(Denver, Colorado) Evangelist Ted Haggard, one of the leaders of a proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Colorado, stepped down from the ministry of his 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs after a male escort alleged he had a three year pay-for-sex affair with Haggard.
Haggard denies the affair, but in an afternoon news conference said that he was stepping down to allow church elders to conduct an investigation. Haggard also said he was voluntarily resigning as president of the multimillion- member National Association of Evangelicals.
After a day of whirlwind controversy surrounding New Life Church and its leader Ted Haggard, who went on administrative leave earlier Thursday, the acting Senior Pastor, Ross Parsley tells KKTV 11 News that Pastor Haggard has admitted to some of the indiscretions.
Thursday morning, Mike Jones went on a Denver radio talk show and said Pastor Haggard paid him for sex over the past 3 years. Jones also claims Haggard did drugs with him. Pastor Parsley says Haggard admitted that some of the allegations are true, but not all of them. The church is not saying what Haggard admitted to.
That’s the way this dance usually goes. First, denial. Then what Nixon aid John Ehrlichman once called the modified limited hang out. Coming next…the tearful confession and rehab.
Harper’s Magazine did a profile of Haggard in an article back in May 2005, titled Soldiers Of Christ …
The city’s mightiest megachurch crests silver and blue atop a gentle slope of pale yellow prairie grass on the outskirts of town. Silver and blue, as it happens, are Air Force colors. New Life Church was built far north of town in part so it would be visible from the Air Force Academy. New Life wanted that kind of character in its congregation.
“Church” is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands of teens and twentysomethings for New Life’s various youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500; this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex’s western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life’s founder.
The picture that emerges of Haggard isn’t of just your usual babbling pulpit thumper, but an archetype of the new breed of confrontational, militant and coercive Dominionist. Haggard fancied himself, a Spirit Warrior…
He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings. One day, while he was working in his garage, a woman who said she’d been sent by a witches’ coven tried to stab Pastor Ted with a five-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—“Control.”
Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted hadn’t come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage “spiritual war.”
So Haggard, there in the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain, built himself a command base of his own from which to wage spiritual warfare…
The Prayer Center—a joint effort of several fundamentalist organizations but located at and presided over by New Life—houses a bookstore that when I visited was called the Arsenal (its name has since been changed to Solomon’s Porch), as well as “corporate” prayer rooms, personal “prayer closets,” hotel rooms, and the headquarters of Global Harvest, a ministry dedicated to “spiritual warfare.” (The Prayer Center’s nickname in the fundamentalist world is “spiritual NORAD.”) The atrium is a soaring foyer adorned with the flags of the nations and guarded by another bronze warrior angel, a scowling, bearded type with massive biceps and, again, a sword. The angel’s pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress….
In the chapel are several computer terminals, where one can sign on to the World Prayer Team and enter a prayer. Eventually one’s words will scroll across the large flat screens, as well as across the screens around the world, which as many as 70,000 other Prayer Team members are watching at any point in time. Prayers range from the mundane (real-estate deals and job situations demand frequent attention) to the urgent, such as this prayer request from “Rachel” of Colorado: Danielle. 15 months old. Temperature just shy of 105 degrees. Lethargic. Won’t eat.
Remember that passage from the Bible, where the devil tempts Jesus with kingdoms of the earth, and all the worldly power therein? There is no poor sucker more vulnerable to the temptations of power, then someone who wants to save the world. Particularly one who needs desperately to save the world, because they’re utterly unable to save themselves. Control won, and it wasn’t much of a contest. The hook was already in him when he arrived aimlessly in Colorado Springs, and when he saw that vision of a glittering city of spirit warriors his own magnificent redemption in the making of it was too much to resist and Control just reeled him in. It was his own spirit he needed to worry about. But you have to know yourself to win that battle, and Haggard, apparently, didn’t want to know.
This is from an interview with Haggard, quoted on Ex-Gay Watch…
The biblical argument could be made, but not in this particular case. In Washington, D.C., our argument has to be the fact that the greatest benefit to society and to our culture and to the children of our nation would be to instill in our Constitution that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. It would be devastating for the children of our nation and for the future of Western civilization for us to say that homosexual unions or lesbian unions or any alteration of that has the moral equivalence of a heterosexual, monogamous marriage.
So that needs to be inculcated into the Constitution, otherwise we run the risk of a Supreme Court decision that will say that a gay couple living together and a heterosexual couple living together have the same standing under the law.
If the only same sex intimacy the man ever permitted himself to experience was secretly with anonymous call boys, then it isn’t surprising that he’d feel that heterosexual coupling was a superior, more wholesome form of human union. You see the same thing happening over and over with these closet cases. Consider Mark Foley…
In 1992, as a Navy lieutenant, Thorne-Begland announced he was gay during a nationally televised interview, helping to lay the groundwork for the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. Four years later, after Foley voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, Thorne-Begland called to complain.
"I said, how could you vote against me, my family, your own self-interest?" recalled Thorne-Begland, now an attorney for the city of Richmond, Va. He said Foley responded, "I could never compare any relationship I have ever had to the nature of my mother and father’s relationship."
When you see your sexual nature as something innately broken and unwholesome, then you’re going to seek out broken and unwholesome sexual encounters. It’s not a matter of proving to yourself that being gay means having nothing but brief, barren assignations. It’s because you don’t believe down in your gut that it could ever be anything more.
And when you see other gay people fighting for equality…well…you just know in your gut that those kinds of relationships aren’t equal, can never be equal. Because that brokenness inside of you is all you know. But you’re not broken because you’re gay…you’re broken because you threw your sex life into the gutter. Just like the gay haters told you to.
And when you see other gay people holding on to their spirituality, steadfastly insisting that God does not condemn them, or their love, you just know in your gut that they’re deceiving themselves. God condemns them, because you condemn yourself. Just like the gay haters taught you to.
I have a YouTube posted in the previous blog, that’s a satirical salute to all the closeted gay people in Washington working to deny equal rights to gay Americans. The list is amazingly big, and as the film makers go through one name after another, with Judy Garland singing "Over The Rainbow" in the background, you really realize how much damage these people are doing, not only to the gay community as a whole, but to the American Dream as well. At the end of it, a banner on the screen reads, "It’s okay, boys… A closet is just a bedroom, with no self respect."
There is no line this President has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party, in power.
He has spread any and every fear among us, in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.
And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him, whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people, is subtle and nuanced — or laughably transparent.
Senator John Kerry called him out Monday.
He did it two years too late.
He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000 — just as millions of us, have been too cordial ever since.
Exactly right. We’ve been in a knife fight ever since the republicans took, let’s be honest here…Seized, power in 2000, for the fate of the American experiment in democracy. Perhaps some of us saw more clearly then others what was coming, your gay and lesbian neighbors especially, since we’ve been fighting the radicals on the right, both religious and secular, for decades now. But as Bush tore up one institutional check on his power after another, over and over again treating the constitution as a mere suggestion, if not a dirty joke, it should have become obvious what we were dealing with. These are not your grandfather’s republicans. I’ve heard them referred to as feral republicans. But really…they’re fascists. For some of us, the time for being cordial ended long ago. For the rest of America, it ended in November 2000.
There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.
Why do they do it? Simple. United we stand…divided we fall. It really is all about that. When Pat Buchanan said to Nixon, "If we tear the country in half, we can pick up the bigger half," he wasn’t talking about the bigger half of a democracy. The right wingers want to govern…they want to rule…they have no interest whatever in letting the people govern themselves. Because then their power is less. Because then they’re merely citizens like the rest of us. It really is all about that. We are going to loose this democracy if more of us, and in particular the other political parties, are not willing to confront republicans as bluntly and as forcefully as necessary, and name what it is that they have become, and where they are relentlessly dragging this country. Garrison Keillor was only partly right…they are not merely republicans first, and Americans second. They are only republicans. It is not democrats and liberals they oppose. They oppose democracy itself. The stand solidly against the bedrock this nation was founded upon: liberty and justice for all. To them it is a dirty joke. That needs to be said now. No more cordiality.
[Update 2]… In comments, Peterson Toscano gives a link to the original. I can’t embed it here, apparently it’s supposed to be a commerical, not for a video, but for the services of Dr, Corvino and other lecturers at Kirkland Productions and they don’t want it floating around the net (and I want to vent about this kind of thing later), but the original is Here.
[Update…] Crap…this video is marked as being "no longer available". So I’ve taken it down. What the flying fuck is wrong with these people?
Via a friend on MySpace… Some excerpts from a lecture on the morality of homosexuality by Dr. John Corvino. He makes a lot of the same points I keep trying to make here, but I really like his approach to that Texas legislator who kept insisting whenever a gay rights bill came up that "animals don’t do that".
A former LIA "client" and now booster takes issue with this post of mine. Here’s my reply…
—–
> I, having been a client at LIA (March, 2005), would like to know some of
> Lance’s horrendous experiences caused by his time there.
A client were you? Swell. You know the difference between being a "client" and being an inmate…right? There’s the beginning of the horror right there buddy, and what’s disturbing right off the bat about your comment is that you seem utterly unable to even notice it. So you my friend, are part of the horror.
Those kids are not in there by choice. Most of them had either made peace with their sexual nature, or were at least beginning to, when they were dragged into LIA by parents terrified from the cesspool of anti-gay propaganda that the religious right vomits into the public discourse, much of which John happily repeats. Joe Stark was on Pat Robertson’s 700 club, mindlessly babbling that gays only live an average of 36 years. Where the hell did he hear that claptrap, if it wasn’t John? Even Paul Cameron isn’t claiming 36 years. But John doesn’t seem to care where he gets his facts on homosexuality, as long as they’re sufficently ugly.
For months at least, if not longer, John was linking his LIA website to a group called The International Organization Of Heterosexual Rights, and using their bogus statistics to paint a picture of homosexuals and homosexuality that was relentlessly perverse and disgusting. After community activists started pointing out how unChristianly it was to be linking to a hate site, John pulled the link. But he kept their bogus fact sheet online. So at least for a time (I haven’t been there recently), people visiting his site were still being given this crap from a hate group…only they weren’t being told who the source of this information was. Dig it. John responded to the accusation that he was spreading hate rhetoric, not by taking it down, but by making it harder for people to discover that the facts on his website were coming from a hate group.
I think part of the reason he does it is because he knows that it frightens parents, and that’s his last best source of clients now: Helpless gay teens who cannot legally refuse his dangerous blend of anti-gay religiosity and junk psychology. As more and more comes to light about the practices of these ex-gay ministries, and their spectacular rates of failure, fewer and fewer grown adults are checking in. So the kids, who cannot legally refuse, are his last best source of income, which he needs to keep the operation afloat. Never mind what it does to kids, to their parents, to the bond between parent and child…John’s on a mission from God, and Gods don’t feel shame.
Imagine a teen who is left handed. Imagine they’re told that their left-handedness is unnatural, perverse, a God condemned abomination. Imagine sending that kid to a place that claims to be able to treat left-handedness through prayer and counseling, and establishing a closer relationship to Jesus. They claim that left-handedness is a form of addiction, that using your left hand to do things like writing is no different from people who use their hands to rob, assault, and murder, people and animals. Imagine that left-handed kid being forced to sit next to grown men who’ve used their hands to do all manner of cruel and perverse things to animals and humans alike, while the staff of this treatment facility is telling him, perhaps not so much in word but sure as hell in deed, that he’s no better then those men. Someday, his desire to use his left hand instead of the God ordained right hand, will lead him into all manner of brutish, deviant, ugly acts.
Imagine this kid trying desperately…trying, trying with all his heart and soul to pray away his left handedness. But he can’t…he’s left handed. And every time he feels the urge to use his left hand, it only serves to remind him that he doesn’t love God enough, that he’s headed for the same life that all those robbers, and murderers live. He’s going to become just like them one day…
What does that sort of thing to to a kid? Well we all know what it does to an adult because it happened. Does the name Jack McIntyre ring any bells? Or has John finally erased all memory of Love In Action’s bloody birth? McIntyre was one of LIA’s first clients (I say client because he went in of his own accord…a choice of free will that neither Lance nor Zach nor any kid in the horrifically misnamed Refuge "program" are allowed) A few months ago I finally stumbled on a copy of his suicide note. You want to know what the horror is my friend? Well…take a peek into the Pit then…
TO: Those left with the question, why did he do it?
I loved life and all that it had to offer to me each day.
I loved my job and my clients.
I loved my friends and thank God for each one of them.
I loved my little house and would not have wanted to live anywhere else.
All this looks like the perfect life. Yet, I must not let this shadow the problem that I have in my life. At one time, not to long ago, that was all that really mattered in my life. What pleased me and how it affected me. Now that I have turned my life over to the Lord and the changes came one by one, the above statements mean much more to me. I am pleased that I can say those statements with all the truth and honesty that is within me.
However, to make this short, I must confess that there were things in my life that I could not gain control, no matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed.
It is this constant failure that has made me make the decision to terminate my life here on earth. I do this with the complete understanding that life is not mine to take. I know that it is against the teachings of our Creator. No man is without sin, this I realise. I will cleanse myself of all sin as taught to me by His word. Yet, I must face my Lord with the sin of murder. I believe that Jesus died and paid the price for that sin too. I know that I shall have everlasting life with Him by departing this world now, no matter how much I love it, my friends, my family. If I remain it could possibly allow the devil the opportunity to lead me away from the Lord. I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple.
I am not asking you to sanction my actions. That is not the purpose of my writing this at all. It is for the express purpose of allowing each one who will read this to know how I weighed things in my own mind. I don’t want you to think that, ‘I alone,’ should have been the perfect person, without sin. That would be ridiculous! It is the continuing lack of strength and/or obedience and/or will power to cast aside certain sins. To continually go before God and ask forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.
Please know that I am extremely happy to be going to the Lord. He knows my heart and knows how much I love life and and all that it has to offer. But, He knows that I love Him more. That is why I believe that I will be with Him in Paradise.
I regret if I bring sorrow to those that are left behind. If you get your hearts in tune with the word of God you will be as happy about my ‘transfer’ as I am. I also hope that this answers sufficiently the question, why?
May God Have Mercy On My Soul.
A Brother & A Friend.
No. May God have mercy on yours, because I don’t have any to spare for the likes of you. Jack McIntyre killed himself, rather then make one more promise to God he knew he could not keep. Bad enough John Smid is doing this to grown adults. Now he’s dragging kids into his little psych room, where he’ll sit them down right next to grown men who have engaged in the most extreme sexual perversions imaginable, and let them know that they’re just like those men are, that their sexual orientation will lead them into all of that and worse. This is what John is subjecting gay teenagers to. He takes in kids who are more or less fine with their sexual orientation, or getting there, and puts his crowbar to their self esteem and tries systematically to utterly destroy their deepest sense of their inner selves, to make them see their sexual nature as ugly and perverse and foul, and that only a relationship with Jesus can save them from their homosexuality. But it won’t. They’re Gay. What happens is that they loose their faith, and often enough, loose their family too. But as long as the checks clear, John doesn’t seem to mind.
> I speak on behalf of LIA, not only because I believe in what they’re doing, but also
> because I care a great deal about John Smid and the LIA staff.
If you care about any of them then you need to do whatever you can to convince them to stop tormenting gay people, and particularly gay teens who are content with who they are. John is trying his best to gut their ability to ever feel good about themselves as gay people, and ever experience what it is to love and be loved, body and soul. He is systematically trying to put as much fear and loathing into teens and adults of their sexual nature so that they’ll never be able to love wholeheartedly without feeling ashamed and dirty. To assault someones sense of self to the point where they cannot see one of this life’s most wonderful, beautiful, amazing things as anything other then ugly and perverse is a crime against them of absolutely staggering magnitude. To do that to children is a crime against humanity.
> Zach Stark’s opinion of "reparative therapy," as it’s being dubbed, variegated a
> great deal after his experience at LIA. "Love In Action has been misrepresented
> and what I have posted in my blogs has been taken out of perpective and context,"
> as Zach is quoted at 365gay.com on 8-1-05. My question to Lance is this: What
> specific occurrences at LIA made your experience so horrendous?
As for Zach…I’m a little fuzzy about how you expect a kid who was forced into ex-gay therapy against his will, and who said in an update to that blog post you’re quoting from there that he could only post blogs his father approved of, to speak out publicly against his treatment. Actually, I’m being sarcastic. You know damn well he couldn’t. Since he’s still underage, and cannot speak for himself without suffering whatever consequences his parents (you know…the ones who put him into LIA in the first place) can dictate, it’s unreasonable to expect him to get on a soapbox about his feelings toward LIA. If I were you though, I would strongly suggest that his silence on the matter since those first couple of posts speaks volumes.
I was with Lance at a protest against reparative therapy in Silver Spring, Maryland. John Smid was there too, but too cowardly to come out to the line and speak with Lance himself. One of the other LIA staffers, a new guy, did come out because, as he said, he wanted to hear from Lance himself why he was upset about what LIA did to him. Lance gave him an earful, the gist of which was that he resented being made to feel horrible about himself simply because he’s gay.
John likes to boast that he brings families together. What happened to Lance after he left LIA was horrible, and he finally had to move out because his mom had become so abusive. The day he moved out, his mom cornered him and started beating the crap out of him. He’s told this to reporters and gave a more detailed account to Morgan Jon Fox who is doing a documentary on the LIA protests. Morgan and Lance let me sit in on the interview to take some photographs and Lance’s story nearly brought me to tears and I had to concentrate on what I was doing and I almost couldn’t. John did nothing, nothing for that family, except tear it apart. Oh…and he cashed the check.
You care about the LIA staff do you? Then dig up whatever stunted whithered stump of a conscience any of them still have left in them, and make them see two things they really, really need to see. First, that they are committing a monstrous assault on the human identity of the people they’re "treating" and their capacity to love and accept love from another. Second, that John has no brakes, and one of these days he’s going to push a gay kid too far and then they’re be more then Jack McIntyre’s blood on the LIA account books, and if you think the judgment on LIA has been harsh up till now, you haven’t seen anything. Yet.
There’s a lot of verbiage out there already on the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage, but candidate for congress Angie Paccione, during an exchange with homophobe and co-author of the Federal Marriage Amendment Marilyn Musgrave (via Pam’s House Blend), said it all, perfectly…
"I think that’s the ideal environment for children to be raised," Musgrave said, of opposite-sex marriage.
The remark got a smattering of applause but Paccione’s response was quick earning her wide clapping and several cheers.
"You want to protect marriage, you know what’s a threat to marriage? Divorce is a threat to marriage," she told the crowd of about 1,000
"You know what else is a threat to marriage? Infidelity is a threat to marriage. Domestic violence is a threat to marriage. Losing your job is a threat to marriage. Marriage is not a threat to marriage. I support equality."
Just so. But taking the bigots at their word that they’re about defending marriage is for rubes. They don’t give a shit about marriage. What they care about is keeping their right to persecute gay people, simply for existing. What they care about is defending the lie that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. What they care about is maintaining the cultural perception of homosexuals as something other then human, something grotesque and ugly and no more deserving of human regard then scarecrows or punching bags. We can’t be the scapegoats for every cheap sin they couldn’t keep themselves from committing, if we can have lives of our own. The only threats to their marriages are themselves. That’s why they need someone else to take the blame. If gay people can enter into marriage, if same sex couples can walk proudly together through life, in trust, in honor, in mutual love and affection, then what does that leave them, except responsibility for their own lives? What do you do when all the scapegoats are finally gone, and there is no one else to blame, but the face in the mirror?
It’s hard to imagine that when Sabrina Farber sent out an e-mail Wednesday she had any idea what kind of firestorm it would set off.
At 9:08 a.m. Farber, who together with her husband, Todd, owns Garden Guy Inc., a landscaping company on Hillcroft, hit "send" on a message that delivered a painful blow with the verbal equivalent of a smiley face.
"Subject: Cancel Appt – Garden Guy
"Dear Mr. Lord,
"I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals.
"Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs.
"All my best,
"Sabrina"
‘Marriage is under attack’
Michael Lord, who is building a house in the Heights with his partner, told me he had found the company through an Internet search. He liked the "before and after" photos on the company Web site.
He said he didn’t notice, at the bottom of one of the pages, under a photo of the Farbers and their four children, this:
"The God-ordained institution of marriage is under attack in courts across the nation, and your help is needed.
"Go to: www.nogaymarriage.com to take action."
Lord said he filled out a form on the Farbers’ Web site and received a return e-mail expressing enthusiasm for the project. He called the company Wednesday morning to set up an appointment.
"Mrs. Farber kept referring to me and my wife," said Lord. "I told her it was actually my partner."
One-word message: WOW
He said she didn’t say anything about that on the phone, but five minutes after they agreed to a Sunday appointment and hung up, he received the e-mail quoted above.
At 9:17 a.m. Lord forwarded the message to his partner, Gary Lackey, with a one-word message: "WOW."
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone our employer would serve…
(Minneapolis, Minnesota) A bus driver who says homosexuality is against her religion will be allowed to refuse to get behind the wheel of vehicles displaying gay ads.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit agreed to the demand by driver despite objections from her union according to an internal transit authority memo obtained by the Star Tribune newspaper.
The controversy arose after the authority accepted an ad from local LGBT magazine Lavender. The ad shows a photo of a young man and carries the slogan "Unleash Your Inner Gay."
The ad runs on about 50 city buses.
When the driver objected the companied issued a memo to dispatchers instructing them not to assign the driver, identified only by her employee number, to any of the buses running the ad "under any circumstances" the Star Tribune reports.
"The decision has nothing to do with the content of the advertisement," he said. "It has everything to do with the employee’s religious beliefs," Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons told the paper.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit says it made a mistake in the way it handled the case of a driver who refused to operate a bus as long as it had an ad for a local gay publication.
Metro Transit says it was trying to do the "right thing" by the diver based on her religious beliefs, but in doing so sent the "wrong message" to the gay community.
…
"We are not persuaded that advertising, per se, infringes on religious practices and would be reluctant to make similar accommodations in the future," Gibbons said in a statement.
"We deeply regret any impressions of intolerance … Metro Transit employs and serves a diverse population, and we do our best to be respectful of all views."
"We deeply regret…" Right. Notice what’s missing? Any hint that the driver in question won’t be allowed to refuse to operate a bus with an ad for a gay publication again in the future. Kinda reminds me of Macy’s pusillanimous "apology" for yanking a Pride Week display from the window of its Boston store during Pride Week there, at the behest of local bigots. Sure enough afterward came the "We deeply regret…"s but nothing changed. Doesn’t look like it has in Minneapolis either. I was a loyal Hecht Company customer until Macy’s bought it out.
WASHINGTON, October 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In their semi-annual meeting held in Baltimore in November of this year, the American bishops will be voting on a new document meant to help clarify the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality and "those with the homosexual inclination." The document is entitled "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care"
Catholic News Service reports that the document condemns homosexual activity of any sort but is careful to reinforce the necessity of treating those individuals with a homosexual inclination with "respect, compassion and sensitivity."…
Hahahahaha! Respect, compassion and sensitivity anyone…?
A gay-rights advocacy organization is denouncing the firing of a campus safety officer at Marian High School, saying she was dismissed because she publicized that she’s a lesbian.
"It’s a horrible lesson to the young women at that school," said Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation in Detroit.
The officer, Charlene Genther, 55, was in her sixth year at the Catholic, college-preparatory school for girls. A former Detroit police officer, she has a daughter who graduated from the Bloomfield Township school in 2001.
Her firing has prompted Marian alumnae to action. A petition at www.petitionspot.com/petitions/genther that seeks an apology for Genther and the gay and lesbian community had gathered 136 signatures by Wednesday.
Genther said Wednesday that she has been in a committed relationship for 28 years and that it was no surprise to anyone at the school that she is a lesbian. She and her partner often attended school events, chaperoned dances and went to parent-teacher conferences.
But last week, when she began publicizing her autobiography, "Badge 3483: A True Story," which addresses the relationship, she was fired.
Genther said Sister Lenore Pochelski, the school’s president, gave her the news Friday, two hours after a local newspaper reporter interviewed her about the book. She said Pochelski said she wouldn’t have gotten fired if she hadn’t gone public with the book.
"She was very clear," Genther said. "She said it was because my lifestyle does not coincide with the teachings of the Catholic Church. I personally felt she was having a hard time firing me. …
"But she was firm that she had to go along with the teachings of the Catholic Church."
Pochelski confirmed that Genther was terminated, but said she would not comment on her termination out of respect for personnel and confidentiality issues.
"She was a great employee," Pochelski said. "We’re grateful for her generous service."
Their gratitude is worth its weight in gold. But it isn’t just gay people who need to be beaten over the head every now and then with all the respect, compassion and sensitivity the catholic church can muster. Anyone who dares regard the homosexual as their neighbor, as fellow citizens, clearly needs a little respect, compassion and sensitivity too.
CORNWALL, Ont. – The altar rail is no place for confrontation between Catholic politicians and the clergy who want them to fall into line, Washington’s archbishop emeritus said Tuesday.
But if a politician consistently and publicly defies the church, he should be denied communion, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick told the Conference of Canadian Catholic Bishops meeting here this week.
”You have no choice in the matter. That person should not partake of communion. Sometimes you just have to do it.”
In Canada, some priests threatened to bar MPs from communion and church activities over their stance on abortion and same-sex marriage.
In the last U.S. election, McCarrick was caught between hard-right Catholics and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic who supported access to abortion and gay rights.
Hardliners said bishops who gave communion to pro-choice candidates were spineless and not ”real Catholics.” Others were horrified that something as sacred as the eucharist could be withheld as a punishment and used as a political weapon.
Respect. Compassion. Sensitivity. What these things actually mean, depends on your point of view. Is the homosexual your neighbor, or an inferior being of some kind…an emotional cripple with an intrinsically disordered sexuality at best, if not a willing tool of Satan, part of a new ideology of evil, whose struggle for equality is a threat to the existence of civilization itself? How you answer that question, defines the meaning of respect, compassion, and sensitivity with regard to gay people. Which makes these occasional avowals of respect, compassion, sensitivity, and so on from the Catholic church far less important, then that consistent and immovable affirmation of dogma, that homosexual relationships are against god’s plan.
Against that standard of measure, respect, compassion, and sensitivity simply cannot mean the same thing when extended to gay people, that it does when extended to everyone else. And if you think that the staggering mountain of evidence that the love of same sex couples is as meaningful, as essential, as life affirming for them as the love between opposite sex couples, might one day convince the Catholic hierarchy that god’s plan is a tad bigger then their dogmas, then you are a moral relativist. The Bishops here in Baltimore have something to say about that too…
The document addresses the fact that America is suffering from "moral relativism in our society" and a "widespread tendency toward hedonism" which makes the Church’s teaching on homosexuality difficult for some to hear.
A Catholic man I met on the job once, told me that it isn’t so much access to God that the church provides, as Truth. That’s important to understand. What "the church" provides, is Truth. When the Catholic hierarchy talks about "moral relativism", what it means is "seeking Truth from a source other then the church". That’s not the same meaning most people get from that phrase. When you think "moral relativism" you generally think of a kind of subjectivism, where every belief is held to be equally valid. But that’s not what the Catholic hierarchy means. As far as they are concerned, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, James Dobson, Fred Phelps, Dr. Laura…everyone…who thinks Truth can possibly be anything but what the Catholic church tells them it is, are all moral relativists.
To let the facts guide you is moral relativism. To judge a thing based on the evidence at hand is moral relativism. To let nature speak for itself is moral relativism. To believe what you see with your own two eyes is moral relativism. Truth is what the church says it is, because only the church Has Truth. If you believe anything else, you are a moral relativist. And if you’re wondering how an institution that not only turned its back on the victims of child abuse, but actively protected the abusers can even think of itself as embodying Truth, then consider that it is precisely because they believe it that those abuses, of the children, of the trust of the faithful, could happen in the first place.
It isn’t the quest for Truth that turns people into gutter crawling thugs, it’s the belief that they and they alone embody it.
There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts – obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.
It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. it was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".
…We have to cure ourselves of the itch of absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
-Jacob Bronowski "The The Ascent Of Man "
It is precisely the same callow vanity that feels no qualms whatever in firing "a great employee", in demanding politicians ultimately heel to their will as a condition of grace, in turning the joy and happiness of same sex couples into ash, that imposed itself on helpless children, over and over again, and then demanded they and their parents suffer in silence. Truth. What does it mean to extend respect, compassion, and sensitivity to the homosexual? What does it mean to extend them to an altar boy? To his parents? To the faithful? It isn’t power that corrupts absolutely. It’s arrogance.
Via Steve Gilliard… If the Russian mob joined in the fight against gay rights, Randy Thomasson would applaud them as "shining models for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community" too…
Sacramento’s large enclave of immigrant Slavic evangelicals is becoming a force on social issues. Their actions shock many.
SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble.
The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.
Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.
"So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."
The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s "Lavender Heights" neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.
Over the last 18 months, Sacramento Russian-language church members have picketed gay pride events, jammed into legislative committee meetings when gay issues were on the agenda and demonstrated at school board meetings.
Incited by firebrand Russian Pentacostal pastors and polemical Russian-language newspapers, the fundamentalists turn out en masse for state Capitol protest rallies.
Last June, urging readers to attend a massive rally, the Russian newspaper the Speaker told them:
"Make a choice. It’s your decision. Homosexuality is knocking on your doors and asking: ‘Can I make your son gay and your daughter lesbian?’ "
In most instances, the Russian-speaking demonstrators far outnumber representatives from all other anti-gay groups combined. Anti-homosexual rallies that a few years ago attracted a few dozen participants now regularly draw hundreds and sometimes thousands, many with a heavy Russian accent.
It’s worth noting, and the L.A. Times article does note, that not all Russian communities in this country are as crazy bigoted as the one in Sacramento. But this one community is different. How?
The Sacramento community, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly evangelical — Baptist and Pentecostalist. The charismatic Pentacostal church, introduced in the Ukraine in the 1920s by missionary and martyr Ivan Efimovich Vornaev, includes speaking in tongues and washing of feet. The churches’ social views are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
And I’ll just bet, relentlessly antisemite too. Russia has had a problem with that for untold generations…the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in Russia…and my understanding is that it is among precicely these fervent religious types in Russia, the kind that like their Christianity loud and gilded and glittering and all controlling, that the hatred of jews is the most vehement.
Well…hating jews doesn’t gain you a lot of traction here in the United States, no matter how proudly you wear Christ around your neck…just ask Mel Gibson. But you can still hate homosexuals and demand respect for your sincere religiosity…
Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.
"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.
Behold a shining model…
Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.
Signs displayed by the demonstrators often equate homosexuality with pedophilia and describe the AIDS epidemic as a message from God. One of the common tactics of the demonstrators is to tap gays forcefully on the head and announce that they have been "saved."
"They’ve declared war on us for some reason," said Stand Up for Sacramento founder Nathan Feldman, a jewelry store clerk. "They got it into their heads that California is the land of sin and that it is their duty to cleanse the state, starting with homosexuals."
What Thomasson means is that they are more aggressive and willing to physically attack gay people then even Fred Phelps’ group. Thomasson is a well known opponent of gay rights in California. What he sees and values in the ethnic Russian community around Sacramento isn’t faith, it’s their willingness to bring fear into the lives of gay people. Because of his new allies in the war on homosexuals, Sacramento Pride Days now require heightened security. This is what brings Randy hope. Or at least, satisfaction.
Mark Foley, co-author of the Internet Child Protection Act, supported by the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, is discovered having Internet Chat Room Sex with a 16 year old former congressional page boy. At one time he had an 84 percent rating from the Christian Coalition. He’d voted for the Defense Of Marriage Act, refused to commit to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and after being outed by a reporter for the Advocate, offered lukewarm opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. He consistently refused to acknowledge his sexual orientation, even as it was an open secret on Capital Hill. But in the world of republican virtue and morals, being homosexual is alright, so long as you’re ashamed of it, so long as you keep your sexuality in the shadows, in the gutter, where they think it belongs…
Kinsey never said that ten percent of the male population is gay. What he did was construct a range from the behavior of his subjects, the Kinsey scale, which went from zero, which was exclusive heterosexuality, to six, which was exclusive homosexuality. It was only later, as gay people began to fight against oppression, that the data for 5s and 6s were combined to come up with a figure of ten percent. Kinsey never said it, but when you looked at it that way it was a figure that made sense to throw out there. Ten percent of the male population is exclusively homosexual, or nearly so.
It’s a figure that the kook pews have challenged ever since, because it is in their interest to claim that we are a tiny, insignificant, worthless part of the human family. Except when we’re the vast conspiracy of militant homosexuality that controls the news media, Hollywood, liberal churches and the democratic party. Then we’re a looming menace. But a looming menace mind you, that only amounts to 1, or maybe 2 percent of the human family at most.
Almost one in 10 straight men on the `down-low,’ study finds
PHILADELPHIA – Almost 10 percent of men who say they’re straight also happen to be having sex with men, according to a new study, one of the largest ever to specifically address "down-low" behavior.
The study, based out of New York City, found that most of the down-low men did not use condoms and that 70 percent were married. Researchers said they hoped their report would change the way doctors asked patients about their sexual behavior.
"Everyone talks about it, but it’s the first time I’ve seen data on this issue," said Thomas J. Coates, a psychologist who specializes in sexual behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles. Even so, he said the numbers were probably low estimates.
"It’s probably above this, because it’s hard to get people to admit to this kind of behavior."
What’s really interesting about Kinsey’s figures is how well they’ve withstood the test of time, considering what it was he actually looked at. All he studied was the behavior of his subjects over a three year period. But why three? Why not just one? Why not five? It’s like Mendel and his damn beans. Mendel was the monk who did that now famous experiment in which he showed how traits are inherited. For his subjects, he used a bean plant, and he tested for seven characteristics. And as it turns out, seven is the most you can cleanly test for, without getting some cross linkage on the genes, because the bean plant only has seven genes. But Mendel knew nothing of genes. As Jacob Bronowski once put it, you can be elected abbot of your monastery, you can even be elected pope, but you can’t have that luck. Mendel had obviously done some background work with his beans prior to his experiment, which told him which traits he could test for. Kinsey had to have done something similar, that told him three years of sexual history was all he needed to know about his subjects, to have a good idea of the whole.
Clearly, the stigma surrounding homosexuality is still strong here in America, and in particular in minority communities. While many of us are now able to live lives out and proud, many cannot. The religious right would like to bring the stigma back down on all of us in the name of righteousness and morality. But the human identity isn’t a blackboard anyone can scribble their will upon. Homosexuality they say, brings only disease and pain and suffering. No. Shame does. Here is what shame buys you.
"We found that those who identified as straight but had sex with men were also less likely to be HIV tested within the last year and less likely to use a condom," than men who said they were gay, said Preeti Pathela, a research scientist at the department.
Pride has the power to lift us out of the gutter of self abuse and self destructiveness. And that is why the religious right hates gay pride. In the relentless logic of knuckle dragging fundamentalism, if we’re not bleeding, they’re not righteous.
By late Sunday night, I was in so much pain I became delirious. Terry took me back to the hospital, where an emergency-room doctor took one look and admitted me. It wasn’t the flu after all—I had bacterial meningitis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the fluid in the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain. While I was curled up in a ball on the bed, the doctor tried to ask me questions. But I couldn’t answer, or consent to medical treatment; I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. So the doctor turned to Terry—who was standing across the room, DJ at his side—and asked if he could make medical decisions on my behalf.
This is the nightmare scenario for same sex couples. One is left incapacitated in the hospital, while the other is denied even the right to be by their bedside, let alone give direction to the hospital staff. It’s what happened to William Robert Flanigan Jr., and Robert Lee Danial at Maryland Shock Trauma back in March of 2002. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints. He died two days later.
Things turned out better for Savage and his partner Terry…
Terry quickly okayed a morphine drip (the nicest thing he ever did for me); he okayed a spinal tap (the worst thing he ever did to me); and okayed a course of powerful antibiotics. The doctors and nurses treated Terry like my spouse, like my next of kin—not just allowing him to remain at my bedside, but also empowering him to make crucial medical decisions for me in a crisis.
The next day I was sitting up, still in a great deal of pain, when the doctor came by. He directed his comments and questions to Terry, not to me; Terry was still in charge, still making medical decisions for me. The only thing I was in charge of was the button in my hand that delivered drops of morphine into my veins.
I was sent home three days later with a catheter in my chest, a cooler full of antibiotics, and a warm feeling in my heart. Wasn’t I lucky to have a boyfriend who cared so much for me? And weren’t we lucky to live in a place where our relationship was respected? The medical personnel didn’t have to treat Terry like my spouse, but they did. Our experience at the hospital left me feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.
Then the painkillers wore off.
Right. Go read the whole thing. If anything the experience of having their relationship treated with dignity and respect made the couple even more worried. What if… It could have been a nightmare. It could have literally killed Savage because absent Terry, the doctors would have run aroung trying to contact someone who was "legally family" and the time they lost doing it could have been fatal. It’s one thing to understand this theoretically, and another to actually live it yourself. They were damn lucky, and they both know they were damn lucky.
The gay haters claim all we have to do to prevent the potential heartbreak here is fill out the proper forms. But they want to bring the nightmare and the heartbreak down on us, because they hate us, because if we aren’t in pain, they aren’t righteous. So if they say same sex couples can protect themselves in one round about way or another you know right then and there it isn’t true. In fact, Flanigan and Daniel had filled out the proper forms and the hospital ignored them anyway. Only having the same right to marry as heterosexuals do, will put our relationships on the same playing field as theirs. Only an equal right to marriage will give same sex couples the kind of legitimacy they need in the eyes of others, whose snap decisions can mean life or death.
For a change the gay channel Logo had something on that lived up to its (Logo’s) potential. It was a history of the gay migration to Fire Island and The Pines, and it covered parts of the island’s history prior to Stonewall, as well as the changes that came after, and with the AIDS crisis.
There’s a reason why documenting the history of our movement prior to Stonewall is so important, while there are still people alive who lived it first hand. When I was a kid I’d heard about Fire Island…it was practically a byword for queerness. Back then Fire Island and Greenwich Village was where all the queers were. You didn’t go there unless you were queer yourself. Even Mad magazine, which was aimed at teenage males mostly, would toss out Fire Island jokes from time to time in it’s pages and magazines for teens weren’t supposed to so much as breath a word about homosexuality back then. But in those days we all thought Mad was cool, because it was something our parents hated. Two years after Stonewall, this is the image I was getting about gays from Mad…
Mad #145, Sept ’71, from "Greeting Cards For The
Sexual Revolution" – "To A Gay Liberationist"
This is what the pop culture was telling me about gay people when I was 17. Three months later I came out to myself. I have to say in all fairness that Mad Magazine isn’t hostile to gay people now, like it was back when I was a gay teen struggling to understand myself. In fact, they’re positively amazing, even by today’s standards. I suppose they understand now that some of their readers are dealing with their own process of coming out. But the late 60s and early 70s were not nearly so tolerant and it’s hard to grasp now, when we’re to the point of fighting for marriage rights, how bad it was back then. Which is why histories like the one Logo was showing tonight are so important. There are a lot of people who would like to take us all back to those days.
And so here I am, 35 years later, watching this history of Fire Island on Logo raptly. I was too young to be part of the pre-Stonewall era, but not so young that I didn’t hear stuff about homosexuals. And now I’m hearing from them, the people, gay and straight, who experienced that first wave of gay migrations to the island what those times were like from their point of view…
…and I’m hearing about how a certain hotel/club got started there, called The Botel, and how it’s ownership passed into the hands of a gay man…and how the tradition of "Tea Dances" started there (late afternoon, when the dances were held, was called "low tea"…I guess it’s a New England thing…). And I learn that back in those days it was illegal for men to dance with men. Not illegal as in, get a ticket and pay a fine, but illegal as in get arrested and thrown in jail and have your life ruined when your name is printed in the newspapers the next day and suddenly your boss and your neighbors and everyone you know finds out you’re a faggot. That kind of illegal…
…so the male Tea Dancers would form a kind of cabaret line and find one woman…she didn’t need to be heterosexual herself…to dance with all these guys who were really dancing with each other but had to be careful about not dancing too much like they were dancing with each other or they might get arrested. The gay owner of the club would watch the dancers and warn them if they started being too obvious, and tell them they had to stop or leave…
…and there are several people in this Fire Island documentary explaining this as I watch and listen, and one of them explains that the police would regularly raid The Botel anyway, and another man says that sometimes the police would patrol the streets around the club and arrest random young men as they left. On those nights, this man says, the bartenders would get the word somehow and warn people not to leave the club alone, but go out in large groups. Another man says that the police had arrest quotas when then went on these raids. Typically, he says, they had to arrest at least twenty gays…
…and I listen to another man explaining that there was a large telephone pole near the Botel, and that it had a chain fastened to it…and the police would randomly arrest gay men as they found them leaving the Botel and cuff them to this chain…one by one…until they had their twenty for that night…and they would put them all on the boat back to the mainland and to jail.
This happened on Fire Island, in the 1960s, during a time when a lot of gay men and lesbians regarded Fire Island as a place they could go to get away from the oppression they felt in their daily lives. It was a place where could be "among your own kind", the people in the documentary were telling me as I watched. You felt like you were in a world apart, they said. Back home was the closet, the constant fear of discovery, the need to keep your head down. On Fire Island you felt like you were getting away from all that, they said. But you never knew when the police might grab you off the street, handcuff you to a chain with twenty or more other homosexuals, and take you by boat to a jail on the mainland. Because you were a homosexual.
And now you know another reason why Stonewall finally happened.
Allegations arise after failed gay rights referendum attempt
The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating alleged election fraud in the failed attempt of a group called Equal Rights Not Special Rights to force a ballot referendum on whether over gay people should be protected by Cincinnati’s anti-discrimination law.
Equal Rights Not Special Rights officially withdrew its petitions Thursday, saying it discovered one paid signature gatherer had fraudulently signed 18 names in the more than 7,600 signatures that were validated by the Hamilton County Board of Elections last June.
Thousands of those validated signatures were to be challenged Thursday by a pro-ordinance group called Citizens To Restore Fairness, which said the referendum sponsor was systematic in its use of fraud and tampering of petitions to push the issue onto ballots this fall. A protest hearing at the Board of Elections, scheduled for Thursday, was canceled when Prosecutor Joe Deters started his investigation.
According to 365Gay.com, Fidel Castro and Cincinnati Reds owner Bob Castellini were among the signees. Maybe Castro gave Phil Burress a box of his best Cohibas while he was there…
Phil Burress, chairman of the group behind the referendum, said he referred to Deters the name of the signature gatherer who he thinks committed fraud. Burress said his staff alerted him to the 18 questionable signatures, and he didn’t look at any beyond that because it was clear they wouldn’t have enough signatures to force a referendum.
"No one else from staff has said anything about (other) signatures that are corrupt," Burress said.
"Why would I be required to check that out, when it’s the homosexual activists making the claims (of massive fraud)."
They pulled the petitions because they went a little too far this time, and Phil has somehow sensed this. The election process in Ohio has been corrupt for so long now under republican rule that the kook pews figured they could get away with anything now and threw caution to the wind. Citizens To Restore Fairness had only just started looking at the signatures and they found Fidel’s name in there and that was too much, even by Ohio standards. And true to form, Phil is looking for a scapegoat. Oh yes…it was that guy we paid to collect signatures. You sure it isn’t the gays Phil? Isn’t it always the gays?
No Phil, it’s you. Someone who feels utterly no compunction about lying through their teeth to incite the mob cannot possibly have any moral brakes when it comes to a little thing like election fraud. Your kind will lie, cheat and steal any election you come anywhere near and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt or remorse about it either, because you’re on a mission from God and God doesn’t mind it when people lie and cheat and steal for Him. God is that big mafia boss in the sky…right Phil? He likes it when you bring Him bling.
This is the republican party in a nutshell. I wander the liberal and progressive blogs and constantly I see amazement over how completely amoral the republicans have become. There’s Bush wiretapping Americans right and left at will as though he can do as he damn well pleases a fuck the rule of law. There’s the bogus rationals for the war in Iraq, in-your-face lies like Saddam was involved in 9-11 that have been debunked over and over again and yet the Bush administration keeps repeating them. There’s the whining petulant sense of entitlement and bitter resentment towards everyone who isn’t One Of Us. I’ve been seeing it for decades in the anti-gay kook pews: That Fuck The Constitution, Fuck Democracy, Fuck The Rule Of Law we’ll do to you as we damn well please attitude…that ritualistic waving around of one damn stupidly transparent lie after another, long after the lie has stopped convincing anyone, because as long as the lie can still incite the mob it’s still useful…that whining, petulant sense of entitlement by virtue of heterosexuality, and bitter resentment toward gay people who stubbornly refuse to hate themselves like they hate us. I’ve had to face that open sewer of arrogance and hate and resentment ever since I left puberty behind. And then I watched as the republican party became that.
A ceremony to honor the achievements of six high profile gay Californians erupted into a political fight at the State Capitol Monday with some Republicans storming off the Assembly Floor.
The Legislature’s Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Caucus (LGBT) sponsored the first Pride Recognition Awards, a program they say is designed to recognize the accomplishments of people who happen to be gay in their respective fields.
Conservative Assemblymembers boycotted the program.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise," said Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia, R-San Diego. "We’re wasting a lot of time we have a lot of bills on the floor."
The honorees included several celebrities, including former NFL tackle Esera Tuaolo and Reichen Lehmkuhl, the million dollar prize winner of the "The Amazing Race 4" reality television show. Watching quietly from the back of the room was Lehmkuhl’s partner, Lance Bass, a singer with the former boy band ‘N Sync. Bass recently went public with the fact he is gay.
Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he hoped the event would benefit Republicans by showing them the "strength of our diversity and the many accomplishments in a variety of disciplines." But about 10 Republicans either walked out or boycotted the event altogether.
"So it’s a great disappointment that they’re acting like such children," Leno said.
MEADE – Two Meade boys have confessed to cutting down a rainbow flag outside a hotel here, the proprietors said Monday.
The Lakeway Hotel became a focus of controversy last month after owners J.R. and Robin Knight hung the colorful banner, a gift from their 12-year-old son, in front of the place. Locals uncomfortable with such a symbol – it also stands for gay pride – decried the flag’s presence and then, in the early-morning hours of July 31, someone cut it down.
The disappearance had remained a mystery, but the father of two local boys brought them to the Lakeway on Friday and they owned up to their involvement.
"They apologized and said they’d replace it," J.R. Knight said. He didn’t name the boys, and Meade County Sheriff Michael Cox said only that officials are investigating.
Meanwhile, Knight said replacing a 5-foot-by-5-foot plate glass window smashed in at the hotel’s restaurant – also apparently due to the flag flap – probably would cost about $500. Two neon beer signs destroyed in the same incident probably will cost another $1,000.
Someone tossed a brick through the window early Friday morning, according to the Knights and local authorities, who are investigating. Scrawled on the brick was the word "fag."
An 18-year-old gay man who was badly beaten in Edgewood on July 30 might have been assaulted because a man at the party believed the gay man had touched his butt, a statement of probable cause filed in state District Court says.
William York, 21, of Edgewood, and Leroy Segura, 19, of Moriarty have been charged with aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Bond for each man was set at $100,000 cash only by District Judge Michael Vigil on Monday. Two juveniles, a boy and girl, are also being held in connection to the case.
York believed the victim tried to grab his butt while they were at a party in Edgewood on July 30, the statement says. He said Segura, who is known by the nickname “Half Pint,” told him the victim tried to grab York’s butt, the statement says.
In an interview, York told state police the comment upset him and made him want to fight the 18-year-old man, the statement says. York said everyone at the party made fun of the 18-year-old man because he was gay, the statement says. York said he wanted to “scare” the victim to “make him straight and to get him to stop acting the way he was,” the statement says.
The juvenile male arrested in the case said he, York and Segura tied the gay man’s hands, placed a torn black T-shirt over his head, walked him into a deserted field, pushed him onto a downed fence and beat him, the statement says. The juvenile, the statement says, said he egged on York by calling the gay man joto, a derogatory Spanish word meaning gay.
The documents did not contain statements from Segura, who wore a rosary around his neck in court Monday.
The gay man suffered bleeding on the brain, a concussion, facial lacerations and bruising from the beating, which lasted for hours, state police have said. York, Segura and the juvenile male have been charged under New Mexico’s hate-crimes law.
The 18-year-old victim went to the party with a girl, who was also beaten and held inside the trailer house where the party took place, the statement says. She told police “the male subjects would knock (the gay man) down and if he did not get up off the ground within a certain count or if he did not make any noise, they would jump on him, hitting and kicking him,” the statement says.
The female victim said the beating stopped as “the sun was coming up,” the statement says.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise…"
I am blessed with a body that reacts…strongly…to mood altering drugs of any sort. Alcohol, marijuana, whatever. It never took much to get me blasted as a teen, and beings as I was usually zonked pretty quickly, I never really had more fun if I did more…just pass out. I’m convinced this is why I never fell into any cycle of addiction and recovery. It certainly kept me from becoming addicted to cigarettes.
I still vividly remember my first toke on a cigarette. I was 11 or 12, and one day my friends and I found an unopened pack of Winstons in a construction site near our apartments. We took it to our private hang out and passed them around. That first puff was my last. It felt like my entire body was under attack. My lungs burned, my skin chilled, my head started to go Right Up Into The Stratosphere. I was hacking and coughing all over the place and for once my friends weren’t making fun of me for not being cool because they were all doing it too. For years after that I wondered why the hell adults smoked. And then I became one.
I smoke the occasional cigar now. It’s a gentler, more mellow nicotine buzz, and I don’t have to drag the smoke into my lungs to get it. And I can tell you exactly why I do it. Stress. Work deadline stress mostly, but also the stress of my life at times. I’m single, and when you’re single you don’t get the chance to have those heart to heart talks about life with someone you trust intimately. So I paint, I draw, I blog, and I go for solitary walks, sometimes with a cigar in hand, just trying to mellow out. And like those other highs it doesn’t take much, and that keeps my tobacco usage down. But I’m aware of the dangers, and when I walk past the Baltimore Gay Community Center sometimes, and I see a bunch of gay kids hanging out, and at least half of them are smoking, I get angry. Not at them, but at the stresses in their lives. It doesn’t take much to figure why you see more gay then straight teens smoking.
Not much that is, if you have half a brain and a functional conscience. Which brings me to the post I saw the other day on Stacy Harp’s blog. You’ll recall Stacy as the anti-gay activist who just the other week was pushing Guy Adams’ claims that raping babies is the newest trend among gays. But, baby sodomizers though we are, Stacy still cares about our health. Really. Stacy thinks the gay community should sue the tobacco industry.
…according to The San Francisco Chronicle the gay community has a higher rate of smoking than the heterosexual community. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, because according to the article gays smoke because of stress, they go to bars (DUH) and the advertisers are victimizing the gay community because they are intentionally targeting the gay community because they know they are stressed out more than any other community.
So much, so obvious. For instance, you’d be kinda stressed too if you had crackpots going around telling your neighbors that you were a having sex with infants because you thought it was trendy. But…no. The problem with linking higher incidence of smoking (and overall drug abuse) among gay people with stress is that’s a finger pointing right back at the likes of…er…Stacy. And the finger must always point to homosexuals. Whatever happens to gay people, whether it’s drug abuse, suicide or violence, it must always be their own fault. Their blood is upon them…
But this is interesting, according to the article…
Gay smokers have their own theories on why they smoke: the club and bar scene, trouble finding dates and falling in love, high alcohol- and drug-abuse rates in the community. Sometimes, smoking is related to a lack of family connections, which can cause stress and also remove pressure to stop smoking once someone has started.
and this….
"Gay people probably smoke longer because we’re not as family- oriented. If you don’t have kids and raise a family, you don’t need to stop," said John Daly, 41, who has smoked for 25 years. "We don’t have the same responsibilities. We can be reckless a little longer."
OH…okay…so now we know why the gay community smokes so much, and here I thought that we are being told constantly by the gay community activists that their lives are just like the normal heterosexual’s life. And yet, in the gays own words they admit that they use stink sticks because they are not as "family oriented", "don’t have kids or raise a family" and "can be reckless", as well as are "drug users" and "alcohol abusers".
Right. Our lives are just like the normal heterosexual’s life, if normal heterosexuals had multi-million dollar political hate machines working hard year after year to deny them the right to marry, the right to raise children, the right to so much as be with their spouse in an emergency room. Our lives are just like the normal life of heterosexuals who have to live under the cloud of one relentless propaganda campaign after another, telling their parents, their siblings, their co-workers, their neighbors that, for example, they’re all busy raping babies. Our lives are just like that of any other heterosexuals who have to listen to the sound of pulpits thumping from one end of the country to the other about how they’re going to burn in hell because god hates them, god condemns them, and everyone else should too. That kind of normal heterosexual family life.
Stacy thinks we ought to be outraged.
As for me, I’m not going to hold my breath (unless some stinky smoker is around) waiting for the gay community to go after the tobacco companies… or the bars or alcohol companies. But if I was gay, I’d sure as heck be very mad that these companies are targeting my community and hoping to snag my community with deadly substances that could kill my community off quicker than if we didn’t all drink and smoke.
Hmmm. Double standard…it’s okay for the tobacco and alcohol communties to push a deadly substance on the gay community, and no outrage. But when someone who is trying to help the gay community tells them they should stop having sex, especially sex with someone who has HIV, you get persecuted.
Not to mention being persecuted just for politely telling us not to have sex with babies please. Yes…we’re a cranky lot.
That last one being in reaction to a news article I came across in July of 2004, about a Utah anti smoking campaign directed a gay youth that lost its funding because…well…it was directed at gay youth…
For eight months, the "Queers Kick Ash" campaign hummed along, spreading its anti-tobacco message to Utah’s gay and lesbian community with help from a state grant.
During that time, records show the Utah Department of Health routinely approved and funded promotional materials – posters, banners, T-shirts, newspaper ads, even a Web site – for the campaign by the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Community Center of Utah. Then, in mid-May, several students were disciplined at Hillcrest High for wearing "Queers Kick Ash" T-shirts.
A few weeks later, the Health Department yanked the funding – an expected $200,000 over the next two years – and the anti-tobacco campaign fizzled. Ever since then, the community center has wondered why it lost the funding.
"We’ve made phone calls, mailed letters and sent faxes – and nothing," said Tami Marquardt, the center’s acting executive director. "They haven’t had the courtesy or the public decency to give us an answer. I don’t know why they won’t talk to anyone if this is all aboveboard. This is nothing but a homophobic cover-up. It’s discrimination, pure and simple."
For its part, the Health Department – in a June 1 letter from Heather Borski, manager of the department’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program – maintains that it opted not to renew the center’s grant to "prevent the anti-tobacco health message from being overshadowed by unrelated advocacy activity."
Richard Milton, the department’s deputy director, and two department spokeswomen would not define "unrelated advocacy activity."
"Our statement speaks for itself," Milton said Friday. "It’s a question of interpretation."
Let me hazard an interpretation: You can’t target gay youth with an anti-smoking message directed specifically to them, because that might lead them to think we actually care what the fuck happens to the little faggots.
Well if I was Stacy Harp I’d be outraged that the state of Utah withdrew funding for an anti-smoking program that targeted gay youth. Wait…no. If I was Stacy Harp I’d have probably taken up smoking years ago, due to the constant stress of trying not to see a gutter crawling bigot every time I looked in a mirror.
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