both the concept of the sacred, and the thing you are trying to superficially attach it to. Guns aren’t sacred objects. They’re useful tools and the government has no business banning them outright, not even for the simple reason that people have a right to defend themselves, but more specifically because while government may be our protector in many ways, it is not our nanny and we are not its children.
It’s entirely proper and reasonable for government to take a roll in keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of anyone likely to commit crimes of violence. It’s completely reasonable for government to regulate the kinds of firearms people can own, and how and when they can bear them in public. That’s different from taking the position that no individual citizen can own a gun period, because then you’re saying that the people have no right to self defense. That completely changes the relationship between citizens and their government, in just the same way that censorship and morality laws do. And let’s face it…outright gun bans aren’t public safety laws, they’re morality laws.
Which…let it be said…all the brave second amendment warriors out there in the NRA and other gun groups really don’t give a crap about, unless it involves their Sacred Guns. On the SLOG Blog the other day in a thread about Heller, a commenter pointedly pointed out that Bush has ripped up habeas corpus and the gun groups kept silent. He went on a wiretapping rampage and the gun groups kept silent. And don’t get me started on the fact that so many second amendment warriors are raving homophobic bigots who hated to see the sodomy laws overturned and who are probably campaigning right now to see same sex marriage banned everywhere. All their fine and noble rhetoric about freedom and liberty and patriotism is just so much bullshit.
When you get right down to it, the second amendment warriors have been responsible for more erosion of our civil liberties and more damage to our constitution then anything the Brady Campaign could ever have done. So to all the cheering second amendment warriors out there right now I would just like to say Shut Your Fucking Pie-Hole! Please. If Scalia had written instead that gun bans are a legitimate expression of the moral values of the voters in a community, just what the fuck would you have said to that? That majorities don’t have the right to impose their moral values on everyone else? Especially when their doing that puts other people’s families at risk? Please. Just…shut up.
What is truth? Can you spot the real from the nicely packaged fake? Could you walk into a shop in some quaint little village in some far-away land, and know whether the friendly man behind the counter is offering to sell you an authentic Rolex or just trying to pass off a slick looking facsimile that won’t keep time worth a damn to a naive tourist? Just how good a judge are you of Authenticity anyway?
Calling him "just plain wrong," Bishop William Murphy has blasted Gov. David A. Paterson for ordering state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.
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Murphy wrote, "I fail to understand how" a homosexual union "can be called marriage. … No matter how much some may wish to apply the term ‘marriage,’ it does not fit because it fails the test of truth and authenticity."
Authentic:
In response, diocesan spokesman Sean Dolan said Murphy "is not imposing his will. He is exercising his responsibility as the shepherd of this diocese to teach the faith.
"That said," he added, "the message should not be misconstrued as an attack on the human dignity of homosexual people. The church teaches that we must treat homosexuals with dignity and love, as we would all God’s children."
Their love is fake. But ours is real. Easy payments too.
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