Elections Must Be Coming Up…I See The Republicans Are Dusting Off Their Gay Menace Fliers
Via Pam’s House Blend… What does a vulnerable republican politician do when a gay challenger threatens to unseat him…? Why…make him look like he’s a predatory homosexual child molester of course…
In the neighboring state to the north, the District 39 race in Virginia is getting ugly, thanks to Republican State Senator James J. "Jay" O’Brien Jr. In a desperate bid to pander to the wingnut vote, he decided that sending out a flyer that says, among other things, that his Democratic opponent
"George Barker wants to take time away from core academic subjects like math, science, and reading to teach children to accept the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lifestyle (GLBT)."
It’s no surprise that this flyer (PDF) was paid for by the Republican Party of Virginia.
What would have surprised me is if the republicans hadn’t stooped to it. This is the party that simply cannot win elections without the bigot vote.
It’s clear that the right wing is ratcheting up the homo-hate as Barker has received the endorsement of the Washington Post.
Republican Sen. James J. "Jay" O’Brien Jr. is an affable incumbent, but his scant command of policy and legislative issues has failed to impress. His Democratic rival, George L. Barker, a health-care planner, would make a far more able, detail-oriented and effective senator in this district straddling the Fairfax-Prince William line.
Barker also has strong support from educators (I’m sure O’Brien feels they are part of the Homosexual Agenda anyway).
More from the heinous mailer — he certainly telegraphs his priorities:
George Barker went on to say that he would vote for legislation that would teach Virginia students about the "GLBT" lifestyle during school hours — regardless of their family’s own beliefs. Barker also said he would "guarantee" his support for "GLBT" clubs in public schools.
…George Barker worked very hard in terms of opposing the marriage amendment, and be strongly in favor of gay rights, be [sic] he shouldn’t impose his values on elementary school children.
A question for O’Brien – I suppose that kids in your state don’t need to know about tolerance and families that are different, you know — like that of little Samuel Cheney, a resident of Virginia and son of loyal Republican Mary Cheney.
Here’s what the republican party is sending to voters in Virginia, to make sure they get the message that the homo running against their boy wants to molest their children…
They’re not calling the gay candidate a child molester outright, but look at the imagery in that flier and tell me that they’re not fear mongering a gay man and child sexual abuse there, right there, with that close up image of the back of that small boy and that shirt collar pulled down the back of his neck, right up in the reader’s face.
It’s despicable. But that’s how republicans win elections these days. From the gutter. Problem is, that’s also how they govern. The party that thinks the only way it can win elections is fear mongering, also seems to think it can eavesdrop on Americans at will, without all that rule of law stuff getting in the way. The party that thinks the only way it can win elections is to appeal to the lowest prejudices within us, also seems to think that it can govern just fine thank-you, in complete secrecy and without any accountability. The party that thinks the only way it can win elections is to call gay men child molesters, seems to think George Bush unilaterally drag the country into whatever war he likes, and shovel your kids into it. You get the government you vote for. You vote your fears, you get a government that makes sure you have lots to be afraid of.
“This is a perverse distraction from the issue at hand,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, D-Nev. “Instead of debating the merits of providing health care to children, some in GOP leadership and their right-wing friends would rather attack a 12-year-old boy and his sister who were in a horrific car accident.”
Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy’s family. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Manley’s charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts. (emphasis mine)
In my experience, if you are not participating in something, you deny it outright to kill the story.
Mitch McConnell is the Republican Minority Leader in the Senate and sponsor of the Orwellian-named “Families First” legislation which would actually decrease the number of kids covered for benefits. Classy. Is someone in his office coordinating a dirty tricks PR advance against a 12 year old child? Have they been helping the story along, doing oppo on this child and his family and feeding it out through the wurlitzer to their corporate media buddies so their hands appear publicly clean while the wingnuts launder their slime tactics for them? As Digby asks, has the Senate Republican Minority leaders office frequently been used as a laundering point of contact for wayward freepers and random wingnuttery at large? Yes or no.
You often wonder sometimes, where the winger blogs are getting their information from.
Anyway, let’s see how the NYTimes does in fielding their latest gibberish.
when Democrats enlisted 12-year-old Graeme Frost, who along with a younger sister relied on the program for treatment of severe brain injuries suffered in a car crash, to give the response to Mr. Bush’s weekly radio address on Sept. 29, Republican opponents quickly accused them of exploiting the boy to score political points.
Then, they wasted little time in going after him to score their own.
In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats’ plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family’s income and assets — even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite — and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits.
OK. So they accused the kid’s family of fraud, essentially. How does the NYTimes do in fact-checking the asses of the right blogosphere?
The critics accused Graeme’s father, Halsey, a self-employed woodworker, of choosing not to provide insurance for his family of six, even though he owned his own business. They pointed out that Graeme attends an expensive private school. And they asserted that the family’s home had undergone extensive remodeling, and that its market value could exceed $400,000.
One critic, in an e-mail message to Graeme’s mother, Bonnie, warned: “Lie down with dogs, and expect to get fleas.” As it turns out, the Frosts say, Graeme attends the private school on scholarship. The business that the critics said Mr. Frost owned was dissolved in 1999. The family’s home, in the modest Butchers Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, was bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000, according to public records. And, for the record, the Frosts say, their kitchen counters are concrete.
Certainly the Frosts are not destitute. They also own a commercial property, valued at about $160,000, that provides rental income. Mr. Frost works intermittently in woodworking and as a welder, while Mrs. Frost has a part-time job at a firm that provides services to publishers of medical journals. Her job does not provide health coverage.
Under the Maryland child health program, a family of six must earn less than $55,220 a year for children to qualify. The program does not require applicants to list their assets, which do not affect eligibility.
In a telephone interview, the Frosts said they had recently been rejected by three private insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions. “We stood up in the first place because S-chip really helped our family and we wanted to help other families,” Mrs. Frost said.
That’s a pretty thorough refutation of every single accusation the wingnuts could come up with against the family. So, good. I myself would add that there never really was any reason to take their frenzied posts seriously in the first place: the crap about the private school, and their real estate assets supposedly affecting how much they could pay for health insurance, were obviously absurd from the start. There never was any need to "investigate" these claims: common sense should have said, "irrelevant."
In other words, if, as the NYT has it,
But what on the surface appears to be yet another partisan feud, all the nastier because a child is at the center of it, actually cuts to the most substantive debate around S-chip. Democrats say it is crucially needed to help the working poor — Medicaid already helps the impoverished — but many Republicans say it now helps too many people with the means to help themselves.
… It’s pretty clear that yes, the Frosts are a good example of the kind of people the program would help, and it’s also pretty clear that the reason the wingnuts went after them and their kitchen counters (!) was that their example is in fact a very persuasive one.
Most Americans know perfectly damn well just how messed up our heathcare system is, and they want relief from the constant stress this mess imposes upon them, and they’d really think it is kind of neat that you might not have to lose your home because your kids get in a serious car wreck. What are their "arguments," anyway? That it’s too costly? When money is shamelessly being flushed away by this administration on all sorts of harebrained schemes, most notably the wildly unpopular Iraq debacle, how’s that one going to fly? That it could lead to eeek socialism booga booga? When people might think to themselves, "is this constant worry over healthcare, which causes me to make constant sacrifices and affects even so basic a question as what do I want to do with my life and what kind of a family do I want to have, actually what American liberty is supposed to be all about? Constant fear?"
You can see why they decided to fling slime on the Frosts’ kitchen counters instead.
Reading the article, this all seems to me pretty clear, though naturally I’d like it spelled out more firmly.
But the real news in the article is this:
Republicans on Capitol Hill, who were gearing up to use Graeme as evidence that Democrats have overexpanded the health program to include families wealthy enough to afford private insurance, have backed off.
An aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release criticizing the Frosts.
And that is good news. If the GOP party leaders are backing off, then the media very likely won’t feel the need to plaster the Frosts all over the damn place over essentially nothing. And that is a Good Thing.
The progressive blogs started fighting back at once on this, and it looks like it made a difference. Now the noise from the right wing sewer isn’t going unchallenged by the time it percolates up to the corporate news rooms. This is good. This is very good. The radical right has spent decades building this noise machine. But it’s starting to look like other voices are finally, Finally, making themselves heard in the echo chamber.
But there’s more to this story then the simple fact that the right is lying about the Frosts. This little smear campaign illustrates perfectly how the radical right has been looking America in the eye and lying about itself, about its purpose, its values, its motives, for decades. Juan Cole (soon to be an ex-republican) sums it all up pretty well here…
I was talking to Tim via AOL IM, and I decided it was probably worthwhile to bring this up for everyone. One of the things that is so surprising (for me, at least) about the whole Graeme Frost episode is that rather than make their case against this program with their vicious assault against this family, they Malkin/Freeper/Limbaugh brigade are doing just the opposite. Rather than expose this family as a bunch of frauds and lazy slackers and welfare queens, they are making the family’s case.
If you look through this family’s dossier, it appears they are doing everything Republicans say they should be doing- hell, their story is almost what you would consider a checklist for good, red-blooded American Republican voters: they own their own business, they pay their taxes, they are still in a committed relationship and are raising their kids, they eschewed public education and are doing what they have to do to get them into Private schools, they are part of the American dream of home ownership that Republicans have been pointing to in the past two administrations as proof of the health of the economy, and so on.
In short, they are a white, lower-middle-class, committed family, who is doing EVERYTHING the GOP Kultur Kops would have you believe people should be doing. They aren’t gay. They aren’t divorced. They didn’t abort their children. They aren’t drug addicts or welfare queens. They are property owners, entrepeneurs, taxpayers, and hard-working Americans. I bet nine times out of ten in past elections, if you handed this resume to a pollster, they would think you were discussing the prototypical Republican voter. Hell, the only thing missing from this equation is membership to a church and an irrational fear of Muslims and you HAVE the prototypical Bush voter.
They are, however, not without fault. They are unable to afford insurance through normal means (and now that they have pre-existing conditions, probably couldn’t get traditional insurance anyway), and managed to get several of their family members injured in a traumatic accident. And, it appears, those are the big blind spots for compassionate conservatism. That, and the real big sin- allowing themselves to advocate for a policy that the Decider was going to veto. Here it is, so you can see their grievous sin that requires they be destroyed:
“Hi, my name is Graeme Frost. I’m 12 years old and I live in Baltimore, Maryland. Most kids my age probably haven’t heard of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.
“CHIP is a law the government made to help families like mine afford healthcare for their kids. Three years ago, my family was in a really bad car accident. My younger sister Gemma and I were both hurt. I was in a coma for a week and couldn’t eat or stand up or even talk at first. My sister was even worse. I was in the hospital for five-and-a-half months and I needed a big surgery. For a long time after that, I had to go to physical therapy after school to get stronger. But even though I was hurt badly, I was really lucky. My sister and I both were.
“My parents work really hard and always make sure my sister and I have everything we need, but the hospital bills were huge. We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program.
“But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. Their parents might have to sell their cars or their houses, or they might not be able to pay for hospital bills at all.
“Now I’m back to school. One of my vocal chords is paralyzed so I don’t talk the same way I used to. And I can’t walk or run as fast as I did. The doctors say I can’t play football any more, but I might still be able to be a coach. I’m just happy to be back with my friends.
“I don’t know why President Bush wants to stop kids who really need help from getting CHIP. All I know is I have some really good doctors. They took great care of me when I was sick, and I’m glad I could see them because of the Children’s Health Program.
“I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me. This is Graeme Frost, and this has been the Weekly Democratic Radio address. Thanks for listening.”
Pretty strong stuff. I can see why this rabid dog needs to be put down with the full force of the wingnutosphere. And it just goes downhill from there. We learn from our intrepid “reporters” on the right that $45,000 is now rich, which is news to me and everyone else who remember mocking Democrats when they tried to claim $100k combined income was considered rich. You righties do remember that, don’t you?
I think the property was valued at around $225,000. I dunno, I have no sympathy for them. Looks like they have more than enough money for luxuries they won’t sacrifice, yet they expect everyone else to sacrifice for them. My family had to sell our house because we couldn’t afford to keep it, have one used minivan and a clunker my husband uses to get back and forth to work, and until this past weekend we didn’t have a television because it was a luxury we couldn’t justify spending on. No private schools for my 3 kids- can’t even afford daycare. Yet we manage to afford health insurance, keep our rental home comfy, and have food on the table. I’m content with what I have and certainly don’t want anyone else paying for what I can afford, after cutting out the luxuries.
15 years ago, when my then-wife and I discovered we were going to have a child – I had a job with no health insurance.
I changed jobs – period. I was stupid and willing to go without insurance for myself – but with my child there was no way I was going to risk it.
These parents have the same opportunity.
They chose not to find jobs that offered health insurance – and they chose to spend their money elsewhere.
Then, when tragedy strikes, they’re held up as models of “what’s wrong with this country”.
Sorry – but they should be held up as models of “What’s wrong with many Americans”.
My bad- they don’t have any advice other than “SUCKS TO BE YOU” or “SELL YOUR HOUSE” or “GET ANOTHER JOB.” Because, as we all know, the hallmark of responsibility is making your children homeless so they can maybe get healthcare. Nobody even pointed to the numerous charities that we conservatives are supposed to expect to fill the gap so the government doesn’t have to pay for things. Instead, it was taunts, catcalls, contempt, and jealousy (because these folks are in SUCH an enviable situation).
I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become. Even if you don’t like the S-Chip expansion, it is hard to deny what Republicans are- a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows so they can make fun of their misfortune.
I’m registering Independent tomorrow.
For the record, I was raised in a family of Rockefeller republicans. I registered republican at age 18, as soon as 18 year olds were given the vote back in the early 70s. I switched to democrat in the 1990s, because I got tired of gay folks like myself being used as baseball bats against democrats. I figured if the party regarded me as the ultimate weapon against democrats, I might as well be one. Mr. Cole…your gay and lesbian neighbors have known what a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows, the republican grassroots are for a long, long time now. Reagan delivered them into power. Bush taught them that to the victor belong the spoils.
Nonetheless, progressive types persist in deluding themselves that there are vast masses of the "needy" out there that only the government can rescue. An editorial in Canada’s biggest-selling newspaper today states:
A total of 905,000 people visited food banks across the Greater Toronto Area in the past year.
The population of Toronto is about two-and-a-half million. Is the Star suggesting one in three citizens of one of the wealthiest municipalities on earth depends on "food banks"? Or is it the same one thousand people getting three square meals a day there? Or ten thousand people swinging by a couple of times a week? And, in that case, how many of them actually "depend" on food banks? Only the Star knows. But the idea that 905,000 Torontonians need food aid is innumerate bunk.
(emphasis added)
Now, I don’t know anything about the Star article in question, but anyone who’s not a wingnut engaged in "fact-checking" can plainly see that the "Greater Toronto Area" would have a larger population than "Toronto." Since wingnut research is done entirely with The Google, let’s consult the oracle:
The Greater Toronto Area (widely abbreviated as the GTA) is the most populous metropolitan area in Canada. The GTA is a provincial planning area with a population of 5,555,912 at the 2006 Canadian Census.[1]
5.6 million vs 2.5 million. OK, the actual figure is only 220% higher than Steyn’s.
These little slights-of-hand aren’t clumsy or accidental.
Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game.
So says Mark Steyn of the National Review. Firedoglake has more…
Why are all these high traffic wingnut blogs (and far right Fox News) attacking this 12 year old boy and his family? This may well be the lamest excuse I have ever heard in my life for attacking two children who were severely injured in a car accident and their parents who couldn’t afford health insurance for them. I mean honestly, this propaganda fishing expedition disguised as “questions” doesn’t pass the smell test, and Malkin and her cronies know it:
Asking questions and subjecting political anecdotes to scrutiny are what journalists should be doing.
First of all, you weren’t scrutinizing, you were harassing the family at their place of business and their home, and then you kept on harassing them and egged your readers to do the same. Your gin up a phony distraction from your bad press because ”the GOP doesn’t care about poor children“ conservative bloggers and pundits decided that the ends justifies the means in cleaning up after George Bush’s latest mess — even if it meant sacrificing the daily lives of a couple of injured children in the fray. Secondly, you weren’t even close to following the code of ethics that professional journalists require in this situation to “minimize harm,” so you can call yourself the ethically-challenged political hacks that you are and be done with it.
None of you political hatchet cronies give a rat’s ass about minimizing harm for these children, one of whom suffered a severe brain injury in the car accident and can’t possibly fight back against this crass, thoughtless tactic. And on top of that, you are liars.
Which really says it all about how much they believe themselves in their own ideology. A political movement that claims to have access to certain truths about morality and governance that so-called "leftists" and "socialists" are trying to suppress has to resort to lies to get it’s point across? So where’s all this Truth you guys claim you have over progressives? No. No. They lie, starting with their declared moral and political values, because if they told the truth, that all they really believe in is Might Makes Right, and the absolute rule of the rich and powerful, they’d never get anywhere. They’re scum. Or as Digby says…
This is so loathesome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance — and sure as hell couldn’t get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.
They went after Michael J. Fox. They went after a wounded Iraq war veteran. Now they are going after handicapped kids. There is obviously no limit to how low these people will go.
Then Jesus Said, “Hey Everyone…Let’s All Sit On This Side Of The Table…”
Seeing yet another outraged headline from some right wing crank site, about the so-called anti-Christianism of the annual Folsom Street Fair, coming across my Google News Digest, finally made my gorge rise enough that I started looking through Google images for other parodies of da Vinci’s Last Supper to post here. I’d come close to doing it the other day when I saw Andrew Sullivan bloviating about the Ad being a provocation. You can always tell that Sullivan’s taken his stupid pills, when he starts channeling the likes of William Donohue. I was scanning Google for other examples of anti-Christian blasphemy, like this one of Christ as a medical marijuana advocate, and the truly bizarre painting titled Frida Kahlo’s Last Supper (I have No idea…), but I soon found that Dan Savage had beaten me to it. Though he Did miss this little collection of Last Supper Cartoons.
Allow me to gratuitously join in the…provocation. Here’s the image, from the Folsom Street Fair program that’s giving the kook pews vapors…
"The bread and wine representing Christ’s broken body and lifegiving blood are replaced with sadomasochistic sex toys in this twisted version of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper," says Concerned Women For America. "’Gay’ activists disingenuously call Christians ‘haters’ and ‘homophobes’ for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse". Kiss my ass. Listening to CWA yap, yap, yap about people not having respect for Christianity is like listening to Al Capone giving advice on fighting crime. I’m no fan of the S&M subculture by any means. My libido doesn’t go there, I’m not into it, I don’t grok it at all, it completely grosses me out. But S&M is by no stretch particular to gay folk, as any casual stroll through the world of heterosexual sex fantasies will quickly show you, and I’ll endure lectures on hate from a lot of people, but not from Concerned Women For America. Hate…did you say? Hate? Let me hear CWA denounce Paul Cameron’s The Medical Consequences Of What Homosexuals Do and I might consider listening to them talk about hate.
It’s a symptom of how the conversation about religion and spirituality has degenerated here in America, that people, even normally sane people, are treating a 15th Century wall painting (it isn’t actually a fresco) as though it’s a page right out of the bible. Iconic it may well be, but that speaks to the skill of the painter, one of the true masters of the art form. It’s Leonardo’s version, not Matthew’s, not Mark’s, not Luke’s, not King James’, not Cyrus Scofield’s. And it’s not a particularly realistic representation of the event either (Hey everyone…let’s all sit on This side of the table…). As I’m told some of the figures in the painting are supposedly representations of politicians who lived during Leonardo’s time, the painting may itself have elements of parody in it. The fact is that this Folsom Street Fair graphic is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of parodies of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous work that have been created over the years. If anyone has a right to be offended here, it’s Leonardo’s ghost.
And…you have to laugh sometimes…Leonardo, if he wasn’t gay himself, certainly sets you wondering about it. Charged (and acquitted) of sodomy as a young man, he never married, and once said that "the act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions". And what did he consider a pretty face? Take a look at the figure of John in The Last Supper. It’s probably his pupil Salai, whom Leonardo fondly and often painted. Another pupil, Melzi, the 15 year old son of a Lombard aristocrat, became his life companion, traveling with the painter and Salai (who was said to have been greatly jealous of the younger student at first), and remaining with the painter until his death. If Leonardo was alive today, Matt Barber would be bellyaching that The Last Supper, with its androgynous John practically swooning at Jesus’ side, was a hate filled anti-Christian parody of…er…The Last Supper.
Now, the sentiment in these works strikes me as a profoundly beautiful one. If I’d been allowed to see more imagery like this in church as a young gay man myself, I might still be calling myself a Baptist today. But again, it just strikes me as funny that the kook pews are whipping themselves into a sanctimonious lather about the sacredness to them of a genre of religious art, that itself has a rich history of homosexual overtones. Have any of these jackasses looked, really looked, at some of these Last Supper paintings?
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — The Senate approved a resolution on Thursday denouncing the liberal antiwar group MoveOn.org over an advertisement that questioned the credibility of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.
MoveOn.org, with 3.2 million members, has become a powerful force in Democratic politics and the advertisement it paid for, which appeared in The New York Times, has come under sharp attack from Congressional Republicans and others as unpatriotic and impugning the integrity of General Petraeus.
Damn those dastardly democrats! Impugning the integrity of a war veteran! Is there no low they won’t sink too!!!
Like…oh…this for instance…?
At a White House news conference, President Bush called the advertisement disgusting and said it was an attack not only on General Petraeus but also on the entire American military.
I got your disgusting right here Junior…
You want a civil debate on the issues? Fuck Off! pls? kthxbye…
Ex-Gay Watch follows up on a previous post that…er…Questions PFOX…
As a follow-up to our previous post on this matter, we have gathered more information in our investigation of claims made by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) here.
Yesterday, we spoke with Jackie Abrams, Vice Chair of the Arlington County Fair. According to Abrams, no physical altercation occurred, police were never called and no one was ejected from the fairgrounds – she was emphatic and certain. “I was in radio contact with the other board members during the Fair, and definitely would have known if the police had been summoned. It did not happen [her emphasis],” said Abrams. She added that her calls to PFOX, and specifically to PFOX president Regina Griggs, had gone unanswered.
They got it out there…why on earth would they want to help anyone prove that it was bullshit? The faithful now have something to bark about…that some wicked militant homosexual activist had attacked their peaceful respectful effort to educate people about the truth of homosexuality…and just you never mind that it never actually happened. Since when does an organization that was born on lies, built on a bedrock of lies, and does nothing but lie through its teeth about homosexuals and homosexuality constantly, meticulously, relentlessly, suddenly stop lying?
???
Of course they lie. Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the pope Catholic? Does PFOX lie? Yes…it’s good, it’s necessary, to expose their lies whenever, wherever they pop up. But on the other hand if by now it’s surprising you that someone from PFOX would make such brazenly false accusations about something involving homosexuals, then I guess it must also be a constant surprise to you that the sky is blue and water is wet.
Meanwhile…via Ex-Gay Watch, Truth Wins Out has some food for thought for all you parents out there, thinking about sending your gay kids off to ex-gay camp…
Truth Wins Out is reporting that Chris Austin, a longtime ex-gay counselor from Irving, Texas, was convicted today of sexually assaulting a client. Austin, a previous speaker for both Evergreen International and the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), has been accused of sexual assault on a client before. In 2001, Mark Hufford made similar accusations:
Hufford accused Austin of engaging in improper sexual behavior that included “oral copulation and fondling” during counseling sessions that spanned more than a year. The psychologist, who also teaches in the church’s Sunday School, had convinced Hufford to participate in “touch therapy.” The therapy gradually progressed to nude sessions and physical intimacy, he said.
I’m assuming the victims in both cases were legally adults, but it’s worth bearing in mind that outfits such as Evergreen and Exodus and Love In Action all claim to be ministries so they don’t have to submit to the licensing and oversight regulations that real hospitals and doctors must. Literally Anyone can claim to be a professional in the treatment of Same Sex Attraction Disorder. It’s like being a palm reader, only you get to make your customers tell you their sexual fantasies and participate in touch therapy…
If Only You Didn’t Hate Us So Much…If Only You Could Just Not Hate Us Quite So Very Much…
Well you had to know this was coming. ABC News, the network that whitewashed the murder of Matthew Shepard, smearing a murdered gay kid as a meth addict who probably had sex with at least one of his killers, ABC News now tells us that the problem with Larry Craig isn’t so much that he was cruising for sex in toilets all the while promoting himself as a Family Values man, but that he was gay…and That’s What Gays Do…
Dig the headlines here. It’s the 1950s all over again as far as how ABC views the gay community. We’re all sex crazed perverts sulking around public toilets…
Public places like men’s restrooms, in airports and train stations, truck stops, university libraries and parks, have long been places where gay and bisexual men, particularly those in the closet, congregate in order to meet for anonymous sex.
Over time, people familiar with cruising told ABCNEWS.com, gay men began using a codified system of signals to indicate to others that they were interested in sex. In an effort to curb lewd acts in public — or as some gays argue, in an effort to persecute gay men — undercover police began sting operations in places known for sex soliciting and employed the same codes.
You have to read to the very end of the article before you get to this, sorta-kinda acknowledgment that this is a behavior characteristic more of the closet, then of gay people as a whole…
With many other options available for gay men to meet each other, Gershen Kaufman, a professor emeritus of psychology at Michigan State University and author of the book "Coming Out of Shame," said public cruising is practiced mainly by deeply closeted men.
"Cruisers are not sex offenders. They are deeply, deeply closeted. There is a lot of self-hatred and shame and they can’t allow themselves to come to terms with their sexuality.
The fact is that anonymous cruising areas are an artifact of the persecution gay people faced daily before Stonewall, when gay bars were routinely raided by the police, their customers rounded up like cattle and herded into paddy wagons, their names and addresses printed in the newspapers the following day. Back in those days you could loose your job, the roof over your head, be expelled from college or dismissed from a jobs program, be denied or have a professional license revoked, and be put on a sex offenders registry and be required to report any change of residence to the police…simply for being gay. This is why back then, many gay people gravitated to places where they could have sex anonymously: because being identified as a homosexual could have devastating consequences. Anonymous sex was seen as a safe outlet.
Back in the 50s, heterosexual sexuality had to conform to the nuclear family ideal, and gay sexuality was forced by fear and prejudice into a pattern of brief barren encounters. When the sexual revolution came along, heterosexuals broke free of the stifling conformity of the 50s, and felt free to explore their sexuality and find their own places of sexual joy and fulfillment on their own terms. I think a lot of gay people, seeing heterosexuals suddenly discovering the joys of sex for its own sake, mistook the culture of anonymous sex they’d been forced into for generations for a kind of liberation too. Well look at us…we were sexual pioneers all along and we didn’t even know it… No…we were outcasts, driven into the gutter by prejudice and hate.
While it may have seemed superficially back in the brutal 1950s that gays were having sex for its own sake, the fact was that we were a people whose sexuality was being brutally stifled. Gay people had sex in back alleys and parks and toilets back then, not because we were sexual pioneers way before the swinging 60s, but because the sex drive isn’t something that you can stifle in a mammal, let alone a primate, let alone a human being, for very long. It had to come out somewhere, and if that wasn’t in the normal human course of dating and mating, then it was going to be in quick, desperate assignations, because an instinct older then the fish was going to drive us, some how, some way, toward some sort of sexual joining, no matter how much fear and self loathing the culture managed to cram into our heads…and our hearts.
Sexual freedom was good for heterosexuals, and it was good for us too. But I think, especially in the years right after Stonewall, that a lot of gay people mistook the tea rooms for a liberation that we already had. No. It was repression. We are not a free people, if anonymous random hooking up is the only choice we are allowed. I get…trust me I get the fact…that there are gay people who feel that cruising for anonymous sex is liberation and getting married and settling down is a kind of sexual selling out. It’s bullshit. Anonymous sex is fine, whether you’re gay or straight, if that’s your sexual temperament. Not everyone is emotionally equipped for relationships, let alone monogamy. Fine. What was good about the sexual revolution, was that it gave our bodies and our libidos back to us. As long as people are decent to one another, to paraphrase Jefferson, it neither picks my pockets nor breaks my legs if the sex they’re having is not the sort of sex I would want to have myself. But we’re not all into that by any means, and if sexual freedom for heterosexuals meant that they could have all the casual sex they want, then it has to also mean that gay people can do the dating and mating thing if that’s what they want.
And that’s what’s been happening for the past couple decades, although you’d never know it to listen to ABC News. Gay couples have in a sense, and literally, been moving into the suburbs. They’ve been getting married. They’ve been settling down. Gay kids are playing the dating and mating game now, just like their heterosexual peers. Gay neighborhoods have coffee shops, grocery stores, boutiques, same sex couples walking their dogs, chatting about the weather, bellyaching about taxes and city services. The cruising zones have given way to online dating services.
I can see, in a really perverse way, how some gay men might think that holding on to toilet stall sex amounts to preserving some kind of gay cultural legacy. But it’s a legacy of repression and persecution, the verdict of bigots, not merely on our sexuality, but on our very hearts and souls. Homosexuals are filth… No. We are human beings. The men having toilet stall sex these days are almost exclusively deeply closeted people who are full of the fear and self loathing nearly everyone had back before Stonewall…back before Hooker’s study, and the APA removing homosexuality from its list of mental diseases…back when we almost all believed that we were sick, like everyone said we were…back when we hated ourselves.
"If only we didn’t hate ourselves so much…if only we could just not hate ourselves quite so very much…"
-Michael, The Boys In The Band
The fact that this kind of thing is still going on is proof that as far as we’ve come as a people, we still have a long way to go before we’re truly free. And if the likes of the republican party and their mouthpieces like ABC News have their way of course, we never will be. The problem wasn’t that we hated ourselves. The problem was never that we hated ourselves. To hate yourself is not the human condition. We were taught to hate ourselves. Because so many others hated us, and could never endure seeing us happy, contented, proud, and least of all…loved. What ABC News is trying to do here, is rekindle that hatred. So the day can come again when we can be taught to hate ourselves once more. So that one day we may once again come to believe that our sexuality, that our love lives, that we, belong in the sewer.
We’re The Moral Values Party…The Party Is The Moral Value…
Glen Greenwald has a good post up about the somewhat different reactions from the kook pews to Larry Craig’s first outing, verses his second…
The reaction to the Larry Craig story provides one of the most vivid illustrations yet of how the right-wing movement works. Last October, just weeks before the midterm election, gay activist Mike Rogers reported that the married, GOP "family values" Senator repeatedly had sex with anonymous men in public bathrooms. His report was based on "extensive research," including interviews with several men whom Craig solicited for bathroom sex.
As Rogers argued at the time, the story was relevant — just as the Vitter prostitute story was — in light of Craig’s frequent political exploitation of issues of sexual morality and his opposition to virtually every gay rights bill. Rogers’ story, as a factual matter, seemed relatively credible, both because of his history of accurate outings and because there is no discernible reason why, if he were intent on fabricating, he would single out someone as obscure as Larry Craig, who was not even up for re-election.
Nonetheless, it is hard to overstate the intense fury that this pre-election report triggered from the Right — not at Senator Craig for engaging in this behavior, but at Rogers for reporting it.
The "Then" and "Now" examples Greenwald gives make it sickeningly clear that the problem for the Party Of Moral Values was the election, and not Craig’s behavior.
Last year, in excoriating Mike Rogers for reporting about Craig’s bathroom sex, Dean Barnett said:
I’m sorry if this topic causes embarrassment to Larry Craig and his family, but I assume by now they’ve figured out that politics in 2006 is a thoroughly rotten business. . . .
THE FIRST LEFT WING PATHOLOGY "OUTED" by the Craig story is the relentless meanness that characterizes modern day liberalism. . . .BUT MOST DAMNING OF THE LEFT is the casual assumption of group-think that this exercise demonstrates. The logic is that if you’re gay, you must therefore support gay marriage. What’s more, you must support everything that someone like Glenn Greenwald supports. To do otherwise evidences self-hatred and a betrayal of the cause.
But today, Barnett — based on reports of the exact same behavior from Craig — demanded that Craig resign from the Senate and said this:
AS TO THE SERIOUS QUESTION OF whether or not Senator Craig should resign, that one’s a no-brainer for someone like me who thought David Vitter should have stepped down. To lead millions of people, one needs at least a modicum of moral stature. Both politicians forfeited that stature when they engaged in their off-campus hijinks . . . .
Vitter falls into the same category. You can’t preen as a moralist and then seek out the services of a prostitute. If Vitter (or Craig or Clinton) had positioned themselves as libertarian libertines, then their private diddlings would have been none of our concern. But all three made a habit of saluting good old All-American family values. How a ranking public office-holder can be so thoroughly revealed as a hypocrite and still cling to his position is beyond me.
I would honestly pay money to watch someone try to reconcile those two positions. Last October, Barnett depicted Rogers as an "odious presence" for violating Craig’s privacy based on purely private behavior that was none of anyone’s business. Today, the same Barnett demands that Craig resign from the Senate, and invokes exactly the rationale which Rogers and other "outers" use to justify these disclosures ("How a ranking public office-holder can be so thoroughly revealed as a hypocrite and still cling to his position is beyond me").
Finally, and rather hilariously, Barnett defends Hewitt’s demand that Craig resign but Vitter need not as follows: "Where one draws the line on such matters is arbitrary, so I don’t think anyone’s being hypocritical if they say Vitter can stay and Craig must go."
Apparently, what matters is to have moral standards, even if they are completely incoherent, arbitrary and applied solely to suit one’s personal biases and political interests [Vitter’s resignation would be for heterosexual encounters and would lead to appointment of a Democratic replacement (hence Hewitt opposes it), while Craig’s resignation would be for gay sex and would lead to a GOP replacement (hence Hewitt favors it)]. It might be totally "arbitrary," says Barnett, but at least it is a moral standard.
Right. As Garrison Keillor said after the 2000 "election" of President Nice Job Brownie, they’re republicans first, and Americans second. What benefits The Party is morally right, because it benefits The Party. That’s the standard. Everything else from God to Abortion to Same Sex Marriage is just a hook to get the rubes into the voting booths. They don’t give a good goddamn about any of that. They just want power.
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)
Regarding This Post I did a little while ago, on the Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon media bullshit circus….it gets even better…or the stench much worse depending on whether you feel more like laughing or crying. Glenn Greenwald has the goods …
But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented — both by Pollack/O’Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military — a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them.
…
The entire trip — including where they went, what they saw, and with whom they spoke — consisted almost entirely of them faithfully following what O’Hanlon described as "the itinerary the D.O.D. developed."
But to establish their credibility as first-hand witnesses, O’Hanlon and Pollack began their Op-Ed by claiming, in the very first sentence: "VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel. . . . " Yet the overwhelming majority of these "Iraqi military and civilian personnel" were ones hand-picked for them by the U.S. military:
Dig it. Two war supporters go over to Iraq on a trip planned, shaped and controlled by the Pentagon, and when they come back to the U.S. to present their pre-packaged findings they’re lauded by our feckless corporate news media as former war critics who went to Iraq to see for themselves what the conditions there were and then became believers in Bush’s policies. It isn’t just that not a word of it was true…it’s that everyone writing those editorals about how Bush’s policies were winning over the war critics knew goddamned well that none of it was true.
You have to think that there are people in Washington, almost certainly among the punditboro, now thinking to themselves that Nixon should have just pardoned the Watergate Burglars immediately…then he wouldn’t have needed to worry about burning his secret White House tape recordings because the investigations would have ground to a halt.
But back then Nixon would have still had to worry about impeachment in a way Bush never will. The republican party hadn’t yet sunk into the depths it has today. Today, if Bush was caught stuffing money he’d just stolen from a bank into the g-string of a 12 year old pole dancer (of either sex) on the White House lawn the republicans wouldn’t impeach him. If Bush walked out of the White House and shot a random tourist in the head the republicans wouldn’t impeach him. There’s no way they’re going to let him be impeached over the Scooter Libby affair.
Many others will note this but I feel obliged to do so for the record. The real offense here is not so much or not simply that the president has spared Scooter Libby the punishment that anyone else would have gotten for this crime (for what it’s worth, I actually find the commutation more outrageous than a full pardon). The deeper offense is that the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.
The president’s power to pardon is full and unchecked, one of the few such powers given the president in the constitution. Yet here the president has used it to further obstruct justice. In a sense, perhaps we should thank the president for bringing the matter full circle. Began with criminality, ends with it.
Here on the Times Oped page you’ll see David Brooks column claiming that the information Joe Wilson brought before the public four years ago turned out to all be a crock, a bunch of lies. And we’ll let Brooks’ scribble be a stand-in for what you will hear universally today from the right — namely, that just as Scooter Libby was charged with perjury and not the underlying crime of burning an American spy, the deeper underlying offense, the lie about uranium from Africa, didn’t even exist — that at the end of the day it was revealed that Wilson’s claims, which started the whole train down the tracks, were discredited as lies.
You’ll even hear softer versions of this claim from mainstream media outlets not normally considered part of the rump of American conservatism.
There aren’t many subjects on which I claim expertise. But this is one of them. I think I know the details of this one — both the underlying story of the forgeries and their provenance and the epi-story of Wilson and Plame — as well as any journalist who’s written about the story. The Fitzgerald investigation is probably the part of it I know the least about, comparatively. (It is also incumbent on me to say that in the course of reporting on this story over these years I’ve gotten to know Joe Wilson fairly well. And I consider him a friend.)
And with that knowledge, I have to say that the claim that Wilson’s charges have been discredited, disproved or even meaningfully challenged is simply false. What he said on day one is all true. It’s really as simple as that.
Really. The entire Wilson/Plame affair is a textbook example of how the republican party Mighty Wurlitzer operates, hand in glove with the Washington press and the Washington punditboro. Never mind talk radio. This was an inside job. The beltway cool kids have been as unanimous in calling for Scooter’s pardon for obstructing justice in the case of outing a CIA agent as political retribution, as they were in calling for Clinton’s head for obstructing justice over a blow job.
There’s a tendency, even among too many people of good faith and good politics, to shy away from asserting and admitting this simple fact because Wilson has either gone on too many TV shows or preened too much in some photo shoot. But that is disreputable and shameful. The entire record of this story has been under a systematic, unfettered and, sadly, largely unresisted attack from the right for four years. Key facts have been buried under an avalanche of misinformation. The then-chairman of the senate intelligence committee made his committee an appendage of the White House and himself the president’s bawd and issued a report built on intentional falsehood and misdirection.
No one is perfect. The key dividing line is who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. Wilson is on the former side, his critics the latter. Everything else is triviality.
Garrison Keller was right: they’re republicans first and Americans second. Not just the men in power, but their courtiers in the news media and the punditboro. When they tell you that the break president Junior gave Scooter Libby is no big deal they are looking you right in the eye and lying through their teeth. It is exactly as Joshua Marshall says it is: "…the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was." And that crime wasn’t a blow job in the White House, it was damage to our intelligence gathering abilities, done for the sake of silencing a critic, sending a warning to others, and bringing the intelligence community to heel. When you see one of these gutter crawling thugs solemnly saluting the flag this Forth Of July, and speaking of the patriotism, and their love for America, remember it.
The prosecutor in the Plame case, Fitzgerald, issued the following statement regarding Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentance…
We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.
We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.” The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.
Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.
Bush, through his press secretary, has indicated he may pardon Libby outright. Look for that to happen if Libby keeps loosing his appeals. Expect the Washington press to rejoice if he does.
Broder seems to have at long last recognized that something is very rotten in Dick Cheney’s office. Huzzah. But it is curious that he mentions Scooter Libby’s name without addressing whether he still thinks it’s such a great idea to shield one of these lying, power-mad zealots from the consequences of his actions. (Maybe Sally Quinn ought to crank up the phone tree and find out.)
With all the Claud Rainsing about Dick Cheney’s power grab, you have to wonder when Broder will finally break to the surface of his beltway wet dream long enough to recognize that a federal prosecutor dealing with one of Dick Cheney’s minions repeatedly lying to his face might have justifiably been suspicious that something more than "just politics" was going on. After all, he was seeing this operation close up, in all its glory, years ago. Cops and prosecutors tend to get curious about why people are lying and covering things up. It’s just the way they think. And when people continue to do it, even when they are caught red handed and everyone knows it, prosecutors have no choice but to charge them. The stench coming from Cheney’s office had to have been extremely pungent.
Broder admits that he was wrong to think that Cheney would be a good second in command and that’s a big admission for him, I’m sure. But he also makes the flat claim that what Cheney has done was constitutional and legal. Again with the knee-jerk defense of the Bushies. Just because they say it doesn’t make it true and there are so many secrets still unrevealed that it’s impossible to properly assess that fact. It’s long past time for these insiders to stop automatically giving the administration the benefit of the doubt.
And it is also long past time they offered an apology to Patrick Fitzgerald who was just doing his job, quietly and deliberately, while Cheney and Scooter’s compatriots both in and out of the administration shrieked like wounded harpies at the prospect of any of the Vice President’s good and honest men being held to account for anything. These courtiers were so caught up in defending one of their own that they didn’t even realize that the bastard in all this was the guy who sent Scooter out to lie and cover up — their great pal, Dick Cheney, the man who learned everything he ever needed to learn about politics by watching Dick Nixon and then doing it better. These people look more and more foolish every day.
The decline of undercover reporting — and of investigative reporting in general — also reflects, in part, the increasing conservatism and cautiousness of the media, especially the smug, high-end Washington press corps. As reporters have grown more socially prominent during the last several decades, they’ve become part of the very power structure that they’re supposed to be tracking and scrutinizing.
Chuck Lewis, a former "60 Minutes" producer and founder of the Center for Public Integrity, once told me: "The values of the news media are the same as those of the elite, and they badly want to be viewed by the elites as acceptable."
Ever wonder why mainstream news has had that rancid aroma ever since Bush was elected? For a good alternative you might try the McClatchy Bureau home page. It’s motto is the heartening Truth To Power. Also, you should give Raw Story and HinesSight a look.
People don’t always appreciate how the fascist right often cloaks its war against political opponents in terms of fighting indecency. The Bush Administration crack down a couple years ago on broadcast indecency was usually taken to be a bone tossed at it’s fundamentalist base. But it was of a piece with the right’s long war on dissent…
You might react by saying that the FCC fines only for exposure of certain portions of skin or particular diction, and it would never punish anyone for expressing a political view. I would respond with three facts.
First, in the 1950s FCC Chairman Doerfer started investigations against TV stations for showing reports done by Edward R. Murrow that were allegedly not sympathetic to famous republican anticommunist Senator Joe McCarthy.
Doerfer was a McCarthy man. McCarthy was such an important figure in the Republican party, similar to Representative Tom Delay today, that his behavior was tolerated by the Republican White House. Indeed, President Eisenhower put two McCarthy people on the commission, among one the Chairman.
Second, while the Washington Post was starting in on the Watergate story, President Nixon’s staff, perhaps at his request, apparently caused his appointed Chairman at the FCC to begin investigations into the Washington Post’s television stations in Florida. The idea, according to then Post publisher Katherine Graham, was to have the investigations cast a cloud on the Post’s continued ownership of the stations, so as to undercut the business model that was supposed to further her initial public offering. Of course, the Post saw this as punishment for its pursuit of the story of the Watergate break-ins.
The political cartoonist Herblock used to draw Nixon’s FCC chairman and cronies with a big sign behind them that said "Fairness Doctrine: If It’s Not Pro-Administration, It’s Not Fair" Even back then attacks on the media by the right wing were fierce and unrelenting. Anytime a story that was critical of Nixon appeared in the press or on TV there were howls from the right about bias. But back then the news outlets had a little backbone. It wasn’t until the right managed to rewrite FCC rules on radio and TV station ownership, rules which once had bipartisan support on the theory that neither party should be allowed to dominate the public airwaves, that the right was able finally to shut progressive viewpoints out of the public debate.
The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.
The new report — entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” — raises serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public radio airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.
While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves. Some key findings:
– In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.
– Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.
– 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.
Note that those top ten markets are either in solidly blue states, or in blue areas of blue states. The exception being Texas.
Two common myths are frequently offered to explain the imbalance of talk radio: 1) the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (which required broadcasters to devote airtime to contrasting views), and 2) simple consumer demand. Each of these fails to adequately explain the root cause of the problem. The report explains:
Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management. […]
Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.
Along with other ideas, the report recommends that national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market.
I bought a satellite radio receiver for my car mostly so I didn’t have to listen to hate radio whenever I took my yearly road trips out west. Anyone who really thought back when the rules were being changed that letting big business rule the airwaves would result in a more consumer choice and more responsiveness to what consumers want to hear either knows now that they were sadly mistaken, or they never listed to radio in the first place and aren’t now. Of course, anyone who’s paid a utility bill recently in a deregulated market knows exactly how much consumer choice big business wants to let us have.
The whole point of Holsinger’s paper is to draw a sharp contrast between gay relationships and heterosexual relationships. But to do so, he he culls his evidence largely from papers which describe injuries from nonconsensual intercourse to denigrate consensual relationships, he describes odd sexual practices that are enjoyed by heterosexual couples to denigrate the minority of gay couples who indulge in those same practices, and he misleads his readers by padding his bibliography with more references to papers explicitly describing injuries experienced by heterosexual men and women to imply that they describe gay men instead.
In other words, to describe gay sexual acts, more often than not he turned to papers which describe injuries sustained through heterosexual activity. And then he used this evidence from heterosexual activity to say that “when the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur as noted above.” But what does this evidence suggest about “complementarity” in heterosexual relationships? Holsinger doesn’t answer.
Burroway, as he has done previously with other religious right bigots, most notibly Paul Cameron, illuminates again and again the casual and deliberate deception in Holsinger’s anti-gay tract. For example, how Holsinger used a study of 365 male patients of a single urban STD clinic in Copenhagan so prove that homosexual sex is more likely to result in disease. As Burroway dryly notes…
This of course means that if you study people with STDs, whether they are gay or straight, you will find people with STDs. Holsinger uses the behavior of one particular sample of men who expose themselves to the risk of STDs to denigrate all gay men (and lesbians!). This study says nothing of those whose “lifestyle” choices do not lead to contracting STDs. And of course, Holsinger’s arguments don’t address whatever responsibility heterosexuals overall have for the 64% of this particular Copenhagen sample who were exclusively straight and were treated for STDs.
This was what Evelyn Hooker understood back in the 1950s when she did her landmark study of the psychological adjustment of gay men. If all you study are sick homosexuals, then all you’re going to see in homosexuality is sickness. But that’s all that some people want to see. Holsinger uses data on injuries to the rectum gleaned from emergency room treatment of people who had been raped, to smear the sex loving same sex couples have as physically damaging. Perhaps in his own mind, Holsinger really cannot see the difference between love and rape when it involves homosexuals. Or perhaps he’s just trying to make sure that nobody else can. Either way, it speaks volumes about that open sewer he calls a conscience.
And here, Burroway nails it:
But worse, Holsinger made the fatal error of ignoring the bonds of affection and devotion that arise in gay and lesbian couples. He reduced the rich complexity of their relationships to pipe fittings and how they interlock with each other. But the interlocking parts that fit together in relationships are those parts that fit sublimely. They have absolutely nothing to do with pipes or connectors or any other analogies drawn from the local Ace Hardware store.
But the interlocking parts that fit together in relationships are those parts that fit sublimely. Yes. Just so. But that is the part of an intimate romantic relationship, that the right reliably fails to grok. I think the reason why is obvious.
We have needed a Jim Burroway in this movement for a long, long time. Someone to actually take the time and effort to rigorously dig below the surface of these religious right anti-gay tracts and show, point by point, how they are looking you in the face and lying through their teeth, confidant that their ostentatious religiosity will keep you from questioning their facts. Surely men of God wouldn’t deliberately lie to us. They may be uptight moral prudes and cranks, but at least they believe in and live by their own moral values and we can trust in that. They are merely zealots, blinded by their prejudices, not conniving con artists. No. There is no mistaking this kind of thing for what it is. You cannot pick and choose your data to suit your purposes, without knowing that you are picking and choosing your data to suit your purposes. It is calculated, it is deliberate, and it is to virtue and morality as Al Capone was to law and order.
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