The Presidential Inauguration Committee just issued a statement saying, "We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan – but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event.” — PIC communications director Josh Earnest.
Did HBO cave in the face of conservative outcries over Rev. Robinson’s selection for this event? Did the Inaugural committee rush Rev. Robinson onstage and off before the broadcast was slated to begin? Whatever the case may be, this is a cold slap. HBO has some serious explaining to do, as does the Inaugural committee.
Harvey Milk is screaming in his metaphorical grave right now.
It’s a good question, and this scenario fits nicely with the alleged technical difficulties I keep hearing about, that prevented Robinson’s words from even being clearly heard by the crowd that was there: I have friends who work as sound engineers, I’ve been with them as they did their work in various settings, and I’m here to tell you that they work hard at choreographing each and every microphone and pickup’s settings for each and every element of an event. I have no idea how the video side of it works but I’d be surprised if it was any less intricate. If Robinson was rushed out before the stage crew and the technical engineers were ready for him that would explain the fumbling around, and possibly even the video black-out. The only problem with this scenerio of course, is it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.
One fuckup I can accept. It’s still unacceptable, amateurish, unprofessional behavior that gay Americans have every right to be pissed off about and demand an apology for, but I can be convinced that one was a fuckup. Two of them that Just Happen to target the gay presence at this event and only the gay presence at this event and it’s staringly obvious that it was deliberate. The only question now is who engineered it?
I’m reading elsewhere that Dianne Feinstein heads the inagural committee. Well, there’s a good place to start. People just assume that since she was Mayor of San Francisco after Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assasinated that she’s a friend of the gay community. Nothing could be further from the truth…
After the 1978 death of Harvey Milk in San Francisco, gay rights activist Tom Brougham came up with a definition of domestic partnership that is now universally used, and was designed to include everything about marriage except sexual orientation. According to Brougham, the definition was that the couple must be more than 18 years old and mentally competent to make a contract. Furthermore, his position was that domestic partners must publicly declare the partnership and pledge to be responsible for each other.
In 1982, Brougham’s definition was modified by Supervisor Harry Britt (a gay man appointed to replace Harvey Milk). Britt’s version was adopted and passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but Dianne Feinstein, mayor of San Francisco at the time, came under intense pressure from the Catholic Church and subsequently vetoed the bill. Not until 1989 was a domestic partnership law adopted in the city of San Francisco…
Note that we have been fighting for marriage rights since the 1970s. Next time some ignorant jackass asks you why same-sex marriage has suddenly become such a big deal with teh gays, slap them upside the head with the biggest, thickest history book you can find.
A recall attempt was made after Feinstein vetoed Britt’s bill, to get her booted out of office. The gay community was massively pissed off. But Feinstein calculated that there weren’t enough gay people in San Francisco who cared enough about domestic partnership in the disco 70s to sign enough recall petitions to get it to the point of their actually being a vote. But another group of pissed off San Franciscans, gun owners, were already circulating a recall petition on her after she signed some new gun control measure or another. Many gay folk simply started adding their names to that one. That gave it enough signatures that a vote was actually held, much to her shock.
She survived it. Ever since when asked about it she has not only never apologized, she has insisted vetoing the bill was the right thing to do. Feinstein is that sort of democrat that blocks progress on equality far more then outright bigots manage, because they keep conning people into believing they’ll do the right thing once in office and then when it actually comes time to do the right thing, they don’t.
I wonder if another Catholic Bishop whispered into Feinstein’s ear again, that she’d better not be seen giving anything to the gays…
Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson’s prayer, HBO said via email, "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."
Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainty.
However, it does seem that the network’s position is that they had nothing to do with the decision.
So who made the decision to closet the Gay Men’s Chorus? Dan Savage sums it up nicely here …
When you’re throwing folks a bone it’s a good idea to make sure they can, you know, see the bone.
It’s five in the morning here in Baltimore, and already my mailbox is chock full of outrage over this. From the Gay Democrats mail list to the local Baltimore lists its everywhere. Everywhere but Google news which seems to think that Robinson’s prayer was seen by the whole nation. Over at Science Blogs they’re calling it an Historic inaugural slap in the face to LGBT community. One commenter there posted this…
We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak
And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids
Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard
Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…
Several people over at Daily KOS, are covering this. DrFood mentions, via Pam’s House Blend, that you couldn’t even hear Robinson on NPR…
Bishop Gene Robinson gave a beautiful invocation at the inaugural concert today. I know because I read it here. (Full text below the fold.) I didn’t see it on HBO. Apparently you couldn’t see it on CNN or PBS. (*see update below) An angry commenter on Pam’s House Blend says you couldn’t even hear it on NPR.
Craigkg is reporting that even those in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial might not have been able to hear Robinson’s Prayer…
In fact, it is being reported by some who were in attendance that when Rev Robinson delivered his invocation, the speakers were either turned down or off all together.
The situation with Rev. Robinson and Rev. Warren has become so incredibly similar to the fiasco involving Donnie McClurkin and Rev. Andy Sidden its not even funny. Before the South Carolina primary, Obama held a concert for black evangelicals and invited gospel singer and "ex-gay" homophobe Donnie McClurkin to sing and emcee the event. GLBT activists reacted by denouncing McClurkin’s claims that gays can change their sexual orientation (aka be saved) and Obama for having such a divisive anti-gay figure associated with his campaign. The GLBT community is rightly very sensitive to the legitimization of the ex-gay movement and the severe psychological damage reparative therapy can have of those subjected to this (being kind here) torture. After some hemming and hawing Obama announced he did not agree with McClurkin’s views on gays, tried to reinterate his own support of the GLBT community and announced that an invocation at the concert would be delivered by openly gay minister, the Rev. Andy Sidden. It was highly questioned at the time having a white gay minister deliver the prayer when several black gay ministers were available and willing to give it. At the concert, Rev. Sidden delivered his prayer in front of a largely unoccupied venue as most people were outside still filing in. Reports put the crowd at one quarter to one third of the eventual attendance at best. McClurkin went on to emcee and perform in front of the full crowd and delivered his own god saved me from my gayness statement…
At Talking Points Memo…there is the Top Ten Reasons Why HBO Censored Gene Robinson…
1. HBO sound system cannot broadcast gay voices.
2. Program ran over schedule, so HBO went back in their time machine and cut the beginning of the live broadcast.
3. Appearance of a gay men’s chorus went way over HBO’s ‘gay quota’ for the event.
4. HBO is a family-friendly network that does not carry offensive material like frontal nudity, profanity, or bishops.
5. Ellen DeGeneres was jealous.
6. Dumbledore was jealous.
7. HBO was warned that terrorists were watching for a signal that America was gay weak.
8. Rick Warren was jealous.
9. Everyone knows all gays are atheists.
10. Sarah Palin used her special anti-Russian spyware to block the signal.
A search of Getty Images, NYTimes.com and WaPo slide shows turned up nothing. In short, I found no visual evidence that an invocation was ever said.
The TVBarn blogger lists three options for team Obama to handle this: 1) Claim it was a technical glitch, 2) Admit they never intended for Robinson to be seen on national TV, 3) Admit they screwed up. My money is on 1, and they’ll stick stubbornly with it no matter how many people point out that the event began without any problems precisely on time, and that the "glitch" only happened during Robinson’s prayer, and that it still doesn’t explain why the Gay Men’s Chorus was closeted.
Could it be that the American media has finally decided these public events should be 100% secular? Don’t count on it, friends, because you know as well as I do that pop-pastor Rick Warren will be front and center and at full volume to kick off President-Elect Obama’s formal Inauguration on Tuesday.
Today’s event at the Lincoln Memorial was entitled We Are One, but apparently We Are Minus One is closer to the truth.
When Barack Obama chose anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-porn Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, gays and lesbians—still smarting from Prop 8—were understandably upset. Well, I thought our dismay was understandable. But a lot of folks in the comments threads here, there, and everywhere disagreed. Barack was just trying to bring the country together, to find common ground, and Rick Warren invited him to his church, and how dare you get upset, trust the man, let him get into office before you start grousing at him about this, why are you worrying about symbolism when it’s policy that matters, and blah blah blah.
…
Then when Barack Obama chose Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop, to give the invocation at tonight’s pre-inaugural festivities—the concert tonight at the Lincoln Memorial—the folks defending Obama were all like, "SEE? Obama is bringing the country together! Anti-gay preachers, gay preachers—everyone is equal and equally welcome!" And Gene Robinson did give the invocation at tonight’s concert…and his words were very moving. You can read the full text of Robinson’s prayer here.
But if you were watching HBO’s broadcast of tonight’s concert you didn’t see Robinson, or hear his remarks… because Robinson’s invocation wasn’t included in the broadcast. Skipped over during the live broadcast, edited out of the rebroadcast.
Dig it. Not just skipped over, but edited out. And Bishop Robinson wasn’t the only thing edited out…
How about the fact that tonight’s other big gay moment—the D.C. gay men’s chorus singing with Josh Groban—passed without the chorus, unlike every other performer, being identified?
Nice. Welcome to morning in America. No matter what little token we may think we’ve managed to win, never doubt the ability or the willingness of the corporate media to make sure we remain invisible. And it’s not just that they’d rather have republicans in power then democrats. It’s not just that allowing people to see their gay and lesbian neighbors for the human beings we are, makes it hard for us to be the monsters we have to become every election year so that republicans can gay bash their way into winning elections. Homophobia is as much a fact of life in the high testosterone boardrooms of corporate America as it is in the megachurch stadium seating big screen TV cathedrals of the heartland. They hate us. First of all you have to understand that they hate us.
The democrats are sill late in coming to this fight. Obama and his people probably genuinely thought they were being actively inclusive in bringing in Gene Robinson. They were probably totally blind-sided by all this. Like a lot of decent rational people, they just don’t get the depth of contempt toward gay people. They never believe it until they actually see it for themselves. You can’t just take a rhetorical stand in favor of gay equality. You can’t just make a few gestures of sympathy and expect any progress to be made. This is a knife fight. They hate us. They hate us with a venom that is as bottomless as it is bitter. Every inch of progress in this fight, every inch, every painful, bloody inch of progress we make toward equality, toward the day when we are free to love and hope and dream and make decent lives for ourselves to the best of our ability, is its own poisonous scorched earth total war. Every inch. It will be like that right up to the bitter end and for generations after. They hate us. They will never stop hating us. Of course HBO censored Gene Robinson. Of course they shoved the Gay Men’s chorus into the closet. The corporate media will keep on making us invisable, will keep on shoving us back into the closet, will enable the demonization of gay people, and look the other way at the toll of death and destruction until someone makes them stop. Asking politely will not change one single solitary thing. They hate us.
On SlashDot recently there was a post concerning Google’s announced support for repealing or overturning Proposition 8. Google placed its opposition to discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage in the context of being able to entice the best workers to its California workplace, but immediately the commenters on SlashDot began to bellyache at the hypocrisy of being concerned about recruiting good workers at the same time they’re laying people off. As if the two things are mutually exclusive. I guess most SlashDot visitors are very young and haven’t been through many recessions.
But reliably came the calls from ersatz libertarians to get government out of the business of marriage. Civil Unions they say, are a workable compromise. People are just getting hung up over a word they say. Never mind that making all civil marriages civil unions just isn’t going to happen politically. Our enemies don’t want us to have even civil unions. This isn’t a fight over a word or none of these anti same-sex marriage amendments would forbid civil unions too and nearly all of them do. That wasn’t accidental. The word people are getting hung up over in this fight isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexuals’.
From the Salt Lake Tribune comes this little article, ostensibly to show that Utahns (read: Mormons) aren’t so bigoted after all…
While Utahns aren’t ready to let gay and lesbian couples exchange wedding vows or enter civil unions, most are willing to give them broader legal rights to inherit property, visit a partner in the hospital and ward off employment discrimination…However, the poll shows overwhelming opposition (70 percent) to any changes to the Utah Constitution that would allow same-sex partners to enter civil unions…
Well isn’t that lovely. You want hypocrisy? It’s not in Google taking a stand for human decency, even as it has to lay off workers. It’s here, right here, in all those righteous people who think that respecting the love and devotion of same-sex couples in sickness makes it okay to rip their lives apart in health. If you believe that homosexuality is a sickness, a perversion, an abomination to God that will lead to the destruction of the family and western civilization, then what sense does it make to give same sex couple’s any rights? All that says, is they know goddamned well that same sex couples love each other every bit as much as opposite sex couples do. All this says, is that they don’t want to be thought of as the gutter crawling butchers of other people’s hopes and dreams that they are.
This is their way of saving face, nothing more, nothing less. It’s the equivocation of bigots trying to look at themselves in a mirror and deny the blood on their hands was something they did willingly, deliberately, knowingly. We don’t hate them…look…we’re willing to let them visit their sex partners in the hospital… How does that make sense when homosexuals are destroying the family and western civilization? It doesn’t. It’s an admission of guilt. It exposes the bedrock of animus toward gay people that motivates them more then simply denying gay people all legal status does. Ignorance sees only monsters when it looks at gay people. It takes shame to know that kicking them in the face isn’t something you want to be seen doing.
And even those moral runts only constitute a bare majority of the whole in Utah. After the critical roll the Mormon church played in passing Proposition 8 became known, Mormon church leaders averred they had no objection to granting same sex couples some small rights, and the democratic opposition in the state promptly took them at their word, proposing legislation to grant them just that. They call their work, without any apparent sense of irony, the "common ground" bills.
While Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, doubts Utahns would change the state constitution to permit civil unions, he said he would entertain bills on more-expansive legal rights for gays.
"The fact that anybody wants [wider rights] isgrounds to pursue it and investigate it," said Waddoups, adding that he would ensure the Common Ground bills get a fair debate if they make it to committee or the Senate floor.
But opposition certainly will follow from Utahns such as poll respondent Maureen Johnson.
"I don’t believe they should have any rights at all," said the South Jordan resident. "The Lord says the man is made for the woman and the woman is made for the man."
Well thank you Senator Waddoups, R-Taylorsville for entertaining the idea that gay people ought to have rights. The compromise between right and wrong is indifference to either right or wrong. The compromise between living in freedom and living in a police state is I agree to put the handcuffs on myself and pretend I had a choice in the matter. The compromise between love and hate is to put the knife into your own heart and spare hate the trouble. The word that describes the "common ground" between free people and tyrants is Battleground, not Peace. Just ask the shades that walk at Shiloh.
Common ground is that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. Once upon a time that was the American compromise. We all had different faiths, came from different lands, were raised in different cultures. But as far as the law was concerned, we were all Americans. The religious and fascist right have waged a decades long scorched earth war to shred the American ideal of equality, so that they might rise above the rest of us and rule over all. Because they are the favored of God. Because to rule over the heathens is their God-given right. No…duty.
Take up the Godly Man’s burden…
Ye dare not stoop to less…
And now we, who believe in the American dream, are in a pitched fight to retake what was once our sacred common ground: liberty and justice for all. Equality is the common ground. What’s equal to marriage, is marriage.
What’s significant about this is that Hanks is seen as the same sort of American Everyman character actor that Jimmy Stewart once was.
“The truth is this takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who’s responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process.”
This, I can see from the other Google news headlines, has the kook pews up in arms.
Actor Tom Hanks went after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their support of California’s Proposition 8 while talking to Fox News. Today, the Church responded.
…
Church spokesman Scott Trotter issued a one-sentence statement today in response to Hanks’ comments. It reads: "Expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."
So cutting off your neighbor’s ring finger amounts to expressing an opinion. See how easy it is to live without a conscience? You don’t have to give a shit about anything or anyone. You can rip apart your neighbor’s marriage. You can brutalize children for profit. The lives of other people don’t matter. Only your quest for Godhood matters. Who cares how many lives you destroy, when at the end of it all you get to be a God?
Geekologie points out the RealTouch, which is a futuristic sex toy for men…
Apparently, the RealTouch is like a Fleshlight, kind of, only with moving parts. The orifice expands and contracts and the interior heats up to human body temperature. And it comes with a USB port that connects you to a computer where you can watch a POV porn film that is cued to the device, so the device simulates the intensity and frequency of the action committed by the porn star on the screen. Comes in straight and gay varieties.
Lovely…
Just…lovely… Behold the total dehumanization of sex. That…thing…on the right is the innards of the heterosexual version. Please god let me be born a gay man in the next life.
A university in Germany is concerned that while some of its students are learning skills that will help them get ahead financially they might be lacking in the skills required to attract partners. Potsdam University, south of Berlin, has initiated a course in flirting and is offering the course to all Master Degree computer engineering students. So far 440 students have enrolled in the course.
Emphasis mine. Gosh…you think there’s a need out there…?
The course will teach students how to write flirtatious email and text messages, methods for attracting partners at parties and functions, how to dress and what topics to discuss while on a date. The course will also guide students in how to deal with rejection if the methods taught in the course fail to produce desired outcomes.
…The university believes that education for students should be about helping them succeed in their future private lives as well as their future careers. ‘Students that feel they are missing out on the fun that others are having are liable to suffer low self esteem and possibly depression: many IT and science students also tend to be socially shy so this is definitely a step in the right direction’ Marta, a student psychologist noted.
…Recent studies around the world have indeed shown that university students studying computer related subjects and science are most likely to be virgins and engage in the least sexual activity during their years on campus. Could Potsdam university break this cycle?
I don’t see why not. This has been a hobby horse of mine ever since my mid-thirties when, still single and lonely, I became sickeningly apparent to me that I still had no clue what I was doing, or how to go about finding a lover. School should teach this as a subject, right along with reading and math and everything else they’re supposed to be teaching kids to prepare them for life. Yet we’re still, in this day and age, lucky to even get decent sex education.
Some people are naturals at this. That’s fine but the thinking seems to be that the dating and mating game is something we are all innately naturals at and that just isn’t true or there wouldn’t be so much loneliness in the world. And violence and hate and all sorts of other psychosis. Think of how much more peaceful this poor angry world would be if everyone had an emotionally fulfilling love life. Teaching people how to date, how to flirt, how to handle rejection, get back on their feet and go on, isn’t as silly as it sounds.
We are not all naturals at this. Most of us are just plain lousy at it. Whatever evolutionary baggage we have for it probably doesn’t much apply in a modern industrial technological civilization. The village were we all used to grow up in together and get to know one another is gone. The dating environment our parents found each other in is gathering dust in the history books. And they did it by trial and error too anyway. We need to get past that, and start treating the human need for companionship seriously, like it’s just as much a matter of our long term survival as making babies. Take a look at the news headlines on any day of the week and tell yourself that the problem with this world is there is too much love in it.
You knew it was going to be an easy day in class when you walked in and saw one of the school’s Bell & Howell Filmosound 16mm projectors set up in the middle of the room. If the teacher was a technologically challenged sort, they’d let the class AV geek (sometimes that was me) thread the film through it and run it. You got to sit back and watch a film, and it was a safe bet that the film would be a lot more interesting and engaging then whatever teacher taught that particular class. Or to put it another way, you knew you had a good teacher when the sight of the film projector was a bit of a let-down.
My favorites were the Bell Labs educational films. Least appreciated on my list were the Highway Safety Institute films that grossed and scared the crap out of me to the point where I almost refused to get a driver’s license. Oh…and the sex ed films about the dangers of heavy petting. Who cared about that stuff anyway?
Then there were the films warning us about the dangers of homosexuality. I think I saw this one in high school…
Yeah, I laughed. As someone who actually sat through some of those old 1950s morality films, I can tell you that whoever did that one got it just about perfect…down to the stilted dialogue and cheesy narration. All that was missing from it was the randomly warbly sound of the old 16mm projector audio.
But some of us still remember the real thing…
That’s what me and my peers all got back in grade school. They were showing this crap to us as early as 8th grade. Before the personal computer came along, before the internet, before cable TV and home video, the only things we knew about homosexuals and homosexuality, were what we were taught in films like that one.
I’m sure those 1950s film makers had no idea, no clue themselves, that some of the kids watching that film were gay themselves, or that the others in the class would one day learn that an old classmate they’d gone to school alongside of is gay, and have to reconcile the kid they’d known with the image of the sick and twisted homosexual monster that they were taught. I’m sure those 1950s film makers had no idea, no clue themselves, what it was like to be either one of those kids, all grown up now, looking apprehensively at each other.
There are several good articles in today’s Pioneer Press Online, about the hostile environment gay teens still face in school every day. Even in the best of situations, where school administrators really want to make sure those kids can get a decent education, it is still difficult.
That last article, is particularly good because it touches on the "soft bigotry" of silence…
One way to enhance a culture of school tolerance is to include gay characters and themes in the academic curriculum, said Shannon Sullivan, executive director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, a statewide non-profit group dedicated to ensuring the safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.
Students who are gay or who are questioning their sexual identity will see themselves reflected in the curriculum and will feel more connected to their school which should have a positive impact on their academic achievement, she explained.
But of course, this is what the religious right calls pro-homosexual advocacy. Never mind that they call teaching evolution pro Darwinism advocacy too. And as in their attacks on science education, the Fundamentalists demand that if you are going to teach about homosexuality, then to be "fair" to "both sides" you must teach the controversy…
Last spring, for example, the Deerfield parent group North Shore Student Advocacy, opposed the inclusion of the Pulitzer prize-winning play "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," on the optional reading lists of some advanced placement English classes in Township District 113. (Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools are part of this district.) Set at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the play focuses on political and social themes of the time.
Lora Sue Hauser, executive director of the parent group, declined to comment for this story. But Laurie Higgins, who taught in the writing center at Deerfield High for eight years before leaving recently to become the director of the division of school advocacy at the Illinois Family Institute, a fundamentalist Christian organization, weighed in.
Higgins said she opposes the inclusion of the play in the curriculum because the text is so "beyond the pale" in terms of its "obscene language" that there was widespread opposition to its teaching among faculty from both sides of the political spectrum.
But it isn’t just the sexually-explicit play that Higgins challenges. She said she is against the inclusion of any literature on the reading list for a public high school that affirms homosexuality as normal unless there are other books on the reading list which question that assumption of normalcy as well. The notion that homosexuality is biologically-determined is controversial and unproven, Higgins explained.
It’s only controversial because teaching the facts about human sexuality makes Fundamentalists pop their corks. The evidence that sexual orientation is as much a biological fact as handedness is comprehensive and overwhelming. But these are people who reject out of hand any scientific discovery that contradicts a literal reading of Genesis. "Unproven" to them really means "unbiblical" and that is not something that is open to proof. They don’t care about the science. They spit on science and laugh.
The strategy here is simply to punish gay kids one way or another. If the adults in their schools won’t make them feel ashamed to be living, then the strategy is to prevent the adults from saying anything good about them, and in that way maintain the climate of shame. The lives and accomplishments of heterosexuals can be taught, but the lives and accomplishments of homosexuals must not be mentioned. What it is for opposite sex pairs to love, honor, and cherish can be taught. Whatever it is that same-sex pairs feel for one another cannot be told, cannot even be alluded to, because the very existence of same-sex pairs cannot even be mentioned. Homosexuals are simply too disgusting to even think about, let alone talk about. The purpose is to alienate gay teens from their peers, and hopefully, make them keep on hating themselves.
One more thing: The following leaped out at me from within the article on A Culture of Tolerance. This is the same Laurie Higgins who was quoted above…
Laurie Higgins, who taught in the writing center at Deerfield for eight years before becoming the director of the division of school advocacy at the Illinois Family Institute, explained her position. She said she has compassion for gay and lesbian people and even has some in her life whom she loves, but she cannot condone their behavior which she views as immoral.
Some of my best friends are… We are in that stage now in the struggle. Since the fight over Proposition 8 I cannot count the number of bigots I’ve seen yap, yap, yapping in print that some of their Best Friends are gay. Once upon a time they felt completely free to tell the world what sick, twisted, depraved monsters we are. Now they have to mouth platitudes of how many gay friends they have first, before going on to explain why they’re twisting the knife in our backs. Or in this case, kicking school kids in the face. How they must hate us all the more, for making them do that.
Via KOS…A wee post from Effective Measure, a public health forum, titled, What Else Did You Expect From Horny Teenagers? Remember it, the next time you hear some crackpot argue that religion is a precondition of moral behavior…
Evolution has hard wired a drive to reproduce in young, healthy humans. That’s how the species survives. Maybe you don’t want them to have sex and maybe they even promise they won’t, but biology is more powerful than parents or governments.
Or even…religious dogmas. Like those that insist evolution is nonsense because it contradicts the biblical story of creation…
A study published in the journal Pediatrics followed 289 teenagers who said in 1996 they took a virginity pledge and compared them with 645 non-pledgers, taking into account religious beliefs and attitudes to sex and birth control. This was done because previous studies didn’t factor in the possibility that teens who pledge may be quite different characteristics that affect sexual behavior than those who don’t. So this was an attempt to compare "like with like," the main difference being that one group had promised not to have sex while the other didn’t. "Virginity pledges" are a prominent feature of the Bush administration’s abstinence only sex education programs that didn’t teach contraceptive practices.
Five years after taking the pledge:
82% of pledgers denied ever having taken the pledge
Pledgers and matched non-pledgers did not differ in rates of premarital sex, sexually transmitted disease, and oral and anal sex behaviors
Pledgers had 0.1 fewer sexual partners in the past year but did not differ from non-pledgers in the number of lifetime sexual partners and the age of first sex (Jennifer Warner, WebMD News)
There was one significant difference between the pledge and non-pledge group, however. They were less likely to use condoms or any form of birth control when they did have sex.
You can’t blame them. No one told them how.
Here’s the thing you need to notice about this: Eighty-two percent of them denied ever having taken the pledge. Not that they broke the pledge and had sex anyway, but that they denied they’d made it. Eighty. Two. Percent.
This is where fundamentalism finds its dead end. You can accept that the bible is literally true or you can accept the natural world as it really is but you can’t accept them both. Fundamentalism won’t have it. The simple, stark, finger of God writing it on the wall truth is this: fundamentalism corrupts its followers. It has to. When confronted by a fact, the honest thing to do, the moral thing, is knowledge it. But fundamentalism demands that you deny any fact that contradicts its own truths. What it instills in a person isn’t either a love or fear of god, but a casual acceptance of deception, first as a religious duty, then as a necessary part of every day life. See it in Alan Bonsell testifying under oath that he did not know where the money had been raised to donate sixty copies of Of Pandas and People to his school’s library. See it in the Proposition 8 advertisements that claimed same sex marriage would result in the forcing of churches to marry homosexuals. See it in the eighty-two percent of teenagers in that study who denied they’d ever taken a virginity pledge. Their religion didn’t change their sexual behavior. It didn’t make them more moral. It made them less likely to use condoms, more likely to catch and spread VD, more likely to get each other pregnant, and more willing to lie. What their religion did for them in short, was take away their brakes.
Steve Fidel over at the Mormon Times complains, Thusly ….
For those who have (correctly) assumed the editor of a Web site called MormonTimes.com is a Mormon, I’ve been called on to be an insider in this discussion by those looking for support for their views against same-sex marriage. As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right.
Two men walking in Vancouver’s Davie neighborhood were targeted for attack in still another anti-gay incident in the gay-friendly area.
The attack took place on the evening of Dec. 4 at around 8:00 p.m., according to a Dec. 8 article posted online at Canadian Web site Xtra!.
Chris Hiller was quoted as saying that he and his boyfriend had just come out of a gay bar and were walking along the sidewalk holding hands.
Hiller noted that he knew another person was following behind, but the presence of the other individual did not alarm him until, Hiller said, "my friend goes, ’Come on, Chris, let’s keep walking,’ and next thing I know I’m on the ground with my face covered in blood and dazed, and my friend’s gone to get help."
Hiller did not see his attacker, but he said that he heard the man utter the words, "You fag, I’m going to beat the shit out of you, I don’t like you, stay away from me."
Added the alleged attacker, "Don’t even come near me, you fag."
The article said that Hiller recounted being stuck on the jaw and then receiving a blow right to the teeth.
The article quoted Hiller as saying that he was down for "about four to five minutes," at which point, "I got up and I’m woozy and staggering a bit."
Hiller continued, "I couldn’t see for a few minutes, and then I sat down."
Police arrived a few minutes later in response to the call Hiller’s boyfriend placed, but by then the alleged attacker was long gone.
A state appellate court reversed Steven Pomie’s conviction on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree assault as a hate crime in the 2005 anti-gay attack on Dwan Prince, ordered a new trial for Pomie, and said he could only be tried on lesser charges of second-degree assault and second-degree assault as a hate crime.
The assault, which happened in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section, left Prince permanently disabled and unable to work.
Note that three of the four appellate judges in that case, Peter B. Skelos, Robert A. Lifson, and William F. Mastro, were appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki. Oh…and Skelos is the brother of Dean Skelos, currently the Republican majority leader in the State Senate. You know…the guy who has been single handedly blocking a vote on same-sex marriage in New York for the past several years.
In 2005, Lifson was one of three judges on a five-judge panel who barred a gay man from bringing a wrongful death suit against St. Vincent’s Hospital after his partner died there. The majority ruled that only a spouse could bring such a case and that the couple’s Vermont civil union did not confer that status on the surviving partner. That same gay man won a 2008 case that sought a benefit from an insurance company for his partner’s death. Mastro was one of two judges who dissented from that ruling from a five-judge panel.
We can only assume it would have been even worse for the spouse, had he been a heterosexual Mormon suing for the wrongful death of his legally married wife. Who knows what angry threats and rhetoric he’d have had to endure then.
So…I write back to Mr Mormon Times Fidel…Thusly…
"As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right."
I see. Tell you what… Walk down almost any street in America holding another man’s hand and see what kind of angry threats and rhetoric you get. That’s all. Just holding hands. That simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of heart-to-heart love is enough to get your head bashed-in, in a lot of places. And you don’t even have to be gay to get gay bashed either, as Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay found out. A couple brothers walking down the street arm-in-arm and suddenly an SUV full of angry young men jumps out at them and one of them has an aluminum baseball bat in his hand. And now Jose, alas, is dead. And his brother will take the memory of that night to his grave. Or if holding another man’s hand is too much for you, just try putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your car. You might get what happened to a lesbian in Richmond California last week when four young men saw the rainbow sticker on her car. All those ads your church paid for warning Californians that the homos were coming into the schools for their kids sure paid off didn’t they? You wrote that sentence I quoted above for your fellow Mormons to read so you could all nod your heads together about how hateful the gays are, didn’t you?
I love it when the faithful complain that teh gays are trying to elevate behavior to the level of a civil right. You’re a Mormon…right? Well…no. You aren’t. Mormon is just a behavior. It isn’t what you are, it’s what you do. You attend church. You do whatever church activities it is that Mormons do. And it came to pass you read the Book of Mormon. You wear the magic underwear. Mormon is something you do, not something you are. See? And we don’t want to be elevating behavior to the status of civil right now do we?
Jackass.
—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.
Which is about as much calm and respectful dialogue as I can manage at the moment. It’s too early in the morning here in Baltimore for me to be getting angry at knuckle-dragging morons.
This post was written by CBS News chief political consultant Marc Ambinder:
One reason the Rick Warren thing is a big deal is because, after Bill Clinton, the gay community is unusually sensitive to getting the shorter angle of presidential triangulation. It is hard to overstate the optimism and excitement that gays and lesbians felt in 1992. But the optimism deflated spectacularly after "Don’t Ask, Don’t tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act, not to mention President Clinton’s sneaky 1996 ad boasting about DOMA, which aired only on Christian radio.
Clinton was willing to say the word "gay" in public and appear in black tie at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, but, in the eyes of the gay political community, his commitment to gay rights vanished both times it counted most.
Relative to other minority groups, the LGBT community is disproportionately dependent on the goodwill of the president, because almost all of their big-ticket agenda items are federal laws (the military, DOMA repeal, hate crimes, ENDA, the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, etc.). And relative to other minorities, gays still want and need basic reassurance that they are an ordinary part of American life and politics. So everyone is peering anxiously at Obama wondering if he is going to let them down like Clinton did.
Emphasis mine. That is all we want to be. An ordinary part of American life. And yet…we can’t. Our lives have to be other people’s stepping stones to heaven. That’s what we were put on this earth for, apparently. To be other people’s stepping stones to heaven. Or in the case of Mormons, godhood…
I think it’s more likely that he’s marginalizing Warren’s rivals among the Evangelical leadership. Warren is not actually any less conservative than Dobson or Robertson or anyone else. He is less partisan. His views on abortion and violence are similarly inconsistent, with one being abhorrent and the other acceptable. (The power and legitimacy of the American state, it seems, turns the conservative faithful into moral relativists.) But Warren has shown a tendency not to attack individual political figures the way his peers have, and so Obama has made the decision to elevate Warren at his rivals’ expense. I had an argument with my colleague Brentin Mock yesterday about Obama’s decision, where he pointed out that someone else would be occupying Warren’s leadership role if it wasn’t Warren, and given the alternatives he’s the best choice.
None of this really changes the fact that mainstreaming homophobia is inexcusable, and that Warren does not deserve to share a stage with the Rev. Joseph Lowery. The contrast between Warren’s celebrity and Lowery’s life fighting for civil rights is absolutely staggering. It’s possible to interpret the decision to include Warren and Lowery as another Lincoln "we are not enemies but friends" moment, an attempt to bring the religious right and religious left together. The only problem is the most offended parties, the LGBTQ community and the women Warren equates with Nazis, are not in any symbolic sense present to make the choice to be friends or enemies. Had Obama, say, chosen a gay pastor and forced Warren to make the difficult decision of whether or not to appear, the situation might be a bit different. At the same time, Lowery’s presence as a symbol of his generation’s sacrifice is absolutely necessary. Obama simply wouldn’t be able to run for president without men like Joseph Lowery.
Even if one reads Warren’s presence as a cold political calculation, it’s hard to see why the LGBTQ community wouldn’t be outraged at being exploited for the purpose of cultural triangulation. Obama isn’t a homophobe, but you gotta wonder how long the LGBTQ community has to wait before they get a president who thinks homophobia is unacceptable…
Someone else…I forget who…remarked that it was as if it was 1993 all over again…an unpopular Bush leaves office and a bright and shining new hope for everyone who believes in liberty and justice for all takes office, only to sell out gay Americans and begin a strategy of triangulation…
How long? Yes. That is The Question. How long do we have to wait for our heterosexual neighbors to finally, at long last, become appalled at what has been done all these years to their gay and lesbian neighbors…to their friends…to their own children…? How long before they finally, Finally see the magnitude of what has been taken from? How long before the sight of hate toward loving couples disgusts them more, then the sight of someone making excuses for hate? How long before shaking hands with gutter crawling bigots like Rick Warren disgusts them enough that even a politician can feel it?
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Amendments that restrict civil marriage rights of same-sex couples – such as Proposition 8 that recently passed in California – have led to higher levels of stress and anxiety among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults, as well as among their families of origin, according to several new studies to be published by the American Psychological Association.
…
Participants reported feeling not just alienated from their communities, but fearful that they would lose their children, that they would become victims of anti-gay violence or that they would need to move to a more accepting community. Some of these anxieties were mitigated by social support.
For instance, one interviewee said he became "petrified …of being raped or roughed up or killed, you know, for doing nothing, basically. I worry about being picked out as a gay guy because my mannerisms are not entirely masculine." Another said the marriage amendment supporters were using the Bible "like a brick on us. They are beating us with it."
Social support from religious institutions, families, GLBT friends and heterosexual allies led most of the participants "to greater feelings of safety, happiness and strength," the researchers wrote.
And in the third study, 10 family members of GLBT people living in Memphis were interviewed regarding how anti-GLBT initiatives and movements had affected their family. Their responses were also grouped into clusters of similar themes.
"Some participants identified so deeply with their family member’s experience that they felt equally attacked by these movements and policies," the researchers wrote. "They considered themselves members of the GLBT community and experienced rejection by others for being a GLBT family member."
"Typically, we tend to think of anti-GLBT policies such as marriage bans and Proposition 8 as affecting only GLBT people. However, our research suggests that others in addition to GLBT people are also impacted by this legislation and sometimes quite negatively. For example, we learned that some family members experienced a form of secondary minority stress. Although many participants displayed resiliency and effective coping with this stress, some experienced strong negative consequences to their mental and physical health," said Jennifer Arm, M.S.
Emphasis mine. Hold that thought for a moment…
But of course…this is what was supposed to happen. When louts like Lee Benson call us "sore losers" don’t be fooled. They know exactly how we feel about having the knife in our hearts. We’re supposed to feel that way. And they take a good deal of self righteous satisfaction in seeing the impact hit. We are supposed to be sore losers. What we’re not supposed to do is fight back.
What anti same sex marriage amendments are supposed to accomplish, particularly in states where same-sex marriages, and same sex couples, have no legal status to begin with, is further alienating gay people from their communities and their families. That is the point. Not that we aren’t supposed to marry, but that we are not supposed to exist. God doesn’t want us here on this good earth. The faithful are only doing their part to insure that we understand this.
At some point, it all boils over. The wave of anger and revulsion after H8 passed was just a taste of what is to come if the religious right keeps hammering away at same sex couples. Rex Wockner was getting a tad jittery a few weeks ago at all the rage being vented by gay people against their tormentors. But it wasn’t just gay people who were out on the streets. I suppose he was worried that the haters would start killing us in retaliation or something. It’s easy to forget, because the deaths happen one lonely life at a time, that gay people are being killed all the time. The struggle turned violent a long time ago. Before Stonewall even. And that’s not counting the suicides. Humans kill themselves for a variety of reasons, most of which are personal and private. But when a people are constantly and relentlessly driven to it, you have to ask yourself if that isn’t a kind of murder too. There is already a lot of gay blood on the pavement. What happens next, is that straight blood starts splashing down on it too.
Take another look at this article. The stress is noticeably affecting the families and friends of gay people now too. What happened after election night this year, was that hundreds of thousands of our heterosexual family members and friends stood with us on the streets, angry and outraged at what they can see now, finally, at long last, is happening to their gay family and friends. What you have to understand is that isn’t going to make the haters back off. It’s going to scare them. And like the guy in Easy Rider said, it won’t make them running scared, it’ll make them dangerous.
Over at Pam’s House Blend, Pam is reporting that some of the righteous folks behind Proposition H8 are planning to take out a full page New York Times ad, to accuse gay people of a campaign of violence…
According to our source, the ad will cite an incident where a white powder was sent to a church, and "document" disruptions of services at houses of worship. The Becket Fund is also allegedly contacting like-minded anti-gay organizations to request that they sign on to the ad.
Matthew Shepard. Nicholas West. Scotty Joe Weaver. Barry Winchell. Thanh Nguyen. Michael Burzinski, Gary Matson and Winfel Mowder and Billy Jack Gaither and Brandon Teena and William Metz and Carl Warren Jr. and Aaron Webster and all the others listed Here …and all the tens of thousands of tens of thousands more whose names we know and whose names we don’t. A campaign of violence has been going on and on and on for generations against gay people. It is considered so unremarkable by the bigots, and by most of the country still, that when gay people start fighting back they can accuse Us of creating a climate of violence without even smirking. They’ve been looking the other way at violence toward gay people for so long, they really think we’re the ones starting it.
What’s coming next, is that the families and friends of gay people will start dying too, because the bottomless hatred that moves the bigot is unable to distinguish between queers and queer lovers, anymore then it was able to distinguish between niggers and nigger lovers back in the 1950s. The crime that finally shocked the nation during the struggle against race segregation in America, was the killing of three young civil rights workers in Missisisippi, two of whom were white. I prophesy now, that somewhere, right this moment, their hearts beating, young and full of life, are one or more heterosexuals who have an appointment with a bloody and grusome death in the jaws of the same mindless sub-human beast that has been killing gay people for generations. They will die for the crime of loving their neighbor as themselves. And when love is put to death for loving, what is left within the human heart to take its place? It isn’t the rage of gay people Wockner needs to be afraid of.
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We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak
And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids
Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….
Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard
Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…
Posted by: Cuttlefish | January 18, 2009 10:38 PM