Reclaim The Night, Brighton, 2012 « smash brown

“It was in the late 70’s, when ‘Women Reclaim the Night’ was transformed into what we are marching for at ‘Reclaim the Night’.  If ‘women’ was dropped from the title, why are we still marching for just women – what about trans?

The Reclaim the Night website states the aim as being to end male violence against women. It explicitly uses ‘women only’ countless times. I understand why this limitation was there initially, but the opinions beliefs and fight should never be limited to ‘women only’.

Reclaim the Night is about giving women a voice. Sexual violence and abuse has primarily targeted women. What about our voice? The obstacles trans survivors face are the same barriers faced by all survivors of abuse – worry, self-doubt, and shame. We have to consider and support the barriers that trans survivors also have to overcome.”

Read it at:

Reclaim The Night, Brighton, 2012 « smash brown.

He’s very cute, btw.

Transsexuels, un combat de tous les genres-from Le Monde

New French documentary about the trials faced by trans people:

Transsexuels, un combat de tous les genres.

Chick-fil-A agrees to stop funding antigay groups, Chicago alderman says

Chick-fil-A agrees to stop funding antigay groups, Chicago alderman says.

Uganda Free David Cecil Now | Censorship Prevails through Arrest of British Producer | O-blog-dee-o-blog-da

Sign the petition to free David Cecil:

Uganda Free David Cecil Now | Censorship Prevails through Arrest of British Producer | O-blog-dee-o-blog-da.

Chris Kluwe: An Open Letter to Emmett Burns

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo has voiced his support for a Maryland ballot initiative that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. In response, Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore) wrote a letter to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti urging him to “inhibit such expressions from your employee.” In the open letter below, Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe responds to Burns.

Chris Kluwe: An Open Letter to Emmett Burns.

How Much Does It Pay To Be Anti-Gay? Eight Top Earning Pastors & Their Anti-Gay Propaganda. Is ‘Christian Con-Artistry’ a Tautology?

Click on a pastor’s name to see their anti-gay stance.

Kenneth Copeland: According to an article by the Associated Press that ran in 2008, “His ministry’s 1,500-acre campus, behind an iron gate a half-hour drive from Fort Worth…includes a church, a private airstrip, a hangar for the ministry’s $17.5 million jet and other aircraft, and a $6 million church owned lakefront mansion.”

“the church disclosed in a property-tax exemption application that his wages were $364,577 in 1995; Copeland’s wife, Gloria, earned $292,593. It’s not clear whether those figures include other earnings, such as special offerings for guest preaching or book royalties.” 

Creflo A. Dollar: The New York Times reported that he drives a Rolls-Royce, is transported in a private jet, owns a million-dollar Atlanta home and a $2.5 million Manhattan apartment.

John Hagee: According to an article in The American Prospect, Hagee, “before he converted his nonprofit Global Evangelism Television into a church in 2004 (thus relieving him of the obligation to file a publicly available tax return), was known to be the highest-paid nonprofit executive in San Antonio, making nearly $1 million a year.”

The article also mentions Hagee’s 2000 book, “God’s Candidate for America,” “published by his nonprofit Global Evangelism Television, which that year used tax-exempt donor money to pay Hagee nearly half a million dollars in salary and deferred compensation for sixteen hours of work a week. Hagee earned another $300,000 from his church.”

Charles E. Blake: According to the Memphis Flyer, Bishop Charles Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ “earns a $900,000 salary and owns a 10,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills while most of his congregation lives in impoverished South Central Los Angeles

Benny Hinn: Hinn said in a 1997 CNN interview that he earned between $500,000 and $1 million each year.

Eddie Long: According to a 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation, “during the period between 1997 to 2000, Long received more than $3.07 million worth of compensation and benefits from his non-profit charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc.” The investigation found that his compensation included a “$1.4 million six-bedroom, nine-bath home on 20 acres in Lithonia; use of a $350,000 luxury Bentley automobile” and “more than $1 million in salary, including $494,000 in 2000.”

Ed Young: pastor Ed Young of Fellowship Church in Dallas lived in a 10,000 square-foot, $1.5 million home by the city’s Lake Grapevine. “Records show that Young was paid $240,000 a year as a parsonage allowance; that’s in addition what sources say is a $1 million yearly pastor’s salary,” WFAA-TV reported.

Franklin Graham:  president of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, had a total compensation of $1.2 million in 2008. Criticism over his high compensation during a slowed economy led Graham to announce in 2009 that he would give up new contributions to his retirement plans from the two organizations he leads, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

Marriage bill passes first reading – National – NZ Herald News

Marriage bill passes first reading – National – NZ Herald News.

The Dan Savage vs. Brian Brown Debate: A few big lies… & another fallacy fest.

There are a few points that were ignored during the debate which I think should have been highlighted. Firstly we’re still allowing anti-gay activists to hide behind the semantic argument. They pretend it’s about the word marriage because they get to hide their bigotry and avoid bringing out debunked science (which at this point is rather embarrassing.) The truth is that it’s not about the word. They’re anti-gay and also against civil-unions:

Colorado civil unions battle reanimates old-school Christian right group

Amendment One North Carolina: Anti-Gay Marriage Measure Passes

This is not about the word marriage!

They have consistently opposed civil unions in every country that has tried to adopt them. They routinely used the same junk science then as they do now to oppose gay marriage. During the unpleasantly long right-wing, Aznar presidency, gay-civil-union bills were presented sixteen times and sixteen times they were vetoed by the pro-religion administration.

Defining a hate group:

It’s actually a very basic concept which conservatives seem to be ignoring: Does a group’s propaganda incite (unwarranted) fear or hate of a particular group? If it does, it’s a hate group.
It’s twofold:
1. Is the information false? Yes, this is an important point in the definition as truth would be a legitimate defence to slander
2. Does the false information incite hatred? Yes

And that’s the end of the story.

Fallacy Fest:

Mr. Brown was disingenuous enough to re-introduce the slippery slope fallacy: Gay marriage will lead to polygamy and bestiality. A slippery slope fallacy is an argument that says adopting one policy or action will lead to others also occurring, without showing a causal connection between the advocated policy and the consequent policies. A popular example  is, “If we legalize marijuana, next we’ll legalize heroin, LSD, and crack cocaine.” This slippery slope is also a non-sequitur, because no reason has been given for why the legalization of one thing would lead to legalization of the other. Tobacco and alcohol are currently legal, and well regulated whilst other drugs remain illegal. Gay unions have existed for decades in Denmark and many years in other countries and no legislation has been proposed or adopted concerning bestiality and polygamy. They have not been proposed or adopted for two very simple reasons. Animals cannot sign contracts and are therefore unable to legally consent and state-sanctioned polygamy would violate the equality clauses in most democratic constitutions. Polygamy not only creates an unequal relationship where (more than) one citizen is subjugated to another but would also entail financial complications regarding pensions, health care rights and inheritance laws.

It’s also a red herring fallacy in that it’s used as a manipulative diversionary tactic. Mr. Brown wants to appeal to society’s repudiation of bestiality and polygamy and associate that repudiation to gay marriage.

It’s Fallacy Fest!!! Your Friendly Guide to Christian Reasoning.

The Naturalistic Fallacy & Argumentum ad Populum

Homosexuality is unnatural is a common anti-gay slogan used by Christians. It’s deceptive in its wording. They start off pretending the word natural is used to reflect nature. Once it’s explained that homosexuality occurs in nature they ad-hoc that they mean minority behaviour.

Issues:

Consumption of the naturally occurring Autumn Crocus can lead to cardiac arrest

1. A deceptive premise; Natural is meant to imply good and unnatural bad when no evidence has been given to support either argument. Cancer is a natural occurrence in human beings, yet few would say it’s a good thing. Cancer treatments like radiotherapy are not natural occurrences, they derive from years of man-made experimentation.

2. Behaviours and characteristics cannot be quantified as good or bad according to their incidence. By that measure we could say Christianity is unnatural as it only occurs in approx. 33% of the worldwide population. We could also say that having red hair is unnatural because it only occurs in 1 to 2% of the worldwide population. Fortunately, Christians haven’t taken their anti-logic to the next step by calling adopted children unnatural children- at least for now. Although there was a time when if you were left-handed or sinister, you were associated with evil.

This will be a series, just one or two fallacies of religious reasoning a day so you don’t get too bored!

The Real Homosexual Agenda by Jack Moore

 

 Jack Moore

Trying To Justify Their Ideology with Science, Only To Then Dismiss Science?

There’s a very amusing example of this in the form of the American Evangelical community’s promulgation of the work of (Dr?) Paul Cameron. In the early 1980′s he founded something called the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality (located in Nebraska) which was later renamed The Family Research Institute. In practice it doesn’t do any research on families, or any real research at all for that matter. The name is a cover for Anti-Gay Pseudo-Science Discount Outlet. Cameron’s been dubbed the “one-man statistical chop shop”. His “studies” have been passed around (and continue to be passed around) and quoted by a number of Christian anti-gay hate groups. In 1992 he (self) published ”What Do Homosexuals Do?” Among other things, the study claimed that 17% of LGBT people enjoy consuming human feces. Note to self: never visit a gay bar in Nebraska!!! I was somewhat surprised at the figure since I’d read somewhere on the interweb that 34% of Nebraskans enjoy consuming human feces, so the number for gays is surprisingly low in comparison.

Fortunately, long before 1992, the scientific community responded en masse.

• On December 2, 1983, the American Psychological Association sent Paul Cameron a letter informing him that he had been dropped from membership. Early in 1984, all members of the American Psychological Association received official written notice that “Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists” by the APA Board of Directors.⁵ Cameron has posted an elaborate argument about his expulsion from APA on his website, claiming that he resigned from APA before he was dropped from membership. Like most organizations, however, APA does not allow a member to resign when they are being investigated. And even if Cameron’s claims were accepted as true, it would be remarkable that the largest professional organization of psychologists in the United States (and other professional associations, as noted below) went to such lengths to disassociate itself from one individual. 
   
• At its membership meeting on October 19, 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that it “formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality.”⁶ 
   
• In 1985, the American Sociological Association (ASA)adopted a resolution which asserted that “Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism” and noted that “Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research.”⁷ The resolution formally charged an ASA committee with the task of “critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron.”At its August, 1986 meeting, the ASA officially accepted the committee’s report and passed the following resolution:
  

  The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Information on this action and a copy of the report by the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, “The Paul Cameron Case,” is to be published inFootnotes, and be sent to the officers of all regional and state sociological associations and to the Canadian Sociological Association with a request that they alert their members to Cameron’s frequent lecture and media appearances.”⁸ 
   

• In August, 1996, the Canadian Psychological Associationadopted the following policy statement:
  

  The Canadian Psychological Association takes the position that Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism and thus, it formally disassociates itself from the representation and interpretations of scientific literature in his writings and public statements on sexuality. 
   

• Cameron’s credibility was also questioned outside of academia. In his written opinion in Baker v. Wade (1985),Judge Buchmeyer of the U.S. District Court of Dallasreferred to “Cameron’s sworn statement that ‘homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals,’” and concluded that “Dr. Paul Cameron…has himself made misrepresentations to this Court” and that “There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron” (p.536).⁹

That’s their guy! Whenever you hear a surreal line about gays having a lifespan of 42 years, you now know who came up with it. When you hear about links between homosexuality and pedophilia, well, this is the guy who came up with the study.

…but here is where things get interesting!

Extremist Christians (who are, btw, making a ton of money by pushing their anti-gay agenda) are generally prepared to dismiss science at their earliest convenience. They decry science if it regards evolution. They condemn studies that prove the children of gay couples are just as well adjusted as children of straight couples- and then they ask society to ignore all real, peer reviewed science and take instead the word of their guy. Paul Cameron. Science doesn’t count to them unless it’s their version of science, junk-science.

Shane L. Windmeyer: Colleges Rally to Kick Chick-fil-A Off Campus

Shane touches a very interesting topic which concerns the long-game.

“Gallup polls suggest that young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are overwhelmingly in favor of LGBT rights, and 76 percent of them support legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples. The Higher Education Research Institute’s annual Freshman Survey corroborates this support for same-sex marriage and also the fact that three quarters of college students today support adoption by gay and lesbian couples.”

From a commercial perspective Huckabee’s appreciation day was a one off. How many appreciation days would it take to outweigh the loss of permanent customers. The Crazy-Christians were, one presumes, already customers- I can’t imagine the numbers could stack up positively in the long run with an entire new generation who refuses to support the marginalization, exclusion and persecution of the LGBT community.

Read it at the HuffPo:

Shane L. Windmeyer: Colleges Rally to Kick Chick-fil-A Off Campus.

Gay.net – Andrew Shirvell Ordered to Pay Millions for Defaming Gay Student

Gay.net – Andrew Shirvell Ordered to Pay Millions for Defaming Gay Student.

Here’s Spain’s Version of a Flash Mob. Beethoven. It’ll make you cry!

John Carroll: Gays Giveth and Gays Taketh Away: An Open Letter to Bailey Hanks

Absolutely fantastic open letter from John Carrol to Bailey Hanks, here’s the best part:

“Just a reminder: You were plucked out of obscurity by a team of gay men, gay men who not only believed in you and gave you the chance of a lifetime but treated you with loving kindness and respect — the same gay men you discriminated against by publicly supporting Chick-fil-A. You were chosen to star in the show Legally Blonde specifically by the director/choreographer, who is a gay man. The associate choreographer and vocal coach who helped you win the reality show you were on are two gay men. A few of the Broadway show’s producers (the ones who paid you) are gay. Your costume designer is a gay man, as is the designer of the wigs and makeup you wore. You were taught the choreography and put into the Broadway show by a gay man, and you were supported and made to feel safe and part of the Broadway community by the many gay people in your cast. These people are not only my coworkers, Bailey, but, more importantly, they are my friends. After your time on Broadway (surrounded by gay people), you did not run screaming home, where the hills have eyes. You stayed here, in Sodom and Gomorrah. You auditioned and continued to make friends and work with — guess what — more gay people. We invited you into our homes and offered you a place at our table. You stayed for dinner, ate all the food, even stuck around for dessert, and now vomited it all up in our faces. Your website describes you as “sweet, kind, caring”; perhaps you should add “unless you’re gay.”

To read the full letter click below:

John Carroll: Gays Giveth and Gays Taketh Away: An Open Letter to Bailey Hanks.

A Gay Actor’s Response to Bret Easton Ellis | Queer Landia

Mike speaks:

QUEERLANDIA EXCLUSIVE: A Gay Actor’s Response to Bret Easton Ellis | Queer Landia.

James Fluhr: The Monster in My Real Life

“I’ll never know what went through my father’s mind when he found pictures of me dressed up in drag on the Internet, but I know that the phone call that came after changed my life forever. I was standing outside in the snow when he called me, spitting rage through the phone.

“I’m not here to buy your dresses,” he said. “You’re not a quiet gay. You’re a liar. I showed the pictures of you in drag to your 10-year-old brother and he cried because he couldn’t understand why his hero would do something like that. Deal with me as a man. Listen to me, son. Who would give a job to someone like you? Say, ‘Yes, sir.’ Did you hear me? Say ‘Yes, sir.’”

Fluhr has transformed his life into a play, if you’re in or near NY:

‘Our Lady’ is playing at the Living Theatre at 21 Clinton Street in New York City on August 13 at 7, August 18 at 3:45, August 20 at 4, August 23 at 10 and August 25 at 12. All showings are in PM. Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Tickets are available for purchase here or more information, check out  www.ourladytheplay.com or tweet @ourladytheplay or @alexandergold.

read it at the HuffPo

James Fluhr: The Monster in My Real Life.

Let me introduce you to Crazy. Crazy is the one over there wearing the tin foil hat.

Crazy says that Obama is a gay, drugged-up murderer. I kid you not. I can assure the world that Crazy is mistaken because in 1999/2000 I was in Chicago and I slept with all the Gay, drugged-up, attractive men in the city. If Obama had been one of them, you wouldn’t be reading a blog I’m writing from suburbia, I’d be on the cover of Newsweek (shirtless)- well, probably not, but anyway…

Meet CRAZY

Christianity, Keefer & Pathological Homophobia; The Workings of an Irrational Mind.

If you were following yesterday’s developments, you probably read some of Keefer’s comments. Keefer is a Christian. A superficial analysis would lead us to believe he’s not just a Christian, but the thumping kind. One of the arrogant types who feels he has the right to disregard the law and impose his vision of his religion on everyone else in society. Keefer gives the impression he believes his right to freedom of religion denotes the right to take away everyone else’s freedom of religion. He seems to feel he is special, he is right. It appears he has come to believe his own sophisms.His argumentation is entirely divorced from logic and science; As his arguments are debunked he sticks his hand into a hat and pulls out another illogical argument and ad-hocs it into the discussion pretending that nothing has happened as he continues to feed his delusions of righteousness. This happens on a wheel without Keefer ever considering the validity of anything he says. He just bides his time, spins the wheel again and keeps bringing back debunked arguments making the rest of the world feel as if trapped in a Kafkaesque fantasy debate. Keefer spent many hours of his Sunday writing comments on this blog, I considered simply blocking him, but I decided to let him keep going so today we could analyze the irrational thought processes that derive from the anti-gay propaganda promulgated by the Christian Right.

There are psychological factors we should keep in mind in this analysis (before we examine his actual arguments) and they relate to the underlying characteristics of Keefer’s mindset and emotional needs. The whole episode might not have had anything to do with religion at all. Firstly we have to consider Keefer (not a wordpress blogger), through search engines sought out this blog. On a weekend, time people usually spend with family or friends, relaxing or enjoying themselves, Keefer was searching for gay-related issues online. Once he found them and received a response to his initial message he was evidently enthralled. So much so that it inspired him to write many comments to the same post over a span of nearly twelve hours. Every so often I would check back and there he was again. For a while I wondered why anyone would put themselves in such a position. To seek out an inhospitable environment is by any measure counter-productive to the self, so we’re not left with many hypotheses to mull over. The most common in my experience is a combination of exploration and self-justification. Many gay men, mostly of my generation and back (the under thirties have grown up with Will & Grace), went through a period of latent homophobia which develops into something more aggressive and can eventually reach the point of being externalized. It’s a natural, snowball-like process that occurs when one is oppressed and doesn’t see a way out. It’s a trick the mind plays on itself, a defence mechanism. One tries (desperately) to embrace anti-gay arguments in an effort to change, erase or re-program one’s self. Others use this as a mechanism to justify the suffering and self-loathing of the realization of differentness in the self: “I feel terrible, but I deserve to feel terrible because I’m evil. If I keep repeating that, at least I can comprehend my pain and solitude.”- I mentioned these options first because I experienced them first hand. I was a teen homophobe who was somehow always inserting myself into the LGBT world. The rational reaction of someone who doesn’t like football is to not go to football games or watch football. If you don’t like sushi, you don’t go to Sushi restaurants- but there I was, again and again surrounding myself with The Gays, even if it was to belittle them/myself- hoping to convince myself and confirm there was something bad about The Gays. The problem (or advantage) of the rational mind is that one doesn’t allow one’s self to substitute science and fact for mysticism and baseless or illogical information; So unlike Ted Haggard or many a Republican politician, by the time I was 21, reason overtook fear, self-loathing and internalized homophobia and I was able to admit to myself that I was gay. Suddenly everything that lay behind me made sense and although I don’t know enough of Keefer to form a concrete conclusion, his dedication to his responses yesterday certainly opens the door to repressed homosexuality being a strong possibility.

The Workings of an Irrational Mind

Keefer’s arguments are easy to debunk. They’re not even really his arguments. They’re the regurgitation of the information on standard anti-gay worksheets that have been distributed by anti-gay groups for decades. They have been thoroughly discredited from every perspective, logic, science and the law- yet every once in a while we meet another Keefer, who for his own personal/psychological reasons resurrects the same fallacies and junk-science of years past.

He began with the most puerile of tactics: “Homosexuality IS unnatural. Things don’t “fit” as intended.

Homosexuality has been documented in 1500 species, it occurs naturally in both sexual and affectionate forms (as in Penguins). Sex in primates is actually more about socialization than reproduction, only 3% of human sexual activity ends in reproduction, the other 97% are interactions for emotional and sexual pleasure.

That argument didn’t work, so then Keefer tries to thump us with his bible: “Rights come from God, not government.”

Maybe Keefer wasn’t aware of the concept of separation of church and state (or maybe he just prefers to ignore it when it’s convenient) which is present in the Western civilized world. In the civilized world it’s governments who decide what rights its citizens have. It’s governments and the people therein who create the framework for what can and cannot be done, what is legal and what is illegal.

Okay, two arguments down, neither worked, so he jumps to the third, one which is actually very common: “Notice your own words: “We live under elected governments in societies where we have freedom of religion.” I see you said “freedom OF religion,” not “freedom FROM religion.” My beliefs are my own, as are yours. I am entitled to my beliefs just as much as you are entitled to yours. When that is denied me or you, this once great country is DONE.

In saying this Keefer evidently doesn’t comprehend the absurdity of his own words, freedom of religion and freedom from religion are interchangeable. The freedom to choose to be a Christian is the freedom from being forced to be a Muslim or a Jew. The freedom to be a Buddhist is the freedom from being a Christian.

Three arguments down, is there still anywhere to go? He backs off a little bit, I feel I may have been rather unkind. He says: “Just because YOU don’t follow God’s word doesn’t mean you are right, and just because I believe in God doesn’t make ME right either. It just means we disagree. So there is no point in insulting me just because I believe in God.”- Unfortunately he doesn’t believe what he just said because here he is, trying to make everyone else adopt the tenets of his religion. In his second comment he even implied we don’t have rights except those afforded to us by his god.

Again I feel a bit cruel, somewhere along the line I made a joke about Cretin deriving from Christian. If you’re a French speaker you know that’s true, but still it was unnecessary. Keefer says :“Liberals are supposed to be “accepting” type of people<sic>. Accept conservatives as you accept the poor, the African-Americans, the immigrants, etc…”- A bell rings in my head. Is this someone looking for acceptance? I’m too wound up citing scientific studies and explaining logic 101. I don’t consider the implications of his plea for acceptance. In hindsight I wonder if perhaps I was pushing him further away? Feeding whatever sense of differentness and alienation he feels already? I steam-roll on. I’m used to it. In the old days when I was a real activist I used to write serious things that required a proper format, style and word limit. I was regularly op-ed-ing on gay issues and they called me El Niño. Not because of my boyish good looks but because of the winds… I wreaked havoc and left devastation behind me. I began articles with phrases like “I find myself scandalized…” and tore people to shreds. Even today whole speeches just roll off my tongue even though I’ve turned into a lazy suburbanite who prefers to write fragmented blog posts with a total disregard for grammar and the rules.

In my defence, my bluntness was that of a passionate 26 year old. It was 2004, we were fighting for gay marriage. We got it. It exists here on a Federal level although it had existed in various provinces years before then. Keefer tries the semantic argument and fails again, I explain to him that words evolve. He’s getting irritated. I suppose I failed to engage him on a human level, I think that’s what he was looking for. Squirrel & Moose jumps in, he’s tough, sounds like El Niño. No playing around, cut-throat, direct to the point. I think to myself, great, this must be what if feels like to have a co-pilot, I can just get up and pour myself another drink, light a cigarette and he’ll handle it. This started at 7:15PM, it’s now 1AM Paris time, that’s 6 hours of Keefer’s Sunday. Occasionally Karen also jumps in, she’s the mother of a trans boy. She’s firm, but gentle as one would expect from a mother. It’s nearly 1:30 here. I turn off the computer, Keefer stays and continues to engage with Karen. She does her best to rationally explain things to him, he seems to get more bitter as the discussion continues. Today I get up and see his last comment came at 6:21AM Paris time- which means nearly 12 hours of back and forth and Keefer visiting this blog. I finally realize there must be more to this than meets the eye…

Christians for Hostility & Violence. The Environment Created by Dan Cathy & the Christian Right. Blood on Their Hands.

It’s All Connected

A few years ago a group of American Evangelicals visited Uganda. They were Scott Lively, ex-gay Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer of Exodus International, a group to which Chick-fil-A donated money. The conference they spoke at was titled The Gay Agenda. During the conference Lively asserted homosexuality was comparable to child molestation and bestiality. he also said it caused higher rates of divorce and HIV transmission. I won’t comment on the invalidity of his claims as his pernicious myths have been thoroughly debunked already. The conference concluded with  “[The parliament] feels it is necessary to draft a new law that deals comprehensively with the issue of homosexuality and… takes into account the international gay agenda… Right now there is a proposal that a new law be drafted.” The Bill that resulted from the conference was one that further criminalized homosexuality. It introduced the death penalty for “serial homosexuals”, and let’s face it, that’s all of us. If you’re gay (like me) you know it’s like eating Pringles, once you start you can’t stop.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Michelle Bachmann’s very anti-gay district was the home of a rash of suicides as was beautifully reported by Rolling Stones.

There is a causal link between hate rhetoric and hate crimes. There’s also a logical link between hate rhetoric and gay-teen suicide.

Anti-gay hate mongers have blood on their hands. I hold them individually and personally responsible for creating the environment in Uganda and elsewhere where members of the LGBT community are harassed, persecuted and murdered as was the case of leading LGBT activist David Kato. They are behind dehumanizing gays to an extent where certain sectors of society feel the very lives of gay men and women have no value. Blood on their hands.

The Bronx

“After he had been punched, kicked and stripped of his clothes and jewelry, the 17-year-old man was given a choice: the bat or the pipe…  Before the night was out, the victims would be tortured with burning cigarettes, box cutter blades, plunger handles and more, prosecutors charged. But first, the 17-year-old had to make his selection. “I guess the bat,” he said.” Prosecutors say the men lured a gay 30-year-old man and two 17-year-olds to an empty apartment in a four-story house on Osborne Place and tortured and beat them, in what city officials have called the worst antigay attack in recent memory.

Barbarians

Eric Unger

Cameron

Trafalgar Square

Jackson Pearce on Chick-fil-A and Proverbs.

Biblical Definitions of Marriage for Dummies

Chick-Fil-A-Holes; The Dan Cathy Butt Plug Scandal!!!

I fortunately don’t have to boycott Chick-fil-A, I live in Europe and I don’t eat fast-food anyway; But if I did it would not be because of company President Dan Cathy’s comments on gay marriage. I would boycott Chick-fil-A because Dan Cathy used profits from Chick-fil-A to donate five million dollars to organizations that advocate:

1. Criminalizing gay people

2. Denying gay people the ability to serve in the military

3. Depicting gay people as pedophiles

4. Making sexual orientation grounds to fire an employee

5. Denying gay parents access to their own children

6: Denying children of gay couples the protections derived from having both parents recognized

and the list goes on.

Yet again, gay activists are making the same old mistake. Playing defence.

“Please, oh please Christian Right, please like us on Facebook!”

“We’re not so bad, look at the scientific studies!”

“We promise to be good, all we want is to get married and behave just like you!”

My message to Dan Cathy and the rest of the Chick-fil-A-Holes is go Fuck Yourselves. Get your pathetic little minds out of my business. I’m not interested in your sex-lives or the contracts you sign with your toothless wives regarding which one of you gets the trailer when you divorce to marry yet another cousin. I’d appreciate an equal disinterest in my sex-life and whatever contracts I sign. I don’t give a flying fairy who you marry. Go live your own lives and stop sticking your noses in other people’s business. Free, tax-paying LGBT citizens do not need your approval to live our own lives.

Pink Triangle and Yellow Star. “Christ Killers & Sodomites”… sounds like a Heavy Metal band.

From “Pink Triangle and Yellow Star,” Gore Vidal, The Nation, October 14, 1981:

Jews, blacks, and homosexuals are despised by the Christian… majorities of East and West. Also, as a result of the invention of Israel, Jews can now count on the hatred of the Islamic world. Since our own Christian majority looks to be getting ready for great adventures at home and abroad, I would suggest that the three despised minorities join forces in order not to be destroyed. This seems an obvious thing to do. Unfortunately, most Jews refuse to see any similarity between their special situations and that of the same-sexers.

At one level, the Jews are perfectly correct. A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact. Although sexual preference is an even more powerful fact, it is not one that creates any particular social or cultural or religious bond between those so-minded. Although Jews would doubtless be Jews is there was no anti-Semitism, same-sexers would think little or nothing at all about their preference if society ignored it. So there is a difference between the two states. But there is no difference in the degree of hatred felt by the Christian majority for Christ-killers and Sodomites. In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink triangles. I was present when Christopher Isherwood tried to make this point to a young Jewish movie producer. “After all,” said Isherwood, “Hitler killed six hundred thousand homosexuals.” The young man was not impressed. “But Hitler killed six million Jews,” he said sternly. “What are you?” asked Isherwood. “In real estate?”

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Mrs. Norman Podhoretz, also known as Midge Decter, [who writes for the conservative magazine Commentary]…. writes with the authority and easy confidence of someone who knows that she is very well known indeed to those few who know her.

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Decter was disturbed by “the slender, seamless, elegant and utterly chic” clothes of the fairies [she saw on Fire Island]. She also found it “a constant source of wonder” that when the fairies took off their clothes, “the largest number of homosexuals had hairless bodies…. We were never able to determine just why there should be so definite a connection between what is nowadays called their sexual preference…and their smooth feminine skin. Was it a matter of hormones?” Here Decter betrays her essential modesty and lack of experience. In the no doubt privileged environment of her Midwestern youth, she could not have seen very many gentile males without their clothes on. Is she had, she would have discovered that gentile men tend to be less hairy than Jews except, of course, when they are not. Because the Jews killed our Lord, they are forever marked with hair on their shoulders–something that no gentile man has on his shoulders except for John Travolta and a handful of other Italian-American from the Englewood, New Jersey, area.

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Every now and then, Decter does wonder if, perhaps, she is generalizing…. But the spirit is upon her, and she cannot stop because, “one cannot even begin to get at the truth about homosexuals without this kind of generalization. They are a group so readily distinguishable.” Except of course, when they are not…. To begin to get at the truth about homosexuals, one must realize that the majority of those millions of Americans who prefer same-sex sex to other-sex sex are obliged, sometimes willingly and happily but often not, to marry and have children and to conform….

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Decter says that once faggots have “ensconced” themselves in certain professions or arts, “they themselves have engaged in a good deal of discriminatory practices against others. There are businesses and professions” [which one? She is congenitally short of data] “in which it is less than easy for a straight, unless he makes the requisite gesture of propitiation to the homosexual in power, to get ahead.” This, of course, was Hitler’s original line about the Jews: they had taken over German medicine, teaching, law, journalism. Ruthlessly, they kept out gentiles; lecherously, they demanded favors. “I simply want to reduce their numbers in these fields,” Hitler told Prince Philip of Hesse. “I want them proportionate to their overall number in the population.” That was the early solution; the final solution followed with equal logic.

Copyright © by Gore Vidal

I Will Survive by Jesus C. of Nazareth