If you live in Indiana, you can now get a special license plate, a portion of the proceeds from which will go to the Indiana Youth Group, which works with issues related to LGBT teens across that state. If you are a normal person, your reaction to this is somewhere between shrugging and being happy that an LGBT youth group has been added to the myriad organizations which benefit from customized license plates. If you are a wingnut from the American Family Association, you are blowing a gasket:
A pro-family activist has said Indiana ignored the health issues involved in the homosexual lifestyle when it decided to issue an LGBT license plate.
[...]
Micah Clark, Executive Director for the American Family Association, said the DMV’s decision to approve the plate was troubling when one considers the tremendous health risks associated with the homosexual lifestyle.
The Center for Disease Control says that practicing homosexual men accounted for 61% of new HIV infections, despite being only 2% of the U.S. population. Homosexual men aged 13-29 accounted for 27% of the new cases.
“You have to question what the DMV was thinking when they approved a license plate for a group which recruits teens into the homosexual lifestyle. Since health risks do not seem to matter, what is to prevent a cigar club from now getting a license plate from the DMV?”
Oh, Micah is one of those really, really confused wingnuts who still thinks that gays recruit. Poor thing. Most of the wingnuts who believe that died in the 80′s. How did reality miss him?
Also, we will simply note that it’s still grotesque to watch “pro-family” leaders, who seriously do not care about how many gay people die, whether from being bullied to death, or from AIDS, concern troll about the “health risks of homosexual behavior.” If they actually cared, they would get on board with real, grown-up sexual education, for all people, including LGBT people, and with making prevention a priority. They would not be spewing alternate-reality hatred about groups “recruiting teens into the homosexual lifestyle.” As usual, it is their ideology they care about, and nothing more.
One more thing, to the journalist who wrote the piece: it is highly misleading to refer to Clark as a “pro-family activist.” He is the spokesperson for a well-known and certified hate group, and nothing more.
This time, it’s in Indiana. Meet state representative Phillip Hinkle, who voted with his anti-gay compatriots to ban marriage equality in that state. Here’s what he does in his spare time:
Indiana state Rep. Phillip Hinkle (R) is embroiled in controversy after The Indianapolis Star discovered emails appearing to solicit the paid company of a young man, sent from Hinkle’s publicly listed email address.
In response to a M4M forum Craigslist post, Hinkle emailed the man, named Kameryn Gibson, and offered him $80 cash, with a tip of $50 or $60 “for a really good time” in the hours he proposed spending together at a local Marriott.
Gibson, whose ad lists him as 20 years old but is actually 18, said he met Hinkle at the hotel, and tried to leave when Hinkle said he was a state politician.
He said the lawmaker at first told him he could not leave, grabbed him in the rear, exposed himself to the young man and then later gave him an iPad, BlackBerry cellphone and $100 cash to keep quiet.
That same link goes to the Indianapolis Star, where they have reprinted the e-mails between Hinkle and Gibson. Here’s Hinkle’s original response to Gibson’s ad:
“Cannot be a long time sugar daddy,” the email reads, “but can for tonight. Would you be interested in keeping me company for a while tonight?”
The email offers “to make it worth (your) while” in cash, and offers a personal description: “I am an in shape married professional, 5’8″, fit 170 lbs, and love getting and staying naked.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kameryn Gibson replied: “Yes I can!” He also sent along his phone number.
What followed was an email exchange between phinkle46 @comcast.net and Kameryn Gibson. One email from Hinkle’s account asks “what will make you happy for giving me a couple hours of your time tonight?”
Gibson: “Wat (sic) can you give me?”
Phinkle46 @comcast.net: “How about $80 for services rendered and if real satisfied a healthy tip? That make it worth while?”
And on and on and on. So, let’s see…anti-gay male politician solicits young man for sex over internet, gets caught…
We’ll just file this under “typical stories involving anti-gay Republicans.”
In Indiana, the state Senate has just passed a bill 40-10 to ban marriage for gays and lesbians. The House passed it a few weeks ago. Luckily, it can’t become law before the next legislature votes on it, and then voters have their say. Still, ridiculous.
Meanwhile, due to elected, poorly constructed wingnuts, the Montana House has been unable to get a bill out of committee to repeal the state’s law against, um, gay sex. This is, of course, goes against a Montana Supreme Court ruling, and also Lawrence v. Texas, but hey, it’s wingnuts. What are you gonna do?
Certain legislators in Indiana’s Senate are trying to push codify bigotry in their state’s Constitution by explicitly banning same-sex marriage, and it’s opening up an interesting divide between social conservative wingnuts and big business:
Jill Cook, vice president of human resources for Cummins Inc., said her company, which employs 5,500 workers at its Columbus, Ind., headquarters, would think twice about expanding if the amendment is approved.
“This resolution sends a powerful message that Indiana is not a place that welcomes people of all backgrounds, and it jeopardizes our ability to attract employees,” Cook said.
Yep. This is one place where corporations can actually be useful, because they’re in the business of recruiting the best and brightest. Protecting the fee fees of social conservative wingnuts really isn’t on their radar, for the most part.
There was an interesting article in the New York Times detailing how some fundamentalists and Tea Party enthusiasts do not believe in Climate Catastrophe, which is backed by almost every real scientist in the reality-based community.
Exhibit A of this backwards mentality is Norman Dennison, founder of Indiana’s Corydon Tea Party. At a forum for Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the Tea Bagger chastised the congressman for supporting efforts to keep this planet from being ruined.
“It’s a flat out lie,” said Mr. Dennison, adding that he had based his view on global warming from the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and Scripture. “I read my Bible. He made this earth for us to utilize.”
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama liked to say, “We are the change that we have been waiting for.” In the parlance of these dangerous fundamentalists: “We are the apocalypse that we have been waiting for.”
Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live through the dire consequences of their delusional fantasy that earth’s resources can mindlessly be exploited with reckless abandon. Indeed, in their warped worldview, God encourages, even applauds, when “God’s People” despoil precious resources.
When the polar bears eventually drown; when lovely homes on Florida’s coast wash into the sea; when drought, dislocation, disease and wretched refugee camps kill millions of people; when bloody wars are started over dwindling resources; when intense storms drown American cities; these fundamentalists should be blamed. Thanks to their remarkable ignorance, spiritual arrogance, and selfish disregard for their fellow man, we may all pay unthinkable consequences.
Isn’t it time that people take pause and ponder the viability of fundamentalism in modern civilization? What does it mean when a religious worldview is so neanderthal that it threatens the existence of humanity? How can America prosper and advance when leaders scorn science and potentially lead us off of a cliff at full speed? Is the majority just expected to sit around and reverently express our “respect” for such nihilistic beliefs?
No – we must speak out against such scripture-based suicide. Sure, fundamentalists have the right to believe such nonsense. But, we also have the right and responsibility to say such beliefs are destructive to the planet. It is our duty to do so, because we inhabit the planet their beliefs are strangling.
While our opponents like to idiotically say that marriage equality will end the earth, the archaic policies to keep the planet frying actually does present a genuine threat. These “moral” scolds love to talk a good game about “family values”, but what type of world are they leaving for the next generation and beyond?
The New York Times article listed recent polling data that shows the Tea Baggers are an unmitigated disaster for our planet and a threat to life as we know it.
Those who support the Tea Party movement are considerably more dubious about the existence and effects of global warming than the American public at large, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted this month. The survey found that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that global warming is an environmental problem that is having an effect now, while 49 percent of the rest of the public believes that it is. More than half of Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have no serious effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view, the poll found.
And 8 percent of Tea Party adherents volunteered that they did not believe global warming exists at all, while only 1 percent of other respondents agreed.
Someone has to say this: The Tea Baggers are by far the stupidest people in America. They operate in a blind, all-consuming rage, that includes not an iota of brain power. They consistently get suckered and duped into regurgitating lies from discredited sources.
For example, the Tea Baggers are the ones who are most likely to believe the garbage spewed by fake think tanks, funded by Big Oil money, that claim there is no such thing as Climate Catastrophe. They get their information from FOX News, which is a front for the corporate interests of the GOP and billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch. What these pea-brained Tea Baggers don’t seem to comprehend, is that they are not working for “the people”, but doing the bidding of the royalists, such as Murdoch, and billionaire-brothers, David and Charles Koch.
With the elections only days away, our nation may be saddled with extremists placed in positions of power. Their retrograde policies will make us the laughingstock of the world, harm our national security, and put The United States of America at an economic disadvantage. While our Tea Party leaders are living in the past — busily extracting and profiting handsomely from fossil fuels — countries like China, India and Denmark are busy investing in the clean alternative energy of tomorrow.
It takes brainpower to remain a superpower — which means that America will continue slipping if Tea Party con artists candidates are victorious on Election Day. Without enlightened policies, the only thing America will be number one at — is claiming that we are Number 1. (We’ve already seen a great erosion in our worldwide education rank — thanks to the glorification of ignorance, exemplified by the Tea Baggers)
I’ve said this before: The more fundamentalist a nation, the more anachronistic it is — and the worse it is economically, spiritually and culturally. If our nation embraces stupid politicians with dumb policies, there will be consequences. And if disaster strikes mankind, there are many of us who are keeping score and will hold these religious fanatics responsible for the living hell they brought to our planet.
Indiana motor vehicles commissioner Andrew Miller, a member of Governor Mitch Daniels’ Republican administration, was arrested Wednesday afternoon on a public indecency for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a men’s public restroom in downtown Indianapolis.
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The police report said that Miller, 40, exposed himself and twice asked the officer if he wanted to “touch it.” He also asked whether the police officer was married, and after being told yes, told the officer it would “be OK,” and that he was married, too.
Miller, who has three children, faces up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine for the Class C misdemeanor, according to WTHR-TV.
WASHINGTON — Saying he “sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd, said Tuesday he will resign from Congress.
“I am so ashamed to have hurt those I love,” he said in a written statement. “I am so sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have fought so hard for me.”
(…)
“In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain,” he said. “I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process.”
He said his wife and children “were more than willing to stand here with me. We are a committed family. But the error is mine, and I should bear the responsibility.”
Of course, as a “Fam’ly val-yews” Republican Evangelical, as long as he goes and repents really nicely, it’ll all be okay, and then they’ll give him a certificate for a free small fry or McNuggets (his choice, for being such a good boy), and it’ll probably never dawn on him what a flaming hypocrite he is for daring to have this sort of voting record, via Joe Jervis:
Souder’s anti-gay voting record: NO on hate crimes (2009), NO on ENDA (2007), YES on constitutional ban on gay marriage (2006), YES on gay adoption ban (1999).
Souder in 2004: “I believe people can have a propensity to alcoholism. I believe they can have a propensity to look at pornography on [the] Internet. I believe they can have a propensity to be homosexual. But I believe that it’s wrong and it’s controllable. That is a fundamental, biblically based view that doesn’t leave a lot of room or comfortability in a society where they don’t want you to have absolutes.”
Awww, and now he got caught with his pants down, unable to stay faithful to his wife of thirty years. I guess he just has a “propensity” for sexytime with staffers when his wife isn’t looking. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: part of the patriarchal white Christian wingnut belief system is that the rules only apply to those they think they’re better than, but never to them. That’s part of why this happens with such hilarious frequency. Sure, he’ll apologize and resign, and then in a couple months, another prominent Republican will be caught screwing something he’s not married to.
So, here’s something else you should know about Mark Souder. He made a video in 2009 with his mistress, whose name is Tracy Jackson, about (get this) abstinence. Of course, my first thought when I saw this video was “Hands where we can see them, folks!”:
