Republican Senator Roy Ashburn, was arrested Wednesday morning for DUI after leaving the popular gay bar, Faces. Whoops…not the happiest way to end happy hour.
In my view, a significant portion of the anti-gay industry is fueled by deeply self-loathing, emotionally stunted gay men and women. This is just the latest example of the astounding hypocrisy we have to fight on our way to equality.
Note to the closet cases: It is no longer 1950. You can live honestly and openly and lead a productive and fulfilling life. You don’t have to put yourself or your family through the wringer by living a lie.
A vocabulary carefully crafted into lethal lies almost always foreshadows fatalities.
In the case of Nazi Germany, the evidence of Hitler’s wicked intentions — from Mein Kampf to the Brown Shirts – was vividly clear. People may have ignored the alarm bells, but no one can say that there were not warnings of the brutality to come.
In 1994, Hutu radio broadcasts that called Tutsis cockroaches helped lead to genocide in Rwanda. Prior to the infamous broadcasts, a newspaper published the Hutu Ten Commandments, which smeared the rival ethnic tribe and included the eerily prescient eighth commandment: “Hutus must stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”
Earlier this month, in Gojra, Pakistan, more than 20,000 rioters torched 100 houses that belonged to Christian families and murdered seven people after a false rumor spread that the town’s Christians had defiled the Koran. Local mullahs enthusiastically furthered this big lie and used it to spark violence.
“We were afraid because the clerics had been railing against us in the mosques,” Riaz Masih, a Christian and retired math teacher whose house was gutted told the New York Times. “They said, ‘Let’s teach them a lesson.’”
The circumstances of these tragedies are vastly disparate in terms of geography, time period and circumstances. However, they illustrate three points:
1) Inflammatory and defamatory words, especially if spoken by religious or political authority figures, can and do lead to violence.
2) There is no shortage of mentally unbalanced people who will sometimes carry out shocking acts, and we should be very careful not to incite them with rhetoric that stokes their paranoia. Like stacks of firewood, these angry individuals go unnoticed until the gasoline is poured and the match is lit.
3) Americans are human beings, just like everyone else. So, the notion that what we say does not matter “because it could never happen here” is jingoistic foolishness.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Dr. Michael Brown, an anti-gay ideologue in Charlotte who brought hundreds of red shirted fundamentalists to that town’s gay pride event. Brown’s mission is to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”
If you haven’t noticed, the extreme right is getting dangerously delirious. A black president, a Latina on the Supreme Court and gay people gearing up to marry in Iowa has exacerbated this crowd’s feelings of marginalization. (Read More)
It’s a far cry from the days when the RNC was led by the 38-year-old “bachelor” of questionable sexual orientation, Ken Mehlman, but, according to The New York Times, Blackwell, a failed Ohio gubernatorial candidate who compared homosexuality to arson and kleptomania at the height of the campaign, may well be the RNC’s next chair.
Signorile has posted audio from the complete 13-minute interview along with transcribed excerpts.
Here are some selected clips:
Ken Blackwell: What I said is that, in that regard, you can choose, people choose to be who they are, as they choose to break civil law and God’s law…I think you can choose not to be homosexual…
Michelangelo Signorile: Did you choose to be heterosexual? Did you wake up one day and say I want to be heterosexual?
KB: The answer is that I’ve never had to make the choice because I’ve never had the urge to be other than a heterosexual, but if in fact I had the urge to be something else I could have in fact suppressed that urge.
***
MS: But you realize people were insulted when you compared [homosexuality] to arson and kleptomania. I would like you to explain that because, how does that get into this whole “choice” issue? I mean, kleptomania is a compulsion.
KB: Well, the fact is, you can choose to restrain that compulsion. And so I think in fact you don’t have to give in to the compulsion to be homosexual. I think that’s been proven in case after case after case…
***
KB: Where you and I disagree is that I do not think homosexuality manifested in behavior is a behavior that should in fact make us change the laws of this land.
MS: But many laws have been changed already. The Supreme Court says that homosexual behavior is not illegal. Arson is a crime. If somebody burns your house down, that’s hurting you, hurting other people. The Supreme Court has said if it’s in your bedroom it’s not hurting anybody else.
KB: If in fact you would feel better for me to say to you that, one, I believe homosexuality is a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed, and that makes you feel better, then that is what I’m saying in the clearest of terms.
Blackwell’s factually challenged opinions are clear and direct — free of the obfuscation and deliberate confusion that Exodus International practices. Like Exodus’ leadership, however, Blackwell essentially denies the existence of sexual orientation and equates all sexuality with behavior, not romantic or physical attraction.
Blackwell’s prescription for America: Be celibate and unromantic for life — or marry someone to whom you’re not attracted and then fake a romantic and sexual relationship until your spouse demands a divorce.
Blackwell’s position regarding human relationships is anti-family, inhumane, egotistical, and disconnected from reality. In short, it’s an embarrassment to the GOP.
An appointment of Blackwell to lead the Republican Party could be very good news for the Democratic Party at a time when its base is beginning to question the party’s own commitment to “change.”
In mid-November, the Colorado Springs-based media empire and political organization laid off 202 of its employees — about 20 percent of its workforce. The group’s explanation for the mass layoffs is the nation’s economic crisis. However, Focus’ money woes may stem, in part, from the more than half a million dollars it spent this fall to help defeat Proposition 8, the recently passed legislation that took civil-marriage rights away from GLBT Californians.
Today, we get new information: While Focus employees were getting the workplace equivalent to lumps of coal, Focus was busy spending more money: The Colorado Independent reports that the organization spent $35,310 to produce radio ads promoting Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ successful runoff re-election campaign this week. The commercials — which had to have been purchased after the Nov. 4 election that made the runoff vote necessary — reportedly were in production around the same time Focus workers were getting the bad news.
What does this move say about Focus on the Family’s priorities? In this season of love and goodwill, when much of the world’s focus will be on the Holy Family, the organization has opted to throw its money into a political move to destroy families. At the same time, Focus tells more than 200 of its workers and their families that for them, there is no more room at the inn.
A day after constitutional bans on marriage for gay people passed in three U.S. states, Kevin Ivers — formerly of the Log Cabin Republicans — writes:
I beg all of you with any energy left in you to wake up. I beg you to stop deluding yourselves about what it’s going to take to really change our situation in the United States. Stop believing promises and start demanding action. Stop scapegoating, and blaming ‘enemies’ and shifting responsibility for all our failures onto others, and take responsibility for everything we face. Stop living the reality show and start living in reality. And if you were active in this election cycle, don’t delude yourself into thinking that the fight is “won.” It is, in fact, almost completely lost as of this moment if you stand down now. Do more than just “know hope” — think different.
I’m not a fan of the Republican Party, but I agree with Ivers that the Democrats — and Barack Obama in particular — did too little to oppose the antigay marriage amendments in California, Arizona, and Florida.
Among pro-marriage, anti-amendment groups, outreach to African-American moderates and religious communities seems to have been inadequate. And gay people were virtually invisible in TV ads.
Members of sexual minority groups must stop waiting for benevolent leadership from above, and start asserting themselves.
Six months ago, Exodus president Alan Chambers declared — despite then-ongoing political alliances — that Exodus had decided months earlier to focus upon ex-gay ministry and refrain from politics.
Exodus has violated that commitment again, with Chambers and his so-called “women’s ministry” leader Yvette Schneider — a former FRC operative — entangling themselves in California’s Proposition 8.
The ballot initiative represents a battle by the state’s Republicans against freedom to marry. In fact, the initiative stands almost no chance of passage: It is a GOP ploy to draw social-conservative voters to the polls and to squeeze defenders of religious, personal, and family liberty out of the GOP.
Chambers and Schneider will take their campaign to restrict Californians’ right to marry to three simulcast rallies, which will employ hundreds of antigay churches and antigay youth groups that seem willing to turn their tax-exempt churches into GOP recruiting stations. The simulcast are scheduled as follows:
Thursday, September 25, 7:00-8:30 pm – Rally for Pastors and Church Leaders
(Rebroadcast Thursday, October 2, 1:00-2:30 pm)
Speakers: Jim Garlow, Chuck Smith, Kenneth Ulmer, Maggie Gallagher, Glenn Stanton, Jennifer Roback Morse, Alan Chambers, Miles McMcPherson, Chris Clark, Dudley Rutherford, Jim Franklin, Lou Engle, and others
Wednesday, October 1, 7:00-8:30 pm – Rally for Youth, Young Adults and Parents
Speakers: Miles McPherson, Ron Luce, Yvette Schneider, Greg Koukl, Sean McDowell, Katinas, Stellar Kart, and others
Sunday, October 19, 5:00-6:30 pm – Rally for Congregations
(Rebroadcast Sunday, November 2, 5:00-6:30 pm)
Speakers: Jim Garlow, Matt Staver, Miles McPherson, Alan Chambers, Tony Perkins, and others
Here’s a list of participating churches political party meeting rooms.
There is no way that a person who is indifferent to the question of whether homosexuality is a choice or genetic can support a conference of crackpots, psychological renegades and far-right Christianists seeking to “cure” gay people. Palin is on record seeking to strip gay couples of all rights in their relationships, although she was forced by constitutional mandate to grant equal benefits to gay couples who are employees of the state government in Alaska. She supported a non-binding referendum for an Alaskan constitutional amendment to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples:
Ultimately, she said, she supports denying those [health and retirement] benefits through a constitutional amendment, if that’s what the public wants.
Alabama Attorney General Troy King, a conservative Republican Christian who has called homosexuality the ‘downfall of society,’ has been caught with his pants down-literally-in a gay sex scandal. King was reportedly nabbed having sex with a male assistant by his wife, Paige King, in the couple’ own bed. It is amazing – the more one condemns homosexuality, the more likely one is to be gay. It is a telltale sign, like freedom rings.
Such tragic stories show why it is so important to come out of the closet. The alternative is living a life of pain and denial. On Monday, I head to North Carolina to speak out against the “ex-gay” Exodus International conference. Exodus says they have more than 700 people already signed up.
Most of these people will realize they are being duped and walk away. Others will suffer for few years before they realize they have wasted time and money. Then, there will be the ones who remain and decide to live like Troy King. When I think of the Exodus conference, I think of Troy Kings in training.
Republican Senator Roy Ashburn, was arrested Wednesday morning for DUI after leaving the popular gay bar, Faces. Whoops…not the happiest way to end happy hour.
