Today I listened to Michael Medved and some moron from a “Religious Liberty” think-tank flipping out about the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Their thesis was that forcing God-fearing, 1000% straight men like themselves to share locker rooms and barracks with gay men will mean the end of civilization, presumably because all that uncorrupted religious straight-dude flesh will be too much of a temptation for gay soldiers — who naturally will have enlisted for deadly dangerous combat in stinking Middle Eastern hell-holes just to get a glimpse of toothless Christian boys from Arkansas naked. These megachurch-bred anti-gay advocates with their visceral terror about the end of the closet, sure that liberated gay men by the hundreds will be lying in wait to rape them the instant the shower-nozzles turn on … I mean, the amount of projection going on is so obvious, it’s almost laughable.
(Quote comes as an aside in a longer rant about Rush Limbaugh’s comments that, if New York Governor David Paterson appoints the replacement for Big Gay Groper Eric Massa, it will be the first time Paterson himself is a “massa.” But don’t call Rush racist, you guys! And by all means, if you have Republican family members/coworkers who think that’s funny, don’t call them on it, because they’ll just start telling you how much they didn’t mind it when a black family lived near them.)
This is Cindy Jacobs of “Generals International,” closing out the “Convergence 2010: A Cry to Awaken a Nation” conference, which also featured Pastor Jim Garlow, Bishop Harry Jackson, and known nutcase Janet Porter as speakers. All are Religious Right leaders of varying influence, but I think when you watch this video, you’ll agree with me that Cindy Jacobs needs to be handed the reins of the entire movement, because she communicates their true, utterly insane beliefs, more clearly than any I’ve ever seen.
Seriously, though, you might have to start and stop this video several times, because I was busting a gut laughing by 0:35.
In an obscene turn of events reserved for pasquinade the dear Minister of Arts and Culture (residing in the Ministry of Intolerance and Prejudice), Lulu Xingwana, stormed out of an art exhibition held on Constitution Hill. The dear Minister was so indignant that she called the artworks “… immoral, offensive and going against nation-building.”
Now that’s pretty rich coming from an obvious plebeian only in official title by virtue of bestowment by the Moral Compass of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, and probably owning a matching flashy car (probably a BMW 7 series as is precept and precedent) holding the sceptre over Arts and Culture.
“While viewing the artwork, Xingwana appeared most upset by the work of Muholi and Mntambo, which deals with intimacy between women.”
The artworks which scarred our dear Minister for life and caused all the brouhaha that the she couldn’t even read her speech was “… a series of photographs by prominent artist and lesbian activist Zanele Muholi, of naked, black women embracing each other, Xingwana slammed the work as “pornographic”, spoke to her aides, and left in a huff. Her personal assistant read out her speech.”
Yes indeed, the pious Minister cannot stand visually stunning and tasteful photographs of women which in fact does not even show societal taboos such as certain parts of breasts and “below the belt areas”. Those were all cleverly and indeed artistically covered. The Minister thinks it amounts to pornography. Now I wonder if the porn label only relates to the assumed gay imagery…
It is especially ironic and terribly regressive that this happened in very close proximity to the much esteemed South African Constitutional Court, hence why the precinct is known as Constitution Hill. This is the same Constitutional Court which scrapped old discriminatory statutes and effectively ordered Parliament to legalise same-sex marriage otherwise the old Marriage Act would have been amended by means of their pronouncement to be non-discriminatory. This same Court gives ultimatums to Government yet the Minister of Arts and Culture provides a nice symbolic desecration in return and tramples all over the Bill of Rights with her tantrum. Uncannily this Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and provides freedom of speech as long as it doesn’t grossly violate another group’s rights.
The Minister was sweet enough to throw in the What-About-The-Children card as some kind of substantiation for her theatrics. This is quite odd when one considers that none of the imagery amounts to pornography. The artist says to the Times of South Africa in rebuttal that “…children need to know about these things. A lot of people who have no understanding of sexual orientation, people are suffering in silence…”
A constitutionally protected minority apparently has to be swept under the rug and children should preferably be protected from this constitutionally protected minority. A plethora of comments on articles covering this national disaster make complete fun of the supposed moral superiority of the new nationalists. The more things change the more they stay the same indeed – from one bunch of nationalists to another. Is anyone else seeing the pattern here?
This hideous event caught some attention beyond the South African borders as well when the Guardian in the UK reported on it. The Guardian states the delineating statement which should have tipped off Her Piousness:
In the exhibition’s catalogue, Muholi’s artwork is described as being “without precedent in South Africa, where there are very few instances of black women openly portraying female same-sex practices.”
The Minister however strongly denies it was the implied sexual orientation which caused all the ire as the Mail & Guardian reports that “[The Minister’s personal assistant] denied that the minister objected to the fact that the women were lesbians. ‘I don’t think it’s based on sexual orientation. It’s more to do with the fact they’re not wearing clothes and engaging in what looks like sexual acts. The minister stands by what she did.’”
The Minister should have expected very substantial fallout. But then again maybe this is the direction the regime under Jacob Zuma is going. Just before the April 2009 general elections Mr Zuma played lay preacher at the Rhema Bible Church which is spearheaded by former World Iron Man wannabe Ray McCauley. Not long afterwards we learnt that Jacob Zuma in distinct demagogue fashion placed same-sex marriage rights and abortion on auction for the loudest sycophant when the earth-shattering news broke as elaborated on by the Mail & Guardian in Zuma’s new God squad wants liberal laws to go.
In February 2010 we learnt of the looming national debate on morality as envisaged by none other than Jacob Zuma. This came literally days after the discovery of the president’s umpteenth child and lover (the latest one being illegitimate). Some now rightfully wonders what practice what you preach means in modern day South Africa.
Annelie Lotriet of the official opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance (DA), released a very critical statement on Xingwana’s hissy fit calling the Minister a bigot with no capacity to uphold the Constitution and suggests that Xingwana should rather tender her resignation. The statement by the DA also states the history of Jacob Zuma’s bigoted utterances: “same sex marriage is a disgrace to the nation and to God. When I was growing up, ‘ungqingili’ [homosexuals in isiZulu] could not stand in front of me, I would knock him out.” Lotriet also reminds the reader that Jacob Zuma recently appointed the rabidly, anti-gay Jon Qwelane as ambassador to Uganda.
The DA further raises some concerns:
It would appear that, below the surface bigotry and prejudice run deep in the ANC. It is disgraceful.
If this government is serious about creating a genuine democracy built on a foundation of human rights, it needs to act against the kind of prejudice the Minister espouses. One would hope the Minister has enough perspective to sanction herself and resign, should her pride prevent her from doing so, President Jacob Zuma needs to take action.
Lastly it would only be befitting to get the opinion of a renowned South African artist and professor of fine arts, Penny Siopis.
“The fact is, as a minister she is a representative of our Constitution. It does not matter if she has a personal distaste for what she sees.”
If this kind of atavistic behaviour is a sign of things to come and some indication of the Zeitgeist within the ANC, I see a very gloomy future for the LGBTIQ community in South Africa. One can only hope that the Constitution is protected from the nationalists’ prejudice and conservativism. Bigotry knows no boundaries and symbolic gestures are often a taste of things to come.
John Shore has a great piece up on whether, as a Christian, he should go to his friends’ gay weddings. To tackle this question, he decided to ask the age-old question “WWJD?” and here’s what he found:
When I next went looking for anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says anything — and I mean anything — about homosexuality, I learned that Jesus spent about as much time talking about gays and/or lesbians as I spend talking about button collecting and/or sea horses: none. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Jesus did say crucial things about homosexuality, but that when he did (curse the luck!) no one around him just then happened to have handy an ostrich feather, sappy stick, or whatever it was they used for pens back then. Which would make sense, actually. If you’ve spent any time at all reading the New Testament, you know that Jesus’ disciples weren’t exactly Johnnies-on-the-spot. They were just normal, everyday guys.
Kind of the whole point! Jesus most surely did love him some everyday people.
Throughout the New Testament, the only kind of people with whom Jesus consistently took frightful exception were the very “teachers of the law and Pharisees” we see him dressing down in the passages above. One thing that often gets lost in our considerations of Jesus is the degree to which he is exactly the wrong person to piss off. And you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the New Testament before you understand that the only kind of people who seem to ever truly anger him are those who put religious dogma above what he most stood for, which was God’s compassionate will.
Around Jesus you can whine, lie, shift your loyalties, be late, be greedy, be too ambitious, be stupid, be a coward, be a hypochondriac, constantly complain, fall asleep at every wrong moment — you can do nothing right, and it won’t in the slightest way seem to offend him. But you put dogma ahead of empathy? You transmogrify God’s law into a justification for denying God’s grace?
Then … yikes, man. Then you’ve got yourself a problem no one wants.
Please do read the whole thing.
I’m not a religious believer, but I find it encouraging to read the words of a believer who actually seems to comprehend his chosen religion. That’s the most obnoxious thing about arguing with the Religious Right, actually: they’re essentially biblically illiterate! They simply pick whatever phrases confirm their biases and bigotries and repeat them ad nauseam. Or they pick phrases that have absolutely nada to do with their arguments and yet claim that they magically DO bolster their arguments! And then when they get shown up by atheists and agnostics in biblical knowledge (repeatedly), they hide behind that verse that says “Even the debbil kin quote scripcher” (possibly not an exact transcription of the KJV). Yeah, well, the Devil may be able to quote scripture, but the verse says nothing about the Devil understanding scripture better than you, so get a new argument.
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.”
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’s 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.
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:
Here, it’s more evidence that the Religious Right has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the financial interests which control the Republican Party:
Oy.
Tony Perkins and pals don’t have any expertise to speak of on macroeconomics or anything else that involves book larnin’, but they’ve perfected “Dance, monkeys, dance!”
Also, this is the closest Tony will get to being on “Glee,” so you have to factor that into his decision-making.
Jeremy at Good As You highlights an interesting piece in Mother Jones about Esther Fleece, the new hire at Focus on the Family tasked with bringing young people into the fold, and with tailoring a younger, hipper message to reach these folks. What’s strange, though, as Jeremy points out, is that Esther acknowledges and understands the reasons that FotF-style religion repels younger people (e.g. the gay hate just doesn’t fly with the younger set), and her superiors seem to understand this, but yet they refuse to correct the problem!
You see, the younger generation has grown up, for the most part, knowing gay people, and when you know us, it’s a lot harder to accept the parallel-universe lies propagated by the Religious Right against the LGBT community. So when Gary Schneeberger says something like this…
As for revising the positions that are alienating youth, though, that’s not really in the cards. “The things we stand for, especially in the policy realm, are things that are rooted in our understanding of the Scripture,” says Schneeberger. “So when we say we think we believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, that’s not going to change.”
it becomes abundantly obvious that Focus on the Family, and by extension, the entire Religious Right, simply doesn’t get it. Their “ideas” about the supposed threats posed to society by the Ever Present Gay Menace are laughable to a generation which has grown up with out [of the closet] gay parents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, teachers, etc. Focus and Pals simply aren’t going to win that argument, ever.
So the choice for Focus et al. seems to be either A. Change or B. Become resigned to the gradual onset of irrelevance. For the moment, it seems, they’re sticking with B.
UPDATE: Now, this is interesting. A reader pointed me to Esther’s “fan page” on Facebook (it’s public, obviously), so I decided to check it out, and saw an update from last month that caught my eye, in light of Esther’s acknowledgement that the demonization of gays is part of the problem faced by Focus on the Family in recruiting new, younger followers. Consider first, this passage from the above referenced MoJo piece:
But Fleece hopes that at some point, gay people will feel welcome at Focus. ”I have biological family that are gay. I mean, let’s be honest–who doesn’t?” she says. While she doesn’t endorse their lifestyle, Fleece thinks there is no reason to single out gays for more moral censure than, say, men who cheat on their wives. ”We’re all sinners.”
Okay, aside from the fact that she’s wrong, that statement does reflect the conflict experienced by many Evangelicals between actual reality and the reality they’ve been taught. She seems to be striving to move forward, in some way. Ready for the status message that caught my eye?
How interesting! Would that be the same Manhattan Declaration written by self-important hack “philosopher” Robert George, he of the circular logic and “because-I-said-so” definition of “natural law”? The one signed by all the greatest luminaries of bigotry, bias and discrimination, wherein they pledge to defy any law that recognizes equality in the United States and abroad?
It would seem that this self-styled modern-day Queen Esther is talking out of both sides of her mouth.
The second step is more complicated, and more graphic. George argues that only vaginal intercourse — “procreative-type” sex acts, as George puts it — can consummate this “multilevel” mind-body union. Only in reproduction, unlike digestion, circulation, respiration or any other bodily function, do two individuals perform a single function and thus become, in effect, “one organism.” Each opposite-sex partner is incomplete for the task; yet together they create a “one-flesh union,” in the language of Scripture. “Their bodies become one (they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together) in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way in which one’s heart, lungs and other organs form a unity by coordinating for the biological good of the whole,” George writes in a draft of his latest essay on the subject. Unloving sex between married partners does not perform the same multilevel function, he argues, nor does oral or anal sex — even between loving spouses.
Oh, hi. I’m just sitting here reading this long profile from the New York Times Magazine of Robert George, author of the now-infamous bigot manifesto known as the “Manhattan Declaration,” and the largely behind-the-scenes brain* of the right-wing religious industrial complex. You might read the above quote and ask yourself, “What kind of pseudo-intellectual self-congratulatory wankfest is this? And shouldn’t a tenured professor at Princeton (how embarrassing for them) be able to see that he’s arguing that only couples with biological children are actually mar…”
Infertile couples, too, are performing this uniquely shared reproductive function, George says, even if they know their sperm and ovum cannot complete it. Marriage is designed in part for procreation in the way a baseball team is designed for winning games, he says, but “people who can practice baseball can be teammates without victories on the field.”
Oh, you have to be kidding me. Okay, so, infertile couples/olds who still do the dirty-dirty are still technically playing the World Series even if they know their balls, er, baseballs, don’t work? All you need is a team that’s willing to practice?
Well by that logic, even though my (nonexistent — taking applications) husband and I know that our parts aren’t extremely likely to create a baby, it’s the thought that counts, and as long as we practice a whole bunch, and we both love being on the team, then it’s just as valid as any other loving, committed marriage.**
Q.E.D., loser.
Read the whole thing if you have nothing better to do with your life than read the convoluted musings of a quasi-philosopher with far too much education for his intellect and a Mommy complex.
**And don’t give me that arbitrary B.S. from the first quote about how it has to be a vagina. If you know it’s a reproductive dead-end, then it really doesn’t matter. That’s merely Church Lady Robert failing to grasp the epic fail of his 13th century thinking.
Religious Activists Claim to be Above the Law and Express Desire to Force All Americans To Obey Sectarian Church Rules, Says TWO
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out (TWO) condemned a theocratic anti-gay manifesto that seeks to foist compulsory Christianity on the nation, at the expense of basic liberty, pluralism and freedom. The so-called “Manhattan Declaration” was signed by 145 fundamentalist, evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox Christian activists, who claimed they were above the law and would refuse to obey state rules unless they were in alignment with their sectarian church beliefs.
“This is a disturbing call for anarchy from a group of radical clerics and activists who believe they don’t have play by the same rules as other taxpaying Americans,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We call on all Americans who value a free society to stand up and reject this theocratic and intolerant manifesto.”
“It is heartbreaking that these so-called Christians have elevated bigotry to be the defining aspect of the religious experience,” said Rev. JR Finney, pastor of Covenant Community Church in Birmingham, Ala. “These churches are uniting by dividing this country and making a mockery of the rule of law.”
The manifesto was unveiled today at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Spearheading the effort is convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson (pictured above), who runs Prison Fellowship ministries. The activists at the press conference signed a declaration proclaiming they will not obey or comply with laws that they falsely claim could be used to force their institutions to partake in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.
“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” reads the manifesto.
“In naming this manifesto, the far right makes great use of symbolism,” said TWO’s Besen. “We believe they have chosen to co-opt the ‘Manhattan Project’ and the ‘Declaration of Independence’. We must pay attention when a powerful group of clerics plans to go nuclear on American values, spending significant political and financial capital to impose their narrow religious beliefs on society.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters anti-gay misinformation, fights religious extremism exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about the lives of GLBT people.
With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
