Toastmaster: Gentlemen, pray silence for the President of the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.

(There is much upper class applause and banging on the table as Sir William rises to his feet.)

Sir William: I thank you, gentlemen. The year has been a good one for the Society (hear, hear). This year our members have put more things on top of other things than ever before. But, I should warn you, this is no time for complacency. No, there are still many things, and I cannot emphasize this too strongly, not on top of other things. I myself, on my way here this evening, saw a thing that was not on top of another thing in any way. (shame!) Shame indeed but we must not allow ourselves to become too despondent. For, we must never forget that if there was not one thing that was not on top of another thing our society would be nothing more than a meaningless body of men that had gathered together for no good purpose. But we flourish. This year our Australasian members and the various organizations affiliated to our Australasian branches put no fewer than twenty-two things on top of other things. (applause) Well done all of you. But there is one cloud on the horizon. In this last year our Staffordshire branch has not succeeded in putting one thing on top of another (shame!). Therefore I call upon our Staffordshire delegate to explain this weird behaviour.

(As Sir William sits a meek man met at one of the side tables.)

Mr Cutler: Er, Cutler, Staffordshire. Um … well, Mr Chairman, it’s just that most of the members in Staffordshire feel… the whole thing’s a bit silly.

(Cries of outrage. Chairman leaps to feet.)

Sir William: Silly SILLY!! (he pauses and thinks) Silly! I suppose it is, a bit. What have we been doing wasting our lives with all this nonsense (hear, hear). Right, okay, meeting adjourned for ever.

(He gets right up and walks away from the table to approving noises and applause…)

Ever have one of those moments?  Silly! I suppose it is, a bit. What have I been doing wasting my life with all this nonsense…  I remember my Ayn Rand days with about the same bewhildered emberassment that I remember my early teenage bible thumper days.  In my defense first, hey…I was raised in a Baptist household…okay?  Second, I can honestly say that the rarefied heights of my passion for all things scriptural occurred within months of my having a "the whole thing’s a bit silly" moment.  I guess I’m just one of those people who has to smack into every damn brick wall for himself, before he knows its there.

I was a passionate Randian right up until Ronald Reagan convinced me that an utterly unregulated market will happily drive itself off a cliff chasing after that one last dollar it hasn’t yet pocketed.  I devoured her books.  Re-reading them again after all these years is really, Really embarrassing.  She may be a good at plot and scenerio, but a writer of believable characters, let alone believable dialogue, she simply wasn’t.  I’ve read yaoi romance novels with less embarrassing dialogue then Rand’s.  And she never, never trusted her readers to understand anything.  Why simply make your point in the story’s action, when you can pound it into your reader’s head with a jackhammer.  She’s like a little bird perched on your shoulder while you read, constantly chirping in your ear, Do you get it?  Do you get it?  Do you get it? 

So I remember very well, all her novel’s heroic capitalists, and her school girl idolization of the manly titans of industry.  I once heard romanticism described as an art form that wasn’t concerned with reality, but with the idealization of reality.  Probably the one and only thing I still have from Rand that I believe in, is that this is false, that romanticism is not only an idealization, but an essentialization of the world around us, and that no one who disconnects themselves from reality, can ever be a good romantic, because you cannot idealize something you do not understand.  Oh…had Rand only taken her own advice a time or two, and actually looked the fuck at what she was writing about…

Duke Cheating Probe Shows Failure of Post-Enron Ethics Classes

By Matthew Keenan and Brian K. Sullivan

May 1 (Bloomberg) — The cheating episode at Duke University may cause academics to conclude the post-Enron emphasis on teaching ethics in graduate business schools is a failure.

Thirty-four first-year candidates for a master’s of business administration degree at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business were disciplined in the program’s largest cheating scandal. Nine students face expulsion for collaborating on a take-home test, in violation of the professor’s rules.

Business students are more likely to cut corners than those in any other academic discipline, several studies show. A Rutgers University survey last year found that cheating at business schools is common, even after ethics courses were added following scandals that bankrupted Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc.

"What is taught in a business program sometimes reinforces students’ tendencies to be entrepreneurial and results-oriented", said Timothy Dodd, 50, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke, in an interview from Durham, North Carolina. "Those sometimes aren’t the people who understand that moral means have to be used to achieve moral ends."

Well…duh.  The Baptist Boy in me would say that if they’re not getting their lessons on ethics at home, they won’t learn them in school.  But there have been good, bad, and indifferent families for generations, and I think the world worn middle aged guy I’m becoming has come to believe now, that the problem isn’t the home life a kid has, but that sharks simply gravitate to where the good hunting is, and a marketplace where ripping people off and bleeding them dry is not only legal, but an easy and respectable way of life, is going to attract a lot of sharks.

I’m old enough to remember when our economy had some regulation that made it hard for business to do that.  I can remember when folks who worked in the retail sector could afford decent if modest housing, a basic car, and still raise a family, pay their bills, put the kids through school, and take a short vacation to someplace once a year.  I was raised through most of my childhood by a single working woman who made nothing more then basic clerical wages all her life and I never went to bed hungry once, never walked out of the house without clean clothes on, and had everything I needed for school and my health provided for.  The bills got paid, we lived in a series of pretty nice garden style apartments, I got the usual gifts on my birthdays and at Christmas, and once a year we all went to the beach for a couple weeks.  When mom retired, she got a basic pension (you may have to look up that word ‘pension’) which combined with her social security and medicare gave her a pretty nice retirement right up to the day she died.

They called it trickle-down economics during the Reagan years.  A rising tide would lift all the boats they said.  So they freed big business from the shackles of the liberal welfare state.  And golly, a lot of businessmen are doing much better for it, aren’t they.  But I’m sure as fuck glad I’m not a kid today, being raise by a single mother trying to make ends meet on clerical wages.  I go to the store these days, and I see the faces of the people serving me behind the counter, being nickeled and dimed to death now and no, the tide didn’t rise, it went out and left a lot of boats stranded, which doesn’t make sense because people can’t spend money they don’t have and when they don’t have a living wage anymore they aren’t bloody likely to be buying stuff they can’t afford.  But what you have to understand about an unregulated marketplace, is that nothing, not even its own sustainability, matters more then the profit you can make Right Now.  The sharks will happily drive our economy and our country off a cliff chasing after that last dollar they haven’t pocketed yet, just because it’s there.

At some point, hopefully, the nation will have a "the whole thing’s a bit silly" moment, regarding the innate goodness of unregulated markets and we can start talking about how to put back together again, what the Reagan republicans started tearing apart.  It would be nice someday, to be able to walk into a store and not feel ashamed at being served by people who simply cannot make ends meet on what they’re being paid.

Rick Perlstein has a good blog going at Campaign For America’s Future that you should check out .  For some help loosing your appitite, read some of his posts on what he’s calling, E. coli Conservatives:

(Click here to learn why we call them "E. coli conservatives.")

I wrote here about how we found out how Peter Pan peter butter got poisoned: the company, months after the event, did a belated inspection that blamed a leaky roof. The FDA hadn’t been able to find that same leaky roof when it inspected fact two months earlier.

Neither the company nor the FDA, we know now, managed to notice what it took those evil "trial lawyers" conservative Republicans so love to hate to discover some three months after the fact: a dead rat, rat traps, and roaches, and more. Conditions worthy of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

"Attorney Randall Hood of Rock Hill and 15 other attorneys were inspecting a ConAgra foods plant in Slyvaester, Ga., in April when they found the dead rat, bird fathers inside the plant, roaches on raw peanuts and other things ‘consistent with salmonella contamination,’ according to a court document."

Ask your Aunt Millie to stop voting for Republicans. If she won’t, at least tell her to skip the Skippy.

Now go back and read that post I put up a few days ago, where David Broder waxes happily about the times he spent eating quail with Karl Rove.

[Update…] Fixed the link to the Broder post.  Sorry…

How much you want to bet they’d do this to a kid who organized a "Day Of Truth"…?

OK… Thanks to a blog reader and supporter over in Tennessee, I’ve gotten copies of the articles (which were never online) concerning David Crockett High School senior Curtis Walsh, who was dismissed from school for a day after organizing the Day of Silence at his school.

The Day of Silence is a national event in which middle, high school and college-aged students take a vow to silence, symbolically representing the silence that is forced upon LGBT people every day by our society.

The articles (which can be viewed as photos: Page 1 and Page 2) state, in part:

Senior Curtis Walsh said he was dismissed for the day early Wednesday morning by David Crockett High School principal Henry Marable for his own safety.

…

“I showed up at school and within two minutes (Marable) called me and three others into his office. After first period I was dismissed for the day.”

…

Marable as well as Director of Schools Grant Rowland said they had no comment on anything pertaining to the student of the “Day of Silence,” in which several students reportedly left school early.

However, Rowland was quoted by a local television station later in the day:

“One student and one reporter caused one heck of a mess to be stirred up for no reason,” said Rowland in regard to the article on the “Day of Silence” that appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the Johnson City Press.

This principal has apparently kept Curtis out of his school ever since the Day of Silence…

Zina Owens, the mother of Tennessee high school senior Curtis Walsh, who was dismissed from school after organizing the Day of Silence, gives us an update.

As it seems, Curtis was kept out of school not only on the Day of Silence (Wednesday, April 18th) but also on Thursday, April 19th and Friday, April 20th.

Just wanted to give you an update on Curtis Walsh, the Tennessee senior who was dismissed for supporting the day of silence. I am Curtis’ mother. On Wednesday, he was sent home as the newspaper article said, but we were given NO REASON (the paper said for his own safety). On Wednesday afternoon about 4:00, I received a phone call from Marable, the principal, and he said that Curtis did not need to come to school on Thursday. I asked if he had been threatened (Curtis) or if it was a punishment. He replied, “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.” On Thursday afternoon my husband, Curtis’ STEP-FATHER, NOT HIS MOTHER, received a call from Marable saying that Curtis did not need to be in school on Friday. As you may guess, this fight is NOT over.

This story hasn’t really gotten all that much attention yet… but I hope it will. What is happening to Curtis is beyond unacceptable.

Gotta love it… “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.”  Right.  Anyone who agitates on behalf of the dignity of gay kids let alone their safety, doesn’t need to be in Henry Marable‘s school.  Sorta gives you a flavor for what life is like for gay kids that have to walk those halls doesn’t it?  Meanwhile Pat Robertson’s legal sharks are threatening any school that refuses to support their "Day Of Truth" with litigation.

Contact info for David Crocket High School in Jonesborough, Tennessee can be found, Here.  More info on another kid who was punished for organizing a Day Of Silence, and a school in Indiana that was put into a lockdown over threats of violence during the Day Of Silence, Here.  You can suppose that Jay Sekulow won’t be stepping up to defend the rights of those students…

…or This Teacher who allowed this student editoral calling for tolerance toward gay students to be published.  She stands to loose her job now , for allowing these highly controversial words to be published in the student newspaper, and read by impressionable young minds…

Would it be so hard to just accept them as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else? Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.

Well we wouldn’t want our kids taking any of that shit seriously now would we?

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

(Rodgers & Hammerstein, South Pacific)

Via Pam’s House Blend…  All those happy little amusements that heterosexuals take for granted…because the No Homos sign doesn’t apply to them of course…

I had a hard time getting started on this post. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around how the TN anti-gay marriage amendment weaseled itself into the most mundane aspects of our life.

Back when I first posted on the effects of an amendment within the state, I focused on the obvious problems such as being denied access to or the right to make medical decisions for a partner. Little did I consider at the time, that we wouldn’t even be able to participate in a "vow renewal ceremony" at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival.

The vow renewal ceremony has no legal standing, even for heterosexual couples.  It’s purely a declaration of love and devotion.  There is no earthly reason to limit it to legally married couples, other then the casual matter-of-fact bigotry that motivated the Tennessee anti-same sex marriage amendment, which the operators of the Tennessee Renaissance Festival apparently share.  You just don’t treat devoted dedicated couples like dirt otherwise.

So now we see that all the anti-same sex marriage amendments are meant to act in the way the old sodomy laws used to, before the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional: by defining gay people as innately depraved and legally unequal.  It’s about more then marriage.  Even the smallest things in our lives, must constantly remind us that we are different, that we are unequal, that we are hated. 

May 12 – 13:
Romance Weekend
In the spirit of Romeo & Juliet, love is in the air, along with many a love ballad…

I got your love ballad right here…

Our vow renewal ceremony is a group ceremony performed by one of our vendors,
who is an ordained minister. Participants in the ceremony must be legally
married under the state laws of Tennessee. We encourage participants to come in costume.

For our homosexual attendees, we suggest something sodomites might have worn back in the middle ages, when they were being burned at the stake…

Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who in 2004 wrote and produced the Ex-Gay documentary I Do Exist, finds Paul Cameron’s latest wanting…

However, to address the actual claims of early demise, I asked Morten Frisch, Danish epidemiologist, to review the Cameron’s paper “Federal Distortion Of Homosexual Footprint (Ignoring Early Gay Death?). Morten is the lead author of a recent report on environmental influences on marriages decisions among heterosexuals and homosexuals. I wrote about this study here and blogged about it here. He very kindly agreed to do so and replied earlier today. As I suspected, he did not find their arguments compelling, or use of data appropriate. Here is his brief analysis:

Cameron and Cameron’s report on ’life expectancy’ in homosexuals vs heterosexuals is severely methodologically flawed

It is no wonder why this pseudo-scientific report claiming a drastically shorter life expectancy in homosexuals compared with heterosexuals has been published on the internet without preceding scientific peer-review (http://www.earnedmedia.org/frireport.htm). The authors should know, and as PhD’s they presumably do, that this report has little to do with science. It is hard to escape the idea that non-scientific motifs have driven the authors to make this report public. The methodological flaws are of such a grave nature that no decent peer-reviewed scientific journal should let it pass for publication.

As a measure of gay individuals’ average ‘life expectancy at birth’, Cameron and Cameron gathered information about age at death from obituaries for homosexual people in the U.S., and they obtained Scandinavian data regarding the average age at death among homosexually partnered persons who died within a period of up to 14 years after the introduction of laws on homosexual partnerships.

Due in part to reports like the present homosexual persons remain subject to stigmatization. The majority of homosexual people, even in comparatively liberal countries like Denmark, are not open about their sexuality in public. Particularly older homosexuals who grew up in periods when their sexuality was either a crime or a psychiatric diagnosis tend to remain silent about their homosexuality in public. Therefore, the higher prevalence of self-reported homo/bisexual experiences and feelings in younger than older age groups most likely reflects that young gays and bisexuals are less hesitant than older ones to provide honest answers in sex surveys.

The majority of homosexual individuals in the report by Cameron and Cameron were presumably open about their same-sex preferences. The groups studied comprised homosexuals who had entered registered partnerships in Denmark or Norway, and homosexuals in the U.S. whose relatives considered homosexuality to be such an integrated part of their deceased loved ones’ personalities that they felt it natural to mention in the publicly available obituary. Since, as noted, age is a strong determinant of openness about homosexuality, the study groups of deceased homosexuals in Cameron and Cameron’s report were severely skewed towards younger people. Consequently, the much younger average age at death of these openly homosexual people as compared with the average age at death in the unselected general population tells nothing about possible differences between life expectancies in gays and non-gays in general. All it reflects is the skewed age distribution towards younger people among those who are openly homosexual.

To further illustrate Cameron and Cameron’s methodological blunder, imagine a country that sets up a new register to record all cases of sexual harassment against women. After 14 years of operation the register is contacted by an advocacy group who gets access to the data to examine how sexual harassment influences women’s life expectancy. Among those women who died during the maximum of 14 years of follow-up, few women will have died after the age of 50, simply because most sexual harassment cases occurred among young women. Using the same logic and methods as Cameron and Cameron, this advocacy group could arrive at the conclusion that sexual harassment reduces women’s ‘life expectancy’ by 30 years or more. Needless to say, this would be as pure nonsense as the conclusion reached by Cameron and Cameron that heterosexuals outlive gays by 22-25 years.

(Emphasis mine) Throckmorton, to his everlasting credit, denounced forcing gay teens into reparative therapy when the Love In Action protests hit the news during the summer of 2005.   He has moderated his stance on ex-gay therapy since then, retired I Do Exist, split with PFOX and the Ex-Gay movement, and now says his work "…does not emphasize changing sexual orientation as much as it does achieving congruence with chosen beliefs and values (which may or may not lead to change of attractions)."  So I guess he’s not in a playing along mood. 

My Day Of Truth happened one morning in June of 2005 when I read the desperate posts of a 16 year old gay kid whose parents were forcing him into Love In Action…when I read that horrible rule book he posted on his blog.  I suspect that was a Day Of Truth for a lot of people.  Who knows…maybe Throckmorton too…

So you have to figure that gay Episcopalians woke up the other day and saw this news item staring them in the face…

Anglican meeting set on gay issue

The spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans said Monday he has agreed to an urgent request for a meeting with U.S. church leaders as the Anglican fellowship nears a split over the Bible and sexuality.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, visiting Canada for a spiritual retreat with the country’s Anglican bishops, said he would meet with U.S. Episcopal leaders in the fall.

"My aim is to try and keep people around the table for as long as possible on this, to understand one another," Williams said at a news conference at the Anglican Church of Canada headquarters.

Well…let us know what you’ve decided about us…

Understanding. 

Richard Rothstein expresses the exhaustion I feel most days, and I’m sure other gay Americans also feel …

Some mornings, by the time I’ve finished breakfast and read the first news reports of the day, I feel exhaustion for no other reason than the fact that I’m a gay American. I wonder if my fellow citizens who spend their days campaigning and crusading to limit my civil rights – the civil rights that they themselves take for granted – ever consider the inhumanity and irrationality of what they do? And I wonder if the millions of Americans who stand by apathetically and allow this travesty to play out with each passing day ever consider the emotional anguish they are deliberately or carelessly causing to millions of children, teenagers and adults?

This weekend KETV Omaha has provided live coverage of the "Love Won Out," Focus on the Family conference intended to "curb homosexuality" and promote "the truth that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions," At the same time, Don Imus is fired for making a horribly tasteless and grossly inappropriate joke about a group of black women. Oh well, who cares about a bunch of fags? Obviously not any of our prominent civil rights crusaders.

No kidding.  Or about the welfare and safety of gay kids either…

In what is clearly an orchestrated strategy, students and parents across the nation are suing public school systems to force them to allow professional bigots to advocate gay bashing and self-loathing on school premises.

Yup…

I wonder how many straight Americans wonder what it’s like to live with the fear and reality that in most parts of this nation you can be legally fired from your job, denied housing, refused a room in a hotel or barred from public facilities simply because of your sexual orientation. I wonder if they wonder how a gay child feels when he or she is called an abomination, prevented from attending a prom with his or her high school sweetheart, or beaten up in the schoolyard while homophobic teachers look on with contempt.

If one assumes – and I do – that given the right information most people will do the right thing, it is very difficult to understand the degree of homophobia and outright hatred that manifests itself in this great nation. Why are we, as Americans, so out of synch with other Western democracies? Why are civil rights more widely protected and honored in the EU, in South African and in Canada then in the land of Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln?

I think it has something to do with that old joke about how Australia got all of England’s criminals and America got all of England’s religious fanatics and between the two countries America got the worst of the bargain.  Seriously…I don’t think the rest of the civilized world really appreciates how dangerously nuts religion here in America has become.   And in these times, gay people have become to the religious right, as the Jews once were to the Nazis.   If you think that is hyperbole, you are not paying attention.

Time was they could demonize Jews as Christ killers.  But after the Holocaust, antisemitism stopped being a winning proposition.  Just ask Mel Gibson.  Then Antia Bryant showed them what playing the gay card can do for the bottom line and suddenly they had a scapegoat they could demonize all they wanted and and they didn’t even have to call us Christ killers to do it.  But, per the androgynous and almost certainly gay Satan in Passion Of The Christ, which almost nobody outside the gay community remarked on during the din of offense over Gibson’s waving around the blood liable, you can see the day coming when the passion plays will have replaced The Eternal Jew with The Eternal Faggot as the villain responsible for nailing Our Savior to the cross.  Maybe they’ll start playing Judas as a homosexual too.  Then every Christmas break can be followed by a rash of January school yard gay bashings, followed by James Dobson’s annual washing of his hands before the advocates for abused children, at Focus On The Family HQ…

I caught a reference to a 2005 article in the Boston Globe about the propaganda machines of the religious right.  It was one I’d read before, but I don’t think I’d managed to blog about it then.  It’s a good one…well worth reading still.  These are religious right front organizations that take on the trappings of legitimate science and then inject themselves into the news stream as opposing viewpoints to well established institutions.  They’re completely fake, but the mainstream news media, and in particular the TV networks, all give them a platform to spread their lies under a bogus effort at "balance", and because it suits the money at the top of the media corporations to keep republicans in power…

Beliefs drive research agenda of new think tanks

President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ”Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.

Bush’s assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.

But Bush’s statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ”Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" — a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.

The president’s statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ”dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.

That pediatric study asserted a ”considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.

The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.

Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.

For example, Cameron’s Family Research Institute, with an annual budget of less than $200,000, tries to counter the views of the 150,000-member American Psychological Association, which has an annual budget of $98 million. The tiny American College of Pediatricians has a single employee, yet it has been quoted as a counterpoint to the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.

(emphasis mine)  The quickest way to deflate the propaganda of these religious right front groups is to shine a light on them.  More often then not you find their bogus studies and stats getting injected into the political conversation without acknowledgment of where it came from.  That’s because these outfits are well understood to be propaganda mills and not real scientific institutions, whatever their names make them sound like.  So whenever politicians like president Nice Job Brownie start quoting their numbers, reporters need to ask where those numbers came from.  

Senior Bush aides, asked for the basis of the comment about adoption, now say they are unaware of any studies comparing heterosexual and same-sex adoptions — by Cameron or by any pediatric association. The president, they say, was probably referring to studies that show children are better off living with both biological parents — though those studies have nothing to do with adoption by same-sex couples.

Duck and weave, duck and weave.   You may remember the time Mr. Book Of Virtue Bill Bennett got caught on ABC’s This Week quoting Paul Cameron’s  bogus figure for the average lifespan of homosexuals.  He first denied he got it from Cameron, then he said there were other researchers who got the same figures.  And so there were.  The other researcher Bennett pointed to, Jeffrey Satinover, had in fact, gotten his figures from Cameron too.  When that was pointed out to him, Bennett retracted the claim, only to make it again some years later.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which identifies Cameron’s organization as an active hate group, in it’s intelligence report on Cameron, The Fabulist, wrote about how Cameron’s propaganda filters into religious right talking points on homosexuality…

In June, the Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York chapter of the Christian Coalition, said in a speech protesting Gay Pride Day that gays should be legally required to wear warning labels, not unlike Jewish stars under the Nazis.

"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one or two years off the average life span, yet we celebrate a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span, according to the 2005 issue of the revered [sic] scientific journal Psychological Reports."

One month later, Dr. John Whiffen, chairman of the board of the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, a faith-basped advocacy group that was contracted by Bush Administration federal health officials to develop an abstinence education curriculum, said that, "There are obvious effects for male homosexuals from a health standpoint. Parents should discuss those with their child." Then he added: "It’s fairly well-accepted that smoking is not a good idea. It takes seven years off your life. It appears that male homosexuality takes more than that off your life. Naturally you should warn them about that."

You notice that none of these people said anything about where they got their information about homosexuality.  That’s because they know full well that it comes from a completely untrustworthy source.  And yet even knowing that, they continue to cite it, and all those other bogus groups with names that mimick actual institutions of science.  All the while posturing as defenders of virtue and morality and godliness…that pesky ninth commandment exempted.

So…Andrew Sullivan would like us to know that Don Imus isn’t really all that bad…inexcusable though his bigotry is…

The Imus Ranch

It does amazing things for some very sick and needy children. It does not excuse Imus’ bigotry, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. It’s more than I’ve ever done for sick kids. And probably more than you have either.

Via The Rocky Mountain News…

Gay student in Pueblo attacked by teens

A 15-year-old gay Centennial High School student was taunted and attacked by six classmates last week because of his sexual orientation.

The victim was undergoing surgery for a broken nose and facial injuries today, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Gay Alliance.

The incident happened last Thursday afternoon, when Anthony Hergesheimer was walking home from Centennial High School along Denver Boulevard, the organization said. Six male students, ages 15 and 16, in a vehicle apparently passed by Hergesheimer several times before they stopped and hurled anti-gay insults at him.

One of the students also got out of the vehicle and threw a can of Lysol at Hergesheimer, who suffered a broken nose and severe facial injuries.

Lysol.  Like they were cleansing the street of some kind of human garbage…

The six male Centennial students, who were not identified, were suspended Monday until a decision is made about possible expulsion. The district usually has 25 days to make a recommendation on whether to expel a student.

Pueblo police is also investigating the attack and possible criminal charges may be filed against the youths.

But it’s not the teenagers who attacked the gay kid who need to be ashamed of themselves, according to The Alliance Defense Fund…

God has condemned them.  They should live in shame.  What was I saying the other day?  You can’t paint a bulls-eye on a group of kids, tell their peers that those kids are condemned by god, and not expect that every now and then one of them will get the shit beaten out of them.  But…that’s the intent isn’t it?  A fearful homosexual is a good homosexual.  You have to beat the pride out of them young.  Christianity has come to this in the Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave:  Accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior means you can set kids loose on other kids, and still look at yourself in a mirror.  Who would Jesus throw the first can of Lysol at?

Okay…I’m riffing on the title of Jim Burroway’s latest expose of Paul Cameron’s latest anti-gay propaganda missive.  Read that as either I’m calling Cameron a devil or that I’m calling him a jackass.  Or that I’m calling his audience devil worshipers, or jackass kissers…

Another “homosexual lifespan" study has hit the news. According to a flurry of press releases making rounds, married gays in Scandinavia die 24 years younger than everyone else:

Once more, Burroway completely destroys Cameron’s propaganda (even calling it junk science ennobles it, really) by way of the simple trick of actually looking at the data.  This is Cameron’s essential technique…one he has perfected over the decades he’s been generating bogus statistics on homosexuality for the religious right: first gerrymander the data, then analyze it as though you hadn’t.  His classic study which is still being used today as proof that the lifespan of gay people is significantly shorter then that of heterosexuals, was conducted on data Cameron pulled from the obituary pages of two gay newspapers.  At the height of the first wave of AIDS deaths.  He averaged the age of death in those obituaries and compared it with that of the average lifespan of the population as a whole.  His supporters have argued since that you can compare the average age at death in mainstream news papers and even in small ethnic ones and get a figure that is comparable to the average lifespan figures of the population as a whole.  But this still makes the same essential mistake of assuming that the social and cultural context gay community papers exist in isn’t different enough that it would skew the data you’re pulling out of the obituary notices.  In fact it is.  Staringly obviously so.

The local gay paper was then, and is now, a fairly new phenomena in a nation that only until the latter part of the twentieth century was even disposed to admit that homosexuals existed, much less allow them to print their own newspapers.  In fact, until the hated Warren Court decided that homosexuals could in fact, distribute their own magazines and newspapers through the mail in 1958 in One v Olesen, it was pretty much impossible.  So you have the fact that local gay papers are a recent phenomena.  You have the fact that older gay people grew up in a climate of repression that marked most of them for life.  You have the fact that even by the time Cameron started collecting gay obituaries the out and proud part of the gay community was decidedly skewed toward younger generations.  You have the fact that obituaries are generally not placed in newspapers by the person who died but by their families, many of whom even today are reluctant to acknowledge the homosexuality of a dead relative (a number of obituaries in the mainstream press back then were written so as to conceal the fact that the deceased had succumbed to an AIDS related illness).  They would be unlikely then to even consider placing an obit in a gay paper.  You have the fact that the readership of gay papers then, as now, played to a largely urban and younger and more sexually active slice of the community as a whole.   And on top of that you have the fact that Cameron was collecting his data while the death toll from AIDS was just coming off its peak.  This is what Cameron was comparing to the average lifespan in the nation as a whole.

That’s his trademark: not so much falsifying the data, although he won’t shrink from doing that either whenever he thinks he can get away with it…but skewing the initial dataset, so right from the get-go any conclusions drawn from it will break in the direction he wants them to.

And his latest artwork may be his masterpiece:

Statistics Denmark and Statistics Norway publish official population cross-tabulations of marital status by age for each sex in their annual statistical yearbooks. Since 1994 in Denmark and 1995 in Norway, these tables have included separate categories for homosexual-partnered individuals…

Cameron is comparing the ages at death of married heterosexuals with same sex couples in registered partnerships.  At first glance it seems shocking that the average age at death is so much lower for the same sex couples.  But in reality it’s nothing more then a brilliant slight-of-hand…maybe his best yet.  The problem, as Burroway notes, is that the statistics for married couples have been gathering for an entire century, but for the same sex couples, only for as long as there had been domestic partnerships in Denmark…just since 1989.  There was no rush of older gay couples to register.  So as Burroway put’s it…

Why is this important? The heterosexual sample has been accumulating under-forties for an entire century.(In 2005, the average age of the groom was 37.4 years; for the bride, 34.7 years) But registered same-sex partnerships have only been available in Denmark since 1989, which means the gay sample got a late start. And if the typical age of someone entering into a same-sex partnership is around forty, then it stands to reason that the typical age at death of someone who has died so far would be similarly young.

If I have a flock of mostly young sheep, and in one year five are eaten by wolves and two more die of disease I can’t look at that and say what the average lifespan of a sheep is.  The age of my flock is skewed young to start with.  I’d need to keep collecting lifespan data on my flock for a period of many years before I could assume I was getting a handle on the average lifespan of my sheep.  What Cameron does is use data that only amounts to snapshots, and he is very careful to get just the right snapshots he wants, to end up with the results he wants:

Cameron’s Danish and Norwegian statistics show an average age at death in the fifties for registered partners simply because there aren’t many older partners in those samples to begin with. And the reason they aren’t in that sample is because for whatever reason, they haven’t registered their partnerships.

Now what might the reason for that be?  Once again, you have the generational differences between those of us who grew up before Stonewall, and those of us who grew up after…

Cameron dismisses the idea that homophobia is a major factor in Scandinavia because “Canada, Norway, and Denmark are far more accepting of homosexual practitioners than the United States (where homosexuals are still barred from the military and ‘gay rights’ laws do not exist in most states).” But saying that homophobia is lower in Scandinavia isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t exist. For example, it is still illegal in Denmark for gay couples to adopt children except for the children of their registered partners. And homosexuality is still not acceptable among many Danes and Norwegians, particularly among those living in rural areas and among the older generations — precisely the populations that haven’t availed themselves of registered partnerships.

This generational difference in the willingness of people to be open about their homosexuality, or that of their family members, is something every honest scientific investigation of the gay community must acknowledge and deal with somehow.  But for Paul Cameron its a handy way to filter out the old people, when he wants to prove that there aren’t any.  Cameron’s trademark is to pull from pools of data that are intrinsically skewed strongly towards a young, urban, and sexually active slice of the gay community and then analyze that data as if it were a random sample that was representative of the whole.  Wherever possible, he finds snapshots of those data pools…timeframes…that he knows will skew the results even further in the direction he wants them skewed.

We software engineers have long had a saying for it: Garbage In – Garbage Out.   Give the man his due…Paul Cameron is a master at selecting just the right garbage to put in, to get the garbage he wants back out.  And he’s getting better at it.  In this latest propaganda missive of his he displays an impressively deft hand.  Thank goodness for people like Jim Barroway.

Go read the rest of his report: Paul Cameron’s Footprint.  And if you haven’t already, go read some of his other magnificent takedowns of this man’s propaganda.  If you are someone who is gay, or knows someone who is, you will likely have some of Paul Cameron’s claptrap waved in your face at one time or another.  He is, as he likes to call himself, the wellspring of all the anti-gay statistics religious right groups use to demonize homosexual people.  He gets away with it because so few people bother to actually look closely at his work and see where he’s pulling his numbers from.  Do the one thing they’re counting on you not to do: look behind the curtain.

Daniel Gonzales, formerly of ExGay Watch has created a little video about the anti-gay counter attack on the Day of Silence. Cynically named “Day Of Truth”, it seeks to legitimize harassment of GLBT kids in school by their classmates, in the name of freedom of religion. The problem is, as always, that the religious right isn’t on speaking terms with Truth, or anything even remotely resembling it. Their website, as the video shows, helpfully provides kids with cards printed up with informational resources on homosexuality that all link back to Ex Gay ministries and their usual myths, lies and superstitions. The party line is that this is all supposed to give gay kids “the other side” of the story. But as always this “other side” is actually a message directed not at gay youth, but to their heterosexual peers. The resources handed out to school kids are nothing less then a collection of handy excuses for them to treat their GLBT peers with disrespect, if not outright contempt.

We see in the video the t-shirt their poster child got tossed out of class for wearing on a previous Day of Silence, which tells gay kids to “Be Ashamed” and that God condemns them. On its face then, this is not a message of love directed toward gay youth, but an exhortation to their peers to treat them like human garbage. It is incitement that at some point is certain to result in outright physical assaults. And when that happens you can bet that like Pilot the grown adults who are instigating this will wash, wash their hands of the consequences. But you don’t paint a bulls-eye on children, tell everyone that those children are condemned by God, and not expect violence to result.

Who would Jesus throw the first stone at?

Another good song, for those days when old friends tell you to go back into the closet. This is The Travelling Wilburys version…

I’ve discovered that YouTube is a pretty good place to find all those good songs that iTunes still isn’t selling. I wonder how long That’s going to last…

Well I know whats right, I got just one life…In a world that keeps on pushin me around…But Ill stand my ground and I wont back down

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

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

…what better song to compose that letter to then…

This One….

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

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

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

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

A shot taken in the library at Casa del Garrett. Well…actually, it’s my bedroom too. That’s my "Gay Studies" bookcase. I’ve got about five other bookcases in the bedroom. About a dozen more scattered throughout the house. Yes…I own many of the books the religious right likes to lie about…. 

Next time you hear one of these clowns yap, yap, yapping about how "a study" "proves" that homosexuality is this, or homosexuals are that…go look it up for yourself and give it a read. If it’s one of their own "studies" then go look up any legitimate science that it cites (if any). If nothing else, it will drive it home to you that these people are not on speaking terms with morality at all.