Lookie there, you all get two Random Ten’s this week, because I didn’t have time on Friday afternoon. So it’s technically the end of the holiday weekend for many people, so here’s your music post! Let’s start with Nina Simone, just because she’s been coming up a lot lately, and also she’d be really kind of pissed off if she saw how far we really are from achieving Dr. Martin Luther King’s dreams and goals. “Lilac Wine?” Yes. Then we hit shuffle on the iTunes, see where things are ten songs later, blah blah blah. More videos after the jump!
Here is Keith Ratliff, the pastor of the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines, speaking to some sort of anti-gay rally in Iowa, about how he knows better than Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, when it comes to the subject of the Civil Rights movement and gay rights:
“For those that spiritually see the big picture, this issue is a battle ground as we said and not a playground,” Ratliff said.
But Ratliff also spoke in favor of marriage between one man and one woman and allowing a vote on the issue.
The rally was organized by The Family Leader, an organization led by former three-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats. The activists are urging Iowa lawmakers, particularly Senate Democrats, to pass a measure that would set the stage for Iowans to vote on forbidding same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution.
Ratliff also declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was raised in a biblically structured home and would not have approved of the “deviant behavior” by the gay community.
“Rev. Dr. King, Jr. wasn’t taught to subscribe to private interpretations of Burger King brand religions, any ‘you can have it your way’ religions,” Ratliff said.
Speaking from the grave with a few choice quotes, telling Ratliff how pig ignorantly wrong he is, is Coretta Scott King:
“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice… But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ … I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing, and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.”
“We have a lot of work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say ‘common struggle,’ because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry & discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.”
“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”
God, she is so inconvenient for them. That’s why they never say a word about her.
They sure know how to pick ‘em in Alabammy, don’t they?
Gov.-elect Robert Bentley in a speech at a Baptist church this afternoon said he plans to be the governor of all Alabamians and be color-blind, but he also said people who aren’t ”saved” Christians aren’t his brothers and sisters.
Bentley told a big crowd at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where the late civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once was pastor, that he believed it was important for Alabamians ”that we love and care for each other.”
”I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind,” Bentley said in a short speech given about an hour after he took the oath of office as governor.
Then Bentley, who for years has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, gave what sounded like an altar call.
“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”
Bentley added, ”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
Ew, don’t you feel like you need a shower now? Especially with all the “daddy” talk. You’re a grown man, Mr. Bentley. Get a hold of yourself.
Once a pathetic hatemonger, always a pathetic hatemonger. Laurie Higgins is celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory by furiously trying to protect her right to hate a minority:
For years, homosexual activists and their allies have manufactured and exploited an absurd and offensive analogy between homosexuality and race in order to advance their moral and political agenda. Homosexualists use the heroic battle to end racial discrimination as a Trojan Horse to eradicate moral judgments about homosexual conduct. All civilized persons — particularly African-Americans — should be outraged. Regarding this analogy, homosexualists have no ethical commitments to either logic or evidence, and they have no regard for the black family in America that already experiences tremendous struggles.
Homosexualist organizations have one goal that reigns supreme over all others: the eradication of the true moral belief that homosexual acts are profoundly immoral. And they are willing to exploit the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in order to achieve their morally dubious and intellectually vacuous goal.
Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) cited Dr. Martin Luther King’s description of “the long arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice,” saying that jettisoning the most enduring criterion of marriage -sexual complementarity- is the moral equivalent of “ending Jim Crow segregation laws.”
State Senator Michael Noland (D-Elgin) continued by saying dishonestly that “We have come far on this issue of Civil Rights and today good men and woman on both sides of the aisle should be able to unite behind this very straightforward issue.” This is dishonest in that the legalization of civil unions for homosexuals is anything but a “straight forward issue.”
Both State Representative Careen Gordon (D-Morris) and openly homosexual State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) further exploited the flawed analogy by comparing same sex marriage to interracial marriage. They are in essence saying that opposition to discrimination based on an immutable, non-behavioral, morally neutral condition like race is equivalent to homosexuals’ fight to normalize and institutionalize deviant sexual relations. Rep. Gordon expressed a radical and heretical notion in her plea for civil unions, which is merely a more publicly palatable term for same sex marriages. She described the passage of the civil union bill as doing “God’s work.”
If our elected leaders truly hold as ignorant an understanding of the nature of homosexuality as evidenced in these statements, then they don’t deserve their positions. These statements reveal the utterly foolish, erroneous, and offensive idea that homosexuality is equivalent in nature to race. There is no evidence or justification to warrant such an analogy.
Race or skin color is 100 percent heritable, absolutely immutable and carries no behavioral implications whatsoever. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is defined by desire and voluntary sexual acts that are open to moral assessment. There is no research proving that homosexuality is immutable or biologically determined. In addition, homosexuality carries inherent behavioral implications that all societies throughout history have deemed immoral.
Homosexual activists and their allies are advancing their subversive moral and political goals by hijacking the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. They seek to intimidate philosophical conservatives into silence by associating them with racism and bigotry. Volitional homosexual acts are not equivalent to race. And morals beliefs regarding volitional homosexual conduct are not equivalent to racism.
Philosophical conservatives and all people who are committed to rational argument need to openly, courageously, and persistently challenge the flawed analogy that suggests that homosexuality is equivalent to race, for this is the assumption upon which the entire homosexual-normalization house of cards is built.
We should not allow the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be exploited for the destructive purposes of the movement to normalize homosexuality and demonize traditional moral beliefs.
Note how she uses her own delusional version of reality, rather than actual reality, to bolster her case.
And really…is there a sane person alive who believes that Laurie Higgins and her ilk wouldn’t have ferociously trying to protect the rights of the segregationists, had they been during the Civil Rights Movement. Come on, now.
Remember: All of Laurie’s statements on the ‘nature of homosexuality’ are filtered through her bigoted understanding of an ancient book. Religious arguments against things are not good reasons! They must square with reality in order to be respected. Laurie is not learned on the subject of sexuality. She is not educated. She is a simple bigot. We don’t really know what personal demons drive her career choice. We do not care, either.
As always, we will point out that Coretta Scott King, who probably understood her husband the best, was squarely on the side of “gay rights are civil rights.” And what do Laurie and her friends have? The disgraceful, disgruntled Alveda. Oh, and they’re also designated as hate groups, mostly due to the fact that they’re all pathological liars.
There are people in this country who think that Sarah Palin is, like, just as important as Martin Luther King, Jr. Actually, the people who think that don’t tend to really like Martin Luther King, Jr., but they know they’ll never win the battle of ideas on that front, so they just try to co-opt his legacy for their own purposes.
The student paper at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, a Catholic high school in Minnesota, published an editorial speaking out against the Catholic archdiocese’s opposition to same sex marriage and their subsequent mailing of thousands of anti-gay DVDs to Catholic families in the state. Then they pulled the piece, because if there’s one thing that’s like Kryptonite to a religious institution like the Roman Catholic Church, it’s reasoned dissent. Hamilton Nolan at Gawker explains:
Yes, the Catholic school’s administration played their role perfectly by pulling the students’ editorial (and an accompanying piece titled “Life as a Gay Teenager”) and replacing it with a statement explaining that “The online comments regarding the editorial and the opinion piece in question were creating a disrespectful environment as well as confusion about the teachings of the Catholic Church; therefore, the administration exercised its prerogative to have the material removed from the website.”
The DVD in question manipulated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words to make it appear as if anti-gay bigots are somehow continuing King’s legacy, and the student editorial in question laid that out for the BS it was. Hamilton continues:
Using Martin Luther King, Jr’s words to support an assertion that same-sex marriage leaves men “fundamentally dehumanized”: fine. Pointing out that that is bullshit, in a remarkably eloquent and fair editorial: unfair. Even more brilliant: use the fact that assholes were leaving disrespectful comments on a story as an excuse to pull the entire story! Good work, zealous Catholics! This’ll teach those gay-accepters to speak out of turn, or ever!
Since we on the side of fairness, justice, love and equality are no fans of censorship, here’s the student editorial in its entirety, viaa commenter at the above Gawker link:
“Staff finds DVD unsubstantiated
November 11, 2010
The Catholic Church has been a long-standing opponent of gay marriage both in civil law and the Church itself. In keeping with this teaching, Archbishop Nienstedt produced and mailed a DVD in which he explicitly endorses an amendment to our state constitution that would bar homosexuals from the right to marry under civil law.
We as a staff believe the Church has both the right to have a teaching on this issue and to deny homosexuals the right to get married within the Church itself. However, we also feel that the DVD many of our families received is inappropriate due to the civil nature of the issue, and the content is nothing more than simple, emotional propaganda.
Archbishop Nienstedt states in the DVD that gay marriage poses a threat not only to the children taken out of the foster care system and adopted by married gay couples, but to children everywhere. He warns us that if we were to legalize gay marriage, the government would start teaching children in public schools that gay marriage is okay––something that is not consistent with Catholic teachings. The DVD further equates the effects of growing up in a household with two moms or two dads to growing up in a polygamous household, or an impoverished, financially struggling, single parent home.
The DVD tells us that the legalization of same-sex marriage will result in a world that no longer cares about a one-man one-woman vision of marriage, which will in turn result in a society that is, “callous and indifferent to the suffering it imposes on its own children, and on women who are left to carry the burden of parenting, and on men who are fundamentally dehumanized.”
How gay marriage results in heterosexual divorce and poverty, the DVD fails to address. How gay marriage leads to the acceptance of polygamy, the DVD makes no mention of either.
In the end, the DVD simply tries to equate gay marriage (an institution that would actually bring families together through the adoption of children) to broken homes and polygamy, without providing any facts to back it up. And, while the struggles of raising a child without a mother or father as support are certainly real, this stems from the fact that single parents are doing the job of two people and is not a reason to deny homosexuals the right to marry under civil law.
The DVD also aimed to reject the notion that the issue of gay marriage is an issue of civil rights. They did this in the most subtle way imaginable: by having a black man quote Martin Luther King Jr. The quote in question was from “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and stated that for a law to be just it must be in line with natural law.
What the speaker fails to address is the very next line of the letter that states, “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the soul.” Clearly this omitted line proves that MLK would not have supported discriminatory policies against any group, including homosexuals. The fact that the Church would go as far as to evoke MLK in an issue which he clearly wouldn’t have supported speaks volumes to the argument which the DVD presents.
To close its argument, the DVD states that the civil recognition of same-sex marriage would be an attack on our religious liberties as Catholics; however, no law that would be passed for gay marriage would have any impact on the Church’s ability to control its own definition of marriage. The legislature is discussing granting civil liberties to homosexuals in a legal way, not a religious one.
We have been told through this DVD to defend the historical definition of marriage through our votes. Well, up until 1967 it was a historical precedent not to let two people of different races get married in 17 states. In previous centuries, married women were considered their husband’s properties. But these things have changed, and it’s time for the civil definition of marriage to change again to account for our gay brothers and sisters, not in the Church, but at least in the civil arena.”
Talk about co-opting the message of a Civil Rights hero…
The following ad is running for Tom Emmer’s campaign in Minnesota. It’s put out by the Minnesota Family Council [sic] and the National Organization for Marriage [also sic], and it shamelessly casts people’s right to “vote against same sex marriage” as a Civil Right.
Disgusting. They believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have supported the majority’s right to vote to take away/deny rights from a minority. There are no words for the grotesque, depraved, cynical minds that would use this logic.
It does show us how little respect they really have for the man, though. Wingnuts know that they will never have the moral authority of a man like Martin Luther King, Jr., and they know they’ll never truly be able to tarnish his image in the eyes of history, though they’d like to. So instead, they pretend that their own fights are somehow a continuation of King’s work. Sorry, but King’s closest confidant, namely his wife, stated on numerous occasions that he wouldn’t have supported bigotry or hatred in any form.
In case you need a refresher, here are some of Coretta’s words on gay rights.
Yesterday was a special day in Memphis, Tennessee.
Black people, white people, gay people, straight people, transgender people, [insert minority and/or majority here], etc., gathered together to begin a march at the National Civil Rights Museum, to push for equal rights for all people.
You see, the National Civil Rights Museum surrounds the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. If you think you know the narrative of what happened in Memphis during the weeks leading up to his death, you probably do not, but you can be forgiven, because I didn’t know the whole story until the other night. That’s a story I hope to bring to you all in coming months, one that has been whitewashed out of the history books.
But suffice it to say that it was significant that this march began there.
People of all shades, all religions and lacks-thereof, many of whom had to take off work to do so, came together on Monday afternoon, to march from the National Civil Rights Museum to City Hall.
The marchers moved North, through historic streets and locations: past the Lorraine motel; across Beale Street, the home of The Blues; past the Peabody Hotel, the Northern boundary of the Miss’ippi Delta; past the old Cotton Exchanges, which put Memphis on the economic map; past the Belz Museum of Judaic and Asian Art, supported by the Belz family, which stands in tribute to the rich Jewish tradition in Memphis; all the way through Court Square, all the way to City Hall.
Once we arrived at City Hall, all various and sundry people took the megaphone and spoke to the hundreds gathered. Some, like my friends Christy, Jonathan and Will, were members or leaders of gay rights organizations and LGBT nonprofits. Others were just regular citizens. Amidst our cheering, a man stood up and explained that it was his deceased partner’s 50th birthday. Nine years ago, his beloved partner took his own life, having been torn down for decades by the hateful messages he received from “moral” friends and family. He asked that we all celebrate this day, in this space, in remembrance of his spouse. Through the tears we all found suddenly in our eyes and on our cheeks, we did.
Many pictures were taken today. I’ll share some that are out so far, but stay tuned, because the best are yet to come.
Somebody I know had this to say about this experience today, of a Southern town coming together, organically, to stand up and show our government and our neighbors that We Are All Memphis:
I have never been more proud of my friends and my city than I was today during the march for our rights as gay citizens of Memphis. Thank you to my hometown Stuttgart boy Michael Hildebrand, everyone who marched, and a HUGE “THANK YOU” to all my straight friends who stood beside us and supported us. I LOVE YOU ALL!
I agree, sir. I agree.
In case anyone is curious, the number of protesters amounted to one guy riding the trolley in the opposite direction, who, as far as I could tell, simply said “fuck” a lot, as well as a bunch of other moronic unintelligible gibberish, which is the linguistic equivalent of what we hear every day from Maggie Gallagher, Peter LaBarbera, Bryan Fischer, Matt Barber, and the legal team defending Proposition 8. Some lone dillweed shouting incomprehensible bigotry in the wind, with the aroma of literal horseshit in his path.
More pictures later on this week, from one who just might have been channeling Ernest Withers. For now, lookit, via Christopher Reyes at Live from Memphis. Click that link for a million more:
Quickly, there is something I want you to know about this picture. What you are looking at is a mother, her son, her daughter, her son’s partner, and her daughter’s partner. This is what the Religious Right is not talking about when they say “Family Values.” They only care about families when they conform to their rigid, mind-numbing, soul-killing notions of family. LGBT Americans and those who support us will always have the market cornered on the ACTUAL meaning of Family Values. Anyways, continue looking at pictures now.
And this last picture is what is known in some circles as a “Pooker for Equality.” Don’t ask.
I love Sam Seder. He went to the Glenn Beck rally last weekend with a camera for his “That’s Bullshit!” series and talked to the attendees about race and racism. This is simultaneously the saddest, funniest, most pathetic video of the event I’ve seen so far. Pay special attention to the guy who thinks Glenn Beck is awesome, except when he says nice things about Martin Luther King, Jr., in which case, he sucks.
Kevin: Adam, you took the words out of my mouth. I feel like every time I see Sandy on television or...
Donny D.: The important thing is that he's a big media figure with a large following, most of which doesn't overlap the...
Donny D.: I've read somewhere (sorry I don't remember where) that for poor, rural women, the general health exams that they along...
Donny D.: Nick K. wrote,
Next Mr. Blatt will be saying that it’s actually Obama who’s oppressing the LGBT community and not the...
David Fishback: For those who wish to keep moving the ball forward in Montgomery County, please check this out:
http://metrodcpflag.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/its-about-more-than-just-fliers/
David Fishback, Advocacy Chair
Metro...
Lookie there, you all get two Random Ten’s this week, because I didn’t have time on Friday afternoon. So it’s technically the end of the holiday weekend for many people, so here’s your music post! Let’s start with Nina Simone, just because she’s been coming up a lot lately, and also she’d be really kind of pissed off if she saw how far we really are from achieving Dr. Martin Luther King’s dreams and goals. “Lilac Wine?” Yes. Then we hit shuffle on the iTunes, see where things are ten songs later, blah blah blah. More videos after the jump!
Yesterday was a special day in Memphis, Tennessee.
