Peddling Hate: From Sea to Shining Sea

On the West Coast, in Everett Washington, the anti-gay group known as the "Watchmen on the Walls" is convening for the weekend to brainstorm with other homophobes, hoping to come up with new and more effective measures to bribe lawmakers into enacting legislation that denies legal rights and protections to the LGBTQ Community.

If these folks were just some wing-nut fringe group that the mainstream media and politicians ignored, a gathering such as this may not be worth reporting.

Unfortunately, the "Watchmen" are just one of many other organizations with a similar purpose who largely control the Republican party and hold sway over many Democrats as well.

On the East Coast, (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) the Values Voter Summit (also known as the Religious Right's Super Bowl weekend) is expected to help the wing-nuts hone in on which candidate best represents their convoluted and hypocritical pro-war, anti-stem-cell research, anti-contraceptive, anti-choice, anti gay adoption, anti-Marriage Equality, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, anti-children's health care, anti-welfare, anti-science, stance.

No wonder these people are having a hard time finding a candidate that is able to twist himself into such strange positions that he will be un-electable in the general election.

In order to woo these crazies, Republicans have to lie about supporting issues that will turn off all of the rest of us.

Take Romney, for example, who made the following statement when he was running for the Senate in Massachusetts against Ted Kennedy:

"I had a dear, close family relative who was very close to me [who died from an illegal abortion] and I promise I will not force my beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.”

Oh, really?

How interesting... since Romney recently proclaimed:

“I am pro-family on every level, from personal to political... as President, I will oppose abortion in military clinics, oppose funding abortion in international aid programs and I will work to ban embryonic cloning.”

He's not only a liar, he's a flip-flopping liar.

Even though Romney and the other candidates are willing to lie through their teeth to win the Republican nomination, the wing-nuts are still not satisfied with the field of candidates.

Of the Democrats, only Kucinich and Gravel are in support of full legal equality.

Hillary, Obama and Edwards all say they oppose our right to be treated as full citizens.

What a sorry state we are in today!

As 50+ year old women, we are disgusted that we are treated like children -- forced to beg abusive adults for rights and privileges that should be ours simply by virtue of our citizenship!

It is humiliating and degrading to be put in this juxtaposition against a gang of thugs who claim the Earth is 6,000 years old, that God created the Earth in 6 days, that dinosaurs lived on the Earth with humans, and that Global War and Global Warming are all necessary precursors to the second coming of Christ at which time the believers will be raptured up and the rest of us will be "left behind."

We say, good riddance. Why wait for the rapture?

If these crazies really hate social and legal progress, they should flock together like the sheeple they are and found another country where they can create their Earthly utopia.

If that ever happens, we give them 2 years before they start to create cliques which eventually turn on others....

Sheesh.

Getting Stoned

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Bob Dylan

Yesterday, Iranian President Ahmadinejad proclaimed there are "no homosexuals in Iran."

This may be true since Iranian law is governed by Islamic (Sharia) law -- or God's law as it is written in the Koran.

Since the Koran (like the Old Testament of the Bible) calls for the stoning to death of gays and lesbians – simply for BEING gay or lesbian, it should come as no surprise that Iranian gays and lesbians try to stay invisible.

And, it logically follows that, except for God himself, what is not visible does not exist!

In America, at this writing, LGBTQ people have the right to live. Of course we are still struggling for certain rights – for example, equality -- but we are able to walk around without the expectation of being stoned to death for being out and open.

That being said, it is important that we remain vigilant to the real threat that there IS a very strong movement in the US to shift our form of government from the secular to a Christian Nation governed by Biblical law.

President Bush has even instituted in his administration, a department of Faith Based Communities Initiatives (FBCI) to “level the playing field” so that religious organizations have equal access to Federal funds.

Never mind that the FBCI is in direct conflict with the Constitutional directive to maintain a separation between matters of State and Church.

The founders of our Republic had a good reason for their desire to create a wall between the function of government and religious belief:

“The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and were executed as heretics.”

Today, the LGBTQ Community has good reason to fear the reemergence of a Christian Nation. If you haven’t read the Bible – especially the Old Testament – you may not know what is in store – not just for gays and lesbians – but for all Americans who eat pork, wear clothes made of different cloth, commit adultery, and experience other mundane and everyday happenings.

Ahmadinejad’s words should stand as a reminder that we must not take our role as citizens lightly.

Every one of us has much to lose when we do not act on our rights as citizens.

For decades, Americans have been dumbed-down to such an extent that we do not know and are not even taught, our civic and political history. Most Americans have never read the Constitution and therefore they are unaware of the rights and freedoms that are slipping away.

Those in power do not want us to understand our history. They prefer to “encase and concretize the human mind in an intellectual penitentiary” so that citizens will not know whether or when to rise up.

We are caught in a cycle of sound-bites and catch phrases that allow us to drift ever closer to a theocratic governing system.

We watch American Idol and are willing to lose our rights, liberties and freedoms as long as the government is doing so in an effort to “keep us safe.”

The questions that need to be asked are:

• Do you place a desire to be entertained and feelings of (false) security over liberty and freedom?
  

• If so, are you willing to go back to the stoned-age?

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

Prophets of Hate

Two recent headlines caught our attention this morning:

From the Houston Chronicle: Murder Suspect Says He Was Doing God's Work From the Muskegon Chronicle: Parents Choose to Accept Son Over Church, Friends

The first is a story about a Texas man who claims that he was ordered by God to murder a gay flight attendant.

The second article tells the story of a evangelical Christian family (dad was a minister) who chose to love and accept their gay son when he came out to them. When they challenged the church's teachings on homosexuality, Dad was stripped of his ministry and he and his family were shunned by their religious 'community.'

These articles, scrutinized together, speak truth to our belief that religious 'moralists' -- who we call prophets of hate -- incite acts of violence toward LGBTQ people. Add to the mix governmental approval -- by silence or by mean-spirited legislation -- that separates LGBTQ people as different from (and therefore less deserving than) other American citizens, and you have a recipe for emotional AND physical harm heaped upon a despised minority.

It is a known fact that social and legal inequity in and of itself causes emotional harm.

In 1954, the Supreme Court deliberated on whether the 'Separate but Equal' doctrine violated the Constitutional rights of Black school children. As evidence that the education system was unfair, the NAACP offered the results of a social research project called the "doll test" conducted in the 1940's by psychologists Kenneth Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark. In the study, the Clark's gave Black children identical -- except for color -- dolls, and asked them to say which dolls they preferred. Most of the children "selected the white dolls and attributed positive characteristics to them."

The study laid bare the obvious harm caused to Black children who were treated differently than White children. The Black children BELIEVED in their own inferiority simply because the world they lived in reflected that image back to them.

It is no different for LGBTQ people and our families.

• There MUST be something wrong with us, right? Otherwise, the late night talk show hosts and morning shock jocks wouldn't be getting rich from using the words "fag" and "dyke" and audiences wouldn't keep laughing at homophobic jokes...

• We MUST be worthless, right? Or State and Federal lawmakers would NOT pass laws that discriminate against us and prevent us from obtaining equal rights and benefits for our loved ones.
  

• We MUST be immoral, right? Or religious leaders wouldn't preach to their congregations that our "lifestyles" are a sin and an abomination. They wouldn't try to "cure" us of our disease. They would not be spending (and taking in) big bucks on anti-equality campaigns.
  

The damage caused by these messages have parents and siblings rejecting their LGBTQ family members and leave some LGBTQ people -- young and old -- feeling like they want to die. And many do take their own life...

Sometimes it just seems the more progress we make the harder the homophobes push back against the tide of acceptance....