Larry Craig: Still Stalling

Yesterday, Idaho Senator Larry Craig announced he would NOT resign his seat as promised.

His decision was made on the same day that a Minnesota judge decided NOT to throw out Craig's guilty plea to the misdemeanor crime of soliciting sex in a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.

The news that Craig broke his promise to the people of Idaho and his Senate colleagues was met with disbelief and indignation:

"He gave us his word that he would resign," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who's in charge of the GOP's 2008 Senate election fundraising. "I'm calling on Senator Craig to keep his word. If he loves his party, and he loves the Senate, the honorable thing to do is to resign."

If Senator Ensign feels betrayed by Craig's brazen disregard to those he promised to honor and respect, think how his wife might feel!

A person like Craig who has spent his whole life living a lie must have no conscience -- no guilt -- about saying one thing and doing another. He has been rationalizing and justifying his betrayal of his marriage vows and his oath of office -- both of which required him to make a promise of duty and honor.

Keeping secrets from his wife and his constituents is a selfish act and although Craig appears full of righteous indignation -- even bravado -- his refusal to do the right thing and leave his marriage and the Senate is the act of a coward.

Craig's refusal to tell the truth about his sexuality not only hurts his family, it hurts the entire LGBTQ Community as we struggle for legal rights, protections and benefits for our families.

The Larry Craig fiasco just makes it that much harder for us to convince elected officials that LGBTQ people deserve legal protections.

How can the LGBTQ Community justify our demands to be treated with dignity and respect when people like Craig continue to sneak around, cheating and lying?

October 11, is National Coming Out Day.

On that day Rainbow Law will be in Jackson Mississippi -- at OUToberfest -- speaking about the need to protect the legal rights of LGBTQ families.

If you are unable to join us in Mississippi, we hope you will celebrate that day by telling the truth about your life to at least one person who does not already know.

We are in the midst of a Fall Fund Raising Drive -- a fight for the very life of Rainbow Law! We hope you will invest a few dollars so that we are able to continue to provide FREE legal documents, information and other services to and for the LGBTQ Community!

Bald-Heads and Other Fetishes

Senator Larry Craig likes anonymous gay sex and as the photo collage on the right illustrates, George W. Bush likes the feel of bald heads.

It seems right wing-nuts are more obsessed with sex than Larry Flint.

While they noisily demand adherence to laws and policies that establish socially acceptable, sexual “norms” for the rest of us, many of the loudest of the pontificators of Puritanism have secretly carved out exceptions to those rules for themselves.

The more extreme the anti-sexual rhetoric -- the more bellicose the protestations -- the more likely we are to discover they have their own hidden and lurid fetishes. In the meantime, LGBTQ people are forced to live our lives without the legal rights and protections of marriage.

The scenario has become so silly and obvious: from now on, when we hear extreme conservatives preach aggressively in support of legal and social controls for private sexual behavior between consenting adults, we will see it as a symptom of that person’s own Paraphilia.

Now that we understand the situation, we can easily see why these wing-nuts continue to dwell on the subject of sex, even when the rest of us are concerned about the war, the economy, jobs, fair trade policy, election fraud, democracy, and other minor issues of the day.

We see nothing wrong with wing-nuts obsessing over sex – as long as they do so in private and with other consenting adults. In fact, we wish them well in their pursuit of group sex, threesomes, homosexual or heterosexual sex, pornography, S & M, whatever “stiffs their spiffs.”

But as long as our government is controlled by closeted sexual deviants, same-sex partners will continue to suffer the consequences of life without legal rights and protections. Such rights will only be granted to “normal, heterosexual married couples.”

While we wait for the rest of the country to wake up to the fact that perceptions about equal marriage rights are being warped by negative stereotypes sputtered by holier-than-thou hypocrites, our families bask in the purgatory of second-class citizenship.

Because marriage confers legal rights, protections and obligations we do not have, we are forced to make the time and take the extra effort to get legal documents to protect our families.

And we absolutely cannot and should not wait for our elected perverts to do it for us.

The Gay Life

This from an article we read this morning:

"Larry Craig is a clear illustration of what the gay rights movement is up against in our fight to be removed from the list of second class citizens. He cares more about his purse and his image on the world stage than he does the suffering of a class of people of which he is a part. He is as much a traitor and betrayer as Judas Iscariot himself.

All of this begs the question, "why?" It's a question that has yet to be satisfactorily answered. What about homosexuality is so threatening to society that groups like the RepubliKKKan party and the Religious Reich are compelled to do all in their power to keep gays in the closet, in the tearoom, and by the actions of vice cops, in the courtroom?

I have no real answers on the why. I have some theories, but I can't call any of them facts.

Social control: Politics and religion are in the business of social control. They use many means to maintain their power over society as a whole. By effectively making homosexuality both a crime and a sin, effectively if they can't shame us into compliance by invoking the name of god, they will get us with the threat and real possibility of legal action. By using these methods, they insure that none but the bravest or most foolhardy will have the courage to come out. They also insure that those who have the need, but not the courage to be honest will eventually wind up busted, and in the legal system. That means dollar bills. If there is one thing that America loves, it's those filthy green-backed pieces of rag paper.

Envy: As I said above, men are horny from the time that testosterone begins raging through their bodies around adolescence. Gay men as a general rule are more likely to find a willing partner for quick anonymous sex. The sex we have has no way of being reproductive. Effectively, without the threat of AIDS or other STD's, gay sex is sex for pleasure. It is sex for pleasure with no ill effects, or nine month surprises. The same cannot be said of heterosexual contact. There is the ever present reality that the nine seconds of pleasure of the orgasm will be followed by nine months of worry followed by eighteen years of child support. Tell me that isn't cause for jealousy. If people will kill because of jealousy, does it not stand to reason they would label someone who was getting more sex than themselves a sinner?

The need to hate: There are simply some people out there who have to hate. It is their Alpha and Omega. It is their overriding reason for living. Gays make a convenient target. As a matter of fact, the use of the word "faggot" remains the last socially acceptable bit of hate speech. The actions of the Religious Reich and the Republicans insure [sic] that nothing short of our own version of a march to Selma will ever begin breaking the hatred."

Read the entire article here

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four

How many Republican men are closeted homosexuals?

Why is this party so appealing to these self-loathing men?

Could it be that political parties reward deviant behavior by promoting the most vulnerable men to higher positions so they can blackmail them with threats of exposure in order to control their votes?

This latter suggestion really makes sense when you think about it. It explains the inexplicable as we sit around scratching our heads, wondering WTF is going on in Washington...

In Idaho, they grow potatoes and their hypocritical Senator is caught with his pants down.

In Iowa, they grow corn and their State's Supreme Court held that the ban on equal marriage rights violates Iowa's Constitution.

I don't know about you, but we’re having corn for dinner tonight!

The True Cost of Conservative "Family Values"

Seemingly unrelated stories involving Mother Teresa's lack of faith or belief in a celestial, all-knowing creator, and Republican Senator Larry Craig's titillating bathroom sex encounters, have us contemplating the true cost of conservative "family values."

As long as the religious wing-nuts continue to bribe Republican lawmakers with the promise of electoral victory by delivering "values votes" in exchange for a promise to recreate America into a CHRISTIAN- judeo* nation, we will continue to see more and more political figures facing a public shaming for their hypocrisy. * The judeo part is only temporary and will end with Armageddon.

And now, after they've destroyed their Republican hosts, these parasitic fascist wing-nuts are evacuating the party in droves as it smolders and burns.

As the unofficial leader of the Republican electoral strategy, Karl Rove is more responsible than any other single person for his party's downfall. The foundation of Rove's plan was to build a permanent Republican majority by catering to "the base."

Unfortunately for Republicans, their base happens to be a cluster of crazed and rabid religious fanatics who insist on controlling what the rest of us do in the privacy of our own lives.

Thus, the most recent scandals involving Republican Senator Larry Craig, Republican Senator David Vitter (not outed for gay sex but still shamed for a sex "scandal"), Republican Representative Mark Foley, and too many others to list, are simply the result of men spewing hateful rhetoric and passing mean-spirited legislation because they were directed to do so.

Now, the hateful, homophobic scheme that once seemed so clever, has come home to bite Republicans on the ass.

If LGBTQ citizens enjoyed equal rights, dignity and respect by our government, perhaps these self-hating gay Republicans would be able to express their sexuality in a healthy manner.

It almost makes you believe that God Himself directed the outings of these men as a way to remind His flock that a true Christian engages in activities that lift up the downtrodden -- not crush them.

And that brings us to Mother Teresa who apparently was having difficulty believing in God. Who can blame her? During her life of tending to the poorest of the poor, she knew that church leaders were protecting and defending depraved priests who molested children rather than using their vast wealth to truly end poverty.

She read the Bible and knew that its primary message was one of love, forgiveness and tending to children, the elderly, poor and infirm. How she must have suffered, seeing the great hypocrisy in her religion.

The real lesson is this: Greed and Lust are here to stay. They exist in religion, politics and in all areas of life.

Whether atheist, agnostic or a believer, some people try every day to live a meaningful life by giving back to those who are less fortunate.

Other people will cravenly and openly prey on and use anyone they can to get what they want, regardless of the impact that their actions may have.

In our quest for links to illustrate a few points we make in this post, we stumbled upon STR:The Freedom Blog, operated by Pastor Billy Bob Neck, who also happens to be running for president.

Here are a few of the "Christian" items we found there:

"What if Hillary Clinton were elected? Would she legislate the kind of immorality that would bring floods and greater harm to America’s infrastructure. Imagine the destructive power of hurricane Katrina and then multiply it ten-fold. That’s how angry God would be after Clinton turns America into a free-for-all for immigration, homosexuality and abortion. Could our insurance markets take a beating from God?"

and this...

"I’m recently returned from our own Christian summer camp, STR Young Patriots Freedom Camp, where as usual we all had a wonderful time praising Jesus and training up our children to be as strong in their faith and determination to defend this great country as our Muslim enemies. It was such a wonderful world of love, I can’t tell you! And Jesus was so happy he even helped us to beat all accuracy records on the shooting range."

and finally, this post about eliminating the two term limit for U.S. President:

"First of all, we need to petition our representatives and senators for an end to the absurd “law” that forces a President out of office before his work is done.

Secondly, in the event that we are unable to start a grass-roots movment [sic] which will correct this constitutional folly, we need to obtain pledges from all Republican candidates that they will uphold the principles of accountability, and rigor of the Bush Presidency. Only that will assure our fragile markets that prosperity can continue.

Finally, we must never forget to pray for the American people, we pray that they will continue to have the sense to trust George W. Bush and his loyal cabinet of patriots. This will help send a message to all of the candidates about the true meaning of conservatism."

We really thought this website might be a joke, but sadly, its for real.