Some days, I really think the organized Christian right should take some of their big bags of money and spend just a little of it doing some background research on the historical analogies they use to describe themselves.
A description of what’s in this video, which is a bunch of leaders associated with the Family Research Council, which has been singled out as a hate group by the SPLC for its anti-gay stance:
Perkins explains the absolute necessity of getting Christians into all levels of government while Boykin compared Christians today to the Spartan army and quoted King Leonidas by declaring “molon labe” [“come and get them”] when he and his army were told to lay down their weapons.
Likewise, Boykin declared “molon labe,” stating that he will not be silenced and challenged those in Washington who are out to take his liberties, rob his grandchildren, and destroy America to just try to take them from him.
Finally, Joyner announced that Christians have more than enough people to take control, but they need to bind together and, as such, would soon be unveiling coalition called “300”.
Well, clearly that movie about the Spartans pulling an Alamo against the Persian army made quite the impression on these fuckwits. Look. I find it hard to blame them. Look at Gerard Butler in his King Leonidas costume:
Still, for such an band of homophobes pushing an anti-gay agenda, I think they may have thought to do a little more background research on the ancient Spartan army that fought the actual Battle of Thermopylae. I realize the movie “300” is horribly homophobic, and the gap between that and the realities of the Spartan army was noted by not a few pro-gay writers when the movie came out. Like Richard Burnett:
Except real-life Spartan warriors made up the fiercest gay and bisexual army in human history. Sparta demanded its warriors sexually love one another so that they would also fight for each other to the death.
Obviously, the Spartan military wasn’t “gay” or even “homosexual” in the modern sense of the word. Ancient Greeks just had really different sexual mores than modern people do, and certainly the same-sex relationships in Greece don’t resemble the love-among-equals standard that is both law and custom for straight and gay in the United States now. But dudes were nonetheless touching penises, and you’d think that Tony Perkins and company would perhaps not want to associate themselves with that.
Or maybe not. After all, it was just recently that one of the prominent members of Perkins’ group the FRC was caught having a little Spartan holiday of his own, having hired a male prostitute to travel with him in Europe. And of course, you have Ted Haggard before him, and really, a much too long list to go into of “family values” conservatives caught up in sex scandals, frequently involving same-sex relations.
This sort of history would make me think a lot more carefully about what historical analogies I want to invoke. But then again, maybe Tony Perkins and company agree with Bucky Bright on “30 Rock”:
Men were men back then. If you wanted to do something private with another man, it wasn’t gay. No. It was just two men, celebrating each other’s strength.
From the heartland, a tale that perfectly illustrates the workaday dumbass resentments that Republicans rely on to get votes. Kansas state legislator Connie O’Brien, Republican of course, was in a hearing on the subject of in-state tuition being granted to illegal immigrants who had Kansas state residency requirements. She decided to go off on a rant that is similar to what’s going on around dining room tables and on Facebook every day:
REP. O’BRIEN: My son who’s a Kansas resident, born here, raised here, didn’t qualify for any financial aid. Yet this girl was going to get financial aid. My son was kinda upset about it because he works and pays for his own schooling and his books and everything and he didn’t think that was fair. We didn’t ask the girl what nationality she was, we didn’t think that was proper. But we could tell by looking at her that she was not originally from this country. [...]
REP. GATEWOOD: Can you expand on how you could tell that they were illegal?
REP. O’BRIEN: Well she wasn’t black, she wasn’t Asian, and she had the olive complexion.
A lot of attention is rightly being paid to the “olive complexion” bit. That’s kicking it old school style, going straight for the skin color when being racist, instead of trying to find ways to allude to skin color without actually saying anything about skin color. (My favorite so far is to say you can totally tell by someone’s shoes that they’re an undocumented immigrant.) And rightly so, though the reaction from right wingers to the outrage this sort of thing is to just look for more euphemisms they can use, instead of doing something as quaint as giving up their hobby of scanning the world, looking for non-white people having things and whipping yourself into an outrage.
But I have to point out that this was far from the only stupid thing the woman said. There’s also the fact that this was about in-state tuition, and she was complaining that her son didn’t get federal financial aid. I would bet a lot of money that he did get in-state tuition, though.
I think we should start calling this sort of thing “everyday birtherism”. After all, both birtherism and this particular rant come from the same place, which is to say a belief that certain things—-financial aid, college degrees, the Presidency—-are only obtained by non-white people through fraud, or that there’s something illegitimate going on. It’s interesting to me that Republicans who rail against federal spending then will turn around and claim they’re entitled to money from all federal programs, even those that were set up to aid people that aren’t as wealthy as they are. Which is basically the heart of the “small government” claim. It’s not that they want small government. They just don’t want to share the public wealth with everyone, but just to keep it all for themselves. Thus, the “get government hands off my Medicare!” That, translated from wingnut to English, means, “I don’t want other people to have the same privileges I have!”
This is the same mentality behind Andrew Breitbart’s Pigford obsession, though he is slightly more sophisticated than this woman at creating plausible deniability.
Call the Waaaambulance for the NOM-ster. Actually, Maggie, I haven’t been thinking about you much at all, since that summer NOM bus tour was such a raging failure that I dropped you and perpetual flop-sweating Brian Brown down onto my third-tier list of homophobes along with The Peter and Ken Hutcherson. But if you want me to point some fingers at bigots who have helped create a climate of discrimination that reinforces young LGBTs that they are not equal in the eyes of the law, I’ll be happy to do so. (NYP):
Do I have blood on my hands?
Major gay-rights groups are saying so. Each of us who opposes gay marriage, they say, is responsible for the terrible and tragic suicides of gay teens that recently hit the news.
San Francisco just filed a brief in the Prop 8 case, saying 7 million Californians who voted to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman are responsible for high rates of suicide among gay people.
Evan Wolfson, one of the leading architects of the gay marriage movement, calls me out personally: “National Organization for Marriage Chairman Maggie Gallagher is among those who, with reckless disregard, attacks LGBT youth.”
Former Clinton adviser Richard Socarides told the AP these suicides demonstrate why gays should be allowed to marry: “When you speak out for full equality now, as opposed to partial equality, or incremental equality, you send a message to everybody, including the bullies, that everyone is equal.”
Apparently, either we all agree that gay marriage is good or gay children will die.
It’s a horrific charge to levy in response to some pretty horrifying stories. Will gay marriage really reduce or prevent gay teen suicide? I felt a moral obligation to find out.
She then goes off on a tangent to discuss statistics about gay youth suicide, sexual intercourse, drug abuse and yes, bullying. Then she says this:
Forced sex, childhood sexual abuse, dating violence, early unwed pregnancy, substance abuse—could these be a more important factor in the increased suicide risk of LGBT high schoolers than anything people like me ever said?
Gallagher’s blind spot is mind-boggling. It clearly does not occur to her that adults—parents who hold views like hers send a clear message to their children about inequality—for LGBT kids, they hear intolerance, or experience abuse from homophobic parents. For other children, their parents’ homophobia gives them license to bully gay (or perceived to be gay/non-gender-conforming) kids. The bigotry trickles down. What people like Maggie Gallagher say to their children can translate into kids who seek to escape through drug abuse, casual or high-risk sex. And some of those kids see no way out—certainly no support system at home if NOM’s message is what’s delivered to them.
Many of the ideas I get from blogging are due strictly to what is probably a low-grade, undiagnosed form of ADD. I’m constantly jumping back and forth between Google Reader, Twitter, and whatever long form articles I’ve pulled up to read. Seriously, if I want to just buckle down and read something, I often just put physical obstacles between myself and jumping around—-like bring a book on the subway, where there isn’t any wifi access anyway. Or lay down in the living room with a cat firmly placed on my lap so I can’t reach for anything but my book or magazine.
But for blogging, hopping around works. For instance, I hopped between this Matt Taibbi article on the Tea Crackers and this blog post from Digby. It was such a great mix that I’ll just point out the pertinent information to you, and frankly at this point I’m not sure long-form analysis is even necessary.
First, from Taibbi’s article:
But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — [Rand Paul] balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. “Physicians,” he said, “should be allowed to make a comfortable living.”
“We as Republicans need to realize that you can’t just cut off the welfare queen and balance the budget,” says Rand Paul, a Senate candidate in Kentucky….
Then Taibbi’s article:
[Teabaggers] are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill “cracker babies,” support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
From another link of Digby’s, this time to a blogger covering an email forward that is burning through Tea Crackerdom. It’s a letter that a doctor wrote to President Obama, though I should put “supposedly” there, as apparently there are many versions. This is one version of the forward that is getting all these totally-not-racists fired up:
During my last night’s shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.
What I particularly enjoyed in this version of the letter is singling out a gold tooth as evidence that someone is living high on the hog via government largess. Gold teeth are associated with poverty for a very practical reason—-they’re cheaper than porcelain veneers, and of course having to have dental interventions at a young age is associated in general with the poorer health associated with poverty. But in this instance, the letter writer wants to have it both ways. He wants to invoke the class associations of gold teeth—-that you’re lower class if you have them—-but he wants to imply that gold teeth are somehow a sign of someone who is swimming in cash by invoking the gold=wealth association. But I’ll bet that even if all these things he whips out as indicators of someone being spoiled—-tattoos, gold caps, tennis shoes, cigarettes, a cell phone, a ring tone, and beer once a week—-were purchased in the course of a year, the total is still probably way less than a single visit to the ER.
***************
Update: There was some discussion about the urban legend status of this letter in comments. By quoting this letter, I was in no way, shape, or form trying to imply that the contents within were true. On the contrary, I was trying to use it as an example of one of the many thousands of email forwards sent around right wing America that are a second tier form of media that’s under-discussed but probably more indicative of everyday views than what you hear on Glenn Beck.
So, out of curiosity, I looked the letter up on Snopes. It turns out that it was correctly attributed, and that the man who wrote it really is a doctor. The letter was written as a letter to the editor of the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. However, as the letter got passed around—-as usually happens in these cases—-some details were added, in this case the detail about the shoes. But it’s mostly the same.
My feeling about this is that Dr. Jones did see the patient he described—-someone carrying a cell phone who has a lot of tattoos and smokes a pack a day is hardly an unusual person—-and he is an unsympathetic, uncaring asshole and I feel very bad for her and all other patients that have to deal with him. It’s interesting that he doesn’t mention what her medical emergency was that brought her to ER, which strikes me as a deliberate oversight on his part to avoid drumming up any sympathy for this person he’s trying to demonize. The description makes her sound young, so I’m guessing she had an accident unrelated to any of her “choices” that he disapproves of. God forbid you realize what happened to her could happen to any of us.
It sucks, but doctors can be right wing, shit-for-brains assholes, too. This one happened to be all those things and capable of writing an email that teabaggers across the nation really enjoy forwarding.
*************
But as Taibbi’s article demonstrates, this isn’t a crowd that’s good with logic. So one more quote from him, to give all this some shape:
That’s because the Tea Party doesn’t really care about issues — it’s about something deep down and psychological, something that can’t be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy. At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing.
“Them” is, as I’ve noted, a particularly large and diverse group. But at this point,anyone who think that race isn’t a major factor in who gets put in the demonized “them” is fooling themselves.
For the homobigots out there who are worried about the downfall of marriage if gays and lesbians are allowed to partake in it, let this be an example of how mundane and committed married life can be for some of us working hard on The Homosexual Agenda.
My lovely wife Kate and I decided, instead of eating babies and participating in an orgy, to spend Friday night cleaning out the pantry and fridge of outdated and spoiled food.
It was a revelation of sorts, with various “science projects” in the fridge, and long-outdated canned goods in the pantry. And some of the dates were frightening.
Some of the fun discoveries in the fridge:
Moldy green Sargento swiss cheese
Ziploc bag containing two boxes of leftover Chinese food, one had leaked through and discolored the box
Rubbermaid plastic container with what looked like was a half of an onion at some point.
Jar way in the back with one dill pickle floating in its water
Deli drawer with various opened packages of deli meats at least a month old.
Apples that have been in there at least 2 months at least and do not look spoiled (that seems unnatural, no?)
Applesauce that was ancient and still didn’t look spoiled (scary)
Various discolored, freezer-burned meats that we didn’t Foodsaver
Some treasures in the pantry:
Three cans of Healthy Choice soups with expiration dates of 9/2009 and 7/2008(!).
Can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (that one I’m blaming on Kate), date: 7/2006(!)
Cans of corn dated 8/2009
Open boxes of pasta and rice, who knows how old.
Open box of Lorna Doones
Open bag of Original Goldfish crackers from June
And that was our deviant Friday night of marital bliss, Maggie, Brian, and the rest of you homo-haters out there.
Feel free to share your pantry and fridge purge nightmares in the comments, or tell us about your progressive Friday perversions that should scare the fundies.
SCOTUS is busy with the rulings today and it has now dealt a huge blow to the protectors of child-raping priests in the Vatican as a ruling came down today that could result in Pope Benedict taking the stand. (Raw Story):
Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases.
The Supreme Court effectively confirmed the decision of an appellate court to lift the Vatican’s immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest in the northwestern state of Oregon.
More on that immunity, which has been the hoped-for trump card in the Vatican’s pocket.
The lawsuit, filed by a plaintiff identified only as John Doe, claimed he was sexually abused on several occasions in the mid-1960s when he was 15 or 16 by a Roman Catholic priest named Father Andrew Ronan.
According to court documents, Ronan molested boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in Ireland and then in Chicago before his transfer to a church in Portland, Oregon, where he allegedly abused the victim who filed the lawsuit. Ronan died in 1992.
...The Vatican claimed immunity under a U.S. law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, that allows foreign states to avoid being sued in court.
But the law contains exceptions. The appeals court cited one of those, ruling the lawsuit has sufficiently alleged that Ronan was an employee of the Vatican acting within the scope of his employment under Oregon law.
I added this to the softball photo post, but it deserves its own entry. I’ve been offline a lot (don’t ask), but I found a few moments to post thoughts on the matter.
Ben Smith at The Politico reports that one of Kagan’s friends finally decided to put an end to the speculation.
“I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight,” said Sarah Walzer, Kagan’s roommate in law school and a close friend since then. “She dated men when we were in law school, we talked aboutmen—who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago – and she just didn’t find the right person.”
...The result has been an awkward dilemma for the traditional media, for whom reporting about homosexuality has always been considered to be off limits. Reporters and bloggers have debated, publicly and privately, the propriety of asking whether Kagan is gay. But Walzer – who has spoken regularly to the press this week – said that in a series of interviews with reporters she had been asked only obliquely about the nominee’s “social life.”
And that traditional media dilemma has been the most interesting thing to hear about, since Walzer confirms that the MSM has clearly been probing and dancing around the question with Kagan’s friends, but never asking about it directly. It points out the obvious—too many reporters/editors are squeamish because, when it comes down to it, they believe that asking about the personal life of someone they think may be gay is crossing some sort of line of propriety. A line that, of course, doesn’t exist when the person is straight.
Being gay is not bad, nor is it only about SEX, kinds of sex acts, etc. Is there mass MSM cognitive dissonance going on? Honest to god, how many times have we heard more gory details than we care to know about heterosexual newsmakers and their kinks, sex acts and accounts of adultery? Can we say, um,
John Edwards
? I didn’t see the media running from that one. They only kept a lid on it until it was confirmed, then then the reporting burst like a dam.
No media outlet could justify that inquiring about what one does in the bedroom is appropriate to ask a SCOTUS nominee, but if there are rumors floating around about whether one is or isn’t gay, why wouldn’t you want to ask that to clear the air?
That’s just asking about a demographic (and an official one in 2010 as one can indicate on the census whether you have a same-sex partner), such as religion, race, region of birth —all things that have been discussed widely as Kagan is being compared to sitting justices.
This is where some cultural growth is in order—printing a 17-year-old photo of Elena Kagan playing softball is juvenile. That photo was selected for a reason; it wasn’t random. Just ask, people.
I will say that the open secondary discussion—that if Kagan did identify as a lesbian privately but was closeted publicly could be a problem in some quarters of the LGBT community was interesting and healthy to have. What I saw less of is rumination of whether a straight ally would feel a need to be closeted in any way. I don’t think so, but in this political climate, a SCOTUS nominee should be prepared to be asked about views on LGBT rights, given cases are winding their way to the Supreme Court. Now, given the theatre that these nominations have turned into, the press is unlikely to get much of an answer other than to look through prior public statements or rulings, but we culturally have to get over the reluctance to “go there.”
Obviously the right wing was looking for a more salacious story about Kagan’s sex life to tie to any “pro-homosexual” views or opinions, but I seriously doubt a declaration of her heterosexuality will cause the fringe to pipe down. Again, watching how the MSM acts, paired with some of the squeamishness about sexual orientation by the left in this matter is a better barometer of whether LGBT issues are truly understood, and whether it does affect public political support (note, not personal support) when the game gets tough on legislation. It can explain why you see calls to backburner human rights legislation, and the WH bus driving over us because it may impact, say, midterm elections.
You know, when I travel these days, my fibromyalgia often makes it painful and difficult to lug around my bags. When the pain is really bad I sometimes wish I had a PHB assistant to help me out (when Kate’s not able to go with me). However, I never thought about going this route…
FRC founder and NARTH board member Dr. George Rekers must have a helluva travel expense budget (and tax write off) for procuring the talents of Geo, the identity of “Lucien,” known to most as a “Travel Assistant”/“luggage carrier” through the
I wonder why it doesn’t have any stats on number of bags Geo can carry, or whether he performs therapeutic massage for his john client to ensure the post-surgery Rekers has adequate comfort for physical recovery? Wait, I found additional information that closed the deal for Rekers.
Massage, good times, Travel, escort for days, nights and weekends, My name’s Geo. 20 year old, 5’9’‘, 130 pounds, 28’’ waist size,8x6” UNCUT, VERSATILE, NICE ASS. Puerto Rican, fair/light-Skin, blond hair, blue eyes and athletic/muscular built. I’m a college guy, masculine, educated, really easy-going, great to get along with, can hold a conversation and passionate You could just say I love to have a good time. Very clean, professional, HIV and Disease FREE. For a sensual meet or companionship. Will do anything you say as long as you ask ;D Repeat encounters are always more exciting for me and make it more casual and comfortable for you as well. Call or text anytime.
Dr. Rekers, how much DOES it cost for ten days with a barely legal, blond, hung, uncut, bisexual Puerto Rican who is happy to spank you and shove it up your gelatinous vile bigoted ass?
Ho, ho, ho, here we go…another professional anti-homo homosexual surfs for man-on-man vacation buddy. Miami New Times:
The pictures on the Rentboy.com profile show a shirtless young man with delicate features, guileless eyes, and sun-kissed, hairless skin. The profile touts his “smooth, sweet, tight ass” and “perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)” and explains he is “sensual,” “wild,” and “up for anything” — as long you ask first. And as long as you pay.
On April 13, the “rent boy” (whom we’ll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.
That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.
...Yet Rekers wouldn’t deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com — which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks — and Lucien confirmed it.
And Rekers is not just the founder of the FRC, he’s on the board of therapize-away-the-gay org National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). I guess he’s fallen off the wagon; but he’s earned a rep as a class-A homo-hater, according to friend of the Blend Wayne Besen.
“While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people,” says Wayne Besen, a gay rights advocate in New York City and the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which investigates the anti-gay movement. “His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals.”
The New Times underscored that Rekers couldn’t have just casually come across “Lucian’s” profile. He would have had to sign up and agree to Rentboy.com’s terms of service then find his listing on the site.
As a favor to Rekers, Lucien recently removed any wanton sexual descriptors from his Rentboy profile. Though he does admit Rekers “likes younger guys to hang out with,” Lucien is protective of his erstwhile client. He describes Rekers primarily as a family man — one whose passion for oppressing homosexuals is dwarfed by his desire to help children. “You don’t understand how much this guy honestly cares about taking care of kids,” he says.
Rekers and the rent boy denied having sex; Rekers classifies their relationship in this manner:
“I’d like to propose another trip to Rome, Italy, for a week or more,” Rekers wrote in an email dated March 21 obtained by New Times. “This is so exciting to have a nice Travel Assistant and traveling companion! Wow! I’m so glad I met you.”
“Efforts to lift the ban were blocked by a 1993 Congressional amendment introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. Those who fought the law say Mr. Helms, who died in 2008, perpetuated decades of discrimination. But just as the ban has disappeared, the curators of Mr. Helms’s legacy are trying to touch up the relevant history. Some want him seen as a savior to those with AIDS and a defender of gay rights. Despite Mr. Helms’s storied opposition to ‘a homosexual lifestyle,’ the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C., is challenging the idea that he was a “homophobe” or obstructive in the AIDS fight.
According to the center’s Web site, ‘It was Senator Helms who worked most tirelessly to protect the very principles of freedom that homosexuals are denied in many other nations.’ John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center Foundation, recently disputed an editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian that vilified Mr. Helms for his role in the ban. Mr. Dodd argued that ‘two million Africans were alive’ because of the senator’s work fighting H.I.V.”
W.T.F. are they smoking? Helms fought needle exchanges and other programs to curb the spread of the disease; all of his homophobic bigotry was raised just last year when Elizabeth Dole tried to have an AIDS relief bill named after the deceased former senator.
Helms didn’t soften his stance about fighting AIDS at home among people who acquired the infection through homosexual activity.
“I don’t have any idea on changing my views on that kind of activity, which is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States,” Helms said.
He also famously opposed Roberta Achtenberg’s nomination to be assistant secretary for fair housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, saying:
“she’s a damn lesbian. I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.”
That hardly sounds like a gay rights champion.
***
I would watch good old Jesse back in the day when he was a commentator on WRAL in Raleigh. I remember as a child listening to him rail on race on our black and white TV. I wondered why this man was so hateful. You didn’t have to be an adult to get the clear message that he didn’t like black folks encroaching on his lily-white world. They belonged in their place.
And those nasty homos…Jesse had no use for them, except when he hired “good fags” to run racist campaigns like Arthur Finkelstein, who worked with Jesse Helms on his Senate run against Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990. That was the campaign with the infamous “white hands commercial” by political consultant Alex Castellanos showing a close up pair of a flannel-shirtsleeved white hands crumpling a termination notice, with an ominous voiceover explaining that a well-deserved job went to someone else because of affirmative action. This appealed to the blue collar, textile working folks in the rural areas, and Helms won handily.
Oh man, it’s getting ugly now. How do you like the gauntlet that Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of the Catholic Church’s Irish flock, has thrown down at Pope Benedict. Why? It’s because Brady is under his own cloud of abuse scandal, and smells blood in the water now that Papa Ratzi is hanging on for dear life when it comes to responsibility for child-raping priests on his watch.
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has said he will only resign if asked by the Pope amid allegations he witnessed teenage abuse victims take vows of silence over a paedophile.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, admitted that he attended meetings in 1975 when two teenage boys signed oaths of silence while testifying in a Church inquiry against Father Brendan Smyth.
The priest was later uncovered as the most notorious child abuser in the Irish Catholic Church, carrying out more than 90 sexual assaults against 40 youngsters in a 20-year period. Survivors’ groups say the revelations show the cardinal colluded in the cover up of Smyth’s crimes – which, they say, allowed the cleric to continue offending - and say he must quit immediately.
Dr Brady claimed that wider society handled child abuse cases differently in the 1970s. ‘There was a culture of silence about this, a culture of secrecy, that’s the way society dealt with it.’
Wow. What a defense that is—“everybody was doing it,” as priest after priest was shuffled from one diocese to another to victimize hundreds of children. I don’t know what culture of silence he’s talking about, but he, in a position of power, and as an adult with great power over the lives of innocent children, surely knew what he was doing was immoral and criminal activity. Does he feel any guilt? Hell, no.
Abuse campaigner Colm O’Gorman said Cardinal Brady ‘is now deeply personally implicated in the gross failures of the Catholic Church in the management of Smyth and his rampant sexual offending against children.’
...Cardinal Brady said yesterday that he would not be resigning because he had done nothing wrong. ‘I did act, and act effectively, in that inquiry to produce the grounds for removing Father Smyth from ministry and specifically it was underlined that he was not to hear confessions and that was very important.’
A shout-out to Cranmer, who compiled a list of shame in the post “Is Pope Benedict XVI about to resign?” (Doubt it, they’d have to pry the Pradas off of his cold dead feet). It’s below the fold.
The Vatican spokesman, speaking to Vatican Radio and Associated Press Television News, defended Benedict.
“It’s rather clear that in the last days, there have been those who have tried, with a certain aggressive persistence, in Regensburg and Munich, to look for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
“For any objective observer, it’s clear that these efforts have failed,” Lombardi said, reiterating his statement a day earlier noting the Munich diocese has insisted that Benedict wasn’t involved in the decision while archbishop there to transfer the suspected child abuser.
Lombardi told The AP that “there hasn’t been in the least bit any policy of silence.”
“The pope is a person whose stand on clarity, on transparency and whose decision to face these problems is above discussion,” Lombardi said, citing the comments by Scicluna, who works in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which was long headed by Benedict before his election as pontiff.
“To accuse the current pope of hiding (cases) is false and defamatory,” Scicluna said. As Vatican cardinal in charge of the policy on sex abuse, the future pope “showed wisdom and firmness in handling these cases,” Scicluna said.
Wow. Do they think we’ve all forgotten how Cardinal Law was shipped out of Boston as he was about to face charges for abuse cover up, all the secret settlements? Amazing.
It is already clear that Catholic Church was covering up abuse cases as a matter of policy, thus the secrecy and the payouts. If the defense is going to be that poor Cardinal Ratzinger was forced to facilitate the coverup of child rape by priests because “everyone is doing it” or worse, that he never knew about it, will simply not fly. (NYT):
When a sex abuse scandal broke in Boston church in 2002, Pope Benedict — then Cardinal Ratzinger — was among the Vatican officials who made statements that minimized the problem and accused the news media of blowing it out of proportion.
As far as the Munich abuse cases and the decision to send a pedophile priest back out to work with children, something that the archdiocese claims Ratzinger knew nothing about, out comes the fall guy defense. That’s not flying either.
The former vicar general took full responsibility for the decision to reinstate the priest to pastoral work. “I deeply regret that this decision resulted in offenses against youths and apologize to all who were harmed by it,” he said, according to a statement posted on the archdiocese’s Web site.
There was immediate skepticism that Benedict, as archbishop, would not have known of the details of the case.
The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, who once worked at the Vatican Embassy in Washington and became an early and well-known whistle-blower on sexual abuse in the church, said the vicar general’s claim was not credible.
“Nonsense,” said Father Doyle, who has served as an expert witness in sexual abuse lawsuits. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.”
This is really sad for those sick about what this is doing to the faithful, to see the hierarchy neck-deep in scandal.
“I am gay. Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. It is something that is personal, and I don’t believe I felt with my heart that being gay would affect how I do my job.”
—California State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield)
This is the funniest and most pathetic story of the day. I think Roy forgot that the news broke last week, and a whole lot of people already knew.
That said, his official coming out on a Bakersfield radio show reveals that he’s still unapologetically politically homophobic, reassuring his Bakersfield constituents he’s not like those radical nasty gays who want civil rights, I presume. (GayPolitics):
Radio talk show host Inga Barks wanted assurances that Ashburn would continue to vote in a conservative manner on LGBT rights issues. Ashburn responded, “I believe firmly that my responsibility is to my constituents. I will take a careful look at each measure and apply that standard. How would they vote on this? How would they want me to vote on this,” adding that most people understood what that means.
“I don’t know how else to ask this, but are you going to live this lifestyle now in the district?” Barks asked. Ashburn, who announced he is not running for public office again, said, “I pray to God I can find peace. I want to go back to the senate and work hard for the people of my district…Now you know everything about me.”
This, my friends, is the definition of a self-loathing man. I suppose if his constituents wanted to round up TEH HOMOSEXUALS, he’d vote for that too. Sick.
WTF is wrong with these self-loathing gays? That at least two California newspaper knew and didn’t say that State Senator Roy Ashburn is gay is almost par for the course; after all, Rep. David Dreier’s open secret is safe with local media.
But how could all the guys partying with him at Faces, the bar Ashburn apparently frequented and was arrested not far from for DUI with an “unidentified man” in the car? Other homo-collusionists were obviously not perturbed by the lawmakers 100% anti-gay voting record. What does it take for some of our people to get the hint that this is NOT OK. (Joe. My. God):
The Californian decided that Ashburn’s sexuality wasn’t “relevant.” The unnamed Sacramento paper apparently did too and never published. To recap: It’s not relevant that a state politician with a 100% rating from an anti-gay group is gay himself. Can you fucking BELIEVE that? And it turns out that the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento has known about Ashburn for a long time.
Christopher Cabaldon, the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento told KOVR he has spotted Senator Ashburn at gay hot spots a number of times. According to Project Vote Smart, Ashburn’s has consistently voted against gay rights legislation including no on recognizing out of state same-sex marriages, no on creating a state recognized Harvey Milk Day, and no on expanding anti-discrimination laws. “To live a secret life and at the same time be attacking the people who you’re one of but are too ashamed to admit, that’s hypocrisy,” said Cabaldon to KOVR CBS 13.
That hypocrisy apparently didn’t bother Mayor Cabaldon enough to actually fucking say something. And you know that if Cabaldon knew, many other queers in Sacramento knew. If I lived in West Sacramento, I’d want to have a long angry talk with my mayor.
This is heinous. That Ashburn was dragged out of his unlocked-padlocked closet to the rest of us is a major problem here. Well when Ashburn was asked about his sexual orientation, perhaps his answer gives us a clue about the political culture of apathy of the gay community where the bloodshot-eyed, state vehicle-driving drunk legislator likes to cruise.
“Why would that be anyone’s business? Including The Californian‘s? “I think there are certain subjects that are simply not relevant and this is one of them. It has no bearing on the job I do.”
Even with a 100% anti-gay voting record, along with organizing family values demonstrations to protect the sanctity of marriage. Something is really f*cked up out there in Sacramento.
We haven’t seen a new batch of Republican Sexual Hypocrites so far in 2010, but in slides anti-gay California State Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), who manages a triple play.
After being pulled over for driving erratically in downtown Sacramento at 2AM on Wed., he earned a DUI, reeking of alcohol, with bloodshot eyes, and blew over a .08.
He was driving a state vehicle, owned by the taxpayers at the time. Ashburn immediately won’t be allowed to drive any vehicle for 30 days.
And the conservative “family values” pol, who fought marriage equality, did this after leaving a gay nightclub, Faces,with an unidentified man in the state vehicle.
Let’s go to the video…
Ashburn, a father of four, is a Republican Senator representing parts of Kern, Tulare and San Bernardino Counties with a history of opposing gay rights.
Ashburn issued a statement on the arrest Wednesday afternoon:
“I am deeply sorry for my actions and offer no excuse for my poor judgment. I accept complete responsibility for my conduct and am prepared to accept the consequences for what I did. I am also truly sorry for the impact this incident will have on those who support and trust me – my family, my constituents, my friends, and my colleagues in the Senate.”
As Joe Jervis notes, Roy easily meets the Larry Craig gold standard of Republican Sexual Hypocrite:
He also has a 100% rating from the anti-gay Capitol Resource Family Impact group for voting against every LGBT rights bill during his tenure.
Don’t you wonder whether the “unidentified man” in the car knew he was cruising off with a self-loathing homo-hater? If he didn’t, he certainly knows now…
Do I have blood on my hands?
Many of the ideas I get from blogging are due strictly to what is probably a low-grade, undiagnosed form of ADD. I’m constantly jumping back and forth between Google Reader, Twitter, and whatever long form articles I’ve pulled up to read. Seriously, if I want to just buckle down and read something, I often just put physical obstacles between myself and jumping around—-like bring a book on the subway, where there isn’t any wifi access anyway. Or lay down in the living room with a cat firmly placed on my lap so I can’t reach for anything but my book or magazine. 
For the homobigots out there who are worried about the downfall of marriage if gays and lesbians are allowed to partake in it, let this be an example of how mundane and committed married life can be for some of us working hard on The Homosexual Agenda.
SCOTUS is busy with the rulings today and it has now dealt a huge blow to the protectors of child-raping priests in the Vatican as a ruling came down today that could result in Pope Benedict taking the stand. (
No media outlet could justify that inquiring about what one does in the bedroom is appropriate to ask a SCOTUS nominee, but if there are rumors floating around about whether one is or isn’t gay, why wouldn’t you want to ask that to clear the air?
You know, when I travel these days, my fibromyalgia often makes it painful and difficult to lug around my bags. When the pain is really bad I sometimes wish I had a PHB assistant to help me out (when Kate’s not able to go with me). However, I never thought about going this route…
FRC founder and NARTH board member Dr. George Rekers must have a helluva travel expense budget (and tax write off) for procuring the talents of Geo, the identity of “Lucien,” known to most as a “Travel Assistant”/“luggage carrier” through the 
Oh man, it’s getting ugly now. How do you like the gauntlet that Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of the Catholic Church’s Irish flock, has thrown down at Pope Benedict. Why? It’s because Brady 
