Lovely. Watch the video. Then I have a correction and a question:

Correction: Molotov Mitchell claims that the Ugandan anti-gay legislation only calls for the death penalty in cases of pedophilia, sexual abuse, knowingly spreading HIV, and “using power to coerce.” Molotov Mitchell is doing something usually referred to as “lying through his teeth.” He is likely aware that those five people in the world who respect him and view him as a trendy, macho guy are far too brainwashed to check his facts for themselves. Sadly, we have the text of the bill, and we were taught to read when we were young, so we can easily show you were Molotov Mitchell is lying. The death penalty is called for in cases of “aggravated homosexuality,” which is explained thus:

3. Aggravated homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the

(a) person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years;

(b) offender is a person living with HIV;

(c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offence is committed;

(d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offence is committed;

(e) victim of the offence is a person with disability;

(f) offender is a serial offender, or

(g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to have unlawful carnal connection with any person of the same sex,

(2) A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.

(3) Where a person is charged with the offence under this section, that person shall undergo a medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.

Okay. If a person has same gender sex with someone under 18, they can be put to death. Even if they’re 19. That’s #1. A person can be sentenced to death if they have same gender sex while HIV positive (even protected! even if they divulge their HIV status!). Thats #2. A person can be sentenced to death if they have same gender sex with someone they have authority over. Presumably this includes a boss having sex with one of his employees, coerced or not. That’s #3. A person can be sentenced to death for having same gender sex with a person who has a “disability.” Again, it is not stated that the sex must be coerced to merit that distinction. Simply that the “victim” must be disabled. That’s #4. Oh, but look at this one: If a person is a “serial offender,” they may also be put to death. This seems to mean that if they are caught having regular old gay sex MULTIPLE TIMES, they are subject to the death penalty. This, presumably, would put most sexually active gay people, having garden variety safe sex WITH THEIR PARTNERS, in danger of going before the, um, Death Panel. (Oh, look, death panels are real. They’re just in Africa.)

So. Either Molotov Mitchell is:

1. Stupid. (Entirely possible.)

2. A liar. (As a member of the Religious Right, this is likely.)

3. Both. (The likeliest option.)

So that’s the correction.

Now my question: When I watched the video, an advertisement for Woolite played beforehand. Woolite is made by Reckitt Benckiser. How do they feel about their name being associated with lying hate speech? Maybe you should ask them.

(h/t Right Wing Watch)

UPDATE: I only watched the video once, but it seems that a revolving group of products are advertising in this video, including Resolve and Dell. Jeremy Hooper and Warren Throckmorton have more on how to contact the companies involved, and Warren’s corrections of Mitchell’s lies are also thorough.

I am no Maureen Dowd fan, but her op-ed today has me cheering:

The church gave up its credibility for Lent.

HA. And:

Canon 1404 states that “The First See is judged by no one.” But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, as my dad used to say. Somebody has to tell the First See when it’ blind ‚Äî and mute ‚Äî to deaf children in America and Italy.

And, number four in the Vatican’s playbook on handling the scandals:

Demonize gays, as Karl Rove did in 2004.

In an ad in The Times on Tuesday, Bill Donohue, the Catholic League president, offered this illumination: “The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis,’ when all along it’ been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.”

Donohue is still talking about the problem as an indiscretion rather than a crime. If it mostly involves men and boys, that’ partly because priests for many years had unquestioned access to boys.

Read it all, as they say on the internet.

(h/t Dan Savage)

Larry King hosts the debate between Sinead O’Connor, the intellectually dishonest, anti-gay Bill Donohue, former CNN anchor Thomas Roberts, himself abused by a priest as a teenager. and a couple of priests. Bill Donohue basically continues his campaign of not caring about the victims and defending the Pope no matter what. He also continues his disgusting argument that raping minors isn’t so bad if they’ve hit puberty.

The only good thing about this scandal is that it’s exposing people like Bill Donohue for the rape apologists they truly are.

There’s an entertaining moment in this segment where Sinead O’Connor says something very sensible, and indeed, conciliatory — she is, after all, a committed Catholic — and Bill Donohue loses his mind. I’m going to guess he’s not accustomed to respecting a woman’s forthright opinion, but again, that’s just a guess.

In this third clip, Bill Donohue hilariously claims that he is “second to nobody” in fighting for victims of sexual abuse. Amazing. The self-aggrandizement is simply amazing:

(h/t Joe.My.God)

Peter caught me making a comment on here about Linda Harvey, and he wrote a big mad “Evan is so mean” post about it. But I’ll do you the courtesy of getting everybody up to speed on where the comment came from, and then I’ll explain it further. This press release is from a talk Linda gave wherein, among other things, she defended her friend and SPLC-certified hate group leader Scott Lively, he who went to Uganda to spread the pernicious lie that gays were responsible for the Rwandan genocide:

Harvey said the Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong when it recently classified several anti-gay groups, including Scott Lively’ Abiding Truth Ministries, as “hate groups.”

“I can’t stand the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are such a hypocritical organization. They don’t cover any of the violence that happens to any of the conservatives.I love what they do with the Klu Klux Klan and racial issues, . They need to go back stay out of this other stuff. They need to get out of classifying hate groups, family groups. I mean I am a normal ordinary person I just happen to have conservative values. I don’t hate anybody. I don’t go on anybody’ websites. I don’t picket funerals. I can’t stand Fred Phelps. I think he is funded by the gays,” Harvey said. “I think he is.”

She said she and Lively have both worked on the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, and that she “loves” Lively.

Ms. Harvey then showed up in the comments section of that press release, and she was shocked, shocked (shocked!), that anyone could have a problem with her dear friend Mr. Lively (there is video at the above link of Lively speaking, by the way):

And how is Scott Lively a “Holocaust revisionist”? Don’t get that one. Are you trying to imply anti-semitism that does not exist? Listen to my daily radio show and hear my support for the state of Israel, much more than you’ll get from most of the left these days, including the Obama administration.

How is Scott Lively a “Holocaust revisionist,” asketh The Linda.

Let us explain this: Scott Lively wrote a book called The Pink Swastika, which argued that the Third Reich was, at its core, a homosexual movement. Indeed, the SPLC (Peter’s personal boogeyman now, apparently) handily disposed of the book’s malevolently asinine thesis in 2005:

In 1995, a book calledThe Pink Swastika made similar claims about the Nazis’ treatment of homosexuals during the Holocaust.

Written by fundamentalist activists Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika says that rather than being victimized by the Nazis, gay men in Hitler’s inner circle actually helped mastermind the Holocaust.

“While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” write Lively and Abrams. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ ‚Äî the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted ‚Äî we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.’”

Historians agree that this “reality” is utterly false. But many anti-gay crusaders have used the “gay Nazi” myth as proof that gay people are immoral and destructive.

(…)

In fact, while the number of homosexuals who died in the Holocaust does not approach the number of Jewish or Gypsy victims, the historical record shows that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. They were routinely sent to concentration camps and marked with a pink triangle on their prison garb.

They were not systematically exterminated. But huge numbers are believed to have died in the work camps, along with an untold number of homosexual Jews, Gypsies and other “defectives” who were sent to extermination camps.

The myth that Nazis condoned or promoted homosexuality sprang up as a slander against Nazi leaders by their socialist opponents in the 1930s. Only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler’s inner circle, Ernest Rohm, is believed by credible historians to have been gay.

The “gay Nazi” slander stuck, though, partly because German laws against homosexuals remained in place for a quarter of a century after World War II ended. That effectively silenced many homosexual victims of the Holocaust from telling their stories. A landmark survivor’s memoir, The Men With the Pink Triangle, began to break that silence in 1972.

Read that whole piece, please. I’ll wait. And then you tell me whether or not Scott Lively is a Holocaust revisionist, Ms. Linda.

Now. Holocaust revisionism is anti-Semitism. Here’s the comment I made:

Oh, and Linda, “Holocaust revisionism” does not only apply to direct anti-semitism. Of course, it could be argued that Scott Lively is anti-semitic since he co-opts the Holocaust in order to lie about gay people, to satisfy whatever mental illness he suffers from. In fact, yes, now that I think of it, his work IS anti-semitism, because it belittles the reality of the Holocaust in order to score points. And by supporting him, you are supporting that strain of anti-semitism.

(Then again, all fundamentalist Christians are anti-semitic at their core, considering the fact that they actually believe their apocalyptical horseshit.)

And you just parrot right along with it, because you’re too virulent to see that if your Jesus was here, he’d probably lay you out like the Pharisee you are.

Let’s get this out of the way: There is one word in that comment I would change. I would remove the word “all.” Because, quite frankly, it was late, and I popped off. Because the truth of the matter is that many fundamentalist Christians do not realize that some the beliefs they are taught, and some of the beliefs which they espouse about the state of Israel are profoundly anti-Semitic. So it’s a mistake to say that they “all” are, because I’m quite sure that many who hold the beliefs I’m about to explain have never taken the time to reflect on the inherent anti-Semitism contained therein.

But that’s one word in a larger train of thought, which I will now flesh out, for the record: A particular and prominent belief system in Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity is known as “Christian Zionism,” which is inspired by “pre-millenial dispensationalist” eschatology. (Think: Left Behind; Rapture Ready, etc.) In its simplest form, this means that these Christians believe that for Christ to return, the Jewish people must set up a state in Israel. (Done.) At which point:

Uri Avnery, is the leader of Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group. He was discussing the theology of many Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christians in a 2002-JUN essay, and wrote: “According to its theological beliefs, the Jews must congregate in Palestine and establish a Jewish state on all its territory so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ possible…the evangelists don’t like to dwell openly on what comes next: before the coming [of the Messiah], the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who don’t will perish in a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon. This is basically an anti-Semitic teaching…” 1 This teaching implies that Jews who remain true to God’s covenants in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) will be all exterminated in a massive genocide that may be more numerous than the Nazi Holocaust.

This theology is most popular (and growing) in extremely conservative, fundamentalist churches, from Pentecostal to Southern Baptist to non-denominational, etc.

It is an anti-Semitic belief system. Period! It takes all of the humanity away from the Jewish people and instead makes them pawns in the biggest “screw you” ever doled out by a (supposed) deity in human history! It ends the story that Fundamentalists believe started in the Garden of Eden by exterminating the race God called his “chosen.”

It is helpful to understand this, because often you will see fundamentalist Christians (John Hagee, etc.) expound on their deep, deep “support” for Israel. Indeed, in Peter’s “big mad Evan Hurst is so mean” post, he says this:

Surely Hurst is not unaware of the fact that the “fundamentalist” Christians he so obviously despises are historically a bastion of support for the State of Israel.

No, Pete. Evan Hurst is all too aware, and is just as cynical as many Jewish Americans about the supposed “support” Christian fundamentalists have for Israel. Because this belief system is not inspiring them to “support Israel” out of love for the Jewish people. It’s, rather, about propping up Israel so that Jesus will come back and take his final revenge on everybody they don’t like. Jews, gays, Muslims, you-name-it. Read Revelation 20. This is the moment of triumph in the premillenial dispensationalist Christian Fundamentalist worldview, which, again, is extremely popular in those circles. This is the moment where Jesus comes back and just cold kicks everybody’s ass. They project all of their perceived victimization onto this imaginary moment in the future where their white warrior will come back and avenge everything they claim to have suffered at the hands of, you know, whoever is upsetting them that day.

Could I have fleshed out that comment more at the time? Sure. Maybe I should’ve. Well, now I did!

But, Peter LaBarbera, for perhaps the first and last time, you’re right about one solitary thing: I shouldn’t have said “all.”

The rest of it stands.

At least Truth Wins Out has a comments section where people can air their views on things, as opposed to AFTAH, where freedom of thought, expression, and even occasionally poorly worded popping off is deemed far too threatening.

(Oh, and Peter does announce, finally, that he suddenly remembered to award the Gay Grinch award to Wayne! He forgot to do it for three months, because, well, you see, what had happened was…)

RELATED: Peter earlier issued a quote-unquote challenge to me, to Wayne, and to Jeremy Hooper, Joe Jervis and Rea Carey to answer a question that this site and Good-As-You have already answered at length: Should other groups like the Catholic Church and the Family Research Council also be classified in the same SPLC-certified hate-boat upon which Peter now sets sail? There is a simple answer: that the SPLC has very specific guidelines for what crosses over into “hate” territory, which they use to decide who is indeed a force for genuine hatred in this country. That’s the simple answer. For a more fleshed out answer, may I recommend that you visit Good-As-You because Jeremy took the ball and ran with that question.

UPDATE: Joe.My.God has also now responded to Peter’s Hate Challenge Wolverine Wankfest or whatever it is.

Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian‚Ñ¢, gave an exclusive interview to Instinct magazine, and it’s a must-read. One thing I noticed, though, is that her satire is so spot on that, except for an exaggeration here and there, it’s hard to tell Betty’s silliness and Linda Harvey’s virulence apart. (Again, except for Betty’s obsession with high fashion. And the fact that she’s more honest than they are.) For instance:

Nevertheless, such attention provides a lovely opportunity to introduce homosexuals to my BASH [Baptists Are Saving Homosexuals] ministry. I want gay men everywhere to know that Jesus touched me. And He can touch you, too. … BASH has raised millions in tithes for my tax-free Christian ministries, helped politically marginalize homosexuals and almost cured close to two men from their addiction to penis. As all Conservative Christians who just happen to hate homosexuals anyway know, being “gay” is just a silly choice, a choice most often made by anti-gay Republicans between the hours of 10 PM and Midnight.

Brilliant.

But how is that really different from Linda Harvey’s career, or Peter LaBarbera’s career? Besides the fact that Betty Bowers is more honest about the actual results of the “ex-gay” ministries that Peter and Linda market, I mean.

Just like Peter LaBarbera and Linda Harvey, Betty bristles at being compared to Fred Phelps:

Other? You’re comparing me to Fred Phelps? Darling, that’ a bit like asking Tom Ford what he thinks about fellow designer Jessica Simpson. Honestly, I find Westboro Baptist appalling in their crude eagerness to reveal what they’re really up to. … We may hate all the same people, but we have learned to couch our loathing in more focus-group-friendly phrases than those ham-fisted prairie yokels at Westboro, with their blunt invective, polygamist-compound couture and patent unfamiliarity with hair conditioner. We talk in code. We don’t “hate fags;” we “pray for sinful homosexuals.” Frankly, these unsophisticated loudmouths are showing our hand. And politics, even more than a bathroom mirror, is no place for candor. I say: Love the sinner — hate their shoes!

God, it’s the interview Linda Harvey would give if she was hooked to a polygraph! (Except for the part about shoes.)

Seriously, read it all.

Instinct also posted Betty’s wonderful Bible lesson on “traditional marriage,” so if you haven’t seen that, watch and take notes, for there will be a quiz.

The Catholic League’ Bill Donahue Is More Interested In Scapegoats Than Solutions, Says TWO

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out today harshly condemned the Catholic League and its President Bill Donohue for its full-page New York Times ad in which the organization served as an enabler for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and sought to deflect blame for the crisis by smearing the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

The offensive ad sought to exonerate the Pope and other priests of blame who are ensnared in a widening sexual abuse scandal that reaches across the globe. Instead of offering an apology for sinful behavior, the Catholic League served as apologists and used the ad to try to deflect the crisis by attacking gay priests.

“This was a disgraceful ad and an unconscionable attempt to smear gay and lesbian people,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Clearly, the Catholic League is more interested in finding scapegoats than solutions.”

In today’ ad, entitled, “Going for the Vatican Jugular”, Donohue wrote, “The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis,’ when all along it has been a homosexual crisis.”

“We should remind Donohue that there is no child sexual abuse crisis in gay community centers, neighborhoods, churches or social organizations,” said TWO’ Besen. “This nightmare has to do with Catholic pedophile priests and those who served as their enablers. The Catholic League thinks it is mounting a defense, but it is only exacerbating the pain felt by the defenseless who were taken advantage of by authority figures in the church.”

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community against anti-gay misinformation campaigns, counters the so-called “ex-gay” industry and educates about the lives of LGBT people. Our goal is to help individuals be true to themselves and lead genuine lives of honesty and integrity.

Oh, but of course. Bill Donohue took this ad out in The New York Times:

His unwillingness to lay responsibility at the feet of the Vatican is unsurprising, and grows ever more tiring. His argument that, because hey, other entities didn’t report the child rape either, is childish. His argument that because many of the victims were going through puberty is specious and disgusting, as it simultaneously says “Hey, this isn’t so bad because some of their voices had dropped and everything,” yet also allows him to scapegoat an entire community of people, most of whom aren’t even Catholic, for the egregious sins of the Roman Catholic Church leadership. His blame-the-victim mindset in the last paragraph is appalling, yet typical for the rape culture mindset of some conservative Catholic men.

This is what happens when a person’s entire worldview is based around the dictates of what some consider to be a criminal organization which claims infallibility and a direct line to the divine. It’s all meaningless, of course, but unfortunately, religious entities such as this are allowed to go relatively unchallenged in today’s world, and when they are challenged, they feign stigmata and cry “victim!” as loudly as they possibly can.

And sadly, this behavior is so common that millions merely roll their eyes and move on.

(h/t Pam Spaulding)

Weekly Column

In a self-righteous, moralizing speech in Michigan last week, right wing radio personality Linda Harvey blithely offered this gem when questioned about discrimination against LGBT partners who want to marry.

“They can still marry someone of the opposite gender,” Harvey said.

This flippant response was not surprising. Self-styled “family values” activists have long turned a blind eye to the destruction caused by such “arranged” marriages. There are support groups, such as The Straight Spouse Network and Gay Husbands/Straight Wives, to pick up the pieces after these unions implode.

In her propaganda-laced presentation, Harvey (pictured) portrayed gay men as living an unhealthy existence. She cherry-picked medical data while blithely ignoring the positive affect marriage would have on the health of LGBT people. In the New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks wrote about what social science has to say about the affects of marriage:

“According to another [study] being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year,” writes Brooks. “If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy.”

If Harvey and others of her ilk were genuinely concerned about the health of LGBT couples, they would be in favor of allowing them to marry. Instead, such hypocrites smugly mask their contempt with transparently saccharine professions of concern. They even offer “help” for LGBT people who are unhappy — while simultaneously working to undermine relationships that might bring joy. Is this not a conflict of interest?

Today’s New York Times science section has an article, “No Matter What, We Pay For Others’ Bad Habits”, that highlights a plethora of factors that determine health:

“Unhealthy habits are one factor in disease, but so are social status, income, family dynamics, education and genetics.”

Homosexuality is not a habit, of course, while homophobia is. Indeed, this preoccupation with prejudice by religious extremists directly affects several of these key measures of health. Every time an LGBT person is rejected from his or her house of worship, this has a tangible impact on their social status. When gay and lesbian couples are taxed at discriminatory rates it affects income.

Gay youth who drop out of school because they are bullied or kicked out of their homes have both their education and family dynamics torn apart. San Francisco State researcher Caitlin Ryan found that, LGBT “Teens who experienced negative feedback [when they came out] were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.”

One would think that priggish proselytizers such as Harvey would read these alarming statistics and oppose bullying in schools. Instead, her organization, Mission America, is dedicated to attacking the “Day of Silence,” an annual event where students remain quiet for a day to show their support for LGBT peers.

Instead of insightful views from a faith perspective on Mission America’s website, Harvey’ organization offers manipulative questions designed to incite students against their LGBT classmates. These include:

• Is there any room for finding homosexuality‚Äîdare we say it‚Äîrepulsive? Or is that response now going to be viewed as “hate”?
• Is a student allowed to say a firm “no” to a homosexual advance?

• Is the Day of Silence really a back-door way to silence valid criticism and gain approval for questionable lifestyles?

So, the unctuous Harvey is concerned for our health, but portrays LGBT teenagers as repulsive predators with a furtive political agenda. I’d hate to see what Harvey is capable of saying if she did not love us so much.

Harvey also prattled on in her presentation, and website, about the supposed dangers of homosexuality – particularly contracting HIV. Not surprisingly, Harvey actively promotes abstinence-only “education” in schools, which is proven to be ineffective. She recklessly presents HIV as a gay disease — when it can be contracted by anyone who fails to take adequate precautions.

It is important to note that even if a gay man contracted HIV today, he still might outlive judgmental religious extremists who are so quick to condemn. Bible-Belt states are generally the fattest, have the highest concentration of smokers, have the most divorces and are even more likely to have traffic accidents due to aggressive driving.

While these busybodies worry about our hearts and happiness, their own children may one-day die prematurely of heart attacks by inhaling Happy Meals. In conservative areas, the fast food drive-thru might as well be a drive-by-shooting.

Isn’t it time our foes stopped obsessing about narrow-minded “morality” and spent more time addressing their own mortality caused by gluttonous and destructive lifestyles? Averting their obsessive gaze from the gays to focus on their own families is quintessentially a “pro-life” position.

Maybe education reform should have been our number one priority instead of health-care? It is clear that for Teabaggers many children were left behind. In fact, I think the only book they ever read was Left Behind, the apocalyptic fundamentalist novel.

Good luck with your moovemint!

When pop singer and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Ricky Martin disclosed Monday that he is a “fortunate homosexual man,” responses ranged from sincere congratulations to “what took so long?” Christian Right organizations have been slow to respond; no doubt they will in the coming days.

Martin, 38, has been a celebrity since his days in Menudo in the 1980s, and since 1991 as a solo artist. That is a long time to endure the dilemma that confronts most LGBT public figures: Shall I be sexually honest — or concede to the twin pressures of a lucrative opposite-gender fanbase that wants to dream of romance with me, and a socially conservative marketplace that rewards secrecy or, worse, faux heterosexuality.

There are valid reasons (besides prosperity) for celebrities to preserve their private lives.

Sanity, for one — it’s difficult to carry out a healthy social and romantic life when it’s conducted under the glare of floodlights and the roaming eyes of TMZ, the National Enquirer, and countless gay gossips.

Avoidance of typecasting is another. Someone whose private life is unknown finds it much easier to secure and succeed with a wide range of different themes and audience demographics, whereas Ellen Degeneres and Elton John — successful as they are — have few options.

Some may argue that, for political reasons, celebrities who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender should come out for the benefit of the “community.” I, for one, think celebrities should take their time and come out on their own terms — not simply because activists like us might want them to.