In addition to being a tireless advocate for his constituents and the American LGBT community, Rep. Barney Frank is well known for telling things like he sees ‘em. I find his candor and passion refreshing, especially in the often stilted world of contemporary American political discourse.

Three of my favorite examples of Rep. Frank’s famously quick wit follow below:

1.) In 1995, Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey infamously referred to Rep. Frank as “Barney Fag” in an interview. Armey retracted the slur and chalked it up to an innocent slip of the tongue. Frank responded: “I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

2.) During the height of debate in the summer of 2009 over the then-proposed (and subsequently enacted) health reform bill, a constituent confronted Rep. Frank at a town hall meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts about his support for health reform, asking why he continued to support what she offensively termed a “Nazi policy.” Frank responded:

“On what planet do you spend most of your time? … You stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis. My answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

Watch:

3.) Rep. Frank made the following remarks at the enrollment ceremony in December 2010 where Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal law:

“Four years ago, a Republican running for congress in Indiana said… [that] if [his Democratic opponent] won, Nancy Pelosi would become speaker, and she would let me enact the ‘radical homosexual agenda.’ So let me own up to that agenda: it’s to be protected against violent crimes driven by bigotry, it’s to be able to get married, it’s to be able to get a job, and it’s to be able to fight for our country. For those who are worried about the ‘radical homosexual agenda,’ let me put them on notice: two down, two to go.”

Watch:

If you’re looking for more of Barney Frank’s greatest hits (including an epic takedown of Bill O’Reilly and a confrontation with our favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann), Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic has a great compilation.

As you all know, Apple pulled the bigoted Exodus iPhone app after our petition drew over 150,000 signatures from customers demanding that the company treat anti-gay apps the same way they would racist or anti-Semitic apps. In reality, it never should have been approved in the first place, but mistakes are made sometimes, and Apple has corrected it. Unfortunately, a writer at another gay blog seems to have a problem with that, so I’d like to take a few minutes to set the record straight by responding to any misunderstandings they may have about what this was and was not about, starting with our old, original logo, with its completely wrongheaded accompanying caption:

Here is the oh-so-cute caption they placed beneath that graphic: “…But only if opposing viewpoints are effectively silenced?”

Um, no. The entire Religious Right has a louder voice in this country than their numbers would suggest, and no one is taking anything from them that falls under the category of “freedom of speech.” But more on that later. Let’s have a look-see at the article:

So why are we not exactly celebrating here at AfterElton? First, we’re bracing for the inevitable: complaints from groups like Exodus, AFA and NOM that this is yet another example of “gay activists” bullying and trying to silence Christians.

Yes, that’s what they say every single time their fee fees get hurt, on every loud speaker they can find. Their views, somehow, are never silenced, especially by Truth Wins Out and the other gay news sources which actually are experts on the Religious Right, who make a daily practice of quoting these people’s words verbatim. If we were trying to “silence” their voices, we’d hide under a rock and hope that makes them go away.  Moving on:

Second, and more importantly, as vehemently as we might disagree with Exodus International’s mission and beliefs, we think they should be allowed to express them.

And they do. Moving on:

Exodus International’s smartphone app was basically a platform for their blogs, podcasts, latest news and FAQs – essentially the same material you could find if you went to their website. It’s not as if the thing was marketed as some sort of magical/religious gay cure in and of itself.

AND what does Exodus International do for a living?! They market “freedom from the homosexual lifestyle!” If one spent any time with the app itself, one would have found that the app opened up a world of false information and defamation of LGBT people. Indeed, Dr. Gary Remafedi specifically wrote a letter to Apple, stating that the Exodus app featured misrepresentations of his own scientific research, and that therefore they should remove the app.

And even if it was, anybody offended and yes, disgusted even, by the Exodus International app could of course choose not to download and install it.

Ah, yes. Freedom of choice. Just like you can choose not to go to a website you don’t like/are disgusted by. We’re winding up to the smackdown here, folks, give me two more paragraphs.

But honestly, how many people were offended by the application itself? How many people even saw the thing? Certainly not 150,000. It’s more likely that most of the people signing that Change.org petition simply didn’t like Exodus International and all that they stand for.

Would 150,000 people signing a petition against a KKK app need to actually see/download it to express their outrage?

Apple says the app was removed because it was “offensive to large groups of people.” But lots of things are offensive to large groups of people. Does the GLBT community really want that to be the standard for what is allowed on Apple’s increasingly pivotal app store? How soon until Apple gets a petition to remove Grindr? What if The Trevor Project tried to release an app to assist gay teens?

Indeed, and I wish Apple had worded that better, but the reason we petitioned for its removal is because it went against Apple’s own corporate policies in that it was defamatory against an entire minority group, and moreover, it spread false information about that group.  So, if a bunch of wingnuts whine and start a petition against Grindr, they’re going to have to prove that Grindr defames them in some way, and it doesn’t.  There are thousands of Christian apps available, and it’s important to note why we petitioned against this app.  It has nothing to do with “opposing viewpoints,” and it certainly doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the First freaking Amendment.

Speaking of gay teens, Truth Wins Out claimed that a key rationale for the petition was “stopping a virulently anti-gay organization from peddling false speech at the expense of vulnerable LGBT youth.” This has an ironically familiar ring to it. The right is forever saying it is teens and children who should be protected from gay content. With this precedent established those Christian activists can now make the exact same case in opposing any gay apps they don’t like.

Oh, well, I don’t know how much time you spend covering things like gay teen suicide and the damage religious extremists do to gay teens and young adults, because I don’t read your blog, but we’re sort of the experts on that, seeing as it’s in our Mission Statement. So you might think it sounds “ironically familiar,” but whereas the Right doesn’t have the moral authority or the concrete evidence to show that they have a good reason to protect youth from gay people, we have both the moral authority and the concrete evidence, and the statistics on bullying and suicide, and a treasure trove of testimony and reporting on the effects of so-called “reparative therapy,” and unlike the Religious Right, we can back up our assertions with the findings of every single major medical and mental health organization in the United States.

Earlier this month the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision ruled that the Westboro Baptist Church had a First Amendment Right to wave their vile “God Hates Fags” signs outside of military funerals.

And the court got it exactly right.

Of course, you can distinguish the Westboro decision from the facts here in that Westboro was spewing their hateful message in a public space. Apple’s online app store is a private space, and thus they have the right to include/exclude whatever organizations and applications they want.

Well, if I had known you were going to win my side of the argument for me, I wouldn’t have wasted all this time.

But it seems clear that Apple’s dominance in the smartphone and tablet markets means that their App store has become a substantial channel for communication. How confident are you that the next public outcry and petition that Apple responds to won’t be to kick off a pro-Gay app?

We’re not very confident at all.

Are you scared? I mean, we’ll be there to fight it if that happens, but I’m a bit stunned that a blog purporting to represent the interests of the LGBT community is so willing to defend an organization with a proven track record of hurting gay people and their families. Yes, the App store is a “substantial channel for communication.” It’s also a private corporation, and as long as their policies are what they are, we will fight for people to recognize that true defamation against LGBT people has no place where racism, anti-semitism and other forms of bigotry would otherwise not be tolerated.

It is really that simple.  I will allow that Apple often applies its policies inconsistently, and that this is a situation that will probably be revisited at some point in the future, for some reason, but that is not an excuse to tuck tail and run when something as egregious as this slips by their filters.  Obviously over 150,000 petition signers agree.

UPDATE: If anyone is not quite clear on who the victims of reparative therapy are, what it does to them, and why Exodus’s “ministry” is really just a front for a hate organization against the LGBT community, please read this in its entirety.  An excerpt:

Being an ex-gay survivor myself and personally speaking with over 1,500 fellow survivors, I can say that [Exodus's Jeff] Buchanan is correct on one point—Exodus has no cure to offer. Instead they issue a curse for those who submit or are forced to submit to their teachings. They offer harm—psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage. They tamper with their clients’ relationships, careers, personal development, and finances. They make a mess of our lives in Jesus’ name.

So what exactly does Exodus do? They now publicly admit that no one changes from gay to straight. They claim they don’t offer a cure. They say they don’t therapize. What services do they provide? Basically they will undermine your sense of self as they reinforce the notion that you are not good enough as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer person. They will demonize your desires, and will not even be satisfied if you choose to be celibate yet insist on honestly calling yourself lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. To add insult to injury they have fought to deny happy homosexuals and transgender people legal rights and protections. They malign LGBTQ people, our relationships, our desires, our dreams, and then they export this message to Uganda, South Africa, Croatia, Singapore, Costa Rica and beyond.

As I said, read it all.

UPDATE DEUX:  I just took a gander at AfterElton’s homepage, seeing as, as I said before, it’s never a blog that’s seemed remotely useful to me in any way.  As I expected, their piece on this was the only one which even approached an attempt to speak about something of actual import to the LGBT community outside of pop culture or Lady GaGa or Glee or whatever the hell else. Ya know, there are some who can do both.  Joe does.  Andy does.  But then there are some who can’t and shouldn’t try, those who should leave it to the grown-ups.

The support for our petition for Apple to remove Exodus International’s inherently bigoted iPhone app has been overwhelming.  As I hit “post” on this piece, the number of signers sits at 139,943.  [If you haven't signed yet, do it!]  We at Truth Wins Out are thrilled with the response, and we encourage Apple to listen.

However, there have been pieces and comments here and there which suggest that some people, even some ostensibly on our own side, don’t quite understand why we’re doing this, or why it’s important.  Some of the complaints mention the First Amendment and/or censorship, neither of which are really appropriate critiques here.  Other complaints suggest that, while those making them may indeed understand Apple’s policies against defamatory apps, they don’t quite understand the inherently hateful message of Exodus and similar groups, couched as it is in sugary, “loving” religious language.

So I wanted to take a few minutes to really break this down, and as my framework, I’ve decided to respond to a piece in Forbes by a writer named Victoria Pynchon, who I truly believe is completely well-meaning, but nonetheless doesn’t quite get it.  Here is how Pynchon starts her piece:

I downloaded the Exodus App today to see whether it contained something akin to hate speech which has been variously defined as any communication which disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race or sexual orientation; or attacks or disparages a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group.

At the risk of putting myself at the center of a firestorm of disapproval, I have to say that what I viewed and read on the Exodus app was not hate speech but simply the expression of religious beliefs with which I, and many other people, disagree.

Exodus International appears to be a non-denominational religious organization that believes homosexuality is a sin. It also promotes the idea that this sin can be relieved by establishing a spiritual relationship with Jesus.

Let us talk about “religious beliefs” for a moment. Many religious beliefs are uniformly harmful. The religious belief that black people should be the natural slaves of white people is/was harmful. We do have a First Amendment in this country which protects speech, protects against the establishment of a state religion, and at least endeavors to keep religious expression and the state separate. However, the free practice of religion doesn’t always extend any old place the religious want it to go. In short, your “religious freedom” ends the second it damages my constitutional freedoms.

Now, that was sort of an aside, because let us be clear that this issue has nothing to do with the First Amendment.  No one is telling proponents of Exodus-style brainwashing that they cannot exercise their religious beliefs.  However, Apple has a stated policy regarding their apps, which specifically excludes apps that are defamatory/hateful toward entire groups of people.  Racist apps do not get in.  Anti-Semitic apps do not get in.  Perhaps some of the confusion, then, is in what precisely about Exodus and similar groups makes them inherently hateful, inherently bigoted, and inherently discriminatory against the entire LGBT community.  Peterson Toscano, who is one of the most well-known survivors of the Exodus world, broke it down the other day in a piece where he quite simply labels Exodus-supporting groups as straight supremacists:

Why all the fuss? Why not let these folks have their freedom of speech even if what they have to say is wacky, antiquated, and panned by proper medical folks?

In the case of Exodus, here’s why we fuss. For one, we are NOT talking about a freedom of speech issue. Exodus is free to say whatever they want on their blogs and pulpits. No private company like Apple has to use their resources to promote Exodus’ message. Apple has the right to say, no.

Exodus spokespeople paint themselves in the media as kindly folks who simply want to help those who are unhappy with being gay. They don’t force anyone to do anything against their will. They do not want to interrupt the lives of happy homosexuals who are content with their sexuality or identity. That’s what they say, but that’s not what they mean. They are being wise as serpents and gentle as doves. They are duplicitous.

Exodus is a Straight Supremacist group that believes that heterosexuality, straight marriage, and gender normative behavior are superior to anything lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people have going on in their lives. At Exodus conferences, in their books, through their many local programs they state that LGBTQ people are inferior to heterosexuals. They say over and over that LGBTQ folks are morally, spiritually, developmentally damaged. Just last week Alan wrote that even celibate gays who still identify as gay “fall short of God’s best.” In fact, he makes it clear that God’s best is for people to be heterosexually partnered, even if they are not heterosexual. They do not seem to consider the needs of a straight person who may well suffer as a result of this union (which is often the case.)

[...]

And what is Exodus’ big goal for 2011? To reach out to youth in middle school and high school with a message of hope! You don’t have to be bullied for being gay because you can chose the superior identity of being straight. They have a new iphone app in large part to reach out to the younger generation with their straight supremacist message. In essence they say, “The bullies are right. You are a worthless piece of shit, but we can bring value to your life. We can help you leave all that gayness behind and become holy and valuable to the world around you.”

You see, Ms. Pynchon, Exodus does not exist without an inherently defamatory framework which blames gay peoples’ problems on our sexuality, and which states that indeed we are worthy of hatred and scorn, and then makes money off promulgating the entirely false hope that one can leave all of these problems behind by denying our true selves and joining up with the Straight Supremacist cause.  Imagine, then, a group which was based on the idea that any time a black person has problems, their skin color is the root of that problem, but if you spend several years and tens of thousands of dollars, you, too, can leave the African-American lifestyle and live as a Caucasian.  It wouldn’t pass Apple’s policies, would it?

Now, there are racist websites and anti-Semitic websites and anti-gay websites all over the internet.  No one is trying to “suppress” their rights to speak out.  But Apple is a private corporation with a stated policy against defamatory and hateful apps.  Facebook has similar policies.  What we are doing here is simply asking Apple to abide by their own guidelines, and if that means it’s time for the Apple hierarchy to spend a moment getting educated on what Exodus International really does, so be it.

Apple had no problem deleting the bigoted Manhattan Declaration app, because the hate in that document was so in your face that a fool could see it.  We understand that Exodus is far more serpent-like in the way they go about their business, but here is something important to understand: the entire ex-gay industry mostly serves as a tool to prop up the very same bigoted groups behind the Manhattan Declaration. Because there is an arm of the Religious Right claiming to love gays so much that they’ll help us find “freedom from homosexuality,” hate groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association are able to maintain a veneer [even if only in their own minds] of plausible deniability over whether they actually hate gay people.  ”Of course we don’t hate gay people!  We love them enough to try to free them from their sin!”

Later in her piece, Pynchon engages in what I see as a deep over-analysis of the subject, trying to suggest that somehow Apple products have become the arbiters of our “national narrative”:

There’s something deeper at work in the demand for the expulsion of Exodus from the App store than what might underlie calls for the boycott of an enterprise whose policies don’t meet with a certain group’s approval – Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF) and the HRC Index come to mind.

The furor over the Exodus App suggests that the iPad, by virtue of its shape and function, is assumed to be carrying our national “super story” – the tale a community tells about itself to establish a shared identity. As scholars explain, these national narratives hold us together and keep us apart.

[...]

When we demand that people be ejected from the public square based on the content of their speech, we’re usually doing so because we don’t want them to be telling any part of our communal story.

[...]

If the iPad and iPhone have become, by virtue of their information app-lization, a version of the public square, we’d be better off letting the public decide whose ideas are more consistent with our national character and whose are not.

No, Ms. Pynchon. It is not that complicated, at all. The Apple products are not The Public Square, and you’d be hard-pressed to point to a situation where gay activists are truly asking that Religious Right opinions be removed from The Public Square. Indeed, we spend our days highlighting and refuting their statements, thus giving their opinions more airtime on the internet [which IS the public square] than they’d ever have before.

This is very simple. Apple has a stated policy against discriminatory and defamatory apps, but unfortunately, as with so many sectors of our society, which have yet to catch up with the fact that anti-gay bigotry is no better than racism or anti-Semitism, they have failed to make the connection that this app goes against their policies just as a white supremacist app would. No one is trying to take away Exodus’s “Freedom of Speech.” We’re asking Apple to be consistent and treat their LGBT customers with the same dignity as they’d treat anyone else.

Newer and older readers might sometimes wonder why the writers at Truth Wins Out occasionally veer, seemingly, way off the beaten path of gay rights and the lies of the Religious Right.  Why do we write about the Park 51 project, Dr. Laura, racism, anti-immigrant hatred, women’s rights and so on?

I’ve always said, for one thing, that discrimination is discrimination, plain and simple, and that moreover, the people who would discriminate against LGBT people tend to be the exact same people who hate Mexican immigrants the most, who use the most coded language to express their distaste for all but their very favorite (read:  Republican) blacks, etc.  There’s an overlap because we’re not dealing with rational people with rational opinions to add to the debate.  Fevered hatred of Mexican immigrants isn’t a well-thought out position; it’s a gut reaction based on fear.  And so it is with anti-gay bias.  These days, there is simply too much education, too much information out there, for people to arrive at a distaste for gay people via any intellectual method.

Along those lines, I was impressed with this post from Betty Cracker over at Rumproast (as I usually am with her posts), which goes a long way to explain, politically, what kind of time we’re living in:

The attempt to establish a Muslimfrei zone around Ground Zero isn’t about 9/11. The wingnut solicitude for “Dr.” Laura’s supposedly lost First Amendment rights isn’t about “Dr.” Laura’s right to repeat racial slurs on the radio.

Fox News’ relentless pimping of the New Black Panther Party non-story isn’t about voter intimidation. Arizona’s anti-immigration law isn’t about illegal immigration. Breitbart’s Shirley Sherrod smear wasn’t about “reverse racism.”

The persistent suggestions from multiple quarters on the right that President Obama isn’t a Christian or an American aren’t about his religion or nationality. And the Prop 8 campaign wasn’t about protecting straight marriage.

What this is all really about is the most orchestrated, widespread attempt to divide this country since George Wallace’s presidential run. Scratch that—Wallace was never more than a regional candidate. This may be unprecedented in living memory.

She then links to a piece from Will Bunch which takes that theme even further, and which deserves to be read in its entirety:

American political debate — in a time of crushing 9.5-percent unemployment, record foreclosures and bankruptcies, and climate change linked to catastrophes from Moscow to Pakistan to Iowa — has been hijacked over the arcane question of whether to allow an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. The controversy is stunning — but it should not be. The national brouhaha over the $100 million Muslim Park51/Cordoba House proposal is not an anomaly but rather the culmimation of an alarming downturn in America’s mood, its discourse, and even our former ambitions as a beacon of religious and political tolerance. In 2010, a large swath of the American public — led by ratings-mad media mavens and immoral politicians like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin — had declared out all-out war on “the Other” in America in all its alleged forms, from immigrants to Muslims to non-white aides working in the West Wing of the White House and of course the president himself.

And it is threatening to rip America apart in a way that we have not seen in 145 years.

[...]

America, we are in for the bumpy political ride of a lifetime. It will take enormous courage for defenders of two centuries of religious freedom and tolerance toward both religious and economic refugees to stand firm in the face of the kind of raw public anger and emotion that have caused backbone-impaired politicians like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or supposed progressive stalwart Howard Dean to wither in mere days. Our determined minority may be barely clinging to our cherished traditions — as best expressed by President George Washington in 1790 when he wrote “the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens” — in the face of this onslaught for the next few years.

Let’s face it: This country has long had its Know-Nothings and its Birchers and its McCarthyites, but it never had gizmos like Fox News or Sarah Palin’s Twitter feed to fuel toxic ideas so far so fast. It’s time we admit these seemingly disconnected battles over “anchor babies, mosques, and a black man in the Oval Office are all part of the same war against “the Other,” and that we are in the fight of a lifetime.

And that, in a few concise paragraphs from two Very Smart People who you all should be reading anyway, is why we at Truth Wins Out are talking about these things.  The people who fight against gay people are rebelling against The Other everywhere they see it these days.  When Maggie Gallagher and her friends talk about “traditional marriage,” there is a whole lot of baggage besides “one man/one woman” tied up in there.  While I’m not saying that every one of them is actively racist or xenophobic (some are), the “I want my country back!” nonsense of their fight for “traditional marriage” is a desire to return to a time when men were the breadwinners and had veto power over everything, the women were legally powerless, raising children was expected rather than voluntary, and all the neighbors were white and spoke American English.  They want to return to a time when everyone “knew their place,” and for white Christian men, that means that everyone else knows that they are the Supreme Penis Gods of whatever homesteads/neighborhoods/Wal-Mart Supercenters they happen to inhabit, and that everyone else maintains their appropriate places, behind whichever Penis God they’ve been assigned to.

It sounds funny, but think about it.

This, by the way, is why the Religious Right is having a fully formed cow about the painfully obvious points Judge Walker raised in his Prop 8 opinion on the subject of gender.  He said, in so many words, that because gender is no longer an essential component in determining the status of partners in  marriage, it’s supremely irrational to deny marriage rights based on gender.  To anyone with half a brain and a spine, this should be obvious.  Married men and women are, whether or not they like it, and whether or not they live it out, equal partners under the law, and have been for a while now.  Christian Rightists do not like that, though!  The existence of gay and lesbian couples who are married doesn’t change anything for them, except to force them to acknowledge that their time of lording their beliefs over society legally is over and done with.

We’re better for it, too, just like the fact that our nation will be majority-minority by 2050 will make us a better, stronger, smarter nation, closer to achieving the ideal of the American Dream.  But our detractors don’t see it that way, do they?

So, again, that is why we talk about all that stuff.  Hope that clears things up.

[h/t to The Poor Man Institute, too, also]

The Family Research Council more or less explicitly contends that only conservative Christians and conservative Jews are entitled to the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.

People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch observes that FRC’s recent statements — including one on CNN’s Belief Blog — limits the definition of religious believer to “Evangelicals, Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox Jews.” FRC excludes atheists, Buddhists, liberal Jews and Christians, Muslims, and every other religious affiliation from its concerns about supposed threats to religious freedom.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court broke America. That may be a little bit hyperbolic, but not by much. If you’re a bit confused about the repercussions of this decision that came down yesterday, this decision that all of your lawyer friends (except those who somehow managed to pass the bar, yet can’t communicate beyond GOP talking points), liberal and conservative, are extremely concerned about, here’s a quick primer. In Citizens United v. FEC (PDF), the Supreme Court struck down over sixty years of precedent and ruled that the government may not regulate spending by corporations in elections. The rules were there for a reason: Because of the deep coffers of, say, Exxon-Mobil or Goldman Sachs, allowing them to spend freely to influence elections very easily overpowers our own rights as citizens. The CEO of Exxon-Mobil was never prohibited from contributing, just like any other citizen. But now the Supreme Court has essentially said that Exxon-Mobil, itself, is a citizen, and entitled to all of the same rights that you and I enjoy in electing our leaders and representatives. Let that sink in for a minute. A little more detail:

(Read More)