From “The Onion”
If God Had Wanted Me To Be Accepting Of Gays, He Would Have Given Me The Warmth And Compassion To Do So
. . . It's a simple matter of logic, really. God made me who I am, and who I am is a cold, anti-gay zealot. Thus, I abhor gay people because God made me that way. Why is that so hard to understand?
Compassion, tolerance, understanding, basic decency, the ability to put myself in another person's position: God could have endowed me with any of those traits and yet—here is the crucial part—He didn't. Why? Because the Creator of the Universe wants me to demonize homosexuals in an effort to strip them of their fundamental human rights.
. . . So unless our almighty Lord and Savior decides to change His mind about my ability to empathize on even the most basic level—which I find highly unlikely—then everyone is just going to have to accept the fact that I'm going to keep on hating homosexuals. And I know that He will fill me with the strength to remain mindless and hurtful in the face of adversity.
You can find the rest here.
HT: MoHoHawaii
Concise if somewhat inaccessible
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.
No idea where this comes from. Found it on a boy blog I follow. I suspect it's not original to the author of the blog. I see sentences constructed like this and know they are inaccessible to a large segment of the population. It's not that they couldn't understand it, but a first parsing doesn't bear fruit so they just check out. In the past I've found it necessary to translate statements in Ivory Tower Speak to be more accessible to my clients.
On the other hand, I think of right-wing buffoons like Beck and Limbaugh and have guilty fantasies of an aneurysm cause by intellectual overload to their atrophied and addlepated brains.
Repealing DADT
I finally got around to watching Obama's comments to GLBT leaders at the White House. I must say I was impressed. His comments about repealing DADT in "a way that will take" seem especially relevant and wise given the recent murder of gay Navy sailor August Provost. He was shot multiple times and set on fire...but it wasn't a hate crime. So, what? The perpetrator merely had a psychotic episode? August's mother says she found out about the details of his murder on TV and not from the Navy. Something stinks here and it isn't brine.
Obama said over and over (paraphrasing) "You can't just change policy. You have to change hearts." If what is happening at Camp Pendelton is indicative of the cultural climate in the military, you can repeal DADT, but that isn't going to make it safe for GLBT service members to serve openly and safely.
Utter horseshit
When I first heard about the raid on the Rainbow Lounge I knew something was fishy. However, these comments from the Ft. Worth chief of police are unreal.
You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive. I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."
OK. For starters, you call putting a man in a hospital with a brain injury "restraint?" Are you kidding me?
I'm not buying this "he groped me" bullshit. No one in his right mind is going to grope a cop checking IDs at a bar. So, either the cops are lying through their teeth or the guy was so completely inebriated he wasn't in his right mind. Let's assume just for a moment the latter was the case. How does that give anyone—much less cops who should be held to a higher standard as professionals—the right to assault the perpetrator?
This kind of behavior is indefensible. Period. The fact that some folk are still peddling the supposition that the unwelcome advances of a gay man are somehow worse than the unwelcome advances of a straight man and thus justify any retaliatory response not only shows where we have come from, but also how far we still have to go.
HT: Joe.My.God.
Joe waxes eloquent…again.
Joe.My.God (re)posts his annual response to the hand-wringing that invariably follows Pride season. Folk with assimilationist tendencies fret about the "freak show" that can only hurt our chances to be accepted by society at large. Joe does an excellent job of responding to such impulses and I couldn't agree more. I would only add that I say to them the same thing I say to Christian whack jobs who get their panties all in a knot about homosexuality: If you don't think it's "right" then don't do it, but don't you dare presume to tell anyone else they shouldn't/can't.
Oh, you could test run a "defective" free parade. You could form urban anti-tranny squads and go around to all the gayborhoods on the morning of the parade and give all the drag queens 50% off coupons for Loehmann's, offer good during the parade only. And they'd GO, of course, cuz hey, those girls love a bargain. But the resultant bland, humorless, "normal" gay parade wouldn't change the course of the gay movement one bit. The part of straight America that is repulsed by drag queens is quite possibly even more terrified by the so-called "normal" gays, because "those clever calculating creatures look JUST LIKE US, and can infiltrate and get access to our precious children. And that's been their disgusting plan all along, of course."
...I'm not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It's OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our "debauched" celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.
Kirby on Utah Pride
It was the most polite event I've been to since I can remember. But then I wasn't a street preacher.
On the northwest corner, a couple of preachers were telling passersby they were going to hell, and in turn being told to "[deleted] off."
The one with the "Homo Sex is Sin" sign was besieged by a dozen furious lesbians, a fact I deduced partly because of how they looked but mostly because they kept saying so at the top of their lungs.
The other preacher periodically held up two female ends of electrical cord and jammed them together to show, I guess, that the fit didn't work.
Neither did the object lesson. For me, it begged all sorts of gospel imponderables about biblically approved amps, volts, etc. Is Heaven 220 or 110? Are power strips brothels or plural marriage?
Because you’re gay, dummy…
I saw Swan Lake at the Vienna Opera House when I was on my mission. I left somewhat underwhelmed and haven't been really big on ballet ever since. Maybe it was because we were in the stehplaetze (standing places) and even with rails to lean on, three hours is a damn long time to be standing—they're super cheap and in the old emperor's box so the view of the stage is superb—or maybe it was because there were too many girls....
I think I could have stood and watched that for three hours. Perhaps I begin to understand why so many people gush about Swan Lake now.
I had a similar experience a while back with a movie called Another Gay Movie. I've tried watching similar adolescent hijinks movies and always found them boring and unfunny. I turned American Pie off after about 15 minutes. Another Gay Movie? As my little brother would say, "I was cramping." Yes, it was adolescent. Yes, it was predictable, but I laughed out loud several times and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
A gay man (or woman) spends most of his (or her) life swimming against the hetero-current of society. When one occasionally finds a gay eddy in which to rest, it's a wonderful respite.
Multiple levels of WTF?
A 9-year old has plead down a premeditated murder charge to negligent homicide in Arizona. A 9-year old. Apparently the kid shot and killed his father and a man renting a room in the home. No one really knows why. I haven't been able to find any talk of a history of violent behavior. There was some talk of abuse. The kid claimed he was keeping tally of spankings and had vowed his 1000th would be his last. However, the statement is inadmissible because a parent or guardian was not present when he made it. There is also the little problem that the tally sheet he claims to have kept cannot be found. It is complicated even more by the fact that none of the townspeople are buying it. Which doesn't mean it didn't happen, but how are you going to prove it in a court of law if there is no physical evidence, no record of complaints and no history of behavioral issues?
No motive has ever been cited, which seems a bit odd to me if you're charging the kid with premeditated murder. But it was this comment, over at the Salt Lake Tribune that just takes the cake.
This story has been stinking to the rafters since I first heard about it. So we are never going to find out if the dad and his pal were a gay couple or prone to child molestation or abuse? Wrap it all up in a tidy plea bargain and save the reputation of the deceased and his family? I say foul! We should have the truth. Even kids don't shoot people for no reason. This little boy executed his dad and the dad's friend with very little emotion apparently. This usually means they had it coming somehow.
What does the sexuality of his father have to do with anything? Gay people are no more likely to be molesters or abusive than the population at large, superstitions to the contrary notwithstanding. This kind of nonsense is as irritating as it is painful. I have two daughters. When it became apparent that a son was not in the cards for me, I was a little disappointed. I think most men would be. You know how I used to console myself? By telling myself that God was protecting my potential sons from me...
But I digress. What if they were a gay couple? Is he trying to say that would be sufficient cause for them to "have it coming?" What if the kid felt it was his God given duty to "kill faggots?" Whose reputation is on the line then? That of a sick little town that managed to teach an 8-year old he has a license to kill?
Oh, and as for "the truth?" Honestly buddy, it's none of your damn business.
Courage Campaign Fights Ken Starr
"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign
Freedom to Marry Week. Get Involved.
(Sometimes the player says the video doesn't exist. Not true. Try reloading the page. It usually works the second time. Is Vimeo having a hard time keeping up w/ the traffic??)
Well, I’ll be.
Governor John Huntsman has come out in favor of civil unions and supports the Common Ground Initiative. A republican. In Utah. Who'd have guessed? I guess miracles haven't ceased.
Freedom to Marry Week. Get Involved.