Well, you see, because…

SAN FRANCISCO — Three Hayward cousins are facing hate crime charges after a man was shot in the face with a BB gun because the attackers believed he was gay, according to San Francisco authorities.

A video of the assault and other similar crimes was recorded by the attackers and is being held as evidence, assistant district attorney Brian Buckelew said.

Mohammad Habibzada, 24, Shafiq Hashemi, 21, and Sayed Bassam, 21, were arrested about 15 minutes after the shooting, when police spotted a car in the area that matched a description given by the victim. The suspects have addresses in Hayward.

Because it was committed by guys with Muslim names. You have to take heart, gays, because in the daily wingnut Two Minutes Hate, Muslims appear FAR more often than gays.

Do they know if this was specifically motivated by religious animus?  Not yet.  But they do know enough that

All three suspects are facing three felony counts and one misdemeanor. They include assault with a deadly weapon with a hate crime enhancement, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, and attempted mayhem.

Okay, so they know it was motivated by anti-gay animus.  First, let’s enter the mind of the wingnuts reacting to this.*  In their widdle world, liberals absolutely LOVE conservative Muslims.  They arrive at this conclusion because They Are Not All That Bright, and can’t compute the idea that liberals might detest the values of radical anti-everything Muslims and simultaneously** have an issue with insdiscriminately bombing the hell out of anything we please in that part of the world.  They can’t grasp the idea that “not bombing” does not equal “surrender,” because wingnuts only understand force when it allows them to feel like their penises are being vicariously represented in the fight.

Okay, let’s visit the wingnuts.  Mark Steyn of National Review Online:

Hmm. “Three cousins from Hayward,” huh? Mormons opposed to gay marriage? Knuckledragging rednecks insecure about their own sexuality? But no. Instead, a little touch of old Amsterdam comes to the city by the bay.

The title of his post?  ”Celebrate Diversity.”  He’s absolutely gleeful that this was done by the big bad brown people from the “turrist” part of the world.  It would be a valid point if we didn’t have such a long history of hate crimes against gays perpetrated by all manner of Christian/Christian-influenced terrorist born and bred right here in the good old US of A.***  But see, again, this is the weirdness of being in a wingnut brain, because people like Mark Steyn think that liberals want nothing more than to roll out the red carpet for radical Muslims.

Next up is Daniel Blatt from GayWingnut,**** who has also convinced himself that mean liberal gays don’t seem to mind when radical Muslims assault/kill gays:

In writing about a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about three Muslim men charged with “firing a BB rifle at the face of a man they believed was gay,” our reader Jenny asks, “when will gay activist groups actually start being activist in aid of saving lives by ending the mass immigration of anti-everyone Muslims?“

Now, I certainly wouldn’t go as far as her, but she raises an interesting issue:  will gay groups cover this with the same degree of frenzied fervor they would if the three men were evangelical Christians?

Um.  Wow.  First of all, “Jenny” is expressing a sentiment that has nothing to do with gay people, but everything to do with racism against the millions of peaceful, nice Muslims in the world, some of whom emigrate from their home countries to the United States. As I’ve said before, gay wingnuttia really has nothing to do with gay rights or equality, but rather is about taking weak Republican talking points and inserting the word “gay” into them, a la “We should listen to Bill Kristol and pre-emptively bomb all Muslim countries to death because, um, they’re mean to gays?” or “We should continue to pass irresponsible tax cuts and run the US based on discredited and disproven Laffer economics, because, um, gays with money likey the tax cut?”  or “We love the anti-gay Sarah Palin, because, hellloooooo, DIVAAAAAAA!!!!!”

Right.  Anyway.  But secondly, Blatt is engaging in the same kind of barely-contained glee as Mark Steyn is.  For gay wingnuts, Republicans and Evangelicals are the chosen people, even if said chosen people hate their guts, and all Muslims are the enemy.  And they participate in the same Two Minutes Hate as straight wingnuts, so they’re essentially willing to throw themselves prostrate before people who don’t believe in their inherent dignity, because hey, at least they hate Muslims more!

But here’s the thing that completely tears their strange views about liberals to shreds, as explained by Roger Ailes (no, not the evil one):

The biggest problem Steyn has (apart from his poodle toupee) is that the men have been arrested and charged, and face enhanced punishment for committing hate crimes regardless of their religion. So [Steyn] can’t pretend that our godless liberal enclaves are under the thrall of Sharia law. If convicted, the three gentleman will recieve serious punishment, and that punishment will be enhanced because of their bigotry. And Steyn will remain free to spew his bigotry, as long as he doesn’t act on it.

The system works.

Exactly.  You see, the reason gays in the West focus a lot more on anti-gay violence perpetrated by Christian rednecks is that most of the anti-gay violence in the West is perpetrated by Christians of some sort.  I should point out here that arguably the most violent anti-gay sub-population in the United States are Slavic Evangelicals, who live largely just over the mountain from San Francisco in Sacramento.  I wonder if Dan Blatt and Mark Steyn will go just as crazy next time one from that population murders/assaults a gay person!  (Actually, no, I don’t care.)

Meanwhile, on the international front, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the anti-gay violence perpetrated by Christians in Uganda, because that’s something we can do something about.  I completely grant that the hatred and violence LGBT people are subjected to in Islamic countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia is awful, but at the same time, I also know that supporting Bill Kristol’s or Daniel Pipes’ latest wet dreams about bombing the holy hell out of Islamic countries in the name of protecting their gays is beyond stupid.  For one thing, their foreign policy ideas are a complete failure on all fronts.  But if we’re going to talk about the plight of gays, let’s talk about the fact that the religious government that has taken root in Iraq since neoconservative wingnuts cheerled us into war with that country in the name of showing them how big our dicks are, is extremely anti-gay! Violence against gay people in Iraq has only gone up since we deposed Saddam Hussein.  Hussein was a bad guy, obviously, but because he was secular, there are certain things he didn’t put up with.  Women had it better under his rule, and so did gays.

The common thread here is that extremist religion is the prime motivator of anti-gay animus and violence, and if we had a Christian theocracy like many in the US dream of, we’d have a hell of a lot more anti-gay violence on our plates.

So yes, wingnuts, it’s outrageous that this happened, and the proper authorities are dealing with it.  But try to conceal your pants-wetting glee over the fact that Muslims did it, because the point you’re trying to score is one that doesn’t exist outside the echo chambers of your minds.

*Canary recommended.

**Two thoughts, one brain, same time?!?!

***Oh look, radicalized conservative Jews have done stuff like this too!  I guess the problem is religously-motivated hatred of ALL kinds?

****I would call it “Intellectual Chernobyl” but that’s already taken.

The American Christian Religious Right are different from radical Islamists how, precisely?

In some Islamic societies, specifically those which veer toward and are ruled by conservative Islamic religious law, women and girls can be blamed, prosecuted, or even killed for being victims of rape or other sexual assault.  Even in some relatively moderate nations, such as Jordan, “honor killings” occur over sexual impropriety, whether real or perceived.  And of course, in some of these societies, gay people fall victim to the same societal traditions and practices. Regardless, the running theme is that women and gays are objects of shame, and that even if attacked, they still deserve to be punished.  It’s the classic “shame the slut” routine that’s existed in patriarchal Abrahamic religious tradition, in varying degrees of intensity, for centuries.

So how, pray tell, is this different?

A state lawmaker and hundreds of child advocates are calling for young girls to be treated as victims and not criminalized as prostitutes.

Sen. Renee Unterman is proposing a bill that would set the minimum age at 16 for prosecuting sex-for-hire.

“There are approximately 400 children per month in the streets of Atlanta that are being prostituted,” she says.

(…)

But conservative and Christian groups banned together to oppose the bill. They say it would lead to more prostitution.

“All we would do is be inviting into our state  pedophiles and panderers looking for children,” says former state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, now president of Eagle Forum of Georgia.

She says correction can also turn a child around and that discipline should not be removed when it comes to children engaging in illegal activity.

As so often happens when I read about what the Christian Right is up to, my head is proverbially slamming into the desk.  And of course it’s the Eagle Forum, AKA The House of Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who is perhaps most known (at least on our side) for claiming that marital rape simply doesn’t exist.

So, according to Nancy Schaefer, the Mini-Schlafly of Georgia, child prostitutes, who, by the way, don’t tend to choose that profession, should be “disciplined.” She’s basically saying that even a child who’s kidnapped and forced into sex slavery is at heart an unrepentant whore who needs to be punished.  The comment about “inviting pedophiles” into the state is just know-nothing concern trolling, because I highly doubt that child predators care whether the children they violate can be prosecuted or not.  It’s a non sequitur, meant to deflect from the misogynistic B.S. coming out of her mouth.  Her contention that failing to “discipline” child prositutes would lead to “more prostitution” is specious, as it assumes that there are hordes of little third grade harlots-in-training just waiting for the law to allow them to slut around for money like they’ve always wanted.

Again, how is this different from the slut-shaming mentality that exists within conservative Islam?  How deep is the self-hatred that pervades the psyches of women trapped in these chosen extremist religious ideologies?

The answer is that is that it’s different only in degree, but it’s the same in spirit. It’s all part of the same story.  Oh, of course, you’re not likely to see a Christian Fundamentalist in the United States blow his daughter’s brains out because she gets raped.  Secular modern society has moderated that sort of instinct in even the most extremist faction of American right-wing Christian society.  But absent that moderating influence, would they keep their hatred, shame and bigotry so subtle?  My belief is that they would not.

Right Wing Watch points out that Eagle Forum is not alone in opposing this bill. They are joined by the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Georgia Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Nice line-up, y’all.  I’m sure that’s how Jesus would’ve played it.

(Weekly Column)

The latest  anti-gay terrorism in Iraq — is gluing shut the anuses of homosexuals, while forcing the victims to ingest a form of Ex-Lax. The special glue can only be removed by surgery — thus often leading to a painful death.

It is always a challenge to know if such information is accurate. But, confirming (I have) the latest form of torture is beside the point, really. What we do know is that the news from overseas is rarely encouraging.

For example, in March “tens of thousands” of people from Burundi demonstrated to outlaw homosexuality. This destitute nation is the kind of place that you may have seen in late night infomercials where flies buzz around the lips of starving children. Eighty percent of Burundi’s population lives in poverty. Famines and food shortages have occurred and the World Food Program reports that 56.8-percent of children under age five suffer from chronic malnutrition. Yet, the good citizens of Burundi have time to chant and hold signs demanding the imprisonment of homosexuals.

Back to Iraq — our tax dollars are now overseeing the wanton murder of gay Iraqis. The New York Times reported this month that “the bodies of 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City…”

In Nigeria, lawmakers are debating a bill that would imprison gay people who live together and jail anyone who doesn’t rat out the gay couples. In July 2008, London’s Independent wrote a story about a 26-year-old gay man in Turkey, Ahmet Yildiz, saying that his own family may have killed him. “They wanted him to see a doctor who could cure him, and get married,” a friend explained.

Box Turtle Bulletin reported that a Ugandan newspaper this week published an article under the banner headline, “Top Homos In Uganda Named.” This outrage — that jeopardizes the lives of gay people – follows a recent anti-gay conference in Uganda featuring a board member from the American “ex-gay” organization Exodus International.

In Moscow, mayor Yuri Luzhkov has rejected calls for a gay pride march to be held during an upcoming European music festival. He has called pride parades, “gay propaganda” and “satanic acts”, according to the New York Times.

What we are seeing in front of our eyes is the globalization of gay bashing. The United States has exported marketing techniques and church structures to culturally homophobic countries. The sexual minorities caught in these nations’ do not have the same freedoms that we enjoy in the west, so they can’t fight back. They are essentially voiceless and fearful — allowing insidious myths and stereotypes to go unchallenged. With gay people effectively demonized and hatred promoted by civic and religious leaders, hysteria on gay issues ensues. (Read More)

(Bernard Madoff)

If 2008 taught the world one lesson, it is that religious people are not morally superior to those who are non-religious. Indeed, faith often shelters the shameless and provides cover for the most corrupt among us.

Sanctimony was the sanctuary of Bernard Madoff, the con artist who bilked fellow Jewish people who never imagined this man of piety would mastermind a Ponzi scheme. A New York Times article summed it up: “…Jews all over the country are already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and personal.”

The article quoted Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angles who said, “I’d like to believe someone raised in our community, imbued with Jewish values, would be better than this.”

Apparently, the rabbi has a short memory.  In 2006, corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff disgraced the Jewish community. When he wasn’t stealing from Indian tribes and polluting Washington, he could be found in synagogues extolling his Jewish family values.

Many in the Jewish community seem shocked by recent events. They have the same befuddled looks on their faces as Christians ripped off by televangelist Jim Bakker. Or, the wide-eyed puritans in the pews who were stunned that Revs. Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard had a proclivity for prostitutes.

This is not to say that religious people are necessarily more corrupt. But, the myth that faith makes one less fallible and more pure must be punctured. This fable comes at a great cost to the holy who keep getting hosed. Charlatans are acutely aware that when religious institutions confer credibility, it is easier to con the credulous. Needless to say, churches, temples and mosques are often a refuge for reprobates. As escaped slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglas noted in his tome “Autobiography,” the most devout Christians made the most brutal slave owners. (Read More)