More Tuesday Beauty

Catholic Students Protest Firing of Lesbian Teacher for Marrying

I have noted before that the younger generations are not buying into the homophobia of their parents and the bigots in many pulpits. The folks at Cathedral High School in Springfield, Massachusetts are finding out this reality first hand as students have begun protesting the firing of Christine M. Judd, who served as athletic director and dean of students. And why was she fired? Because she married her same sex partner last month - an act that is 100% legal under Massachusetts law. The Republican has this on Judd's firing:
*
The athletic director at Cathedral High School lost her job this week, saying she was pressured to leave after marrying her female partner in August. Christine M. Judd, who served as athletic director and dean of students, said she is no longer an employee of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield school system after a meeting Wednesday with administrators of the Catholic high school.
*
The diocese listed her departure as a resignation, but Judd said she is still exploring her legal options.
*
“I married my partner this summer,” Judd said. “I was hoping that my loyalty, my professionalism the last 12 years would supersede the current hypocrisy that has already been shown with the Diocese of Springfield.”
*
Asked to elaborate on her claim of hypocrisy, Judd said she questions if there are lay persons who work for the Catholic diocese who divorce and remarry without an annulment, or employees who use birth control, or men who have had vasectomies, or individuals who are pro-choice on abortion.
*
WWLP-TV 22 News has coverage on the dozens of protesters who came out to voice their displeasure with the modern day Pharisees at Cathedral High School. Ms. Judd makes a good point when she says she suspects that gays get subjected to a different standard than others who break with the Catholic Church's 12th century views. Sadly, Catholicism has become increasingly synonymous with anti-gay bigotry, homophobia and hypocrisy. Here are highlights:
*
Dozens of students and friends of Christine Judd came out to St. Michael's Cathedral to protest her resignation. Students told 22News she was forced to resign because she married her same sex partner this summer.
*
"When I found out she was terminated and I found out why she was terminated, I was outraged and disgusted with the decision that was made. They have people working for them who are divorced, they have people who are using contraceptives, they have students who go to the school who are pregnant, and they don't make them leave, so why should they decide to act on those principles now?" said Martin Boyle, a Cathedral High School Senior.
*
"If we're going to preach tolerance, we need to practice tolerance and I think the old ways are prohibiting us from doing that. We just think it's time for the church to progress,” said Alexandra Nicolai, a Cathedral High School Senior.
*
22News spoke with some parishioners coming out of mass and asked them what they think about the diocese's decision.
*
"I hear them screaming out there and they're absolutely correct. Who are we to judge? That's one of the main things we believe in church. We are not the ones to judge anybody, because God almighty does that," said Tatiana Flores, a parishioner.

Petraeus Condemns Church Plan to Burn Qurans - Church Flips Him the Bird

While constantly wrapping themselves in religiosity and the American flag as they push an agenda of hate -n this case against Muslims rather than gays, their other preferred target - U.S. Christianist in reality do not give a damn about fanning anti-America flames or even endangering the lives of U.S. service members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, its all about the Christianists and their over powering egos and lust to disseminate hatred. Even the objections of General Patraeus, commanding general in Afghanistan, who says that burning Qurans will endanger American lives, means nothing to egomaniac wingnut pastor Terry Jones, who has basically told Patraeus to go f*ck himself. The irony, of course is that pastor Jones is no better than the Islamic extremists that he purports to condemn. Change the holy book in their hands and Jones and Islamic terrorists are nearly interchangeable. Here are highlights from the Wall Street Journal on Patraeus' remarks:
*
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.
*
Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.
*
"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," Gen. Petraeus said in an interview. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."
*
Hundreds of Afghans attended a demonstration in Kabul on Monday to protest the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who has said he will burn copies of Islam's holy book to mark the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Afghan protesters chanted "death to America," and speakers called on the U.S. to withdraw its troops. Some protesters threw rocks at a passing military convoy.
*
Mr. Jones, head of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., said in a statement that "We understand the General's concerns. We are sure that his concerns are legitimate." Nonetheless, he added, "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats." Mr. Jones has been denied a permit for the demonstration, but has said he plans to go forward with the protest.
*
[M]ilitary officers said they hoped that Gen. Petraeus's statement—an unusual move since military commanders rarely get involved in politics—would convince Mr. Jones to change his plans.
*
Gen. Petraeus declined to elaborate on the nature of the threats or violence that could occur, but westerners in Afghanistan have been warned away from restaurants and other public places amid the rising tensions.
*
Military officials also fear that if video of the Quran burning is broadcast in Afghanistan, tensions could rise between NATO forces and the Afghan military and police. Allegations of mishandling the Quran have interrupted Afghan security training at least twice this year, Gen. Caldwell said.
*
If pastor Jones represents true Christianity, then I want nothing of it.

GOP Candidate Scott Rigell Led Anti-Gay Split of Historic Episcopal Parish

I have written previously concerning the far right religious views of Scott Rigell (at left), GOP candidate for the Virginia 2nd Congressional District. With the election getting closer, it is timely that I more fully document Mr. Rigell's extremism and just how strongly he opposes equality under the civil laws. Many locals in Virginia Beach, Virginia are likely to know of Galilee Episcopal Church, a historic parish that is a landmark on Pacific Avenue in the northern portion of the resort strip. What many voters in the 2nd District do not know is that Scott Rigell played a leading role in splitting this historic parish asunder back in 2006-2007, the result of which was the founding of fundamentalist Trinity Church by Rigell and others vehemently opposed to LGBT rights and the ordination of gay clergy. The Virginian Pilot had coverage at the time of the split (fortunately, the Galilee parish has survived without the departing homophobic element). Here are highlights from that coverage:
*

In a split echoing the debate within the Episcopal Church, seven leaders of Galilee Church have quit to launch a new congregation outside the denomination they accuse of heresy. . . . Scott Rigell, one of the departing Galilee leaders, said he could no longer endure the Episcopal Church's "modern" approach, which he said was at odds with the denomination's historical "orthodox" stance on scripture.

*
Just how many other Galilee members may leave will become clearer when Hauser's Trinity Church holds its first service today in space at First Baptist Church of Virginia Beach on 35th Street. Hauser called Trinity an "orthodox evangelical congregational church" unconnected to any denomination.

*

In leaving Galilee, they chose not to emulate several Episcopal churches in Northern Virginia that voted last year to take both their parishioners and church property out of the denomination. . . . Bishop John C. Buchanan, the diocese's interim leader, said he would never let the parish split away. "This property is a legacy from good, faithful Episcopalians," he said then. "There will always be a parish affiliated with the Diocese of Southern Virginia in this location and on this particular site." In the end, it was the prospect of a fight within Galilee, not with Buchanan, that tipped Hauser against pushing for a parish pullout.

*

A portion of a statement signed by Rigell to the Galilee congregation confirms what he thinks of gay citizens (as well as more progressive denominations that are gay accepting):

*
[W]e disassociate ourselves from Resolution A-095 which opposes "any state or federal constitutional amendment that prohibits same-sex civil marriage or civil unions." This resolution gives, in effect, the endorsement of the Church on same-sex civil marriage.

*

No doubt, Rigell is hoping that this four year old story stays under the radar. However, if elected to Congress, there is little doubt in my mind that Rigell will take his decidedly anti-gay and stridently Christianist views with him to Congress. Having known Rigell from years ago when I was active in the GOP and from living in the same neighborhood as Rigell before I came out, I know first hand that Rigell has no regard whatsoever for the concept of separation of church and state or for the right to religious freedom for all citizens. To put it bluntly, Rigell needs to be defeated on November 2, 2010.

Tuesday Male Beauty

Legal Loopholes Rob Children of Gays of Rights and Protections.

The Irish Times has a story on an Irish report into the experiences of children of gay parents reveals the closeness of such families, but also the anguish caused by legal loopholes that rob them of basic rights. While the report looks at situations in Ireland, the parallels with the USA and anti-gay states such as Virginia in particular are many fold. Sadly, Christianists have no qualms about injecting homophobia into the civil laws and punishing children merely because they have same sex parents - yet another illustration that Christianity is not a positive in the lives of many people. Indeed, it is yet another example of extremist religious belief constituting an active evil (and why each time I read such stories, I slip further away from wanting to be associated with Christians whatsoever). Here are some story highlights:
*
Tomorrow marks the launch of a groundbreaking report from the organisation Marriage Equality called Voices of Children . The report documents for the first time the experiences of children growing up in Ireland with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) parents. The often complex social and legal issues raised in the report will be discussed at a one-day conference being held as part of the launch.
*
Like the other young people interviewed for the report – there were 12 participants, all of them the children of lesbian couples, in what is a modest qualitative research study – Barry believes it is important that awareness is raised about their legally precarious status.
*
The recently published Civil Partnership Act does not give children of civil partners the same rights as those of married people. Nor does it recognise the relationship between a child and its non-biological civil-partnered parent. The children of gay parents are left in limbo with regard to a range of issues such as the protection of the family home, maintenance, succession rights, divorce, guardianship and custody.
*
Does having gay parents mean they are more likely to be gay? This question makes Christine Irwin-Murphy (22) from Darndale in Dublin laugh out loud. “I just find that question hilarious; it always makes me laugh,” she says. “Sexuality is not predetermined by what your parents are. It’s who you are and who you find attractive or, more importantly, who you don’t find attractive.
*
Having an unconventional family arrangement made school life difficult for many of the children in the group, except where they attended a more progressive school or had teachers who were “nice” enough to respect their families. The report contains several examples of everyday homophobia, especially concerning the policy in some schools not to let sick children go home with their non-biological parent.
*
Another example was one group member’s memory of being discriminated against by her friend’s homophobic parent with the apparent approval of the school principal. “That friend’s parents found out that I had a gay mother, and went into school and told the principal that she didn’t want her child playing with that other child. And the principal actually accepted that,” she said.
*
Young people in LGBT families are excluded from adoption and Civil Partnership legislation, despite warnings from the Ombudsman for Children that this could give rise to violations of international human rights. For campaigners, the upcoming referendum on children’s rights is an opportunity to address these very real concerns.

Have the Voters Learned Nothing?

Given the apparent willingness of voters to forget which political party gave us the economic meltdown and the budget busting Middle East fiasco, the cartoon by Tom Toles seems to sadly reflect current political reality. Obviously, the GOP is relying big time on the idiocy of the voting public in its effort to retake control of the House and maybe the Senate.

And Christians Say Islam is Anti-Women?

As Islamophobia continues to run rampant in the USA and all types of anti-Islam statements flow from the mouths of Christianists, it is necessary to remember precisely what type of poisonous anti-female thread exists throughout Christianity's history. The Old Testament combined with statements of Christian leaders and thinkers over the centuries confirm that Christianity has just as many dark and frightening threads as Islam. Bob Felton at Civil Commotion has assembled some quotes that drive home the fact that the Christianists should not be throwing stones at Muslims since Christianity itself as practiced is a glass house itself. The statements also make it clear that Christianity has a long history of despising women and subjugating them. Here are some highlights from Bob's post on the subject:
*
Lest good Pious folk smugly indulge some Islam-bashing, a few words from a few of Christianity’s most influential thinkers:

■Clement of Alexandria: “Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman.”

■Tertullian: “Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil’s doorway. You led astray one whom the devil would not dare attack directly. It was your fault that the Son of God had to die; you should always go in mourning and rags.”

■Ambrose: “Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam… it is right that he whom that woman induced to sin should assume the role of guide lest he fall again through feminine instability.”

■Augustine: “Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.”

■Pope Gregory I: “Woman is slow in understanding and her unstable and naive mind renders her by way of natural weakness to the necessity of a strong hand in her husband. Her ‘use’ is two fold; [carnal] sex and motherhood.”

■Thomas Aquinas: “[Woman] was made only to assist with procreation.”

■John Knox: “Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man.”

■John Wesley: “Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born.”

*

Not exactly a proud heritage, but one that more Christians need to remember. This mindset still runs strongly through the Roman Catholic hierarchy and many conservative Protestant denominations. It's but one of the very ugly aspects of what self-professed Christians have done to Christ's Gospel message. Here's local buffoon, Pat Robertson's thoughts on women:
*
"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." –Pat Robertson
*
"(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." –Pat Robertson

Monday Male Beauty

1938 Deja Vue

With the Neanderthals in the GOP demanding that government spending be slashed - of course without identifying what they'd cut - Paul Krugman has a timely column that looks at the parallels between 2010 and the situation in 1938. Krugman makes the case that only more government spending can get the economy truly headed back in the right direction. The question is whether we will learn from history or go down the wrong path and the resulting economic stagnation that is taking such a heavy toll on so many American families. Unfortunately, I fear that those inside the belt-way who worry only about short term political gain will convince a public woefully ignorant of true history, including economic history, to move in the wrong direction. The possible winners will be the GOP that created the financial bubble in the first place and then opposed corrective action. Especially, given the leadership vacuum in the White House and Obama's insane reliance on economic advisers who were deeply involved in creating the current mess. Here are some column highlights from the New York Times:
*
Here’s the situation: The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections. The president in question is Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the year is 1938.

*
Now, we weren’t supposed to find ourselves replaying the late 1930s. President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out.
*
And just as some of us feared, the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it — and the nation — in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.
*
The story of 1937, of F.D.R.’s disastrous decision to heed those who said that it was time to slash the deficit, is well known. What’s less well known is the extent to which the public drew the wrong conclusions from the recession that followed: far from calling for a resumption of New Deal programs, voters lost faith in fiscal expansion.
*
From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today. Had anyone proposed spending even a fraction that much before the war, people would have said the same things they’re saying today.
*
The economic moral is clear: when the economy is deeply depressed, the usual rules don’t apply. Austerity is self-defeating: when everyone tries to pay down debt at the same time, the result is depression and deflation, and debt problems grow even worse.
*
But the story of 1938 also shows how hard it is to apply these insights. Even under F.D.R., there was never the political will to do what was needed to end the Great Depression; its eventual resolution came essentially by accident.
*
I had hoped that we would do better this time. But it turns out that politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes. And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.

Bush and Cheney Wanted to Invade Syria

Not content with debacles in both Afghanistan and Iraq, new revelations by former Prime Minister Tony Blair confirm that the Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney wanted to spread the war to Syria as well. How Obama can continue to give a pass to these war mongers - who have needlessly bankrupted the USA with their perpetual war model - is dumbfounding. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it and with Bush and Cheney escaping all accountability for the squandered lives and wasted trillions of dollars the stage is clearly set for a repeat of the Middle East disaster in the future. Personally, I believe BOTH Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes and suffer the consequences. Of the two, I continue to put the majority of the blame on Cheney who led the brainless Bush down the primrose path. War crimes charges would be the best method to prevent future needless wars and deliberate flouting of the Geneva Conventions. It might also help improve the USA's batter moral standing with the rest of the world. Here are highlights from the National:
*
Syria always feared that the White House of George W Bush and Dick Cheney would invade Damascus once it had dispatched with Baghdad in 2003 and, in his newly released memoirs, the former British prime minister Tony Blair confirmed those fears were well founded.
*
Describing the former US vice president as an advocate of “hard, hard power”, Mr Blair said Damascus was next on Mr Cheney’s hit list. “He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it – Hizbollah, Hamas, etc,” Mr Blair wrote in his autobiography, A Journey. “In other words, he thought the whole world had to be made anew, and that after September 11, it had to be done by force and with urgency.”
*
Syria’s correct assumption that powerful US forces wanted to attack it had profound implications, domestically and in Iraq. Although no friend of Saddam Hussein, Damascus had every reason to want the American occupation to fail and, therefore, no incentive to stop Islamist militants crossing the border to fight US troops.
*
Faced with this very real US threat, the Syrian authorities also moved to quash growing domestic dissent, arresting and jailing dozens of pro-democracy activists. That crackdown continues to this day.

Catholic Church Accuses BBC of "Anti-Christian' Bias"

What do you do when the media spotlights a religious institution's hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy? If you are the Roman Catholic Church, you accuse the news media of bias and bigotry - anything to try to change the spin in the hope that some of the sheeple in the pews won't begin to realize that they are being played for fools and suckers. With Papa Ratzi's upcoming trip to the United Kingdom - a trip that will cost British taxpayers a great deal of money in terms of providing security for God's Rottweiler - it is only natural that the British media is focusing on the Catholic Church, including some of its less than savory aspects. It is also only natural that, given all of the horrific stories of sexual abuse by clergy, that many Britons are upset at the public cost of the Pope's visit when they flat out wish he'd either stay in Rome or pay for his own security costs. Now, further igniting high emotions, Cardinal O'Brien has accused the BBC of being "anti-Christian" and "anti-Catholic" merely because it has reported the truth about the Church. If the Church leaders spent as much time cleaning their own filthy house as they do attacking those who report the news, the Church would be a far less corrupt institution. Here are highlights from The Telegraph on the issue:
*
Cardinal Keith O’Brien said the BBC’s news coverage is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”. . . . He also accused the corporation of plotting a “hatchet job” on the Vatican in a documentary about clerical sex abuse on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.
*
“Our detailed research into BBC news coverage of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, together with a systematic analysis of output by the Catholic church, has revealed a consistent anti-Christian institutional bias.”
*
Cardinal O’Brien also voiced fears that the broadcaster will use a forthcoming documentary called Benedict –Trials of a Pope to humiliate the pontiff on the eve of his visit to Britain. The programme, which charts the clerical child abuse crisis that has dogged the Catholic church, has been made by Mark Dowd, a homosexual former Dominican friar. It will be aired on September 15.
*
The BBC dismissed Cardinal O’Brien’s criticism of its religious coverage and denied that it had marginalised mainstream religious issues, which it said were placed “at the heart” of its schedule. A spokeswoman said: “The BBC’s commitment to religious broadcasting is unequivocal. BBC news and current affairs has a dedicated religion correspondent, and works closely with BBC Religion, ensuring topical religious and ethical affairs stories are featured across all BBC networks.”
*
My advice to the cardinal - if the truth hurts, clean up the Church's act and get rid of the rampant anti-woman prejudice and homophobia for starters.

Labor Day Weekend Five Years Ago - Katrina Aftermath

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a repost of a post I did roughly three years ago that described the efforts of my former b/f and I in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation to New Orleans, my late grandmother's home town. Perhaps we were a bit crazy to undertake the adventure, but I know that we touched some lives and helped individuals who had largely lost everything. I continue to believe that the story line based on our experiences would make for a hysterically funny screenplay - sort of a "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!" in nature. Here's the post:

Since we are in the midst of hurricane season (June 1 through November 30), I wanted to recount an adventure [my former partner], Raymond and I had Labor Day weekend of 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Having lived on the Gulf Coast and loving the City of New Orleans, in the aftermath of Katrina, Raymond and I were so so sick of watching the television images of Hurricane Katrina victims that Raymond felt we had to do something. Perhaps it was craziness in some ways, but what followed is a trip I will never forget.

*

Raymond began calling the Red Cross and various telephone numbers shown on TV seeking to find a way to bring some evacuees to live in our house and/or assist in getting back on their feet. Finally, he made contact with a woman in an office in Baton Rouge assisting evacuees. Through her, we had a contact and arranged to go to Baton Rouge to pick up people to come back to Norfolk. Thinking that we had firm plan in place, we rented a van and drove south, carrying extra tanks of gasoline (some given to us near the Alabama border by a Baptist Church team head back to Georgia) and slept in rest areas during the trip. We got as far as Jackson, Mississippi and hit a wall. Our contact who was supposed to meet us in Baton Rouge disappeared in the confusion generated by Chimperator Bush's PR visit to Baton Rouge the day we were to arrive.

*

Unable to confirm any arrangement, we were reluctant to drive another 120 miles each way to Baton Rouge where chaos was in full reign. Hence, we went to the Jackson Mississippi Coliseum where the Red Cross was warehousing evacuees like animals. Our volunteered assistance was turned down by the Red Cross because of "liability concerns." Next we headed northward to Meridian, Mississippi where a large Methodist Church had several hundred evacuees. We nearly had a family decide to go with us, but the father - who was a basket case - in the last resort wanted to stay in the false hope of being able to return to New Orleans.

*

Leaving Meridian, we finally stopped at a cute little restaurant called the Santa Fe Cafe in the tiny town Forrest, Mississippi, since we had not had a normal meal in several days. Upon being seated, the waitress immediately says to us "You boys aren't from around here, are you?" Thinking we were probably about to be beaten up or killed, we explained the basis for our quest. When the waitress told other employees, we soon had them all talking to us and we ended up with food - a fabulous southern style buffet - on the house. They refused to let us pay for anything. Anyone traveling from Meridian to Tuscaloosa should look up this restaurant, which is just off the interstate.

*
Finally, we wound up visiting a Red Cross relief event at the Talladega Speedway in Alabama. There, we met some evacuees who gave us the phone numbers of several evacuees stranded in Atlanta who were about to run out of hotel vouchers. We finally picked up seven evacuees in Atlanta - by chance all seven were gay - and drove back to Norfolk. Some of the members of our church, First Lutheran of Norfolk, began helping the evacuees with funds and support. One older couple took in three of the evacuees since nine people in our house was madness.

*
We and our evacuees were very frustrated—having faced adversity at every turn as they try to find jobs and housing in the area. It was a maze of bureaucratic red tape since day one. People have been very critical of New Orleans officials and they way they handled things, but from what I saw, the Norfolk area would be just as bad if it happened here this year at some point.

*

An account of our adventure was printed in the Virginia Lawyers Weekly. Without a doubt, I have to be one of the most out attorneys in the Commonwealth of Virginia after that September 2006 article.

Sunday Male Beauty

Leaving Iraq - Obama's Missed Opportunity

I will admit that I did not watch Barack Obama's speech earlier this week on the alleged departure of combat troops from Iraq - although I did read the speech transcript. As readers cannot help but know, I am none too happy with Mr. Obama and his statement that Americans "turn the page" on the disaster in Iraq leaves the nation vulnerable to future fiascoes when played by liars and demagogues. George W. Bush is many things, but honorable and sincere are not two of them. By failing to throw the Iraq debacle squarely at the feet of the GOP and Chimperator Bush, Obama missed a golden opportunity to remind American's that much of the current deficit derives from 7 years of needless war in Iraq. He also missed the opportunity to tie the current economic hard times on the delusional Bush and the anti-regulation Republicans who set the stage for the financial market melt down. Only by clearly focusing on past mistakes and laying blame where it belongs can voters hopefully learn that voting based on slogans and/or cynically manipulated social issues does not replace electing candidates to office who are not focused solely on short term elector advantage. Frank Rich has a column in the New York Times that looks at Obama's failure and Jim Wallis has a piece in the Huffington Post that revisits the true cost of the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney's fool's errand in Iraq. Here are highlights, first from Wallis' piece:
*
The emotion that grips me this morning, after watching President Obama's speech last night and listening to the commentary about the "end of our combat mission in Iraq," is a deep sadness. Even in the Oval Office speech last night, the mission of the war in Iraq still wasn't made clear -- and it never was.
*
This was a war started on a false pretext -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them or hand them off to terrorists.
*
That Saddam Hussein was a terrible and brutal dictator was well known, but bombing his cities and people wasn't the only way to deal with him, as many church leaders pointed out at the time. And, of course, the U.S. hadn't made war on the countries of every other dictator who was as bad, or worse, than Saddam. But those dictators weren't sitting on deserts full of oil -- always the unspoken reality of our foreign policy and wars in the Middle Eastern region.
*
But what makes me so sad this morning is the enormous human cost of the war in Iraq; and how a massive number of people and families -- in America and Iraq -- have had their lives ended or changed forever because of this war and will have a hard time turning the page.
*
The human cost of the Iraq War is literally breathtaking. I went to a website last night that has documented the number and published the pictures of those who died, 4,400 so far. I couldn't stop looking at their pictures -- so young -- so many husbands and wives, fathers, mothers, and those still almost children themselves. . . . . Even conservative estimates of Iraqi civilian causalities are now over 100,000 with some estimates peaking over 1.3 million.
*
The unbelievable financial cost of the Iraq war also has clear human consequences. What could that $1 trillion -- $745 billion in Iraq and $330 billion so far in Afghanistan -- have done instead of war? How might the eventual $3 trillion in estimated costs that include long-term consequences and veteran's needs have been better used?
*
So was the war in Iraq worth the enormous human cost? My answer is no, the results are definitely not worth the cost.
*
Obama sadly would have Americans turn the page on this enormous waste of human life and U.S. dollars. By doing so, he has given a huge gift to those in the GOP who brought us the debacle in the first place - and who want to resume control of Congress. I simply do not understand it. Frank Rich has this to say:
*
What was so grievously missing from Obama’s address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose “end” he was marking.
*
This mood has not lifted and may be thickening as we trudge toward Year 10 in Afghanistan. But Obama only paid it lip service. It’s a mystery why a candidate so attuned to the nation’s pulse, most especially on the matter of war, has grown tone deaf in office.
*
In recent polls, 60 percent of those surveyed thought the war in Iraq was a mistake, 70 percent thought it wasn’t worth American lives, and only a quarter believed it made us safer from terrorism. This sour judgment is entirely reality-based. The war failed in all its stated missions except the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
*
We handed Al Qaeda a propaganda coup by sacrificing America’s signature values on the waterboard. We disseminated untold billions of taxpayers’ dollars from Baghdad’s Green Zone, much of it cycled corruptly through well-connected American companies on no-bid contracts, yet Iraq still doesn’t have reliable electricity or trustworthy security.
*
Of all the commentators on the debacle, few speak with more eloquence or credibility than Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. Writing in The New Republic after Obama’s speech, he decimated many of the war’s lingering myths, starting with the fallacy, reignited by the hawks taking a preposterous victory lap last week, that “the surge” did anything other than stanch the bleeding from the catastrophic American blundering that preceded it.
*
As the Pentagon rebrands Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn — a “name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid,” Bacevich aptly writes — the whitewashing of our recent history is well under way. The price will be to keep repeating it.
*
The cultural synergy between the heedless irresponsibility we practiced in Iraq and our economic collapse at home could not be more naked. The housing bubble, inflated by no-money-down mortgage holders on Main Street and high-risk gamblers on Wall Street, was fueled by the same greedy disregard for the laws of fiscal gravity that governed the fight-now-pay-later war.
*
The other American casualties of Iraq include the credibility of both political parties, neither of which strenuously questioned the rush to war and both of which are still haunted by that failure, and of the news media, which barely challenged the White House’s propaganda about Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds.
*
[T]here was no escaping the tragic fact that instead of bringing American-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, the costly war we fought there has, if anything, brought the bitter taste of Iraq’s dysfunction to America.
*
The sad truth is that thousands died for no legitimate reason and trillions of dollars were wasted for no reason. That's right, no reason, other than the Chimperator's hubris and Cheney's greed and megalomania.

Meghan McCain - A Face of the Future GOP?

Coming from a family that for decades voted moderate Republican (I myself resigned from the party as the Christianists began to seized control), I still shake my head in disbelief at times at the foul thing the GOP has become under the demagogues of the far right who refuse to separate religion from the civil laws. And who, candidly display themselves to be totally un-Christian and better named modern day Pharisees. Given the changing views of younger generations towards gays and racial issues and the increasing degree to which younger voters are turned off by today's GOP, to have a future long term, the GOP must change. True, it may win a few more election battles using the current anti-gay screed and similar messaging that resonates with the older portion of the party that is literally dying off with each election cycle. But long term, one would think that someone within the Party would be looking beyond the next election and perhaps a decade down the road. One who seems to be doing that longer view approach is Meghan McCain (Margaret Hoover and some others seem to see the long term hand writing on the wall as well) who has a new book out. Here are highlights from a review in the Washington Post (obviously, she's no darling to the far right loonies):
*
Her memoir is as much a scathing critique of the Republican Party as it is a passionate tale of life on the campaign trail. McCain takes repeated jabs at the intolerant ethos of today's Republicans. She rails at feeling left out: The party, she says, has been hijacked by the right wing and has rejected -- to its detriment -- the moderate politics that she and millions of other young conservatives espouse.
*
[S]he is both "passionately pro-life" and "passionately pro-contraception," and chastises conservatives for their narrowness of vision on the issue. "They go on and on about how evil and wrong abortion is, but don't like to talk about how easy it is to not get pregnant."
*
When McCain met Sarah Palin, she "felt shaken and troubled," worrying like many others that the Alaska governor was not prepared for the national stage. . . . She blames the choice of Palin on a secret cabal of campaign advisers and particularly excoriates Steve Schmidt, whom she describes as "our bullying campaign manager."
*
Once the Palin clan climbed aboard, the Pirate Ship started to sink. "From the minute Sarah arrived," McCain writes, "the campaign began splitting apart. And rather than joining us, and our campaign, she seemed only to begin her own."
*
She ended the campaign feeling alienated from her party and worried about its domination by the Christian right. Calling herself a passionate Christian, McCain fears the party will shrink and possibly become irrelevant if it narrows its agenda to "accommodate only one moral code." On the night of her father's defeat, she felt gloomy enough to imagine the worst for the party. "That night," she writes, "I was standing at its funeral and saying good-bye."
*
I remain convinced that long term the Christianists will be the death of the GOP. The question is one of when and how someone with charisma can wrench the party back from the Christo-fascists before the party becomes irrelevant.

Things Christianists Hate: Gays, Bi-sexual Womenn and Men Who Play Video Games

I try not to be too snarky in my posts, but at times the Christianists and the parasitic opportunists who play them for money make it ever so hard. The untethered insanity that they pass of as religious devotion is just too, too crazy to let me hold my tongue. Lou Engle - who I personally think needs major psychiatric intervention NOW - is a case in point. As are his fellow loons and theocrats who demonstrated in Sacramento, California against gay marriage. In their prayers, they also prayed for bisexual women and middle aged men who play video games. WTF is with men playing video games? Seriously, at times I don't what planet these folks are from - perhaps a planet called Moron?

*

Not surprisingly, joining Engle in the batshittery was KKK loving, not so closeted racist Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. What frightens me about such people is that far too many Americans fail to realize that these individuals and their mentally disturbed followers will not rest until there is a theocracy in this country. That's not to say they will ever be successful in the endeavor, but I fear that they will become more radical (and violent) as their agenda fails and as a result increasingly live up to the name "Christian Taliban." I also cannot help but wonder what's missing and/or broken in these people's lives that they obsess over denying rights to people they don't even know and who merely want to live their lives with basic security under the civil laws. Here are highlights from the Sacramento Bee on the religious based insanity:
*
Summoned by conservative Christian leaders from around the country, thousands gathered on the west steps of the Capitol on Saturday for 12 hours of solemn prayer, gospel and Christian rock – and repeated calls to end abortion and gay marriage.
*
Much of the day was devoted to speeches about God, love and morality, but there was considerable blurring of the line between religion and politics. Among the speakers was Tony Perkins, a leader of the religious right and head of the Washington lobbying group the Family Research Council. . . . "If (the ruling) stands, in one generation we will have gone from banning the Bible in public schools to banning religious beliefs in society," Perkins said.
*
The event's organizer, conservative Kansas City evangelist Lou Engle, urged the crowd to "break the altar of homosexual marriage."
*
Speakers decried what they called the rampant immorality sweeping America. The crowd was asked to pray for women who'd had abortions, clergy addicted to pornography, bisexual women – even middle-aged men who play video games.
*
The Sacramento event began with a four-hour religious concert Friday night at Raley Field. On Saturday, organizers planned for a crowd of 50,000, lining up portable toilets alongside Capitol Mall and installing video screens several blocks from the stage. But while the area immediately adjacent to the stage was packed, the mall remained largely empty. The California Highway Patrol declined to make a crowd estimate.
*
[T]he presence of such heavyweights as Perkins put a political cast on the day. Engle's website posted a video greeting from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a once and potentially future candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, urging people to come to Sacramento. Huckabee tore into Walker's Proposition 8 ruling on the video.

More Saturday Male Beauty

The Benefits of Gay Blogs for the LGBT Community

Admittedly, there are days when I feel like letting this blog die. It's a major time commitment and it's an effort to try to find interesting and at times different thought provoking things to write about. Search agents help, but it still takes time - as does finding male beauty photos which are still a lure for some readers (yep, Don, I'm thinking of you) who by the way do claim to read the articles as well. On the plus side, writing is good therapy for me and since I cannot afford to be on meds and seeing a therapist, blogging fills a void. Of course, the biggest plus is when I receive a wonderful message from some reader whom I unwittingly have touched. An article at Ezines Articles has identified other benefits of gay blogs - even if LGBT blogs are none too popular with the Obama crowd at the White House. In fact, the article makes the proposition that gay blogs help gays worldwide. Here are some highlights:
*
In the information age, blogs have become important and popular tools that are instrumental to distributing knowledge and news to wide and diverse populations. As such, blogs are necessary tools for any group wishing to keep its members abreast of new information and developments. While blogs are important to any group, because of the way the LGBT community is spread out around the country and the world, gay blogs are even more important in making sure that all are kept up to date on items that are relevant and vital to LGBTs.
*
One important benefit of gay blogs is that they promote greater awareness of issues that are important to the LGBT community. . . . Data about progress in one area could provide a way for others to push forward in another area.
*
Another benefit of gay blogs is that they provide a way for LGBTs to meet other people and to discuss trends that they see occurring within the community or greater societal happenings that could ultimately cause an impact on other LGBTs.
*
While news about progress and trends are helpful, blogs can have an even more tangible plus. As LGBTs are still often victims of discrimination and violence, blogs can have the very real impact of warning others about specific incidents and rallying people to fight institutions that continue to promote discrimination.
*
Every day, LGBTs win more battles for equality and host more events that celebrate its members and their contributions. As a result, blogs can help spread news of these victories, which can serve as inspirations to others, and promote knowledge of and attendance at these events, so that they can achieve the greatest degree of success.
*
A final important advantage to gay blogs is to raise funds and support for gay causes and LGBT friendly politicians. Every success for the LGBT community requires money and manpower to drive it further. Blogs are vital tools in rallying these resources and increased readership of gay blogs can help to form a more vibrant and engaged social force.
*
Gay blogs have a vast potential to drive change, promote awareness, and mold a greater sense of family for LGBTs everywhere. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all is that gay blogs remind LGBTs that they truly are a community.

*

I can personally state that blogging HAS made me feel more of a part of a larger community, both in terms of interactions with other bloggers and also in terms of knowing that others are enduring and battling along with me for the day when anti-gay bigotry and homophobia will be largely a thing of the past. Making a difference for the better is something I very much want to do.

Tea Party Candidate Opposes Masturbation

There are some who have tried to depict the Tea Party crowd as conservatives who are focused on economic issues and smaller government rather than in many ways just another incarnation of the Christian Right. Sharon Angle and others demonstrate that the Tea Party candidates are more of the same tired bedroom police that we've seen time and time again. Then there's Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell (pictured at left) who who seems to want masturbation outlawed - she equates the act, in fact, as "self-abuse." If Ms. O'Donnell doesn't want to engage in masturbation, then my message to her is "don't." However, if she wants to police people's bedrooms and crusade for abstinence only education and other Christian Right whack job issues, then she ought to join a convent as opposed to running for Congress. Jezebel.com has details on O'Donnell's insanity. Here are some highlights:
*
Sorry, what was that about the Tea Party being all about economic and not social issues? Not only has this year brought Sharron Angle. There's also Christine O'Donnell, whose definition of abstinence includes self-abuse.
*
O'Donnell is challenging a congressman in Delaware's Republican Senate primary, and until now no one took her seriously. (Possibly because she's a wackjob . . . ) But then establishment Republican Lisa Murkowski lost in Alaska to a previous unknown, backed by Tea Party money, and the groups vowed to make Delaware their next target.
*
Republicans party officials are scrambling, trashing her in the press and making websites like "The Real Christine." And reporters have just started digging. The Huffington Post reports that O'Donnell was on a Sex In The 90s special on MTV. (Remember those?) "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust," she said,
*
The good news, this is all dandy for Democrats, who have every reason to want O'Donnell to win the primary — polls show that Democrat Chris Coons can beat O'Donnell, but not Republican Mike Castle. And that would actually be wonderful.
*
Until the GOP ceases to be largely a religious based party (no matter what the remnants of the country club set claim), we are going to see more and more Sharon Angles and Christine O'Donnells. The wealthy may want lower taxes and neat tax loop holes, but do they seriously want lunatics running the country? They - including some of my neighbors - need to wake the Hell up to what has become of the Republican Party.

Saturday Male Beauty

2012 Presidential Campaign Ad Starts Airing — for Hillary

As I have noted before, in retrospect I believe I may have backed the wrong candidate in 2008. Unfortunately, I believed Obama's moving - but utterly insincere - speeches. A Chicago dentist named William DeJean apparently has the same feelings that I do and has paid $5,000 to air some recruit Hillary ads for 2012 in New Orleans. As I have noted before, I hope Obama is challenged for the 2012 nomination and defeated. He needs to learn that words and promises DO matter. As Hillary warned in 2008, he has proven too weak to get done what he promised. This from the Advocate:
*
"She has more experience working in and with the White House than most living presidents,” the ad says about Secretary of State Clinton. “She is one of the most admired women in our nation's history. Let's make sure the president we should have elected in 2008 will be on the ballot in 2012. Hillary 2012: Hillary Clinton for President. Start now. Where there's a Hill there's a way.”
*
Contacted by The Advocate about the ad, DeJean said, “I think my commercial is saying what most are thinking right now. I think there's a lot of buyer's remorse with Obama.”
*
The ad does not address gay rights, and DeJean said that progress on that front did not specifically motivate the ad. However, he said that he believes a Clinton administration would have accomplished more for equality than President Obama has achieved at this point.
*
“I think she would have done what she said she was going to do,” said DeJean. “I don't think he's necessarily followed through on his promises. I saw a sign at the Chicago gay pride parade that said, 'Change, my ass.'”
*
The ad may also run in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and possibly Houston. Clinton has repeatedly denied any interest in making another run for the presidency.

Larry Sabato Predicts a Republican House Majority

My undergraduate classmate and politico guru Larry Sabato is predicting that the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming elections. I have been saying for well over a year that the Democrats have alienated their base and done nothing to prove that they can govern and get things done other than on a half-assed basis (e.g., piss poor health care reform). As a result, I candidly cannot find much sympathy in my heart for the Democrats since, in my view, they have brought defeat upon themselves by breaking promises to those who put them in office and lacking the spine to attack demagogues within the GOP who have not been properly challenged even though they propose no solutions to the nation's problems. It's basically, the same old bullshit from the GOP, but unfortunately, the Democrats have set themselves up to be depicted either as do nothings or big spenders - even thought the budget deficits track back to the GOP. Leadership DOES matter and it's sadly lacking both in the White House and among the leaders of the Congressional Democrats.

*

All this said, the boyfriend and I will do our part and support our local members of Congress who have supported the LGBT community. In fact, on the afternoon of September 26th, we will be hosting an event for Congressman Glenn Nye at our home. More on that will be forth coming as the details are finalized. I will likewise be doing a piece once I have a one on one conversation with Nye. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on Larry Sabato's predictions:
*
In a report issued this morning, University of Virginia political handicapper Larry Sabato estimated that Republicans will pick up 47 seats in the House on Nov. 2, more than enough to restore the party to majority status at the start of the 112th Congress.
*
"Conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer," writes Sabato. "The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low." He adds: "To most voters--fair or not--it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered."
*
And, on Wednesday, Charlie Cook, a former Fix boss and editor of the Cook Political Report, wrote that "Democrats find themselves heading into a midterm election that looks as grisly as any the party has faced in decades." Cook added that there are 32 Democratic incumbents who currently trail their Republican challengers in either public or private polling -- far more than the 11 GOP incumbents who were losing at this time in 2006. (Democrats re-took control of the House that year.)
*
[G]loom and doom predictions for Democrats, therefore, can have real world implications as donors are less likely to pony up crucial dollars, targeted Members go into panic mode and party strategists become more willing to throw their side overboard in conversations with reporters.
*
For Democrats trying to hold the House majority then, these increasingly pessimistic prognostication add another layer of complexity to the challenge.

Historians' Changing View of Lincoln's Sexuality

In 2005, the late C.W. Tripp posited that Abraham Lincoln was secretly a homosexual in his book, “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.” Not surprisingly, many historians and those on the far right were aghast - as if somehow being same sex attracted makes one incapable of being a great leader and a wartime president. Never mind the many figures from history that were what we would nowadays call gay: Alexander the Great, Roman Emperor Hadrian, Michelangelo, Leonardo Di Vinci to name just a few. Some might question why 145 years after Lincoln's death the issue even matters. In my view, it IS an very important question given the far right's never ceasing efforts to depict LGBT individuals as sick, perverted, mentally ill, alcoholics, drug addicts and many other derogatory things. That a major figure like Lincoln was one of us - albeit perhaps more or less in the closet - turns the agenda of our enemies upside down. It also will cause no small amount of angst amongst far right Republicans if their party's principal founder on the national level loved another man and slept with him for years. Indeed, if Joshua Speed (pictured at right, above) was in fact the "love of his life" for Lincoln, many anti-gay stereotypes are destroyed or at least seriously undermined.

*

Both Change.org and Gay City News have stories on this still debated topic and the growing number of top flight historians who are beginning to admit that Lincoln was likely gay. Living out and proud changes many minds in our favor on a daily basis. And while younger generations are rapidly changing their attitudes about and levels of acceptance of LGBT citizens, by bringing out the real stories of gay figures from the past, may further accelerate the the ultimate defeat of anti-bigots. Plus, it's down right fun to imagine the conniption fits among the Bible beaters. Here are highlights, first from Gay City News:
*
[T]he LGBT press has been ignoring an infinitely more significant development under way with vastly more important implications for the Republican Party: the increasing acceptance by historians that the loving heart of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator and the first GOP president, found its natural amorous passions overwhelmingly directed toward those of his own sex.
*
This shifting consensus about Lincoln’s sexual orientation is certainly the most stunning and effective rebuke to the Republican Party’s scapegoating of same-sex love for electoral purposes, which came to fever pitch during the 2004 race that [Ken] Mehlman spearheaded for George W. Bush.
*
“We are getting closer to the day that a majority of younger, less homophobic historians will at long last accept the evidence of Lincoln’s same-sex component,” John Stauffer, chair of Harvard University’s Department of American Civilization, told Gay City News, adding, “ We’re already seeing the beginnings of a trend that will amount to a major paradigm shift.”
*
Stauffer is one of the nation’s leading experts on the Civil War era, and in his latest — and best-selling — book, “Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln,” he supports the thesis that Joshua Speed was, as he put it, “Lincoln’s soulmate and the love of his life.”
*
And in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Reviews of American History, Stauffer hammers home this point, writing, “In light of what we know about romantic friendship at the time, coupled with the facts surrounding Speed’s and Lincoln’s friendship, there is no reason to suppose they weren’t physically intimate at some point during their four years of sleeping together in the same small bed, long after Lincoln could afford a bed of his own. To ignore this, as most scholars do, is to pretend that same-sex carnal relationships were abnormal. It thus presumes a dislike or fear about such relationships, reflecting a presentist and homophobic perspective.”
*
A majority of Lincoln scholars dumped on Tripp’s book when it was published five years ago, but the “paradigm shift” on Lincoln of which Stauffer speaks is not only being led by younger historians like himself (Stauffer received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999, began teaching at Harvard that year, and was tenured in 2004).
*
In a lengthy article entitled “Abraham Lincoln and the Tripp Thesis” in a recent issue of one of the oldest scholarly journals devoted to the iconic president, the Lincoln Herald, a senior Lincoln historian and author of numerous Lincoln books, the octogenarian William Hanchett, professor of history emeritus at the University of California/ San Diego, “challenges historians to either refute the Tripp thesis or to rewrite Lincoln’s biography. Hanchett believes that Tripp is correct at least in the broad outline of his work and finds it frustrating that most historians, rather than confronting this pioneering study, choose to ignore it,” as the Lincoln Herald’s editors put it in introducing Hanchett’s revealing, carefully footnoted essay on Lincoln’s same-sex affinities.
*
Hanchett in particular breaks new ground when he deconstructs what we know of the much-ignored secret Memo books kept by Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon as he spent a quarter century intensively researching his massive “Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life,” published in 1889. The UC/ San Diego scholar details how he believes that the otherwise thorough Tripp missed the evidence there that backs up Hanchett’s view that “Lincoln’s secret” was homosexuality.
*
One of the few traditional Lincolnists to describe — however obliquely — the lifelong Lincoln-Speed relationship as homosexual was the Illinois poet Carl Sandburg, in his masterful, six-volume Lincoln biography. In the 1926 tome titled “The Prairie Years,” Sandburg wrote that both Lincoln and Speed had “a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets.”
*
“I do not feel my own sorrows more keenly than I do yours,” Lincoln wrote Speed in one letter. And elsewhere: “You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting.” In a detailed retelling of the Lincoln-Speed love story — including the “lust at first sight” encounter between the two young men, when Lincoln readily accepted Speed’s eager invitation to share his narrow bed — Tripp notes that Speed was the only human being to whom the president ever signed his letters with the unusually tender (for Lincoln) “yours forever” — a salutation Lincoln never even used with his wife.
*
Speed himself acknowledged, “No two men were ever so intimate.” And Tripp credibly describes Lincoln’s near nervous breakdown following Speed’s decision to end their four-year affair by returning to his native Kentucky.
*
“Why [have] scholars [been] so willfully blind to the host of historical evidence that Lincoln had a strong homosexual component?,” Harvard’s Stauffer wrote to this reporter in an email, explaining, “The answer stems from the intense homophobia throughout 20th century America, which has profoundly shaped Lincoln scholarship. Every scholar needs to read previous scholarship on Lincoln; and even comparatively open-minded scholars, after reading the mass of Lincoln scholarship, can easily be persuaded into perpetuating the blindness about Lincoln’s relationship with Speed.”
*
Stauffer, however, underscored in his email, “These explanations don’t account for the fact that most scholars today can agree that other well-known and beloved figures, such as Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, had strong homosexual tendencies but deny that Lincoln did, despite similar evidence. The reason for this paradox, and perhaps the central reason why scholars have been willfully blind to the evidence on Lincoln, is because most view him as the ‘redeemer president’— essentially ‘America’s Christ’ — and don’t want America’s Christ having strong homosexual tendencies.”
*
Change.org follows a similar analysis and also adds these salient points that underscore why having the truth about Lincoln ultimately told is important:
*
Abraham Lincoln is one of the most revered figures in American history. Students around the country are required to memorize his Gettysburg Address. His debates are seen as some of the penultimate political rhetoric in U.S. electoral history. His mug is on the penny, the five-dollar bill, and on Mt. Rushmore. Scores of Republicans proudly boast that they're "the party of Lincoln." And his Emancipation Proclamation makes up one of the foundational documents in the U.S. civil rights narrative.
*
Stauffer's comments in the piece are pretty interesting, if not for the fact that they suggest that within historian circles, folks who dismiss claims about Lincoln's homosexuality might be doing so because of internalized, or not so internalized, homophobia.
*
Today, we're making a big deal out of people like GOP strategist Ken Mehlman coming out of the closet, or conservative straight allies like Ted Olson, Margaret Hoover, Steve Schmidt, and Christine Todd Whitman, who willingly point their name down to support marriage equality. But what if it turns out that one of America's foremost historical figures, and someone dubbed one of the greatest Presidents our country has ever seen, "had a streak of lavender?"

More Friday Male Beauty

Focus on the Family Supports Bullying and Gay Teen Suicide

UPDATED: I concede that my emotions were high when I wrote this post. Having lost friends to suicide because they could not deal with the rampant homophobia around them, Justin's needless suicide as the result of religious bigotry truly set me off.

*

Focus on the Family ("FOTF") has shown its truly ugly face yet again in a controversy that has arisen out of the Anoka-Hennepin School Division where three gay teens have committed suicide. In the face of efforts to implement a no-bullying policy that would protect GLBT students against vicious bullying, FOTF has come out in opposition of the policy - once again disingenuously claiming that it would restrict the religious freedom of religious based bigots who frankly believe that the only good gay is a dead gay. The controversy highlights just how sick and perverse FOTF and its adherence are in reality despite their efforts to wrap themselves in religion and play the victim card. It truly sickens me and every time I read a story such as this I slip one step further towards disavowing Christianity in its entirety because it is nothing less than evil as practiced by people and organizations like FOTF.

*

One mother, Tammy Aaberg, who lost her son Justin (pictured above) is speaking out and properly laying responsibility for her son's death at the feet of the school board which has failed to protect her son and other students from anti-gay bullying. It appears that the school board recently - and all too typically - knuckled under to to Christiaist that "homosexuality not be promoted." These bigots believe they have the right to trample over the rights of everyone else. Gay Agenda has background on the situation here, as well as commentary on FOTF and it's faux "experts" who are opposing needed changes. In my opinion, if anyone is guilty of a "culture of death" it's FOTF and similar anti-gay bigots. The Daily Planet News has coverage on Tammy Aaberg's statements on this tragedy. Here are highlights:
*
According to his mother, Justin Aaberg was "a very sweet boy who seemed to always have a smile on his face; he didn't have a mean bone in his body...He was always a shoulder [friends] could cry on and would help them with their problems. He was also an extremely good cello player who even composed a few of his own songs."
*
Tammy Aaberg's son, a student at Anoka High School, killed himself on July 9th, 2010. In testimony she gave to the Anoka-Hennepin School Board on Monday, Aaberg said her son was bullied because of his sexual orientation. She blamed the district for not intervening to stop the bullying, accusing district administrators of tying teachers' hands with a policy that kept teachers from being able to "reach out and help these hurting students."
*
"I'm only asking that you please make the school safe for GLBT students still alive and in this district today they are people just like us and deserve to be treated like the rest of us. Suicide should not feel like the only way to take away the pain and shame."
*
According to Peter Gokey, a former teacher in the Anoka-Hennepin School District and a leader of a group of LGBTA activists in the school district and who is familiar with Justin Aaberg's suicide, the young man also left messages saying he was driven to suicide by incessant anti-gay bullying.
*
When OutFront Minnesota, through staff attorney Phil Duran, offered to conduct district-wide LGBT sensitivity and anti-bullying training for all teachers and staff following last year's suicide involving former Anoka-Hennepin student Alex Merrit, Associate Superintendant Michelle Langenfeld declined, saying in a letter to Duran that the neutrality policy prevented "support for district-wide staff development around a GLTB initiative."
*
"I suspect in part it's because they know they've got this very conservative community and some loudmouths in that community who'll raise cain if they do something pro-LGBT," said OutFront's Duran.
*
Yet another young gay life needless lost, one of thousands around the country each year. Meanwhile Christianist bigots like James Dobson strut about feeling self-righteous and congratulating themselves on their piety. Meanwhile, truth be told, they are little better than murderers. Justin, may you rest in peace. And may those at FOTF burn in Hell as they so justly deserve.