While shooting footage for a documentary in Brooklyn this past weekend I came upon this sign outside of a Methodist church and felt compelled to share it with you. It made me feel good to see tolerance so boldly stated.
Are you tired of worshiping the God of Love under the same roof as uppity women priests and gay people? Look no further, says the Vatican, because the Roman Catholic Church wants you. Come let us give you a safe place to worship, says the Church famous for harboring at least 4,000 pedophile priests.
Dan Choi is a well-decorated combat veteran who was dismissed from the military because was gay. His message at the National Equality March rally was simple and compelling. Choi made it clear that he is done asking and he is now telling. Don’t ask, don’t tell must be repealed immediately.
Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military because he had come out as a gay man, received a Service to Humanity award from the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. As part of his eloquent speech, Choi burned his discharge letter at the podium.
My initial reaction: Any society that can’t rectify a situation involving this much gross injustice probably can’t get much of anything done. Hint to Congress: Simply write a law that says you won’t kick highly competent soldiers out of the military just because they are gay.
Gordon Brown stepped up and plainly said what should have been said long ago. Alan Turing was a hero, yet he was treated terribly by the British government. Here’s an excerpt from The Guardian:
Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay.
Describing Turing’s treatment as “horrifying” and “utterly unfair”, Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. “We’re sorry, you deserved so much better,” Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.
Back in 2005, I was intrigued when the story broke that a fake reporter supposedly named “Jeff Gannon” somehow got access for White House press briefings. His real name turned out to be Jeff Guckert, and he had no credentials as a reporter. He didn’t even qualify for a press pass. Really strange stuff. Actually, the story got much much stranger:
Investigative bloggers at Daily Kos and AmericaBlog.org discovered that Guckert owned male escort sites, and was himself a male prostitute.
I just ran across this 2005 Raw Story piece that goes into a lot more detail about Guckert/Gannon. Not only did he not belong at the White House at all, but it turns out that he was almost always there.
[D]ocuments obtained by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal Guckert had remarkable access to the White House . . . Guckert made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, previously worked as a male escort, and was refused a congressional press pass.
If you read this Raw Story story, you’ll be amazed at the many anomalies regarding Gluckert’s White House visits. According to the linked Wikipedia and Raw Story articles:
The Secret Service Records appear to show that he checked in, but never checked out on many occasions, and visited the White House on several days during which no press conference or other press events were held.
You’ll see all of the data regarding Gluckert’s many visits at Raw Story. I don’t remember this story (of the extent of Gluckert’s White House access) ever getting covered by the mainstream media.
I’ll end with a question. It seems as though a huge percentage of gay bashers are conflicted closet gays. It was also clear that there were a LOT of gay-bashers in the Bush White House. To connect the dots, it would appear from Gluckert’s real profession and his extensive White House access that he was visiting the White House to provide sexual services to someone who also spent a lot of time at the White House. So who was it that Gluckert was spending so much time with at the White House. Which of the Bush Administration anti-gay bigots was spending so much time with Gluckert?
And one more question: Whenever a politician takes a strong anti-gay stand, shouldn’t we immediately and automatically remove them from political office and require them to go to therapy so that they can work out their conflictedness regarding their sexual attractions toward members of the same sex?
Stephen Colbert argues about Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell in front of a large crowd of troops.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Formidable Opponent - Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell | ||||
|
||||
And now here’s more on Dan Choi, yet another gay Arabic language specialist fired by the military. This is insanity. It’s time for Barack Obama to step in and for Congress to get busy repealing Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Gabriel Winant lays out a strong case at Salon.com: Rush Limbaugh just can’t stop talking about butts.
Critics say that Rush Limbaugh likes to talk out of his ass. But that’s only half the story: Rush can’t stop talking about butt, either. It’s too bad that Sigmund Freud’s long dead, because Rush is the old shrink’s dream patient, with an obvious diagnosis: Limbaugh has an anal fixation.
Based on Winant’s long list of evidence, it does make you wonder whether Rush needs to go see a therapist to figure out why it is that this “family values” guy has now divorced three women. Maybe we’ve got yet another classic case of reaction formation on our hands, and that would certainly explain a lot of Limbaugh’s hostility.
Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach is a fighter pilot and weapons systems for the Air Force. Aubrey Sarvis writes that Fehrenbach has excelled at everything he has done for the Air Force. His reward? They are kicking him out of the Air Force because he is gay.
The Air Force is about to discharge this guy, a virtual poster boy for Air Force recruiting, because he is gay? Someone has to be kidding. This is sheer madness.
Let me check my calendar . . . yep, it’s 2009. Obama is in office. This is insane. And it’s been done many times before, for instance, when the military kicked out dozens of gay Arabic language specialists during the Iraq invasion because they were also gay. Sarvis advises that we need far more than an executive order to stop this madness to protect the remaining 65,000 gays and lesbians in the military. We need to change DADT immediately. We must rip it apart and choose our military personnel on one criterion: whether they can do the job.
A law is a law, even a bad law. Our country and service members are suffering the consequences as we watch this theater of the absurd play out. We need this new 111th Congress and this new President to engage each other immediately and with a sense of urgency to stop this obvious madness.
To compound this tragedy, Fehrenbach was two years shy of retiring with a full pension. See Fehrenbach’s interview by Rachel Maddow at the top link.
This article from the 8/24/08 edition of the Colfax Record indicates that Christianity once had same-sex ceremonies akin to marriages:
Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).
These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiated in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.
Fascinating stuff. The article provides quite a bit of detail. This was the first I had heard of this. It does present a challenge to the claims of contemporary Christians who abhor homosexual marriage because the concept of marriage has “always” involved one man and one woman.
“Christian” marriage is outlawed by the Bible. I’m not exaggerating. You’ll find all of the stunning details, along with citations to the Bible, at Dwindling in Unbelief. How does the Bible outlaw traditional “Christian” marriages? Here are some of the Bible rules listed:
This list list only includes the first seven rules. Go to Dwindling in Unbelief for the details and the pinpoint citations. Don’t just trust me on these rules. Go read the Bible. These rules are all there, clearly stated.
Conclusion: We need to march to America’s heartland and start picketing traditional Christian marriage because it is clear that traditional Christian marriage contravenes the clear teachings of the Bible.
In response to one of Hank’s posts from a week or so ago, Erich posted the Internet commercial put out by NOM, the National Organization for Marriage, which is, in my mind, almost a parody of itself. The ridiculous assumptions they put forth - that THEIR freedoms are at-risk, that schools are teaching gay marriage, that they are losing something if gay men and women are allowed to marry - would be laughable if not for the fact that a portion of our population will watch it and nod vigorously in agreement.
I think these “storms” say it better:
–
On YouTube, you’ll actually find many of these parodies - thank goodness so many jumped on board to point out the utter absurdity of that horrible ad.
[If you're viewing this post from the home page, click on the title for 2 additional parodies.]
Amazon.com has just initiated a new marketing policy. They are stripping away the sales ranking of any book with so-called Adult Content. Here’s their little explanation:
“In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
What this mean in effect, however, is that books primarily with gay and lesbian content are being singled out for exclusion from database searches. It is being applied in a bigoted and surprisingly hamfisted manner to conform to someone’s standard of what constitutes Offensive Material.
Adult Content generally means anything with more than coyly suggested sex in it. However, as a sample of the books not having their sales ranking stripped away, consider these:
–Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
–Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
–and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
These book sell very well, generally, so it’s obvious that there’s a dollar connection to this new policy. Midlist—the vast majority of books—will be targeted.
