I don’t know why this surprises me.

I guess I’m not surprised, per se, but more just grossed out by how gullible these people are.   The man is an attorney, for God’s sake, and the age of the earth is a matter of scientific consensus so strong that Barber has absolutely no excuse for continuing to believe such childish rubbish.

Always remember, kids:  Homophobes are never just crazy about one thing; they tend to have verifiably insane, completely incorrect, factually incoherent beliefs on any number of subjects.

[h/t Joe]

Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver has a wife, and her name is Anita.  She’s actually the president of the Liberty Counsel!  Anita has decided to write a poem about marrying a tree, because she thinks it’s a funny way to make the stupid “slippery slope” argument against marriage equality, which is popular with a dwindling number of shut-ins and nursing home patients.  Let’s take a looksee at her work of art.  As you will see, Anita is very gay for her ficus, and may be inadvertently venting about her own marital problems throughout the stanzas:

Oh how I love my ficus tree
It’s one with whom I long to be
I rub its bark and shine its green

She never rubs Mat’s bark anymore.

It’s calm and never makes a scene

We’re quite content and never shout
When I stay out late it doesn’t pout

Betrays a sense of longing, don’t you think? Shouldn’t Anita and Mat save this for couples’ counseling, or do fundamentalists believe in that?

Or tell me how to spend my money
It leans toward me and I call it “honey”

Ooh. She’s tired of being told how to spend her own damned paycheck, and I bet I agree with her!

It fills a special place in my heart
I promise that we will never part
I can even quote a Bible verse
Of the fig tree that Jonah loved first

Yeah well, David loved Jonathan more than he EVER loved a woman, so maybe we should all agree to stop cherrypicking Bible verses that support our deep, irrational bigotry, shouldn’t we, hmmmm, Anita?

Now there’s a judge on the west coast
I know he’ll give what I want most
To marry my precious ficus tree
Me, a ficus and baby makes three

Actually, you’ll have to go argue that on your own, babe. I doubt you’ll make it to court, but you’re welcome to try.  Try to wash the bark off your hands first…

This may never become a trend
So I may tire of my woody friend

Gross, Anita.

Wait, maybe “ficus tree” is a pet name for something else entirely.

GROSS.

And if I decide to give up my Mister
The judge would then let me marry my sister!

Whatever.

Again, wingnuts: Don’t attempt “funny.” It always comes out sounding sad, lonely and pathetic.

Traditional values!

The Lisa Miller/Janet Jenkins saga continues, as the case was argued before the Vermont Supreme Court, with Lisa Miller and Isabella, of course, still likely out of the country:

(Dillon) This is the second time that the Supreme Court has heard arguments in a bitter child custody battle between two women who were former partners.
But the case took a new turn in January, when Lisa Miller – who now lives in Virginia – failed to appear to hand over the child in a court-ordered custody swap.
Miller’s lawyer is Rena Lindevaldsen. She says she hasn’t heard from her client in months and doesn’t know where she is. And she told the state Supreme Court that a Vermont trial judge was wrong to award custody to Miller’s former partner.
(Lindevaldsen) You’re switching from the first time anywhere in this nation from a fit biological parent that individual’s child and switching to somebody who has been declared to be a parent who is not that child’s biological or adoptive parent.
(Dillon) But associate Justice John Dooley challenged the lawyer on a number of points. First, Dooley asked: what about men whose children were conceived through reproductive technologies.”
(Dooley) “So I take it your position would be the same to a father, to a husband, for whose spouse was impregnated by artificial insemination – he could not ask for custody in a proceeding if they went through a divorce? Is that right?”
(Lindevaldsen) “Unless of course he adopted the child in the meantime.”
(Dillon) But Dooley said because the couple had been joined in a Vermont civil union the child did not have to be adopted in order for Jenkins to be considered a legal parent.
Then Chief Justice Paul Reiber weighed in. Reiber brought up the issue of Lisa Miller’s contempt of court citations. The Virginia woman faces arrest because she defied a court order and disappeared with the child.
(Reiber) “You said a few moments ago that your client, your referred to her as a “fit parent.” Hasn’t she had seven or eight contempt orders issued against her?”

That’s the trouble with anti-gay fundamentalists trying to be heard in courts of law. Since everything they believe is preposterous nonsense, it doesn’t tend to go well for them.

(h/t Kyle)

(Weekly Column)

We are fast approaching the point where it will only be news if an outspoken Christian conservative politician isn’t cheating on his or her spouse. The extramarital humping from the self-righteous Bible-thumping is becoming clich?© with the scandals happening almost by the day.

The latest lying Lothario is Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) who announced that he would resign from Congress because he had an affair with a woman on his staff. Rep. Souder had received a zero on every single Human Rights Campaign scorecard since entering Congress in 1995. He has consistently voted against employment protections, hate crime laws, increases in HIV/AIDS funding and providing equality to same-sex couples.

Clearly, the state of the GOP Family Values fraud is such, that Republican leaders were probably relieved that Souder’ sinful shenanigans were with a woman – not an undercover cop in a bathroom stall (Sen. Larry Craig) or with male congressional pages (Rep. Mark Foley).

Like most sexual scandals, there was an element of tragic comedy. In November 2009, Souder’ mistress, Tracy Jackson, interviewed Souder for a video on abstinence.

“You’ve been a longtime advocate for abstinence education and in 2006 you had your staff conduct a report entitled ‘Abstinence and its Critics’ which discredits many claims purveyed by those who oppose abstinence education,” Jackson said as she introduced Souder.

Technically, there was no hypocrisy in this instance, because Souder believes in abstinence before marriage — and he was clearly married at the time he and Jackson put in a little overtime protecting the morals of taxpayers.

However, there was quite a bit of duplicity in Souder’ rabid and reactionary opposition to LGBT equality. For example, he opposed the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, which would give federal employees in gay relationships access to health benefits. In voting against the bill Souder told the Federal Times, ”I am against taxpayer funding for these benefits because it is totally inconsistent with the belief that marriage should be one man and one woman.”

Social conservatives would do themselves a huge favor if they edited their marriage creed to, “one man, one woman and one mistress.” Although, it is doubtful even this amendment would sate their voracious sexual appetites. One just has to consider the outrageous behavior of Gov. Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford (R-S.C.) and Sen. John “I slept with my best friend’ wife” Ensign (R-NV) to realize that conservative politicians are as addicted to extramarital porking as they are in procuring big government pork.

The most predictable part of the salacious Souder scandal is his attempt to blame unnamed political opponents for exploiting his tryst.

“I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” Souder said. “In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon and twisted for political gain. I am resigning rather than put my family through a painful drawn out process.”

Souder is clearly confused. The only thing that was likely “twisted” was the bed sheet used during his extramarital affair. The congressman seems blithely unaware that it was opportunistic puritanical phonies — such as he — that are responsible for creating the toxic environment in Washington that he now ironically bemoans.

It was right wing ideologues looking to mine conservative churches for votes and money that made “protecting” the family a matter of United States policy. They launched a destructive culture war and divisive debate, even as they behaved like whores who fornicate. Yet, the money-grubbing morality machine soldiers on — blaming everyone and everything but the shallowness and emptiness of their wanton worldview.

A perfect example of deflecting blame came from The Liberty Counsel’ Matt Staver who suggested outside forces were out to get anti-gay researcher George Rekers, who got nabbed with a male hustler he met on Rentboy.com.

“I think that it’s the classic [tactic], ‘If you can’t destroy the message, you destroy the messenger,’ … and I think this is a personal attack (on Rekers) designed to cast aspersions on his character and reputation,” Staver said.

Is Staver suggesting that a gay organization or mischievous LGBT activist sent Rekers to RentBoy.com? Furthermore, isn’t the alleged rectitude and righteousness of these holier-than-thou messengers a key part of the moralistic message?

Miami Herald columnist Daniel Shoer Roth said it best this week when he wrote, “When these cases come to light, it is a victory for the public, because you open your eyes to the veiled nature of these two-faced individuals. And, hopefully, you will better appreciate those who are honest with themselves and others.”

Right wing activists and politicians have no one to blame for their troubles but themselves. People would not care one bit about their tawdry affairs if they had not made “family values” a central part of the affairs of state.

(The Awakening Conference was sponsored by the Freedom Federation and held April 15-16 at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA. Truth Wins Out’s founder Wayne Besen reports live from the event )

If the Religious Right fringe one day establishes a theocracy in America, no one will be able to credibly claim that they did not explicitly broadcast their dubious intentions. Having just spent two days at “The Awakening” conference at the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’ Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, one message was unmistakable: Many key Religious Right figures vehemently reject separation of church and state and believe America is a fundamentalist Christian nation.

“The Bible is the government of the people, by the people and for the people,” thundered Cindy Jacobs of General’ International from the stage. “I believe there is an awakening to do just that.”

What’ frightening is that many leaders on the Religious Right hold a basic belief system that is seemingly incompatible with democratic forms of government. Their central tautological argument is that liberty originated from God and so the only way to be truly free is through a theocratic system that honors the creator of freedom.

Huh? Exactly.

According to this mindset, God has ordained the faithful to be in positions of leadership, rendering any form of government that does not elevate these “chosen ones” or reflect their extreme views as illegitimate.

The Saturday night rally began with a surprising controversy. Lou Engle (pictured), the constantly rocking, intense, mustachioed cleric of The Call with the booming voice of a professional wrestler declared, “We are here to honor all denominations. There will be no tongues tonight.”

This left many in the audience offended, and well, tongue-tied. In a huff, several people stormed out of the main chapel. Sensing a gaffe, Engle soon reappeared on-stage and happily declared, “I apologize, we can speak in tongues!”

At this heavily advertised event, there was no shortage of the paranoid and prejudiced. But, one pleasant surprise was that attacks on LGBT people were on the decline. The crowd was more riled about President Barack Obama’ healthcare plan, which the Family Research Council’ Tony Perkins referred to onstage as “a socialistic time bomb.”

The big news at the conference came from Engle. While sitting in the audience during the “LGBT Agenda” breakout session, he spoke up and conceded that the next generation of evangelical Christians is largely supportive of LGBT rights (but not abortion). Engle said that when he preaches against gay people, the Christian youth often “rage against him.” Engle, a giant in right wing circles, said that the far right has lost on this issue barring a miracle, such as an intercession at a 500,000 strong youth rally. When he floated this idea to the activists on-stage, The Liberty Counsel’ Matt Barber said they should privately discuss such a rally after the forum.

Good luck with that idea, considering the breakout session at Falwell U. drew only 15 people. Virtually everyone in the small crowd was a hardcore anti-gay activist from groups such as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX). Clearly, gay bashing was an issue that was not motivating many young people, as it has been in the past. (Although, it seems Engle’ group, The Call, may already be testing his intercession plan in Uganda) (Read More)

For the past two days I observed The Awakening, a two day extremist conference that took place at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. In-depth commentary and analysis will be provided later when I return to New York City.

For now, here are a few pictures from the event. Yes, that is me posing with Liberty Counsel’s Matt “Bam Bam” Barber. In the other picture, Matt is with Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition and Rena Lindevaldsen, Esq.

The big news here is that radical cleric Lou Engle of The Call conceded, at a the LGBT Agenda breakout session, that the next generation is largely supportive of LGBT rights. (but not on abortion) He claims that the far right has lost on this issue barring a miracle, such as an intercession at a 500,000 youth rally that Engle floated to the activists on-stage and in the audience. Matt Barber said they should privately discuss such a rally after the forum.

Good luck with that idea, considering the breakout session at the late Jerry Falwell’s university drew only fifteen people – two of whom were observers from progressive organizations. The rest of the crowd were hard core anti-gay activists from groups like PFOX.

Unfortunately, I was “outed” at the session by Lafferty which made me about as comfortable as a fly landing on a porcupine. She asked me if I had any questions. I looked around the room and saw no movable middle in this bunch, so I declined. I preferred to plead the 5th, to ensure I could attend the big rally that was planned for the evening.

Check in later for more observations on the conference and rally.

Once upon a time in a land far away (Naperville, Illinois) a pretty pretty princess was just minding her own business, conducting witchhunts against doctors of Bible at faraway universities and uploading pictures of dudes in assless chaps onto the intertubes. You know, princess stuff. When at her castle appeared an invading group called the “Southern Poverty Law Center” who crossed the moat into her peaceful solitude by suggesting that her website was actually, you know, a hate website. (Because, duh?)

But she feared not, for she knew that riding just behind on some sort of rabid donkey was her knight, Matt of Barber, carrying his signature right-hook (from oily man-wrestling days of yore) to defend her dignity:

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel tells OneNewsNow the SPLC had done a fair job during the civil rights thrust in America in identifying and labeling neo-Nazi hate groups, ones that truly fall within the definition of hate.

“They have instead turned into what amounts to a leftist, extremist, partisan, Democrat organization, and they use the credibility that they’ve built up over the years as a weapon against people who have an opposing worldview, particularly to oppose biblical Christianity,” Barber explains.

Boo hoo. Perhaps what’s actually happening is that the SPLC is starting to notice that espousers of tradishnul values like Barber and LaBarbera are actually just bilious bigots, just like neo-Nazis? I mean, hell, at one time in this country, Jim Crow laws were tradishnul values. Sometimes tradishnul values have to be replaced by better values as the human race evolves.

In another “right hook,” Barber adds the following:

“But seriously,” continued Barber, “If AFTAH is a “hate group,’ then so is Liberty Counsel, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church.

Okay.

“I can’t speak for the organizations with which I’m affiliated and, of course, I hate absolutely no one,” concluded Barber. “Nonetheless, I’d like to officially request that the SPLC add my name to its spurious “anti-gay hate list.’ It’ good for one’ biblical bona-fides.”

(Matt Barber currently, and proudly, sits on the board of Americans for Truth.)

Okay.

He asked nicely, after all. I had forgotten (for a brief moment) that Matt was on the board of AFTAH. So now we can officially talk about him as an affiliate of an SPLC-certified hate site.

Cheerio!

(h/t Right Wing Watch)

I wrote the other day about Alan Chambers’ bizarre talk at the Liberty University G-H8 summit. In case that left you wanting more, here’s Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel* speaking for almost ten minutes about how, if Fundamentalists have to abide by the law in our secular society, it’s somehow a violation of their freedom of religion. Uh huh. Just to clear things up: religious freedom doesn’t include the right to lord your beliefs over other peoples’ lives. Note that every complaint Rena has about non-discrimination laws involves conservative Christians feeling the need to use their religious beliefs as a club to hurt other people. THAT is the freedom our opponents fight for. They’re not fighting for the right to believe and worship as they please. They have that, and they’ll always have that, because no one has ever threatened to take it away!

No, these people are simply children who refuse to learn to play well with others, and if I was their preschool teacher, I’d have a really hard time passing them.

Anyway, Rena goes over the Religious Right’s Greatest Hits:

1. Catholic Charities wouldn’t abide by the law in Massachusetts, so they cried victim when they freely chose to close their doors, thereby throwing children under the bus.

2. The photographer in New Mexico who broke the laws of the state of New Mexico when she refused to photograph a same-sex wedding. Was she a photographer working in a religious institution? Oh hell, of course not! She just thought she should be able to deny her services to any groups/people she doesn’t like, much in the way restaurants denied service to African Americans before the law compelled them to do differently.

3. The couple running the bed and breakfast in Vermont who opened their space for weddings and parties, oh, except that one time when (!!!) a homosexshul couple wanted to have their wedding reception there, so they said no, and used their religious bigotry as an excuse to deny that service.

4. The YMCA had to allow gay couples to have family memberships! OH NO! The sky is falling, and it’s like lions are personally eating Rena Lindevaldsen’s flesh!

What tedious whiners!

Anyway, here’s the video, if you want to watch it. She moans and groans about transgender people, GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, PFOX and some other bullroar. But again, notice that NONE of the so-called “religious discrimination” she whines about involves their actual religious freedom. It’s ALL about religious people being denied the right to their own self-appointed moral pedestal over the rest of the population.

(h/t Good As You)

OH AND ONE TIME THERE WAS THIS BOOK CALLED KING AND KING! HAVE WE WHINED ABOUT THAT ONE TODAY? Yeah. She whines about King and King. Again.

Seriously, these fools need some new material.

*Lisa Miller, your client, is still a kidnapper on the lam. Just pointing that out.

Over the past week or so, it’s been reported that Vaughn Walker, the judge in the Prop 8 trial, is gay. This shouldn’t matter, because those of us who understand how the judicial system works know that judges are charged with interpreting the law in light of the Constitution, and nothing more. Cries of “judishul activizms” from the Religious Right in gay rights cases are ringing more and more hollow, as straight white Republican-appointed judges around the nation are ruling in favor of our equality in increasing numbers. So, if Vaughn Walker rules in the plaintiffs’ favor in the Prop 8 trial, he’s simply joining a growing group of Republican appointees who agree that equal protection means equal protection for ALL American citizens. But of course, the Religious Right doesn’t see it this way.

So let’s tack off the Religious Right reactions to this revelation:

1. Matt Barber issued a hysterical press release, suggesting that Walker’s behavior during the trial has been “bizarre,” and that his (overturned) decision to allow cameras in the courtroom contributed to a “circus” atmosphere, which hurt the anti-gay side, because, like the cowards they are, they imagine themselves “victims” in the wake of the Prop 8 vote. Barber calls the judge’s sexuality a “conflict of interest,” because Matt Barber stubbornly and childishly clings to definitions of sexuality that have been disproven for decades. If I were being charitable, I would suggest that maybe all those years he spent groping and being groped by men in tight shorts resulted in some sort of long lasting head injury.

2. Brian Brown attempted to take a gentler approach, saying that regardless of whether Walker is gay or not, he’s still an “activist” judge, and that the deck has been stacked against the anti-gay side from the beginning. Apparently it hasn’t crossed his mind that the deck might have been stacked against bigotry and discrimination because reality is stacked against bigotry and discrimination.

3. Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum farted out some sort of jumbled words where he claimed that Prop 8 voters had been harassed and blacklisted over their votes. The hysteria surrounding the aftermath of the Prop 8 vote would lead an uninformed observer to think there was some sort of bodycount among the Religious Right after that vote, but reality, of course, knows otherwise. Santorum also accused the judge of “rigging the trial.” Uh huh. TS at Instaputz replies, “It’s not every day that a former Senator accuses a Reagan and Bush-nominated federal judge of ‘rigging’ a trial.”

4. Peter LaBarbera, predictably, soiled his everloving panties over the revelation:

One need not rely on this disturbing item from NRO to conclude that American jurisprudence is in big trouble given the expanding number of judges who are, to use modern parlance, “openly gay” (which is to say: proudly practicing or inclined to practice perversion). If they regard their homosexuality as (part of) “who they are” and, by extension, view foes of homosexuality as akin to racists, it is difficult to imagine them being truly impartial on “gay”-related cases.

Having said that, given the ferocity with which many straight liberals promote homosexualist ideology today, there surely is plenty of left-wing judicial bias to go around without laying all or even most of the blame at the feet of America’ homosexual judges. A straight liberal who regards homosexuality as a pure “civil rights” issue is just as capable of being a reactionary, anti-religious bigot in his approach toward moral opponents of homosexuality as an openly homosexual judge.

Waaaah. Peter’s comment does start to expose the obvious problems with the Religious Right’s logic on this (he’s good for that, because he’s just not put together correctly). The NRO piece Peter links to is from Ed Whelan, and if you know NRO, you know it’s a fairly hysterical analysis, itself. These are the people, after all, who pay Kathryn Jean Lopez to fawn over 15 year old boys at anti-choice rallies and to mangle the English language on a daily basis, while Jonah Goldberg continues to suck at the teat of wingnut welfare, riding his mother Lucianne’s coattails all the way to the bank, writing columns about how global warming isn’t real because hey look, meteors! (For instance.)

Anyway, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. I’m sure there are many more Religious Right luminaries going through the roof over this, and if you really want to know, may I suggest Google, but I personally can take only so much of their garbage before my brain cells start feeling threatened.

If you have a working brain, you already know the obvious flaw in the Religious Right’s logic. If being part of a minority group disqualifies a judge from presiding over any cases involving that minority group, then judges would have to recuse themselves from so many cases that our system would fall apart. For instance, Scalia would have to shut it, forever, about anything involving the Catholic Church. And again, this betrays a willful refusal to understand what the judicial system IS. I have no idea whether or not these Religious Right figures actually do understand what judges do — I mean, come on, we’re dealing with people who think Liberty is a real law school, for god’s sake — but their public stance is obviously to misinform an already civics-stupid culture about the role of judges in our society, because Religious Right figures don’t value the American system of governance like the rest of us do.

I could go on, but John Aravosis already smacked them all down quite thoroughly, so I’ll just excerpt what he said, and then you should click the clicky to read the rest:

If a gay judge is unfit to rule on a case involving gay people or the religious right, then using the far right’s logic, a straight judge would be just as biased towards straight people in any anti-gay discrimination case. But it’s worse than that. African-American judges would never be able to rule on civil rights cases – well, no one would really, since every human being is a member of at least one race, thus, under the religious right’s logic, we’d all either be a minority or the majority, making us a party to any civil rights suit. (Or perhaps Latino judges would be able to rule on discrimination cases involving African-Americans, it’s not entirely clear.) And Republican judges clearly couldn’t rule on political cases, nor could Democratic judges. Which means the entire Supreme Court, the entire federal judiciary, and really any judge who ever voted or who has any political views whatsoever, is ineligible from any case that involves politics. And female judges couldn’t preside over cases involving women, or men I guess, and so on.

And in fact, the religious right’s logic, to its illogical conclusion, means that conservative Christian judges also would not be permitted to preside over any case involving gays, non-Christians, Christians who aren’t members of some religious right sect, cases involving politics (since the religious right became a de facto subsidiary of the Republican party decades ago), cases involving discrimination (since the lead religious right groups routinely promote bigotry – in fact, their raison d’etre is to promote bigotry), any case in which a black person is involved (the religious right used to use the Bible to justify slavery (and still think slavery was a good thing for blacks), and the Mormons excluded blacks from the upper levels of their church up until the 1970s), and lots of other issues. And let’s not forget that the Southern Baptists were formed because they split with the north over slavery – the SB’s were for it. But hey, they apologized…. in 2009.

But see, they don’t actually believe that. The Religious Right, incorrectly, thinks that they should have an elevated place in society. They have done nothing to deserve that place, and in fact, have been a solid stain on American history, but they’ve convinced themselves otherwise. There is no “logic” to speak of in their statements. No, they believe, in general, that they should be the final arbiters of all law in this country, in direct contravention of the actual American system, which guarantees us freedom from the tyrannical notions of bigoted, white male supremacist fundamentalist religion. And as their numbers continue to decrease with each passing year, pronouncements of this sort will become more and more extremist. The good news is that the American public is greeting these statements more and more with a collective yawn of boredom.

A year after it helped launch the Uganda genocide legislation, Exodus is teaming up with Robert Knight, Matt Barber, and an attorney who affirmed child abduction by her ex-gay activist client. Joining with NARTH’s leading political activists “therapists” at Liberty University’s School of Law, their objective is simple: Convince the public that the Constitution’s Bill of Rights cannot survive so long as LGBT people have any rights at all.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers will headline a two-day conference and symposium Feb. 12-13. The events will criticize sexual honesty, reject mainstream psychiatry, deny the existence of sexual orientation, and assert that conservative Christians’ rights are incompatible with the rights of sexual and religious minorities.

According to the Liberty Counsel, a Christian Right legal-attack squad, the February 12 conference is titled “Understanding Same-sex Attractions and Their Consequences.” On February 13, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?” Liberty University was founded by fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, and it is operated as a veritable police state where no dissent from the late Falwell’s ideology and lifestyle are permitted.

Chambers will tell fundamentalists — as he has done many times before — that same-sex attractions are caused by bad parenting and abuse, that public honesty about one’s orientation is sinful, and that recognition of the equality of religious and sexual minorities is demonic. (Read More)