State Rep. Kevin Calvey praised the Oklahoma State Board of Education today for repealing their sexual orientation policy.
After a request from Calvey, the State Board of Education met today to make a rule change that repeals their current sexual orientation policy by modifying it to be in sync with federal and state law.
"This brings Oklahoma’s educational rules in line with federal and state law and also in line with the values shared by the large majority of Oklahomans," said Calvey, R-Del City.
Currently, federal and state laws require strong anti-discrimination policies in the areas of gender and race but do not address sexual orientation.
Notice the equivocation there. They are not taking protection from discrimination away from gay citizens, they are merely bringing their laws into conformance with federal rules…which only happen to not protect gay people from discrimination. If homosexuality is such a shameful, immoral thing, as these folks so vehemently insist it is, then why do they act like they’re ashamed to admit what they’re doing, when they do it to homosexuals?
But even more then that…notice this:
"The board’s old policy would have opened the door for our schools to become battlegrounds where activists for ‘alternative’ lifestyles would try to undermine the moral teachings of parents," said Calvey. "Now, Oklahomans won’t have to worry about that."
Oklahomans. Oklahomans. None of whom, apparently in that barren wasteland that is the mental landscape of Kevin Calvey, are homosexual, because homosexuals sure as hell have something to worry about now. But no…Oklahomans don’t need to worry about anything that might happen to them. They’re not Oklahomans, they’re not citizens, they might not even be human beings as he understands the term, and they’re certainly not his neighbors.
"I’m a uniter, not a divider". Remember that? Anyone remember that?
Yesterday was the Day of Silence, a day when students all over the country refused to speak, in silent solidarity with those whose voices have been silenced by hatred and bigotry. Sounds just like one of those foofoo liberal protest kinda things that the bleeding hearts are always doing…right…? I mean…what the hell is that all about anyway…who needs it…why can’t they just stop waving it in our faces…?
Three-quarters of students surveyed across America said that over the past year they heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke" frequently or often at school, and nearly nine out of ten reported hearing "that’s so gay" or "you’re so gay" – meaning stupid or worthless – frequently or often.
Over a third of students said they experienced physical harassment at school on the basis of sexual orientation and more than a quarter on the basis of their gender expression.
Nearly one-in-five students reported they had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and over a tenth because of their gender expression.
Today the other side gets its shot. They’re calling it, without any apparent irony, the Day Of Truth. And if you’re wondering when truth ever even remotely mattered to a group of people who wave Paul Cameron’s lies about homosexuals around like a goddamn bible, then you’re probably a filthy heathen.
Via Ex-Gay Watch, here’s what Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund, which fights anti-bullying measures in public schools with the ferocity of…well…a bunch of bullies, has to say about it:
“Day of Truth” participants will hand out cards of their own, offering to share a candid, loving, fact-based counterpoint to the unspoken assertions of the advocates for homosexual behavior. While making their case from a Christian perspective, the “Day of Truth”ers will confront with compassion — not condemnation — and restrict their discussions to the periods before, after and between classes.
Loving. Compassion. Not Condemnation. How about a little truth in this Day Of Truth? In April 2004, while other students at Poway High School in northern San Diego County were observing the Day Of Silence, student Tyler Harper put masking tape all over the shirt he was wearing, and wrote messages on it specifically to let the gay students at Poway High School know his contempt for them, and for those who thought their lives, and their right to a decent education, were worth defending:
A candid, loving, fact-based counterpoint….confronting with compassion, not condemnation… If you’d think the Alliance would object to this sort of thing…well…think again. The school ordered Harper to take it off. Harper, with the help of Alan Sears and his Alliance Defense Fund, sued the school. They lost:
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that a T-shirt that proclaimed "Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned" on the front and "Homosexuality Is Shameful" on the back was "injurious to gay and lesbian students and interfered with their right to learn." The court said that the shirt can be barred on a public high school campus without violating the 1st Amendment.
"We conclude that" Poway High School student Tyler Harper’s wearing of his T-shirt " ‘collides with the rights of other students’ in the most fundamental way," wrote 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, quoting a passage from Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of students.
"Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion, or sexual orientation have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses. As Tinker clearly states, students have the right to ‘be secure and to be let alone,’ " Reinhardt said.
It seems so simple. All American kids have a right to an education, that’s what the public schools are for. They’re there for the fundamentalist kids, and the heathens alike, but they’re there for everyone. While you’re in school, you have to respect each other. That means the other kids can’t harass you, and you can’t harass the other kids. It seems so simple. But it isn’t. That kind of live and let live agreement is anathema to the religious right.
Had a the school allowed its students to wear t-shirts condemning fundamentalist Christianity as shameful and telling the student body it should be ashamed for tolerating the fundamentalists among them, Alan Sears would be furiously throwing lawsuits around like an antipersonnel mine throwing shrapnel. But let the school tell fundamentalists kids they can’t to the same thing to their gay and lesbian peers, and Sears sides with the harassing students. Hypocrisy? Oh mes non! Fundamentalists have rights that no one else has…because they’re god’s favorite people. To claim that the heathens have the same rights they do isn’t merely an attack on their privileged status, it’s literally an attack on God Almighty Himself. Heathens simply don’t have the same rights god’s people do. Certainly not the right to be left alone. Especially not the right to an education.
Or for that matter, the right to even live. In Iraq and Iran as I write this, gay people are being kidnapped and tortured to death at the behest of the mullahs, whose sense that they are god’s right hand is little different from the theocrats of the religious right here in America. Exodus’ Randy Thomas takes note of that, and compares it to the persecution Christians face…
If you are Christian in Iran … you get stoned to death.
If you have same sex attraction in Iran … you get stoned to death
If you are a Christian who struggles with same sex attraction in Iran … you get the point.
Alas…he doesn’t.
We must keep this in mind for perspective and seek out ways to intercede (prayer and other ways) for our Christian siblings and for those being murdered because of their sexual orientation.
Homophobia is not some off the cuff comment about Tinky Winky. Homophobia is what you see happening in Iran. I am grateful for the Dutch government finally giving asylum to those fleeing Iran. I pray that those who want to find Christ will and those who want to overcome homosexuality will be allowed their right to self-determine that path for their lives as well.
What’s missing from this? Any hint that homosexuals in Iran have the right to exist just as they are. Thomas’s prayer is only for those who wish to change. For the rest, he has no prayers.
Exodus is now taking it’s tacit approval of anti-gay violence to the caribbean, and to Jamaca, where a murderous killing nightmare is taking place. Wayne Besen writes:
An article in last week’s Time magazine calls Jamaica the "most homophobic place on Earth." It points out that two of the island’s leading gay rights advocates, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, were recently ruthlessly slain. If that was not enough, a crowd essentially danced on Williamson’s grave by celebrating over his mutilated body.
In 2004, a father learned his son was gay and went to his school to invite a group of peers to lynch his son. Now that’s family values!
Not too long after this sickening episode, witnesses claim, police egged on a mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. Earlier this year, a Kingston man, Nokia Cowan, drowned after a crowd shouting "batty boy" (a Jamaican slur for queer) chased him off a dock.
"Jamaica is the worst any of us has ever seen," Rebecca Schleifer of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch explained to Time.
That’s what was left of Brian Williamson after the mobs got through with him. Another human life lost to hate. Another voice forever silenced. Truth. But for Exodus, PFOX and the Alliance Defense Fund to come out strongly against anti-gay violence would be to completely contradict their own message, which is that homosexuals can leave behind all the harmful effects of the gay lifestyle any time they want to. Change is possible. Or, to put it another way, whatever happens to homosexuals is their own fault.
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. -Leviticus 20:13
There is the ex-gay message. Not Change Is Possible, but Their Blood Shall Be Upon Them. Brian Williamson. Nicolas West. Billy Jack Gaither. Gwen Araujo. Matthew Shepard. Barry Winchell. Allen Schindler. Seventeen year old Kristofer Guy King, who was killed when a neo nazi with a knife broke into the trailer he was sleeping in, looking for his eighteen year old gay friend. This is what happened to his friend’s mom, Patricia Wells:
Via Peterson Toscano, a powerful reminder that James Dobson’s greatest crimes against humanity aren’t the ones he’s committed against gay and lesbian people, but his methodical and systematic breaking of the bond of love between parent and child. Ex-ex-gay blogger Christine writes about what it was like growing up in a fundamentalist household, where Dobson’s pathological hatred of children had found its soil, and taken root…
I was disciplined and guilted and shamed into submission for many years. It somehow seems appropriate to me that Focus on the Family is such a partner with Exodus. My parent’s treatment of me as a child (using Dobson as their guide) no doubt made me all the more vulnerable to the ex-gay message. I was ready and willing to believe myself a damaged and broken person that needed to be fixed, with my sin nature needing to be beaten down and submerged, subdued, and dominated. I was willing to believe that my homosexuality was a part of my own strong-willed defiance gone horribly wrong and satanically out of control.
I can’t even look at Dr. Dobson’s book Dare to Discipline without wanting to weep…
Well somebody needs to look at it. Because this man has single handedly shattered the lives of countless thousands of helpless children. And he did it by manipulating their parent’s fundamentalist religiosity, their fear of Satan, and that secret empty place inside of them, where other people have a conscience and a capacity for basic human sympathy…
For parents like mine, who got almost all of their parenting advice from Dr. Dobson, is it any wonder that everything turned into a battle of wills and they saw their child as a "strong-willed tyrant" that needed to be battled into submission? Dr. Dobson is a man who says that "If discipline begins on the second day of life, you’re one day too late." What kind of discipline could a one-day old infant possibly need?!?
I have heard of Dobson-style parents commenting on how "manipulative" a four-month old baby is, because the baby will smile when an adult is playing with them, but cry when it is left alone.
This is sickening. Of course an infant will cry when its left alone. Look at that, because the temptation is to think that Dobson desensitizes parents and he doesn’t. Infants are helpless and vulnerable and need to be cared for. For Christ sake they’ll cry when they’re hungry too, when they’re sick, when they’re in some kind of pain. The first reaction of any normal human being to the sound of an infant crying is that anxious sensation that something’s wrong. But the problem Dobson’s parents face isn’t that they don’t know what to do with a crying infant, it’s that they don’t know what they’re supposed to feel.
And Dobson supplies them with an explanation of child parent interaction that fits their sensibilities perfectly: there are no genuine human emotions…everything is manipulation. Love… affection… tenderness… anxiety… grief… sorrow… Dobson tells them that all of that is really just different ways humans manipulate one another. Ask yourself what kind of person this makes sense to, and the horrors inflicted on so many children in this world by their own parents stop being so surprising.
There’s also the story of how Dobson treated his own dog, Siggie (yes, after Freud) in a battle of wills between man and beast. Dobson relates this story in The Strong-Willed Child:
"I had seen this defiant mood before [defiant mood being indicated by Siggie not wanting to leave a warm spot in the house and go to his kennel, and subsequently growling at Daddy Dobson], and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me ‘reason’ with Mr. Freud."
If you decide to click on that link, brace yourself. They say that the abuse of animals is a prime indicator of deeper sociopathologies. Its something they watch for in young children as a warning sign of potential for serious pathological violence later in life. Dobson however, is in the enviable position of being able to exercise his pathologies by proxy. Why abuse children yourself, and risk a very long prison term, when you can get their parents to do it for you? But not just any parents mind you. You need the ones who are missing that extra something most humans have…a capacity to feel sympathy. A heart, capable of whole hearted love for another. You find yourself enough of these, and then the rest is just a matter of invoking the name of Jesus, and telling those parents that their children are Satan incarnate.
No…I’m not exaggerating…
This brings me to another thing I’ve wondered of late. In talking with other ex-ex-gays or those who have survived fundamentalist upbringings, many of us have in common parents who are absolutely unable to love unconditionally. These parents do things and say things that most parents would not utter to their children no matter how upset they were with them. Is it the idea of sin or satan somehow controlling our lives that gives them license to think of us this way, or talk to us this way? Is it a lifetime of thinking of us as "defiant tyrants" that gives parents the idea that their child is in league with the devil himself?
My own mother once looked at a 5-year old boy and said out-loud to him "get thee behind me, Satan!" because she was convinced that he’d looked at her in a defiant manner that gave her chills and that she could only attribute to Satan. She told our family about this later, with an air of pride that she’d had the guts to speak out against Satan in this manner (nevermind the poor child who probably still remembers that church lady calling him "satan"). For those of us whose parents see us in this light…could this be an explanation for why they are so willing to throw us away, to denounce us and reject us? Do they truly still see brazen and defiant tyrants controlled by satan when they look at us?
(emphasis mine) I’ve seen that with my own two eyes. Guy I dated once had a father like that. Couldn’t love unconditionally if Jesus Christ gave him his heart to do it with. And there’s the problem, in all its horrible stomach churning glory. There’s the Pit you don’t want to stare into for too long, because it also stares back into you. The fundamentalist demands structure, tight all controlling structure to their world, because the world of intimate human interaction is utterly incomprehensible to them. If they have to manage their way in the human community the way the rest of us do, by building bonds of trust and Empathy and love, they’re completely lost at sea and cannot cope. Without that all controlling structure to tell them how to conduct their lives at the interpersonal level, they simply can not fathom right from wrong. They just can’t figure it out. Telling a five year old boy that he’s the devil no more disturbs their conscience then telling him the time of day would. The boy does not exist in their conscience as a boy, but as an incomprehensible…thing. It might be human…it might be a child…on the other hand it might be the devil himself. They’ve just no way of knowing, apart from some structure, some tradition, some religious dogma, telling them what the boy is.
And into this soil fertile for every human horror you can imagine, because none of them have any brakes beyond the traditions and social structures they live inside of, comes Dobson – telling these parents that their children are, in fact, the very images of satan himself. The growing child who expresses the slightest shred of their own human individuality is, in fact, channeling the serpent in the Garden of Eden…
Perhaps this tendency toward self-will is the essence of ‘original sin’ which has infiltrated the human family. It certainly explains why I place such stress on the proper response to willful defiance during childhood, for that rebellion can plant the seeds of personal disaster.
To suck the human identity out of a child, leaving their soul an empty blackboard that any authority figure can scribble their will upon, is Exactly Dobson’s purpose here. But I don’t think Dobson means to be that authority. I think he just takes pleasure in the emptying of a human soul, and leaving it with nothing left to Be. A vampire gains some nourishment from the people whose blood they take. Dobson is one of those toxic human voids that just suck the life out of everything they touch, for the pleasure of watching something they could never themselves become die. Oscar Wilde once said that we’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Dobson is the man handing out hot pokers to parents, determined that every child will grow up blind, so they will never know that the stars above his gutter and beyond his reach, even exist.
…many of us have in common parents who are absolutely unable to love unconditionally… My own mother once looked at a 5-year old boy and said out-loud to him "get thee behind me, Satan!"… Never mind the stacking of the Federal Courts…here’s the legacy of the ascendancy of the religious right that America will be suffering under for generations to come. Tens of thousands of soul wounded children, walking into adulthood with their only understanding of what it is to trust and love coming from parents who were taught to regard them as satanic beings.
Via Pam’s House Blend… The Stranger is reporting that a pharmacy in Seatle refused to fill a woman’s perscription on moral grounds. The morning after Pill? Contraceptives? Oh mes non: Antibiotics…
The complaint includes one incident at the Swedish Medical Center outpatient pharmacy in Seattle. According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was "morally unable" to fill a Cedar River patient’s prescription for abortion-related antibiotics. Cedar River’s complaint quotes its Renton clinic manager’s May 17, 2005, e-mail account: "Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription… to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in… and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription." (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.)
Cedar River Clinics, is a women’s health and abortion provider. What you need to pay attention to here is that the pharmacy in question has at this point, no idea whether or not the woman who needed the antibiotics has even had an abortion. They only know the doctors calling the prescription in work for a clinic that provides abortions. But…never mind. The moral position now seems to be to let woman who do have abortions die from post surgery infections. And it gets better…
The complaint also includes an incident from November 2005 in Yakima, in which a pharmacist at a Safeway reportedly refused to fill a Cedar River patient’s prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins. The pharmacist reportedly asked the customer why she had gone to Cedar River Clinics and then told the patient she "didn’t need them if she wasn’t pregnant."
Perhaps the day is coming in which grocery store owners can legally deny food to certain people on moral grounds too. Who would Jesus starve to death?
"I’m a uniter, not a divider." Remember that? Anyone remember that?
For the past several years, ever since the landmark Boy Scouts of America v Dale case, I thought I had staked out a solid position: As reprehensible as I found the Boy Scouts’ discrimination against gays and atheists, I don’t cherry-pick the First Amendment. I think that freedom of association is generally a good thing, because it means the assholes of the world will usually cordon themselves off where they won’t bother the rest of us.
But then came last night’s season premiere of Showtime’s outstanding series "Bullshit!"
Penn and the silent though emotive Teller laid bare the tangled relationship between the Boy Scouts and government, relying on an almost incalculable amount of public funds and accommodations to carry out Scouting activities.
See…this is the problem I’ve had with them when the case of James Dale came up. You’d have had to be living in a cave not to know how much money the BSA sucks from the public teat for their own purposes. Their annual jamboree, held with pentagon help and funding, costs the U.S. Taxpayer from what I’ve heard something between seven and eight million dollars every year. That’s just the jamboree. Atheists pay a portion to fund that thing. So do gay and lesbian Americans, and the parents of gay and lesbian kids. And without even they tiniest compunction or shred of shame, the BSA cheerfully takes that money and puts it into its pocket.
As an aside, a few years back when I worked in the Senate, I played a bit part in helping to turn back legislative threats to the Scouts’ dependence on government. Even though I was accurately representing the position of my boss, I felt I could do so in good faith, based on my own experience in the Boy Scouts dating back to the early 1980s. But as "Bullshit!" points out, the BSA was hijacked by the Mormon Church in the mid-’80s, and today I’m sickened that I didn’t know the full story before now.
You may have heard that Mormons have this reputation for being thrifty self sufficient hard working people. That’s certainly the reputation I grew up hearing. So either it wasn’t true all along or something’s changed since then, because now it seems as though self sufficiency is more like bigoted insularity, and thrift is not spending your own money so long as you can spend other people’s money.
The bottom line is, you cannot have private membership standards that exclude a good swath of the public while continuing to suck off the public teat…
Just so. My feelings at the time of Dale were that that BSA had worked so diligently for so long to make itself into a national institution, and now that it had this special place in the law and in public funding, for it to suddenly claim it was a private religion based club when it suited its purposes to do so was such transparent hypocrisy it deserved to be thrown out of court. They wanted that special place over all other youth organizations in American culture, that Norman Rockwell spot in American life. Now they needed to accept that with that came an obligation to actually serve all American youth…not just the chosen few.
That was the political issue as far as I was concerned. But there was a moral one too, which made me furious. The Boy Scouts were telling certain kids that they were lesser beings, destined to live immoral squalid lives simply as a matter of their religious beliefs, or their sexual orientation. I don’t care what your religious beliefs are, to beat up on a kid’s deepest sense of themselves, their relationship to their creator, their emerging sexuality, is obscene. It is a crime against humanity to take hope away from a child…to teach them that it’s pointless for them to reach higher, to strive for the best within themselves, to teach them that in fact they have no best within, only squalor they will never escape from. You can argue that youth groups deserve some degree of public support, but only to the extent that they actually nurture America’s children. An organization that takes some of America’s children and shoves their faces into the mud and then tells them that’s all they deserve in life is beyond contempt. After all the BSA had strived to become to America’s children, somebody needed to hold them to their own damn standards.
But…no, this is not the America it once was. The case came down against Dale and I was furious. Okay…fine…they want to be a private club…let them exist as one…on their own dime from now on. But judging from the religious right, and the ferocity by which they’ve fought to keep the BSA sucking at the public teat, you’d think hypocrits were Christ’s favorite kind of people.
Man…I wish I’d caught that premiere of Bullshit. Over at Naked Writing, Jody Wheeler says they’ve signed on for two more seasons of it, but in the process of doing their shows they’ve managed to piss off just about every executive at Showtime so more then five aren’t likely. Fine. I was looking to see if any of the big cable movie channels were going to be running Brokeback and I saw Showtime was running Crash, so they’ve pissed me off. Two more years of Bullshit is just about enough reason to keep subscribing despite that. But barely.
Why would a boy raised by a family of conservative republican Mormons want to mock rape 18 children under his charge at a Student Leadership camp and then plead for leniency so he could go on missionary duty for his church? Why would a conservative family values republican allow his son to evade responsibility for the serial sexual assault of children, some 15, some as young as 11 years old? Why would a staunchly conservative family values church institution like the Mormon church allow someone who mock raped 18 children with broomsticks, canes, mop handles and flashlights, and who despite being confronted by the testimony of his victims, continued to maintain it was nothing but a little hazing, go on a mission so they could become an elder member of the faith? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it does not make sense. And if it does not make sense, you must acquit!
Clifton Bennett, the 18 year old son of Ken Bennett, the president of the Arizona state senate will, in all likelihood, get probation instead of a prison term, for mock sodomizing 18 children aged 11 to 15 with an assortment of implements, including a broom, a cane, a mop handle and a heavy-duty flashlight. The assaults occurred at the Chapel Rock Camp in Prescott Arizona, at a week long camp held for student council leaders.
The son of Arizona’s Senate president confessed that he and another counselor shoved broomsticks and flashlights into the rectums of 18 boys in at least 40 incidents at a youth camp in June.
Now Yavapai County prosecutors say they will drop all but one assault charge and likely recommend little or no jail time if 18-year-old Clifton Bennett agrees to plead guilty.
A similar agreement has been offered to co-defendant Kyle Wheeler, 19, who faces an additional assault charge for choking three of the boys until they passed out.
The plea agreements were first presented in court last week and could be completed at a hearing Monday.
Prosecuting attorney James Landis explained the plea agreement in court, saying the "broomsticking" was a hazing ritual and a punishment, not sexual assault.
But legal experts, sex-crimes prosecutors and victims’-rights lawyers say the acts clearly fit the definition of sexual assault.
Perhaps, but that definition does not take into account being the son of one of the most powerful republicans in the state of Arizona, which can turn even the serial mock raping of 18 children in less then a week into a non-dangerous, non-repetitive offense…
The pleas, which describe the assault charge as "a non-dangerous, non-repetitive offense," have outraged parents who say their sons were victims of violent sexual attacks. The boys, who were 11 to 14 years old at the time, have had trouble going to the bathroom, sleep with clothes on, are afraid at night, and have undergone sexual-assault counseling.
Boys will be boys. Probation in this case is being sought as the preferable outcome, as this will allow young Bennett to continue with his upcoming missionary duties…
They [Bennett’s lawyers] described Bennett as an honor student and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, planning to go on a mission in September. "A felony conviction for assault will make his desire to complete his mission impossible," they wrote.
And this poor world could certainly use another missionary like him couldn’t it.
Police reports say he was assaulted with a broomstick, a flashlight and a cane — and now a 12-year-old Tucson boy may see the camp counselors accused of attacking him receive a plea deal that could allow them to avoid prison.
…
According to police reports, the assaults took place at Chapel Rock Camp during a weeklong camp for school leaders in June. The reports say some campers clogged a toilet and, when no one would confess, witnesses told police the junior counselors lined up the youngsters, told them to bend over and "broomsticked" them.
The boys told police that "broomsticking" was done alternately with a broom, a cane, a mop handle and a heavy-duty flashlight while they were clothed. The exact definition of broomsticking varied, according to witness reports, from touching brooms to the boys’ rectal areas to one description of how a boy was held down and the witness said the broomstick was "shoved" into his bottom.
…
The father of that boy says he did not know about the assaults until a detective called the family’s home in December. The father said his son spoke directly with the detective and has been reluctant to discuss the incidents with his family.
…
The father said he spoke to the victim advocate in the County Attorney’s Office, who told them Clifton Bennett was going to be offered a plea bargain to one count of aggravated assault. Cadigan also said she was told by a representative from the office that Bennett is being offered a plea bargain to one count of aggravated assault and Wheeler will be offered two counts. They’ll both face probation rather than jail or prison time, a possibility.
"Come on. I told her that was unacceptable. This was not roughhousing. These are 12 and 13-year-old kids. Anyone else would go to prison for six to 10 years," said the father, whom the Star is not naming because it would identify his son.
"I do remember when we picked him up from camp he complained that his butt hurt. But we didn’t pursue it. We had no idea what had been going on," he said. "He’s a pretty accomplished kid and he’s in counseling now, so hopefully he’ll get over it. He’s a strong kid."
The next time either the Mormon church or the republican caucus of the Arizona state senate go on a roll about how homosexuals, and same sex marriages, are such a dire threat to the welfare of children, someone ought to ask them where Clifton Bennett is doing his missionary duty these days, and if he’s allowed anywhere near children or broomsticks.
[Update…] Photo of our fine young Mormon missionary-to-be and one of his accomplices via Pam’s House Blend:
Eighteen boys ages 11 to 15. Broomsticks. Canes. Mop handles. Flashlights. Good thing Dad’s the president of the Arizona State Senate..!
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a photojournalist…
Time was, I had several small newspapers running my photos. But for a kid fresh out of high school there was scant little money in it, and my soul was never competitive enough to keep pounding doors for work in a market that was saturated with other guys like me looking to get their pictures printed. By the mid-70s I’d given it up, and for a decade I just wandered aimlessly in the workforce. But my interest in what news photographers do has never flagged, and I’ll reliably stop to listen whenever a photographer comes forward to tell the story behind a photo. Their stories are worth hearing, to understand the struggle it sometimes is just to take the images that can keep the public informed, let alone deal with the fallout…
So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera — the story of his death became my responsibility.
The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.
…telling the reporter, "To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’" Michelangelo Signorile, himself of Italian descent, said on his show the other day that the word translates roughly into "get fucked up the ass". This is the man the right has been for years calling the most intellectual justice on the court. You have to figure they think it’s too bad Al Capone wasn’t available when Reagan had an opening to fill.
Whether Scalia knew there was a photographer there when he did that I’m still not sure. But the moment he heard the camera go off, he said "You’re not going to print that, are you?". So at minimum he knew he’d been caught being the crude barstool asshole he always is when he thinks the cameras aren’t there. But this time one was.
The photographer, Peter Smith, an assistant photojournalism professor at Boston University, was freelancing for The Pilot, a newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. The operative word here is freelancing. Had he been staff, the photo of Scalia making an obscene gesture would have been the newspaper’s property and likely would never have seen the light of day. But, at least when I was doing it, a freelancer owns the photos they take, until they sell them to a newspaper. Whether The Pilot offered to buy the photo I don’t know, but I know had that been me I’d have held onto the rights for dear life.
For a couple days the photo stayed in the shadows, while the republican Mighty Wurlitzer went into operation, to convince the public that Scalia had made no obscene gesture…that the reporter was lying…blah blah woof woof… I was watching the whole thing unfold from the sidelines, knowing from my own experience just how suddenly things can happen, and how being just a fraction of a second on either side of the moment means you missed it. You get yourself back home to your darkroom (or nowadays I guess your computer), and you develop your film and you look over what you got and you see that you were close, but not spot-on enough that the picture is clear and unambiguous about what that moment was. Where the difference between capturing the moment and missing it entirely is less then a heartbeat, less then the blink of an eye, to be good at what you do you have to train your mind to see it coming and be there when it happens, just to stand a chance of getting it at all. The rest is chance, and chance can do even the best photographers wrong sometimes. I’d expected the photo of Scalia would hit the papers and the Internet almost at once, and when it didn’t I started to wonder if either Scalia had successfully managed to have it suppressed, or the photographer simply didn’t get a good shot of it.
“It’s inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment,” said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.
Despite Scalia’s insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper “got the story right.”
Smith said the jurist “immediately knew he’d made a mistake, and said, ‘You’re not going to print that, are you?’ ”
The Archdiocese of course, fired Smith immediately. Only I’m a little fuzzy about how you fire a freelancer. I guess what they meant was never darken our door again… Well, they covered up for child molesters. You have to figure that demanding a photographer cover up for a gutter crawling thug, who feels perfectly free to treat a church like it’s the corner bar, would be even less likely to strike them as unethical behavior. Morals. Values.
Peter Smith has taken what will become one of the iconic photographs of our times. That face, and the gesture, say it all, not only about the man, but about the times we are living in. That is what photographers live for. The god of shadow and light smiled on him in that one instant, and he captured an image that says it all, and he did not just the right thing, but the only thing a photographer could do with it; he showed it to the world. Because the world needs to see.
When you’ve just about begun to think you’ve finally plumbed the bottom of the hate barrel, something like this comes along to remind you that it has no bottom. Just as the Soulforce Equality Ride was about to leave Oklahoma, the state school board reacted to their presence by removing the protections gay school kids had from being harrassed by their teachers. One state representative, a (surprise) republican, said the change was necessary to protect students from gay militant activists. If you’re a little fuzzy about how letting teachers abuse gay students protects the rest of the student body then you’re probably some kind of godless heathen pagan yourself.
If you’re not a married heterosexual, a male who regards himself as having a natural right to dominate women, or a women who understands that her place is to passively obey her man and spit a quiver of children out of her vagina like a machine gun, then the little middle of nowhere town in Utah named Kanab would like you to know that you’re not welcome there…
KANAB – After unanimously endorsing a conservative think tank’s resolution supporting the "natural family," Kanab’s City Council is coming under fire – naturally.
Gay-rights advocates and even some residents are scolding city leaders for embracing a nonbinding proposal that:
* Labels marriage between a man and a woman as "ordained of God."
* Sees homes as "open to a full quiver of children."
* Envisions young women "growing into wives, homemakers and mothers and . . . young men growing into husbands, home builders and fathers."
Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Utah in Salt Lake City, finds such language archaic and offensive.
"It doesn’t address what the landscape of the American family looks like today," she said Tuesday.
She said the concept of family "has evolved in a lot of different ways, and it is sad when government discriminates against the rights of families."
Kanab waitress Marina Johnson, a single mother of three, agrees, arguing that the resolution stigmatizes those who fall outside its limiting language.
"It should not matter if a couple is gay or single or what their religious affiliation is or whether they believe in God," she said. "It is not right that [someone’s partner] be denied medical benefits just because they are not married in the traditional way."
Instead, she says, "people should be allowed to do the right thing and take care of the people they love."
But Kanab Councilman Anthony Chatterley backs the measure "wholeheartedly."
"I support the values, hopes and goals stated in the resolution," he said. Kanab "is a strong, family-oriented community. It always has been, and we would like to see this continue."
Carol Sullivan voted for the resolution – pitched by the conservative Sutherland Institute – last week when it was introduced by Mayor Kim Lawson. But the council’s sole woman did so with some reservations.
"I saw no reason to vote against it because it is nonbinding," she said, noting that no one spoke out against it. "But I did wonder why it should be a government issue."
Okay…let me get this straight lady…you’re a conservative and you voted for a resolution even though you weren’t sure it was something government should be involved in? Digby’s Right, conservativism doesn’t mean anything anymore other then pure unadulterated right wing tribalism.
Kanab’s problem however, is that it fancies itself a tourist destination. And now, some of the tourists, and the people who make their living on the tourist trade, are a tad pissed…
"Recently read about your vote to censure anyone other than . . . heterosexual, childbearing couples. Even though I fit that bill, I am so disturbed by your actions that I am rescheduling my travel plans to avoid Kanab completely," reads one e-mail sent to the city.
"Y’all are silly," reads another e-mail, obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through the Government Records Access and Management Act.
And a northern Utah woman vows to stop visiting Kanab because the resolution supports "prejudice, discrimination and subtle social cruelties."
Such responses from potential hotel-staying, souvenir-buying, restaurant-dining visitors worry Hallisey, executive director of the Kane County Office of Tourism and Film Commission.
"With 700 of 1,000 [hotel] rooms in the county here in Kanab, it’s a viable tourist location," he says.
No, it isn’t. I’ve driven through Kanab several times, and the operative word there is through. I stopped for the night there once and swore afterwords I’d never do that again. There’s nothing there worth seeing, and the accommodations there are pitiful for the price they expect you to pay. Kane county is about as empty as a patch of Utah gets. Bryce Canyon is in Garfield county, Zion National Park is almost entirely in Washington county, and the various locations of Dixie National Forest (I think it’s some kind of franchise) are scattered in the surrounding counties.
Just about all Kanab has going for it are those motel rooms, none of which get better then three diamonds in my Triple-A guidebooks. Oh, and its own little Hollywood Walk Of Fame, which is basically nothing but a series of placards erected on the sidewalk of the main drag, that breathlessly tell you about any Hollywood western that might have been filmed anywhere within miles of the place. As I read those things I was actually embarrassed for the people of that town, but it’s on that basis that Kanab likes to call itself "little Hollywood". When all the good sightseeing is somewhere else, you go with what you’ve got.
The evening I was there, after I settled into my motel room, I took my camera and strolled the main drag, looking in the little tourist shops, scouting for anything worth bringing back home. I struck up a brief conversation with a young high school aged girl working the cash register alone in one of them. The common conversational theme you get from most people that age, living in towns like that, is their almost panic stricken need to get the hell out of there by any means necessary. No prisoner walking a cell in San Quenton is as determined to find a way to escape as these kids are. We’d not exchanged two sentences I think, before she was telling me about her plans to go live somewhere else. That particular girl’s ticket out, she was convinced, was to go to California and appear on American Idol. As we talked I swear every time I tried to turn the conversation to what life in the area was like, she would always yank it right back to her upcoming appearance on American Idol and how that would be the thing that would get her out of that there and to some better place. By the time I’d walked out of her store, I was gripped by a need to get the hell out of Kanab too. But I’d already paid for my room.
Kanab is a place highway travelers stop on the way to someplace else. If it has any other source of income besides those 700 motel rooms and the few eateries and curio shops along it’s main drag I’d like to know what it is. So you’d expect that they’d at least not give anyone a reason to keep on driving.
But no…
The resolution is a "slam to everybody, including those who fit their definition of a natural family," Brunner says. "We’re becoming a diverse community so there are more who feel comfortable about speaking out."
That includes those who support the resolution.
"I salute Mayor Kim Lawson and the council," writes Katie Thomas, who noted she came to the area 32 years ago from California seeking a quieter way of life. "Many of those who are offended and opposed to the proclamation…may have an agenda that would bring the kind of changes that could redefine all that we came for."
The Rev. Doug Hounshell says he "thanks God for a community that doesn’t think it has to be ‘gay-friendly.’ "
"We don’t mean to be mean-spirited," says Hounshell, pastor of Cliffview Chapel Baptist Church in Kanab. "But the message to a homosexual might be that this is probably not the friendliest town for that type of thing."
No Doug…it isn’t that you don’t mean to be mean spirited. It’s that you are and you just want everyone to politely ignore that fact while you’re busy cutting your town’s throat to satisfy your cheapshit prejudices.
What’s interesting here is that for all this moral posturing going on, the actual resolution that the Kanab city council passed is hard to locate. It’s modeled on a boilerplate Natural Family Resolution that the theocratic Sutherland Institute came up with, and has been pushing in Utah. But it’s hard to find a copy of this resolution, even on Sutherland’s own website. It took a little digging, but here it is:
Resolution 1-1-06R The Natural Family: A Vision the City of Kanab
Whereas, the natural family is the fundamental unit of society and is entitled to protection in Utah by local and state governments; and
Whereas, the natural family is the locus of the true common good and that citizens of the City of Kanab, Utah help ourselves when we help our families; and
Whereas, the natural family results in healthier, happier, more productive, and more civically-engaged adults as well as healthier, happier, safer, and better educated children; and
Whereas, most serious public pathologies – including crime, delinquency, illegal drug use, domestic violence, long-term poverty, and low educational achievement – are closely associated with family breakdown and disorder; then,
Be it resolved, that the City of Kanab, Utah adopts the following vision as a guide to policy formation and public action:
We envision a local culture that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as ordained of God. This culture affirms marriage as the best path to health, security, fulfillment, and joy. It casts the home built on marriage as the source of true political sovereignty and ordered liberty. It also holds the household framed by marriage to be the primary economic unit, a place marked by rich activity, material abundance, and broad self-reliance. This culture treasures private property in family hands as the rampart of independence and liberty. It celebrates the marital sexual union as the unique source of new human life. We see our homes as open to a full quiver of children, the source of family continuity and social growth. We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers; and we see young men growing into husbands, home-builders, and fathers.
We see true happiness as the product of persons enmeshed in vital bonds with spouses, children, parents, and extended family. We look to a landscape of family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children. We envision parents as the first educators of their children. We see homes that also embrace extended family members who need special care due to age or infirmity. We view local neighborhoods and communities as the second locus of political sovereignty. We envision a freedom of commerce that respects and serves family integrity. And we look to local government that holds the protection of the natural family to be their first responsibility.
NOW THEREFORE, it is hereby resolved by the City of Kanab, Utah, that the Natural Family: A Vision for the City of Kanab shall be in effect until further resolution.
Dated this 10 day of January, 2006.
A full quiver of children. You’d have had to see it with your own eyes to appreciate the desperation I saw in one young girl’s face one evening in Kanab, which by the way is not all that far from Colorado City, where the men of the Lee’s Ferry polygamists are apparently having their way with teenaged girls. Do you folks out there have any clue what happens to a lot of teenage kids who go to Hollywood looking for a way out of the suffocating woman hating mind numbing hopelessly bigoted and going nowhere fast hell holes you’ve made of your communities? There’s your Vision for the future. Right there.
The Church says it has ‘rules’ that preclude the gay placements. What has not appeared anywhere is a reasoned case that such placements are bad for the children, and it is the interest of the children that must come first. (For a critical survey of the studies and arguments relative to placing children with homosexual couples, see cosmos-liturgy-sex.) The claim that 50 or 60 percent of children reared by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual doesn’t cut any ice in some quarters. So what’s wrong with being homosexual or bisexual? And, if the incidence of sexual abuse of children in such settings is many times the norm, well, isn’t it time we reconsider the legitimacy of intergenerational love?
Sweet. The reason Pope Benedict is waging jihad on gay households isn’t because he’s a raving medieval lunatic, but out of alarm and concern for the welfare of children at the hands of predatory homosexuals. Only…just where is he getting his facts here? Sullivan does a little digging, and comes up with a familiar name…
So where does Neuhaus get his inflammatory claims? The only link Neuhaus provides is to a far-right Catholic website which in turn relies on a separate review published by Pat Robertson’s "Regent University" of 36 studies of gay parenting. 35 of the 36 "concluded that children from same-sex parents were not adversely affected," which is what the consensus largely is. One study alone provided the statistics Neuhaus relies on. That study is by our old friend, Paul Cameron…
Bingo. It almost always comes back to Cameron. But now they’ve nested his lies three layers deep…a right wing Catholic website, to a review by Pat Roberston’s Regent University to Cameron.
Why doesn’t Neuhaus simply say he’s relying on Paul Cameron for his facts about the dangers homosexuals represent to children? Well…isn’t that obvious? What’s interesting is that Cameron has become so toxic to the right, that they have to bury his name even deeper now. When William Bennett was arguing that homosexuals only live an average of 46 years, he only had to bury Cameron’s name one level deep, referring simply to another study that, as it turned out, cited Cameron for the figure. Now they’re burying his name three levels deep. They’ll be burying it three hundred layers deep one of these days, and it still won’t occur to them to just fucking stop spreading his lies.
What ninth commandment? I repeat, what ninth commandment?
Compassionate conservativism is that you don’t have to walk to the homeless shelter when you’re thrown out of the hospital, because you can’t pay your bills. A taxi will take you to one. Preferably in some other city…
For many months, Los Angeles city officials have complained that regional hospitals are dropping off their indigent patients in the city’s tough Skid Row area. On Wednesday, officials at a homeless shelter released a videotape that allegedly catches one hospital in the act. The incident has become part of an ongoing investigation that could result in criminal or civil penalties.
Here’s the pictures of how it went down…
City Council member Jan Perry, whose district includes L.A.’s Skid Row, says hospitals may be dumping their homeless patients in downtown Los Angeles because the cities hosting the hospitals don’t want to deal with their homeless problem.
"We have a very high concentration of services in a small geographic area," Perry says. "And for municipalities who don’t want to… extend themselves to the homeless, it’s an easy excuse to just bring them over here and leave them here."
Easy. I’ll bet it is. How much you want to bet that the hospital board of directors and the voters and city officials of Bellflower, California are part of the block of ‘values’ voters that helped president I’m A Uniter Not A Divider to two terms in office? I have a question for the religious right. If this is a Christian Nation, as you folks keep yap, yap, yapping that it is…then why is this happening? In particular, why are the poor and homeless hurting so much in territory you control?
I know…I know…the vastly more important war on homosexuality is taking up all your valuable time and money. You people have been spending millions to deny us the right to marry, haven’t you? In the name of Jesus and all that is righteous in the eyes of God, haven’t you? And you couldn’t even put shoes on her feet before you dumped her out on the street.
Heroes Of The Conservative Movement Trading Cards…Collect Them All…
Card 31: Barbra Bush donates a portion of her vast wealth to help her fellow Americans recover from Katrina. Well…to her son actually…
The Houston Chroniclereports this morning that the donation Barbara Bush made to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund was ‘earmarked’ for the educational software company Ignite!
As some of you probably know that’s the junk company owned by her ne’er-do-well son Neil Bush.
Actually, though, it’s way better, or worse, depending on your turn of mind.
Ignite!’s has a unique business model, which works like this. Neil goes around the world finding international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to ‘invest’ in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House.
A couple years ago when I was at Salon I wrote about the craze for investment in Ignite! then taking hold among Red Sea oil magnates and progeny of the rulers of the People’s Republic of China (See this article as well about the craze for investing in Ignite! in the United Arab Emirates and specifically in Dubai). Now, Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has awakened to the wonders of investing in Ignite!
Kudos to Joshua Marshall. Yes…her donation was tax deductable.
Just as the time of reckoning approaches and the Washington Post will, like it or no, have to take responsibility for all the flagrant, credulous warmongering it did in a fit of BushCo. access rapture, you guys hire the most thick-witted, mouth breathing home schooled freak you could lay your hands on. The respectable journalists who have managed to survive the Patrick Ruffini sycophancy of John WATB Harris, the jejune truthiness of Deborah Howell and the simple fact that one of the biggest stories of last year was how the paper’s own superstar fucked you over and then wouldn’t talk to you about it are no doubt cringing in the bathroom stalls.
They must’ve really been jamming sharp objects into their eyes this morning after Domanech took them to task for their lack of Red Dawn acumen. Oh, lordy Jim. I have to tell you, if I’d been writing a send-up of a right wing blogger I could not have done a better job.
You have to read the whole thing. It’s fucking hilarious.
The Third Reich collapsed 61 years ago but you wouldn’t know it if you walk into the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin. The stark entrance hall is lit by a black chandelier in the shape of an iron cross. The pulpit has a wooden carving of a muscular Jesus leading a helmeted Wehrmacht soldier and surrounded by an Aryan family. The baptismal font is guarded by a wooden statue of a stormtrooper from Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) unit clutching his cap.
Friezes depicting the eagle of the Reich and helmeted soldiers’ heads have been carved into a giant stone arch framing the chancel. The organ was used at the 1935 Nuremberg rally of the Nazi party and egend has it that the church was originally meant to be named after Adolf Hitler. Indeed, the only thing that might irk the Führer were he to inspect the building now is the absence of swastikas — there used to be plenty, but they have been scratched out from the walls because the Nazi symbol is illegal in Germany.
The church bells — which were also embossed in swastikas — are likewise missing. They were removed and melted down in 1942 to forge much-needed guns and ammunition.
…
In the early 1930s the Protestant church came under the influence of a racist and fascist movement called the "German Christians" — called "stormtroopers of Jesus," by the group’s leader and founder Rev. Joachim Hossenfelder.
"The people who designed this interior wanted to show that religion and the Nazi philosophy could merge into one. But it can’t," said Böhm.
No…but that won’t mean people won’t try. Particularly when it comes to choosing between a faith that says, someday, the last shall be the first, and their own comfortable conceits. Emphatically it won’t mean that everyday people won’t come and worship the muscular Jesus regardless of anything the actual Jesus said, about loving your neighbor as yourself, about doing unto others, about how blessed are the merciful, and pray their devotions to Christ and to the Aryan race, and return to their homes thinking themselves good Christians, good soldiers for righteousness. How popular is Muscular Jesus now in America? How popular the Jesus of vengeance, the Jesus of war? Change the uniforms on the soldiers a tad, and that church could fit easily into any bible belt community in America, and quite a few outside as well.
That, I’m glad to say, is not the Christianity I grew up with. But I’ve been close enough to it to have a certain familiarity with the mindset. And as a gay man my very existence is pummeled daily by the disciples of the muscular Jesus. Had I not the religious upbringing I had, I might be as hostile towards Christianity now, as are others I know.
Why the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell became the media embodiment of Christianity, and not people like Fred Clark, and Peterson Toscano, I have absolutely no idea. But it’s one of the great tragedies of our age. Böhm is right…the religion of Jesus cannot be merged with the philosophy of Nazis. The mistake is that the muscular Jesus isn’t a merging of the two philosophies, but a superseding of the one by the other. So the Jesus that said love your neighbor vanishes in the shadow of the one who says might makes right.
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