Via Atrios…   Digby has a good post up about Hippie Randism and Libertarian Lefties that goes into something I’ve wanted to discuss more.   A libertarian isn’t a Randiod and either one of these could occasionally seem to resemble either a conservative or liberal.   Or to put it another way, and speaking of Whole Food’s hippy climate change denying champion of absolute corporate deregulation and union busting, just because someone looks and acts like a granola organic liberal progressive New Age self-actualization holistic health guru that doesn’t mean they aren’t a right wing asshole when it comes to the prerogatives of massive corporate money.   Here, Digby quotes the Times profile…

In the early eighties, Mackey told a reporter, “The union is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover.” (That quote, to Mackey’s dismay, won’t go away, either.) His disdain for contemporary unionism is ideological, as well as self-serving. Like many who have come before, he says that it was only when he started a business—when he had to meet payroll and deal with government red tape—that his political and economic views, fed on readings of Friedman, Rand, and the Austrians, veered to the right. But there is also a psychological dimension. It derives in large part from a tendency, common among smart people, to presume that everyone in the world either does or should think as he does—to take for granted that people can (or want to) strike his patented balance of enlightenment and self-interest. It sometimes sounds as if he believed that, if every company had him at the helm, there would be no need for unions or health-care reform, and that therefore every company should have someone like him, and that therefore there should be no unions or health-care reform. In other words, because he runs a business a certain way, others will, can, and should, and so the safeguards that have evolved over the generations to protect against human venality—against, say, greedy, bullying bosses—are no longer necessary. The logic is as sound as the presumption is preposterous.

Digby goes on to say…

He’s a libertarian who identifies culturally with the left. He’s into New Age religion and self-actualization and believes in holistic health practices, clean food etc. But he’s not a left libertarian. These things get confusing, but it’s important to make the distinction.

Basically, this guy is a standard issue right libertarian which means that he is a free market fundamentalist, hates unions, hates government and extols the virtues of the John Galts like himself, although he believes in a sort of corporate paternalism that requires him to look after the parasites (workers) in some rudimentary fashion. He is also a believer in civil liberties and drug legalization. (I assume that since he’s a Paul supporter, he’s also critical of the Fed.) There are quite a few of these folks out there who seem like your liberal next door, more than you might realize. Hollywood, for instance, is full of them. I worked for a few. Many of them even think they’re liberals and will vote for Democrats on social issues. But when it comes to taxing the wealthy and regulating business they might as well be Dick Cheney.

There is, of course, an actual left libertarianism and it is best articulated by Noam Chomsky, not some wealthy twit like Mackey…

It gets confusing, and I suppose it will only get more so as the republican party degenerates further and further into theocracy and outright populist-nationalist lunacy.   Others have noted how the 2010 edition of the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference is going to be sponsored in part by the John Birch Society…they of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Was A Communist fame.   If this is what the republican party wants to become then don’t be surprised to see people fleeing from it into a lot of factions and libertarianism is a very popular label to wear in some circles.   But that’s really all it is in most of them.   Just a convenient label the wearer hopes means I’m Really Not A Right Wing Asshole…Honest…

There are Lefty Libertarians.   They think government shouldn’t regulate business and shouldn’t regulate morality.   There are Right Wing Libertarians.   They think government shouldn’t regulate business and states should regulate morality but not the federal government since it had the unmitigated gall to desegregate the schools.   And then there are the Randoids.   Rand herself and her intellectual spawn Leonard Peikoff absolutely loathed the libertarians.     There are mixes and matches (call them mashups if you will…) of all three and then some.   There are almost certainly for example, John Birch Libertarians and John Birch Randoids.   Probably some of these shop at Whole Foods and look outwardly like hippies.

I like to think of it as that little corner of the Twilight Zone where which way is up depends on which ideology you’ve bought into.   The problem with all of these is they have very little interest in how things actually work, and why things can and do fail.   It’s all about the ideology.   So in one very real sense there isn’t much to practical difference between any of them.   But don’t try to tell a Lutheran that they’re more or less like an Episcopalian just with different vestments.

It’s going to be a fun decade, with the republicans leading the way to a political landscape where parties begin are more and more like religious movements, then conversations about how to…you know…actually govern…

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

-Emo Philips, The Best God Joke Ever

Smokin’ hot essay in this month’s GQ by John Ritter on Ayn Rand’s influence on college students, bankers, financiers, chairmen of the Federal Reserve, and other people who need to have their certainties smacked out of them from time to time for the good of the rest of us.  I know, because I used to be one of them…

A weirdly specific thing happens with the books of Ayn Rand. It’s not just the what of the books, but when a reader discovers them—almost always during the first or second year of college. Rand grabs a reader at a time of maximum vulnerability and malleability, when he’s getting his first accurate sense of how he measures up in the world in terms of intellect and talent. The longing to regard oneself as misunderstood and underrated can be powerful; the temptation to project oneself as such, irresistible…

Sort of.  Not everyone likes thinking of themselves as misunderstood.  I sure didn’t.  But I never blamed being taken for a weird little geek on being misunderstood because I knew I was one.  Being raised in a Baptist household the first person you always blame for just about everything, let alone not fitting in, is yourself.  

It was after leaving my church and coming out to myself as gay that I first read Rand.  But in retrospect, clearly, all those days spent in church listening to fire and brimstone pulpit thumping had left their mark on me.  I craved moral certainty, and admired the firebrand moralist who spoke to those certainties.  If I have a weakness to this day that’s it.  But at 20 the bible had long since lost its power as a moral instrument.  It was still interesting in its echo from a distant time kinda way, but no longer authoritative.  I wandered aimlessly in a kind of existential stupor, unwilling to rest my moral values on religious absolutes that I knew perfectly well were nothing more then the bar stool prejudices of various pulpit thumpers, but unable to find another moral compass to guide my way.  Reason and morality it seemed, were two different things.

Two books shook me out of my moral fog then, almost one after the other.  In retrospect, both were terribly flawed teachers.  And yet they left me with concepts I still value to this day.  The first was Robert Audrey’s African Genesis.  I found a tattered copy of it in a corner of a warehouse I once worked in, wrinkled and discarded, and picking it up and reading the first page of it…

Not in innocence, and not in Asia was mankind born… 

…I had to take the thing home.  I absolutely devoured it.  And from Audry I gleaned the idea that the forces that move within our consciousness actually are understandable and manageable…but only if we seriously study our evolutionary past.  To construct workable human societies, and moral codes that actually and really benefit us, we need to undertake an almost brutal, unromantic, understanding of ourselves and that means looking also to the past which brought us forth.  Not to do so would be akin to trying to build a bridge with no understanding of the nature of the materials you’re constructing it from…

We are not so unique as we would like to believe.  And if man in a time of need seeks deeper knowledge concerning himself, then he must explore those animal horizons from which we have made our quick little march.

Yes.  Yes.  And Yes.  I still passionately believe this is true.  Let it be said that a lot of naturalists and anthropologists really hate Audrey for his overwrought image of humans as killer apes.  But you can discard that part of it…our understanding of the human ancestors is much improved since he wrote that book…and still respect the basic idea.  We are, each of us, in body and consciousness, living histories of millions of years of life on earth.  To make a better life for ourselves in the here and now, we need to understand that history.

The second book was Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.  As John Ritter writes…

The days during which that 19-year-old has Rand’s worldview vectored into his cerebral cortex are feverish and sleepless. Days of beautiful affliction during which the intransigence of others—roommates, a coed the patient has been hitting on, professors, parents, everyone—are shown to be the product of their shortcomings, their idiocy and sublimated envy of the patient’s intelligence and talent…  One day you’ve got a bright young kid dutifully connecting the dots of his liberal-arts education; the next, he’s got Roark and Galt in the marrow and has become…an insufferable asshole.

Well…kind of.  I never thought of my friends as idiots.  But I suspect I did turn into a bit of a jerk because that’s what happens to people when they become True Believers.  Suddenly everything made sense!  The world was powered by the rational human intellect!  Everything that denied the mind was anti-life!  Capitalism wasn’t merely the most productive economic system ever invented, it was the only Moral one!  To take possession of your own life and live it for the good of your Self was the highest virtue!  Here was an ideology that appealed to my inner geek and my inner pulpit thumper both.  I am certain there was a period in my life when I couldn’t speak two words without going off about Randian ideology.  It’s amazing I still have friends from that period.

People wonder how it is that so many gays become Randians since Rand herself was a vitriolic homophobe.  But Rand’s morality of sex, that enjoying sex for its own sake was not only moral, but was morally validated by a couple’s mutual pleasure in each other’s bodies, is very appealing to a people who are taught to feel ashamed of any hint of sexual desire in themselves the moment puberty hits them.  I saw Rand’s morality as a reasoned and high minded rejection of the notion of original sin drilled into me all throughout my Baptist childhood, that our bodies, that our feelings of sexual desire, were evidence of humanity’s fallen state.  And it seemed to validate any sexual relationship, gay or straight, that sprang from mutual appreciation of the best within each other, body and soul. Rand declared that sexual joy for its own sake, taken between two people who wholeheartedly and completely desire each other was a righteous thing.  And a lot of gay people, myself included, said ‘Amen!’

But therein, for me at least, lay the seeds of discontent as well.  Rand taught that human emotions were the unconscious sum of the workings of our rational mind.  This led her to view homosexuality as the result of bad thinking…faulty premises as she liked to put everything that didn’t fit into her philosophy.  It led her acolyte and lover Nathanial Brandon to suggest in one essay that gay men were gay because they’d been subconsciously made afraid of women from being taught to idealize them but not desire them.  Huh?  As any gay person knows, and especially any gay person who ever tried to psychoanalyze themselves straight, your sexual orientation isn’t something you think yourself into.  Or out of.  And here was Rand and her "collective" dispensing pop psychology crap about homosexuality that not only gay folk themselves, but actual researchers, had known for decades was claptrap.  We don’t think ourselves into our sexual orientations, they just are.  But that kind of thinking about human consciousness was anathema to Rand.

How I managed to embrace an ideology that regarded human consciousness as entirely the province of the rational mind after reading and embracing Audrey I cannot explain.  But there it was.  Eventually the ideas I gleaned from Audrey did come back to me.  I think it was while reading a statement of Rand’s that she was neither a supporter nor denier of the theory of evolution.  Well of course, because evolution throws a great big monkey wrench into her model of human consciousness which acknowledged only the human capacity for rational thinking.  Rand’s human being was every bit the separate creation that Adam was in Genesis.  And that is not what a human being is.  The moment I read her statement on evolution it got me to thinking about all the other ways I’d had to forgive Rand for making pronouncements about this and that which just seemed…well…stupid. 

And that was how I found my way out the door to her church.  The one thing I took from her that I still keep close to my heart to this day is the idea that morality must be reason-based.  It must withstand the test of truth, conform to the evidence, logically and objectively work to benefit our lives.  Oh that Rand herself had held to this idea, when championing her notion that unfettered capitialism is the only moral system. 

Unfortunately…for all of us…she didn’t.  And neither have her intellectual heirs…

This is because there are boys and girls among us who have never overcome the Randian infection. The Galt speech continues to ring in their ears for years like a maddening tinnitus, turning each of them into what next year’s Physicians’ Desk Reference will (undoubtedly) term an Ayn Rand Asshole (ARA). They constitute a relatively small percentage of Rand readers, these ARAs. But they make their reading count. Thanks to them, the Rand Experience is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It’s metastasized. You, me, all of us, we’re living it. Because it’s the ARA Army of antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while, it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative crater that was left behind.

Feeling fisted by the Invisible Hand of the Market lo these past fifteen months? Lost a job lately? Or half the value of your 401(k)? Or a home? All three? Been wondering whence the too-long-ascendant political and economic ideas and forces behind Greenspanism, John Thainism, blind Wall Street plunder, bankruptcy, credit-default swaps, Bernie Madoff, and the ensuing Cannibalism in the Streets? Then you, sir, need to give thanks to Ayn Rand Assholes everywhere—as well as the steely loins from which they sprang.

Reading Ritter’s GQ essay gave me a feeling (yes Ayn…a Feeling…) reminiscent of that moment gay folk experience when they discover they’re not the only ones like themselves.  Well…if even Alan Greenspan can admit now, while standing there in the center of the wreakage of our ecomony, that perhaps he was wrong about all that deregulation stuff, maybe we’ll see some other big names come out of the closet as ex-Randian.  We could be in for lots more fun denunciations of Randian claptrap. 

There is a third book I discovered well after Audrey and Rand, which I still hold dear to my heart.  Jacob Bronowski’s Science and Human Values.  Bronowski clarified for me how knowledge, being a Process of discovery and refinement of models, was also at its core a deeply personal and creative act.  He brought me to an understanding I really needed, about how the work of both scientists and artists had the same creative root, thereby bringing my inner techno geek and my inner art geek finally to some degree of peace with one another.  But more importantly, he showed me how to get past my need for certainty.  There is no perfect God’s eye view to be found, either in the bible or in Atlas Shrugged.  Our knowledge exists in an area of imprecision we can never fully eliminate.  Call it the Uncertainty Principal or, as Brownoski suggested in The Ascent of Man, the Principal of Tolerance if you like, but there is no God’s eye view.  Quantum physics has proven that literally.  But that does not mean we can never really know anything.  It means we have to always bear in mind that area of uncertianty always tied up in our understandings, and that knowledge is a process of test and refinement, and not a thing we can safely stop questioning.  We have to always take care to ask ourselves what we know, and how we know it.  Always.

If I had to point to one thing that sums Rand up in her entirety for me it would be this:  She wrote in Atlas Shrugged, "I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand.  FIRE, a dangerous force, tamed at his finger tips.  I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come out from such hours. When a man thinks there is a spot of fire alive in his mind – and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."  Thereby turning cigarettes into a symbol for fans of her and her philosophy.  It is a beautiful, eloquant image…the act of thinking, the hand holding fire.  In 1974 Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer, quit smoking at that time, and never once for the rest of her life warned her readers about the dangers of cigarettes.  When someone gives you, the artist, their love wholeheartedly, you need to love them back.

Go read the whole thing.

I saw this little news tidbit over at Box Turtle Bulletin.  But first, let’s review some testimony about marriage from Alan Chambers, president of the ex-gay therapy group Exodus International.  Alan likes to tell people that homosexuals can change.  Here he is, giving testimony at a 2004 U.C. Berkeley Debate on Same-Sex Marriage…

My name is Alan Chambers; I am a Christian…

Hello Alan…

…a husband to my wife, Leslie and I also used to be a homosexual. To be clear, I did not choose my same-sex attractions nor did I willfully adopt a homosexual orientation, but my response to both, my behaviors, were a choice.

I remember being a lonely 18 year-old searching for Mr. Right. I remember the ache to have a man hold me, protect me, love me and devote his life to me. I remember thinking I would do anything to fill that insatiable need. I did everything short of praying for my knight in shining armor to show up on my doorstep. I was certain that beyond the shadow of a doubt that the missing piece to my life’s puzzle was going to be found in the man of my dreams.

Nearly 14 years later, I am happy, content and satisfied emotionally, physically, spiritually, relationally and sexually. My process was one of self-determination and willful choice to move beyond the box that enslaves so many wonderful same-sex attracted people. Change is possible and I am living proof. I used to be homosexual and today I am not.

Had same-sex marriage been legal in 1990, I am certain that I would have tested that option. I met men who I wanted to marry. Yet today, as a mature adult with a sober perspective, I realize that I wasn’t searching for a man as much as I was searching for an answer, a drug even, to numb the pain and to make me feel better about who I thought I was. The law kept me from making one, if not many, life-altering mistakes.

Recently, Dennis Teti wrote in "The Weekly Standard", "Governments’ purpose is not to dispense rights but the secure rights created by nature and nature’s God." The current laws saved my life and continue to save the lives of other young people like me who need life saving boundaries.

As a former homosexual, I know that this battle has little, if nothing, to do with marriage, but rather with an absolute need for social approval and acceptance. This experiment with marriage, being promoted by a few, is about silencing inward guilt, pain and the gut-wrenching reality resident within homosexual and lesbian people that their desires will never be completely satisfied in the ways they seek homosexually. Legal endorsement and approval of same-sex marriage will simply guarantee that more lives those of today’s and future children, will be ruined. We already live in a truly tolerant society where the law views us all equally. Race, religion, gender, age or disability affects our personal freedoms. The laws in place that protect marriage do so to protect an institution that has been the bedrock of societies for thousands of years and most importantly to protect children. A two parent, one man-one woman, family is the best environment in which to raise the next generation. We must do all we can to protect this family unit.

Again, I am one of tens of thousands of people whom have successfully changed their sexual orientation. I am grateful for the message of change and for the current laws that saved my life.

Saved your life did they…?

Woman accused of stabbing husband formally charged

BOULDER – A woman accused of stabbing her husband less than two months after their wedding day is now facing second-degree murder charges.

[Traci] Housman told police they were drinking a lot the night of Aug. 2 and started arguing after "John began telling everyone, ‘I’m a gay guy.’"

According to the wife the fight got physical when they got home and she stabbed him in self defense.  She’s facing 32 years in jail now.  Good thing this guy wasn’t allowed to marry another man, eh Alan?

You’re right Alan…absolutely right.  This battle has little, if nothing, to do with marriage, but rather with an absolute need for social approval and acceptance.  Right on.  It is being promoted by a few, is about silencing inward guilt, pain and the gut-wrenching reality resident within homosexuals.  Some homosexuals.  The ones that hate themselves and want more then anything else to be heterosexual.  Homosexuals like you Alan.  As long as there exist some gay people, anywhere, who could accept themselves just as they are, and live happy, contented, decent lives just as they are, and find someone of their own sex to love and cherish and settle down with…then what does that make you? 

Silencing inward guilt?  Can a man really buy self respect by driving a dagger into the hopes and dreams of his neighbors?  Really?

Andrew Sullivan updates his post on Virginia Foxx and Matthew Shepard…

I should be clear: I do not for a minute believe that the bigotry behind the Matthew Shepard murder was a hoax. I think it was murkier and more complicated – i.e. more human – than some want it to be. Of course, if you believe that his murderers deserved the maximum sentence because they brutally murdered someone, and not because they were meth-fueled bigots, it doesn’t matter. I want the same laws against the same acts enforced equally on everyone. If police don’t enforce the law equally, get on their case. But leave the laws alone.

Okay…point taken and granted.  He’s not saying hate had nothing to do with the murder, which is Exactly what the kook pews are saying.  As to his horribly misinformed attitude about anti-lynching laws hate crime laws, I’ll leave that argument for another time.  But this business that the murder of Matthew Shepard was "murkier and more complicated" then it at first appeared is a load of horseshit.

In his confession to DeBree, McKinney had denied using meth the day of the murder, and while McKinney had been arrested too late for the police to confirm this through blood testing, DeBree felt certain that McKinney had for once told the truth.  Obviously it’s unsurprising that the lead investigator would disagree with the defense, but DeBree had some compelling reasons on his side.  "There’s no way" it was a meth crime, DeBree argued, still passionate about the issue when I met him nearly six months after the trial had ended.  No evidence of recent drug use was "found in a search of their residences.  There was no evidence in the truck.  From everything we were able to investigate, the last time they would have done meth would have been two to three weeks previous to that night.  What the defense attempted to do was a bluff."  Meth crimes do have hallmarks.  One, "Overkill," certainly seems to describe what happened to Matt, but no others so seamlessly fit that night: "A meth crime is going to be a quick attack," DeBree pointed out.  "It’s going to be a manic attack…  No.  This was a sustained event.  And somebody that’s high on meth is not going to be targeting and zeroing in on a head, and deliver the blows that they did in the way that they did," with such precision.  "Consistently it was targeted, and even if you’re drunk, you’re going to have a tough time trying to keep your target.  No.  There’s absolutely no involvement with drugs."

Beth Loffreda,  Loosing Matt Shepard.  pg 133 – 134

A week after we met in his office, Rob [DeBree] took me to the crime scene.  As we drove out to the fence in a Sheriff’s Office SUV, he stopped in mid-sentence by the Wal-Mart"  "Here’s where it began," he told me and gestured in imitation of McKinney striking Matt.  We restart the conversation, but he’s made his point: the drive to the fence seems unimaginably long.  It’s not far – no more then a mile or two – but the rutted dirt road they turned on to makes for extremely slow driving.  When I say something to Rob about how long it takes, he agrees.  "They were coming here to finish him."  On that dirt track, it is hard to believe the defense attorney’s claims that the two killers had been drunk or high on drugs or crazed by homosexual panic.  It just takes too long to get to the fence…

Beth Loffreda,  Loosing Matt Shepard.  pg 155 – 156

"I have never worked a homicide with this much evidence," Rob says, all these months later a bit of wonder still bleeding into his voice.  "It was like a case of God giving it to us.  I’m not kidding.  The whole way it broke down from the beginning to the end – it was like, here it is, boys: work it.  It’s almost like it pissed off God, and he says, oh well, come here, let me walk you over here, walk you over there, pick up all this, pick up all that.  It was just a gift.

Beth Loffreda,  Loosing Matt Shepard.  pg 157

There is more.  Much, much more.  But that last paragraph I quoted pretty much sums it up.  There is absolutely nothing murky or mysterious about the death of Matthew Shepard.  It is one of the most crystal clear examples of purely venomous anti-gay murder in the record.  They spent time torturing that kid.  That is not hyperbole, it is the one overwhelming fact at the heart of what happened.  That, and that they made an effort to take him where they did.  Whatever their intent when they walked into that bar that night, when they walk out of it with that kid, they were about torturing and killing a homosexual.

The only confusion regarding this case, is what has been deliberately and maliciously injected into the national conversation about it by the religious right. And to understand why they’ve been so vehement about denying that anti-gay hate was the root of it, you have to consider not only the political context of their opposition to hate crime laws, but the context in which Shepard’s death came to light.

What happened was that Shepard’s death brought to a grinding halt, their brand new nationwide 600,000 dollar anti-gay ad campaign.  That summer, starting with a full page ad in the New York Times that proclaimed "I’m Living Proof That The Truth Can Set You Free", a group called "Truth In Love" sponsored by fifteen arch right anti-gay groups began a national campaign to roll back the gains gay activists had won, using ex-gay therapy as their ruse, not to talk about curing homosexuality, but to demonize homosexual people.  Wayne Besen in his book, Anything But Straight, documents the brutality of that campaign.  Behind the smiling faces of people who were now free, free at last from the loathsome taint of homosexuality, the campaign was peppered with lies about gay recruitment in schools, child molestation, the spread of AIDS, and how homosexuality leads to drugs, disease, and death and many biblical condemnations of homosexuality.  Don Wildmon, whose group was one of the sponsors, was busy telling people that…

Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, the only way for them to "breed" is to RECRUIT!"

In the midst of this propaganda onslaught, comes the news that a gay college student was practically crucified on a deer fence in Wyoming…that the kid who found his dying body thought a first that it was a scarecrow.  And then a couple days later, news that Fort Collins Colorado fraternity revelers during their homecoming parade, entered a float that bore a scarecrow with a sign that read "I’m gay"  And disgust swept across the nation.  The ad campaign now seemed less an outreach to homosexuals in the public mind, and more like what it really was, an attack on their lives.

Almost Immediately the religious right set about blaming Shepard for his own death.  It’s not hard to understand why.  They deliberately created the climate of hate toward gay people that made that both kid’s death and the mockery of it in Fort Collins not merely inevitable, but intentional.  Desired.  The homosexual monster must be feared.  The homosexual monster must be eliminated from our midst.  The very last thing they wanted was that the climate of hate would be held to account…that terrorizing homosexuals would be considered criminal. 

For generations the act of beating, and even murdering, homosexuals was considered less a crime and more a distasteful consequence of homosexuality in society.  Randy Shilts related how a young gay man who was raped sought medical help, telling a doctor what happened, only to have the doctor look at him and say "Well you’re a homosexual aren’t you?"  Matthew Shepard put a human face on all that…the face of anyone’s kid…and suddenly it seemed as if for once beating and killing a homosexual wouldn’t just be swept under the rug as par for the course…no more then what you got, and probably deserved if you were a homosexual.  Instead, the nation was appalled at what happened to that kid.

And that made the religious right livid.

They began Immediately to smear and slime that poor kid’s memory.  What ABC News and 20/20 did by taking that smear campaign and elevating it to the level of "respectable journalism" is unforgivable.  ABC News ground another cigarette into a dead gay kid’s body so they could get some ratings.  At least the hatred of Fred Phelps is genuine.

There is nothing murky about what happened to Matthew Shepard.  Nothing.  The evidence leaves absolutely no doubt that a 112 pound gay college student was tortured and murdered by two thugs because they thought homosexuals were human garbage and their contempt for them justified anything they did to that kid that night.  They had Fun.  They enjoyed themselves.  Anyone who cites that 20/20 hit piece is in about the same category as William Bennett, citing Paul Cameron on the shortened lifespan of homosexuals.  You are dispensing bullshit that even Baghdad Bob would laugh at.

"I have never worked a homicide with this much evidence," Rob says, all these months later a bit of wonder still bleeding into his voice.  "It was like a case of God giving it to us.  I’m not kidding.  The whole way it broke down from the beginning to the end – it was like, here it is, boys: work it.  It’s almost like it pissed off God, and he says, oh well, come here, let me walk you over here, walk you over there, pick up all this, pick up all that.  It was just a gift.

Take a wee stroll around that lonely prairie grass field of evidence sometime.  It’ll rip your comfortable 20/20 myths…and then your heart…to crying pieces.

The footprints and the tire tracks were perfectly etched; Matt’s watch, his student ID, and a quarter were laid out by the fence like props.  All that told DeBree a pretty clear story about what had happened there, including something I’d never heard in all the reporting of the crime – that Matt had made a run for it that night.  First, he had desperately "tried to stay in the truck," Rob believes.  Once out, he tried to escape.  "Henderson had made a statement to Chasity Pasley that she told us about, that Matt was able to break free and tried to run.  And according to what we were able to see at the crime scene, we could pretty well put that together.  His wristwatch was located twenty-three feet or so from where he was tied up, and I think that’s essentially what he was trying to do, was just to run.  He was tackled down; then he was drug over to the fence and tied by Henderson."

Beth Loffreda,  Loosing Matt Shepard.  pg 156-157

Scientific American finds the usual void of actual data behind the claim of successful ex-gay therapy…

Back in 1979, on Meet The Press and countless other TV appearances, Masters and Johnson touted their book, Homosexuality in Perspective—a 14-year study of more than 300 homosexual men and women…The results seemed impressive: Of the 67 male and female patients with “homosexual dissatisfaction,” only 14 failed in the initial two-week “conversion” or “reversion” treatment…During five years of follow-up, their success rate for both groups was better than 70 percent.

Not bad.  However…there was just one wee problem…

Prior to the book’s publication, doubts arose about the validity of their case studies. Most staffers never met any of the conversion cases during the study period of 1968 through 1977, according to research I’ve done for my new book Masters of Sex.  Clinic staffer Lynn Strenkofsky, who organized patient schedules during this period, says she never dealt with any conversion cases. Marshall and Peggy Shearer, perhaps the clinic’s most experienced therapy team in the early 1970s, says they never treated homosexuals and heard virtually nothing about conversion therapy.

When the clinic’s top associate, Robert Kolodny, asked to see the files and to hear the tape-recordings of these “storybook” cases, Masters refused to show them to him…

Kolodny began to suspect Masters had, at best created “composite” cases out of many individual ones at best, or at worst had committed outright fraud.  Virginia Johnson apparently had similar misgivings about Master’s conversion successes, but never spoke publicly about them.  She later regretted that the book had gone to the publisher in the form it had, saying, “That was a bad book.”  She feared that “Bill was being creative in those days” in compiling the conversion case studies.

Masters insisted right up to his death in 2001 that his work had been based on “…10 years of work with five years of follow-up—and it works.”  But he never showed anyone the actual data, and few who worked with him never saw any of the patients, let alone the work with them actually taking place.  Given how reliably such therapy fails to work for everyone else, it isn’t hard to figure why Masters never showed anyone the data.  He had the same reason Exodus, Love In Action, and a host of other conversion therapy quacks have.  The data doesn’t exist.  The human consciousness isn’t a blackboard anyone can scribble their will on.  It doesn’t work that way.  You can’t talk someone out of being homosexual any more then you can talk them out of being left handed, or having blue eyes.

Andrew Sullivan notes the Get The Government Out Of Marriage Altogether argument.  In California a couple of noble idiots are trying a lawsuit to do just that.  Douglas Kmiec approves…

Give gay and straight couples alike the same license — a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a "civil union" — anything, really, other than "marriage." For those for whom the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they could want. The Church itself would lose nothing of its role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that it finds in keeping with its tenets. And for non-believers or those for whom the word marriage is less important, the civil union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states, and in federal law, for "married" couples.

This is a wonderful solution to some problem somewhere in a galaxy far, far away perhaps, but not to the problem of same-sex marriage here on Planet Earth.  Once more: how many of these state amendments bulldozed through by the religious right also ban civil unions outright?  How many of them are written to ban any and all rights and benefits associated with marriage, never mind civil unions?  How many times do the bigots have to complain that anything that gives same sex couples any sort of recognition at all is unacceptable before you begin to listen to them?  How many of the Common Ground initiative laws proposed in Utah, after the Mormon Church averred that they weren’t really against giving same sex couples Any rights, did the Mormon church actually allow to pass?  What…not even hospital visitation? 

At long last, do you still not get the depth of the hatred here?  The word they’re choking on isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexual’.

Jonathan Rauch, who writes from time to time like he has common sense, joins hands with a bigot to announce they two have found common ground.  Wow…common ground…

In politics, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now.

It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

I see. Well that sounds like a plan all right.  And it would work too…right up to the point that something like this happens…

If her name had been Joe, her wife wouldn’t have died alone

Your wife is dying.

One moment everything was fine. You were in your stateroom on the cruise ship — it was to be an anniversary cruise — unpacking your things. The kids were in the adjoining stateroom playing with your wife. Suddenly, they banged on the door crying that mom was hurt.

So now you’re in the hospital — Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami — waiting for word, and it’s not coming. They tell you, Joe (we’ll call you Joe) you can’t be with her. You plead with them, to no avail. No, Joe, sorry, Joe, we can’t tell you anything.

One hour turns to two, two to four, four to six. Your wife is dying and no one she loves is there.

Finally, in the eighth hour, you reach her bedside. You are just in time to stand beside the priest as he administers last rites.

Your wife is dead. Her name was Lisa Marie Pond. She was 39.

It happened, Feb. 18-19, 2007, except that Pond’s spouse was not a man named Joe, but a woman named Janice. And there’s one other detail. Janice Langbehn who, as it happens, is an emergency room social worker from Lacey, Wash., says the first hospital employee she spoke with was an emergency room social worker. She thought, given their professional connection, they might speak a common language.

Instead, she says, he told her, "I need you to know you are in an anti-gay city and state and you won’t get to know about Lisa’s condition or see her" — then turned and walked away.

Now consider what the legal status of that couple would be in a hospital run by a "religious organization", as many increasingly are, within the scope of your…compromise.  Oh…I know…just tell the ambulance driver not to take your dying spouse to the closest available emergency room if it’s owned by a church.

Right.  Something like this happens and that artifice of civility you’re trying to prop up comes crashing right back down in flames again Jonathan.  And what we see in the wreckage, once again, sickeningly but clearly…very clearly…is how much your new found friends hate us, how bottomless that hate is.  And…oh by the way…they hate you too.  You knew that, right?

I have a question Jonathan.  Who do you think you are talking to?  Someone who can see a human being when they look at homosexuals?  Someone who wants the same decency and common civility to flourish in society, and nurture the best within its citizens?  Are you smoking crack?  Are you drunk?  Did banging your head against that impenetrable wall that is Blankenhorn’s cheapshit bar stool prejudices for years make you simple?  Read your own goddamned newsprint jackass.  The open sewer that is your pal’s conscience is right here, laughing in your face:

Whatever our disagreements on the merits of gay marriage, we agree on two facts. First, most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage. Second, many Americans of faith and many religious organizations have strong objections to same-sex unions. Neither of those realities is likely to change any time soon.

I’m sorry…you’ve been "discussing" this issue with Blankenhorn for…how long now…?  And finally…Finally…you get him to agree with you that "gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage"…?  Well that’s a giant step forward all right.  Look at that goddamn it!  Just look at it!  He isn’t agreeing that we need anything whatsoever, let alone the perquisites and protections of marriage, but only, and grudgingly, that we Feel like we do.  I suppose Janice Langbehn was only pretending to be in anguish while her spouse was dying.  But then don’t we all.  Someday Jonathan, if either you or your husband find yourselves in that same situation, you’ll pretend to feel anguish too.  It takes a lot of practice to mimic how attached heterosexuals are to their spouses and their families, doesn’t it Jonathan?

You’d think a civilized, let alone civil society would recognize such a basic human need.  Certainly your pal Blankenhorn believes it does.  But there’s the rub.  Homosexuals aren’t human.  They don’t need marriage, they only feel like they do.  I guess because we’re jealous of how heterosexuals have real human needs and we don’t, or something.  And you think that this is an improvement over whatever it was that he was thinking about gay people before you started having your discussions with him?  What could that have possibly been?  That we were only making noises about marriage to hear ourselves talk?  Either you’ve never really looked down into that Pit that is the human capacity to hate, or you’ve been staring into it for too long.  Either way, you just don’t seem to appreciate, or care, how much damage your bigot pal and his fellows in the kook pews have done to American society, let alone to civility.

A compromise…you say?  I have a compromise for you.  It’s called the constitution of the United States.  That first amendment thing?  What it doesn’t give your pal is the right to drop his church onto my back, or yours, or anyone else’s.   He can build his church.  He can worship in it.  He can live his life as he sees fit.  And all that America ever asked of him in return, is that he give his neighbor the same right.  The compromise used to be this: in the public square, we were all equal, if not in the eyes of God, then at least in the eyes of the law. 

Your pal and his neighbors in the kook pews absolutely despise that idea. And they have been waging a relentless scortched earth war against that American compromise for generations.  How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who think being civil to heathens amounts to condoning sin?  How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who believe that the basic premise of America is itself evil?  They don’t call it a nation where Christians have freedom to worship…they call it a Christian nation.  What is the compromise between those two things?  I’ll tell you what it isn’t: The United States of America.  Liberty and justice for all?  Yes.  So long as "all" means just the folks in the pews of Blankenhorn’s church.  Civility doesn’t mean you have to allow your neighbor to sin.  Why…that’s just the opposite of civility…

Meanwhile, back in Utah…another doomed search for common ground goes on…

Final common ground bill dies in House committee

A legislative committee defeated the last in a group of gay-rights bills presented to Utah lawmakers this year. As was the case with the others, committee members said the bill was not necessary and voiced concern about the law opening the door to gay marriage.

The bottom line is most conservative lawmakers just don’t believe any of these bills just address civil rights. Instead, the Common Ground bills were viewed as a "threat" to traditional marriage.

The last Common Ground bill would have affected medical visitation and inheritance. Changing the law could affect people outside the gay community as well. But the focus—and concern—was predominantly centered on gay rights.

They can’t even let same sex couples visit their spouses in the hospital.  Civility anyone?  Common ground?  Here’s your common ground…

Utah State Sen. Compares Gays To Alcoholics, Terrorists: ‘They’re The Greatest Threat To America’

Today, the Utah state legislature “dealt a final blow” to the last of five gay rights bills taken up under the Common Ground Initiative, when it defeated a bill that would have granted gay couples rights of inheritance and medical decision-making. Yesterday, the state House rejected bills that would have allowed gay adoption and protected gays from housing and employment discrimination.

Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.” Some excerpts from the interview:

– To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts! But I don’t care.

– They say, I’m born that way. There’s some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol.

– They’re mean! They want to talk about being nice — they’re the meanest buggers I ever seen. It’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.

– I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society, because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman, the family. … And I believe that they’re, internally, they’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of. Yep, the radical gay movement.

He also said that gay people have no morals…that "It’s the beginning of the end. Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure. Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide."  Oh…and bragged that he’d killed every bill in his judiciary committee that so much as smelled of gay rights.  When this blew up in the media, the Utah Senate took swift action.  They removed Buttars from his chairmanship.  Oh…but not because they disagreed with him mind you…

"I want the citizens of Utah to know that the Utah Senate stands behind Senator Buttars’ right to speak, we stand behind him as one of our colleagues and his right to serve this state," [Senate President Michael] Waddoups said. "He is a senator who represents the point of view of many of his constituents and many of ours. We agree with many of the things he said. …We stand four square behind his right [to say what he wants]."

Waddoups refused repeatedly to clarify which of Buttars’ opinions are shared by himself or Senate leaders.

Emphasis mine.  And to further clarify…

He said the decision to remove Buttars from the committees was ultimately his own as president, a move he made so the Senate could function smoothly. The judiciary committee, in recent years, has heard most of the bills dealing with gay and lesbian rights, and removing Buttars from his position would remove the "personalities" and focus on the issues, Waddoups said. 

This was a PR move.  They weren’t disgusted with the man…they just wanted him to stop saying to publically what they all believe.  That homosexuals are not human beings.  That homosexuals are destroying the world.

Civility.  Common Ground.  So you got Blankenhorn to agree that homosexuals Feel as though they need the protections of marriage did you Jonathan?  Wow.  Peace in our time.  Do let us know when you’ve got him to the point where he agrees that we Feel a human heart beating in our chests.  That would be…awesome.

So the other day a senior McCain campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, took a stroll over to the Log Cabin Club and commended them for all their hard work on behalf of gay civil rights…

“I just wanted to take a second to come by and pay my respect and the campaign’s respect to your organization and to your group,” said Schmidt, who many view as the new architect of the Republican Party. “Your organization is an important one in the fabric of our party.”

In his brief remarks, Schmidt weaved in a personal anecdote about his lesbian sister and her relationship to him, his wife, and his children. “On a personal level, my sister and her partner are an important part of my life and our children’s life,” he said. “I admire your group and your organization and I encourage you to keep fighting for what you believe in because the day is going to come.”

The Log Cabin members there in attendance immediately began questioning him on McCain’s record on gay equality, pressing him repeatedly on his stance on same sex marriage.  Finally concluding that they’d come there looking to see a leader and they didn’t.

Hahahahaha….  No.  Actually, that was a high school student in Concord New Hampshire, speaking directly to McCain himself…

High School Student to McCain: You’re No Leader

William Sleaster, a student at Concord High School rose to ask McCain a question about gay rights and, ultimately dissatisfied by the answer he received from McCain, told the Republican presidential contender that he’d come looking to see a leader and didn’t.

McCain first answered the high school student by talking about his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the military’s policy regarding gays, and about his belief in the sanctity of marriage.

“Discrimination in any form is unacceptable in America today,” McCain said.

“I understand the controversy that continues to swirl around this issue,” McCain said. “That debate needs to be continued.”

Sleaster pressed on. “Do you support civil unions or gay marriage?”

“I do not,” McCain answered. “I think that they impinge on the status and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.”

“So you believe in taking away someone’s rights because you believe it’s wrong?”

“I wouldn’t put that interpretation on my position, but I understand yours,” McCain said diplomatically.

Sleaster went on to ask another question about how to help the working class in America, which McCain fielded by talking about the country’s need to figure out education and health care, and to secure the environment.

Sleaster indicated that he wanted to follow up again.

“You have one more? Go ahead you’re doing good,” McCain encouraged.

“I came here looking to see a leader,” Sleaster said. “I don’t.”

The assembled students murmured, and a teacher started to step in.

“I understand,” McCain said. “I thank you. That’s what America is all about.”

…and Homeland security immediately began tapping his family’s phones and intercepting their emails.  I sure hope that poor kid doesn’t need any student loans to get himself through college.  Anyway…here’s what the Log Cabin members actually did.  They…uhm…cheered as Schmidt rose to the defense of Sarah Palin…

“You saw one of the great speeches in the history of political conventions last night by an accomplished governor of a state who has just announced herself as a major force in the Republican Party in her own right, and I think the other side this morning, when you consider the backlash that is likely to occur after all the vile filth that’s been thrown at her, they ought to be sitting on the other side saying, Oh – My – God,” Schmidt said to the cheers of some 50 attendees. 

Vile filth…???  You mean…like this…?

Like…this…?

This…maybe…?

That kind of vile filth?  Meanwhile the Log Cabin cheered for the lady who tried to eliminate domestic partner benefits in her state by referendum when she couldn’t get it via the courts, and told the Eagle Forum in a 2006 questionnaire that her No. 2 priority as governor would be "preserving the definition of ‘marriage’ as defined in our constitution."  They cheered.

If sixteen year old William Sleaster had been there to see it, he might not have bothered challenging McCain on his gay rights positions.  If we don’t stand up for ourselves, no one will stand with us.

The Log Cabin Republicans: Breathing new life every election year into Truman Capote’s saying, that a faggot is the homosexual gentleman who just left the room.  

Via the New York Post…  Hey!  Everyone!!  Look At ME!!!  I’m A MEDIA KING!!!!

Paul Colichman, the William Randolph Hearst of the gay media, is not supporting Barack Obama for president. But that doesn’t mean he’s backing John McCain.

"I’m a die-hard Democrat," he tells Page Six. But Colichman was also a die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter. He and Harry Thomason produced a documentary, "The Hunting of the President: The 10-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."

Colichman, 46, who owns The Advocate and Out magazines, GayWired.com, and Here, the premium cable network for gays, said he finally dealt with his disappointment over Clinton’s defeat last week and came around to Obama.

"I thought, ‘Get over yourself!’ I had literally written out a check to the Obama campaign. And then I saw him in front of an evangelical group in Anaheim," he said.

Before Rick Warren at the Saddleback Civil Forum, both Obama and McCain defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"I thought, ‘Wow! He just threw the gay community under the bus,’ " Colichman said. "My partner looked over at me, and we tore up the check."

Hillary Clinton on same sex marriage (Pew Forum):

Gay Marriage
Clinton opposes same-sex marriage but favors civil unions in which gay couples receive full recognition and benefits. She says that "marriage has always been province of the states" and advocates repeal of a provision in the Defense of Marriage Act that prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage. In the U.S. Senate, she opposed amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. While she has solicited and received the support of gay and lesbian groups, many gay activists were alarmed over her March 2007 comment that the morality of homosexuality was up "to others to conclude." She later released a statement saying that she does not believe homosexuality is immoral. In an April 2008 interview, Clinton said she would change federal tax policies and immigration laws to eliminate disparities affecting same-sex couples.

Barack Obama on same sex marriage (Pew Forum):

Gay Marriage
Obama says that he personally believes that "marriage is between a man and a woman" but also says that "equality is a moral imperative" for gay and lesbian Americans. He advocates the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because "federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does." He supports granting civil unions for gay couples, and in 2006 he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In March 2007, Obama initially avoided answering questions about a controversial statement by a U.S. general that "homosexual acts" are "immoral," but Obama later told CNN’s Larry King, "I don’t think that homosexuals are immoral any more than I think heterosexuals are immoral."

They both oppose same sex marriage.  They both favor civil unions.  They both favor repeal of DOMA.  They both opposed the federal marriage amendment.  Well that sure puts Hillary way ahead of Obama on the same sex marriage issue doesn’t it?

And…so sitting down with Rick Warren is more offensive then…say…sitting down with Richard Mellon Scaife is it…?

I know…I know…  You’re both MEDIA KINGS!  And…bitter…

It must be an election year…the Log Cabin Republicans are cheerfully telling everyone they can what a bunch of happy quislings they are.  An AP news story on the upcoming republican party platform (which I’m not going to link to), says the platform will contain the usual call for a constitutional ban on same sex marriage.   Log Cabin spokesdroid Scott Tucker says he’s fine with that…

"This isn’t a hill we’re going to die on," said Scott Tucker, a spokesman for the gay rights group Log Cabin Republicans.

Log Cabin is a gay rights group like a white sheet flapping in the wind is an American flag.  But let it be said they’re working on building common ground between gay and straight within the republican party…

"Unlike previous years," said Gary Bauer, a social-conservative veteran of platform struggles, "I just don’t see deep divisions within the party."

See how easy it is for people of differing views on gay rights to get along in the republican party?  Really…all it takes is a little abject submission. 

I realize that you can’t pigeon hole gay people on the issues.  Gay folk range the entire political spectrum from left to right.  I grok this.  But if a conservative gay group will not take a simple basic principled stand for marriage then what the fuck good is it?  Oh yes…I hear them yap, yap, yapping all the time that their sexuality isn’t all there is to their lives and they have other issues too.  Fine.  Marriage, as it happens, is about more then sexuality too. 

I don’t ever want to see these pathetic quislings tut, tutting the sexual excesses of "gay culture" again, if they’re not willing to raise so much as a squeak in protest over a plank that calls for a constitutional ban on same sex marriage.  Better to die on the hill, then in the gutter.