Wednesday Male Beauty

Say No to Government Funding of Anti-Gay Organizations

As yet another example of how the principally the Republican Party can no longer separate itself from Christianist nutcase causes and as a consequence should be considered first and foremost as a religious party, in Minnesosota GOP Rep. Jim Ramstad (and a misguided Dem. Sen. Amy Klobuchar) is working to land $500,000 in funding for Minnesota Teen Challenge (MNTC), an anti-gay faith-based drug treatment program. One of the requirements of the program is that participants swear off homosexuality. Now, all too typically, the religious organization is unhappy that it is finding itself and it's religious dogma under scrutiny and instead thinks it should have a blank check of taxpayer derived monies. Fortunately, that isn't going to happen as evidenced by this editorial piece in the Minnesota Independent. Here are some highlights:

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If you accept taxpayer money, you have to accept that you’re going to receive public scrutiny. That simple point seems to be eluding Minnesota Teen Challenge (MNTC), the faith-based drug treatment program which secured a federal earmark in early 2008 arranged by Rep. Jim Ramstad and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, for its “Know the Truth” program which aims to prevent drug use. Operating close to the border of church and state, the group’s members are unrealistic if they think their work is not going to get attention.

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The point of my article was not to suggest that MNTC was not successful or beneficial, as Scherber implies. Rather it was to point out the overtly religious nature of the organization and that the program has historically been controversial. In the interest of brevity, I left some examples out. For instance, MNTC’s stance on Halloween verges on the comical (”Halloween is a day set up totally for Satan … The more people who go out dressed as demons, ghosts, witches and goblins, the more glory Satan receives”). Scherber’s claim that the Holy Spirit told an MNTC bus driver to avoid the 35-W bridge on the day of its collapse in August 2007 is touching but, let us say, unverified.

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I think MNTC has been very effective for the clients it serves. However, I don’t think it’s appropriate for judges, prosecutors or public defenders to suggest the program as an alternative to jail. (Szalavitz, by the way, vehemently disagrees with MNTC’s claims about its success rate).

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One thing is clear. The pressure to keep a positive public image is important to MNTC at this time. As the group’s Web site acknowledges, MNTC invested money in Fidelis Foundation, an institution created by Christian philanthropist Tom Petters, who is now under investigation for organizing a Ponzi scheme and defrauding investors such as the Fidelis Foundation. MNTC lost a lot of money and Klobuchar’s proposed earmark will certainly help ease the burden a little. What else could explain sending form letters to every media outlet that runs an article critical of the organization?

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As I have argued repeatedly, a group's freedom of religion stops the moment it starts accepting public, taxpayer derived funds. If the organization cannot operate in a manner that does not trample on the religious freedom of others or which does not involve indoctrination of a set religious view, then the solution is simple: do not accept taxpayer derived funds. It's that simple.

The Horrific Bush Legacy

Even a casual reader of this blog will soon realize that I despise the Chimperator who I believe is the worst president EVER in the history of the United States of America. He is exhibit #1 as to why an intellectually lazy, ignorant in terms of other cultures, and blindly religious fundamentalist individual should NEVER again hold the office of President. The Bush legacy is one of doing much damage to the nation domestically and internationally and I believe history will not be kind to either him or Emperor Palpatine Cheney. He at home the Bush/Cheney regime has severely damaged the economy and undermining civil liberties for U.S. citizens. Internationally, he has made torture a U.S. policy and acted as a war criminal. Bob Herbert in the New York Times has an overview of the Bush/Cheney disaster that I agree with fully. Here are some highlights:

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Does anyone know where George W. Bush is? . . . We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions. But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.

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When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

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This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

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The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

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He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

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And then there’s the Bush economy, another disaster, a trapdoor through which middle-class Americans can plunge toward the bracing experiences normally reserved for the poor and the destitute.

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The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe.

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The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests — sins of commission and omission — would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort. He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”

More Tuesday Male Beauty

Pope Tries A Rick Waren Move

I and many others have written about Nazi Pope Benedict XVI's latest attack on LGBT individuals when he said that protecting the human race from homosexuality was on a par with saving the tropical rain forests. Now the former Hitler Youth Pope through a spokesman is claiming he never made the statement and/or that it was misinterpreted. The same type of tactic that Christianist anti-gay bigot Rick Warren made when slammed for equating gay marriage with incest and pedophilia. Nice try, but it will not work since he former statements are of record. I am always baffled by those who try to claim that they never made statements event though they are in written form or on video. Nothing like documenting that you're a liar and a bad one at that. Here are some highlights from Pink News UK on the effort to spin the fiction that Ratzi did not say what he is documented to have said, as well as comments from a UK gay rights leaders:

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Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and Archbishop of Westminster, has defended Pope Benedict XVI's controversial comments about gay people.

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During an interview on this morning on Radio 4's Today programme, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said that the pope "wasn't condeming anyone or any person" with his comments. The cardinal went on to say that the pope was only trying to emphasise the importance of the family, and the responsibility on humans to procreate. He also said that Pope Benedict's comments were "quite difficult to interpret" and as a result of this that he had been "very much" misrepresented in the media.

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London Gay Christian Movement chief executive Rev Sharon Ferguson said: "There are still so many instances of people being killed around the world, including in western society, purely and simply because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity. "When you have religious leaders like that making that sort of statement then followers feel they are justified in behaving in an aggressive and violent way because they feel that they are doing God's work in ridding the world of these people."

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"This must be the most ourtrageous and bizarre claim yet made by the Pope who has already got a well-deserved reputation as one the most viciously homophobic world leaders on a par with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe," said PTT secretary and trustee George Broadhead. "The Vatican has already reinforced its anti-gay reputation by strongly opposing a UN declaration calling for an end to discrimination against gays, but this latest Papal outburst is clear evidence of an obsession about homosexuality which is tantamount to paranoia."

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Gay equality activist Peter Tatchell wrote on PinkNews.co.uk: "The suggestion that gay people are a threat to human survival is absurd and dangerous. It is poisonous propaganda that will give comfort and succour to queer-bashers everywhere.

Rick Warren - A Kinder Kind of Hater

Tuesday Male Beauty

Bishop Bans Outspoken Sex Abuse Advocate from Church

Rather than deal with the problems within the Roman Catholic Church, as is typical the Church leadership would rather try to silence critics who demand that there be accountability. The latest case as reported by Yahoo News involves Portland Bishop Richard Malone who has banned Paul Kendrick (pictured at left), a co-founder of the Maine chapter of the lay reform group Voice of the Faithful, from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, and warned in a letter that if he tries again to contact Malone, he risks losing any right "to participate fully in the sacramental life of the church." Kendrick has been a vocal critic of how church leaders have responded to abuse claims and treated victims. My personal advice to Kendrick and other Catholics - walk away and find a less corrupt and nasty denomination. Only loss of significant numbers of church members and, more importantly, loss of monetary contributions, is all that the bitter old men in dress within the hierarchy understand. Here are some story highlights:

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"It's a not-so-subtle attempt to silence me," Kendrick said Monday. "My response is that it's not about me. It's about protecting children today and helping and supporting those who were abused. He will not silence me from speaking out on those issues."

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Kendrick has protested outside churches, inundated the diocese with mail and e-mail, participated in a public confrontation with Malone and even showed up at an out-of-state meeting the bishop attended, Bernard said. She called it a campaign of harassment that ultimately could undermine Malone's ministry.

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Kendrick got word of the potential penalty after he told the bishop in a letter that he planned to attend Christmas Eve Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where Malone often celebrates Mass. The activist then received a criminal trespass order that barred him from the cathedral, the chancery and Malone's residence. He was also served an order to cease and desist from harassing Malone.

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Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and former dean of Duquesne Law School, said he had never heard of a bishop using church law, in this case the threat of an "interdict," against activists. "It's extremely unusual," said Cafardi, who was an original member of the National Review Board, the lay panel the U.S. bishops created in 2001 to monitor their response to the abuse scandal.

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The Rev. Tom Doyle, a Virginia priest and advocate for victims who is representing Kendrick, said the church has threatened to prevent Kendrick from receiving Holy Communion if he doesn't comply. Doyle said he can't find any basis for the diocese's actions, but he said church leaders have been angered by the aggressive tactics of some activists. Doyle said his work with abuse victims cost him a promising career as a canon lawyer in the church. "One of the biggest sins in the Catholic Church is to criticize a bishop," Doyle said.

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Last year, Malone released the names of 12 living former priests who faced credible allegations of abuse in Maine. The diocese also validated allegations against nine of 21 deceased priests identified by the attorney general in 2005 as being accused of sexual abuse.

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It would appear that Malone is a modern day Pharisee far too used to having his ass kissed by sheep like parishioners. And if criticizing a bishop is a no-no, I guess I'm in deep shit. As if I give a twit what such hypocrites and phonies think of me.

LGBT Couple Found Murdered in Indianapolis

The Christianist continue to demonize LGBT citizens and simultaneously oppose hate crimes legislation disingenuously claiming that no such laws are needed to protect gays - even though religion (something unlike sexual orientation which can easily be changed) is typically a protected category in most hate crime statutes. Thus, they establish an atmosphere where gays are targeted and brutalized by those who think their religion justifies harming gays, yet want to keep "special" protections for themselves. Sadly it is all too typical of the un-Christian Christianists. To them, LGBT Americans are an inconvenience to be discarded like garbage. From a story reported at Bilerico Project by Bill Browning (another Blogger summit attendee) it appears that two more LGBT individuals have died as a result of a hate crime. Here are some story highlights:

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Two Indianapolis residents were killed over the holidays. While details aren't definite, it would appear one or both individuals were specifically targeted. If the double slaying is a hate crime, nothing will be done about it. Indiana doesn't have a hate crimes law; instead we have a "hate crimes reporting" law, but there is no recourse if police departments don't report to the state. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department stopped documenting hate crimes years ago.

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Michael Hunt, 22, and Avery Elzy, 34, were found shot to death in "a bedroom." A dog in the room was also killed. While any murder is horrific, the IMPD's statements and news coverage of the homicide have been particularly heinous. Once again, Indianapolis is proving to the LGBT community that our city isn't sensitive to our concerns, lacks basic knowledge of our needs, and could absolutely care less.

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In a video released by the local NBC affiliate, Lt. Kevin Kelley can be seen stating "the two individuals did live an alternative lifestyle" at a press conference yesterday. I attempted to contact Lt. Kelley three different times today to ask for clarification of his "alternative lifestyle" comment, without response from anyone at IMPD.

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Instead, as is often the case in Indianapolis, all remote mentions of the LGBT community is silently being swept under the rug. When two elderly gay men were murdered earlier this year, police didn't identify the victims' sexuality and refused to discuss whether the double slaying was a hate crime. The media rewrote their posted stories - the two progressed from roommates, to a gay couple, and finally into a caregiver relationship (the correct relationship).

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With no motive released, a complete lack of understanding of LGBT issues, and a previous record of whitewashing LGBT concerns, is it any wonder some in our community are spinning their own nightmares?

More Monday Male Beauty

How Bush and the GOP Helped Stoke the Mortgage Bust

I have had a number of Republicans - many of whom are in reality the most concerned only about what they pay in taxes and to Hell with the best interests of the country - try to blame Bill Clinton, Congressional Democrats and many others for the mortgage industry collapse and accompanying credit market melt down. An article in the New York Times that I bookmarked a while back helps reveal the lack of substance of these arguments made by GOP apologists and shows that the Chimperator's policies (which were rubber stamped by the GOP controlled Congress) helped set the stage for the residential mortgage market collapse. Here are some highlights:

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The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse when President Bush and his economics team huddled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a briefing that, in the words of one participant, “scared the hell out of everybody.”

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[H]is Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him [Bush] that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in. “How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”

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There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk. But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

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[H]is housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards. Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. . . . And the regulator Mr. Bush chose to oversee them — an old prep school buddy — pronounced the companies sound even as they headed toward insolvency.

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As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Mr. Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn; . . . The result was a series of piecemeal policy prescriptions that lagged behind the escalating crisis.

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For much of the Bush presidency, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and war; on the economic front, its pressing concerns were cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. The housing market was a bright spot: ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college. *

But for much of Mr. Bush’s tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put homeownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers . . . . So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending. . . . And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down.

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The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. “Corporate America,” he said, “has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place.” And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Mr. Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment.

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Mr. Bush populated the financial system’s alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more. As for Mr. Bush’s banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks.

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The bottom line is that for all the GOP efforts to blame others for the current financial crisis, they and the half-wit Chimperator are largely to blame for the crisis in which the country now finds itself.

Study: Parental Reaction Has Huge Influence on Gay Suicide

San Francisco State University's Family Acceptance Project has released a new report which is highlighted in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), that looks at the effects of parental rejection on LGBT youth. I have actually had a copy of this new study entitled "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults" for nearly two weeks but it was embargoed until 12:01 am today. The findings are in many ways what one would expect - namely, that negative family reactions to youth sexual orientation often has very negative consequences, including increased rates of suicide, depression, and/or drug use - but it is nonetheless helpful to have a legitimate study to backup what should seem obvious. Based on individuals I have met, it is often easy to see precisely the adverse outcomes described in the study report. Here are some highlights:

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The results of this study show that negative family reactions to an adolescent’s sexual orientation are associated with negative health problems in LGB young adults. As such, this study provides empirical evidence to begin addressing long-standing questions about the precursors of high levels of risk consistently documented in studies of LGB youth and young adults. Because families play such a critical role in child and adolescent development, it is not surprising that adverse, punitive, and traumatic reactions from parents and caregivers in response to their children’s LGB identity would have such a negative influence on their risk behaviors and health status as young adults.

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LGB young people from families with no or low levels of rejection are at significantly lower risk than those from highly rejecting families related to depression, suicidality, illicit substance use, and risky sexual behavior. So helping families identify and reduce specific rejecting behaviors is integral to helping prevent health and mental health problems for LGB young people.

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The current study also has important implications for identifying youth at risk for family violence and for being ejected from their homes or placed in custodial care because of their LGB identity. LGB youth are overrepresented in foster care, juvenile detention, and among homeless youth. Moreover, conflict related to the adolescent’s sexual and gender identity is a primary cause of ejection or removal from the home.*

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Specifically, the study found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults who reported high levels of family rejection during adolescence were:

• 8.4 times more likely to report attempting suicide

• 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression

• 3.4 times more likely to report illegal drug use

• 3.4 times more likely to report having engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse.

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The clear import of the study is that Christianist and homophobic parents who reject their LGBT children - and professional "Christians" like James Dobson who market anti-gay hate - have much responsibility on their hands for the adverse consequence that their children and LGBT youth come to suffer. Obviously, loving and truly Christian parents would not reject their children, but then these types of parents aren't truly Christian in the first place.

Monday Male Beauty

Meanwhile, the Church Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel for Priests

Maybe it is because gays no longer need to hide within the priesthood, or maybe it's because more and more young Catholics recognize the hypocrisy, corruption and rot at the heart of the Church's leadership, but whatever the cause, the Roman Catholic Church is desperate for priests and is now importing priests form Africa among other places to fill the void. From my experience growing up Catholic, the vast majority of Catholic priests have no clue whatsoever on issues faced by modern American families or the strains experienced by married couples with families. Instead, they think they have it tough living with a housekeeper, possessing more funds to spend upon themselves than most married men, and having church women kiss their asses and look after them. And that's priests born and raised in the USA. Now, because nearly no one wants to go into the priesthood and because the Church excludes woman, married men and normal gays, the Church has resorted to importing foreign born and raised priests who will be even less competent to counsel their American parishioners. One can only hope that in time this type of idiocy will be the harbinger of further declines in Catholic Church membership - loss of members and money are the only thing that registers with the Vatican. Would that the Episcopal and Lutheran Churches would begin a marketing campaign to disaffected Catholics. Here are highlights from the New York Times on the importation of priests:

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Father Oneko [from Kenya] is part of a wave of Roman Catholic priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America who have been recruited to fill empty pulpits in parishes across America. They arrive knowing how to celebrate Mass, anoint the sick and baptize babies. But few are prepared for the challenges of being a pastor in America.

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Father Oneko, 46, had never counseled parishioners like those he found here at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church. . . . . To the volunteers at St. Michael’s, it was clear that Father Oneko was out of his element in many ways.

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In fact, the flow of priests from the developing world to Europe and the United States amounts to a brain drain: most of those developing countries have far fewer priests in proportion to Roman Catholics than the United States does. Father Oneko’s situation in Kenya, serving 12 parishes simultaneously, was not unusual.

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Father Oneko arrived at St. Michael’s on the heels of a Nigerian priest who had been helping out temporarily. Father Oneko said he was unnerved to hear that the Nigerian had not been a resounding success. Parishioners complained that they could not understand his accent.

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He did not tell the parishioners that in Kenya and Jamaica, he had been a charismatic Catholic, participating in faith healings and leading Masses with spirited singing and clapping that lasted for hours.

Pope Continues Anti-Gay Jihad

The Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI (pictured at left saluting Hitler) , is continuing his anti-gay jihad this time working to interfere with the civil laws of Spain which has abandoned the 13th century level of knowledge and Thomist "natural law" so popular with the Pope and the other nasty, bitter old queens within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy. In my view, if Benedict wants to restrict scientific/medical knowledge of sexual orientation to a 13th century level, he should be consistent and refuse any medical treatments not in vogue at that point in history. With any luck, we'd be rid of the old geezer in no time. I know that I am harsh with the Catholic Church, but I believe that in its current form and with its current leadership, it is in many ways a force for evil in the world today. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post's story on the Catholic Church's latest efforts to deprive segments of Spanish society from civil legal rights:

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Hundreds of thousands of people attended a Mass in central Madrid on Sunday designed to promote traditional family values in a predominantly Roman Catholic country that has legalized gay marriage and made it easier for people to divorce. The service started with a message from Pope Benedict XVI, who urged Spanish Catholics to keep their families strong. . . . . The archbishop of Madrid, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, added: "the future of humanity depends on the family, the Christian family."

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Spain's Socialist government has angered the church by legalizing gay marriage, making it easy for people to divorce and instituting a public school course in which children learn about homosexuality and same-sex marriages. It is also considering easing Spain's restrictive abortion law.

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A similar Mass and rally were held at this time last year in the same square, and organizers put attendance at well over a million. Then, bishops criticized the Spanish government over its social policies but this time there were no such remarks.

Final Sunday Male Beauty

Lizard Pope

This photo via Pam's House Blend was just too good to pass up. Frequent readers know that I hold Benedict XVI in extremely low regard as both a fraud, hypocrite and one who has utterly failed to punish bishops and cardinals who enabled and/or covered up the sexual abuse of minors. Benedict XVI has no moral standing to pretend to give moral guidance to anyone.

And as Pam noted: The Prada Papa Ratzi opens his trap again, and the homophobia stinks like trash piled up during a NYC garbage strike.

Milk the Movie

A reader wrote "We saw the movie "Milk" on Christmas Day, and we hope that many, many people will see it, especially the young people. Inspiring! It has to help the cause! Did you write about it? I may have missed a post..."

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Actually, I did see the movie and thought it was wonderful and a "must see" not only for LGBT Americans, but for everyone. I was very moved and will confess that at times I felt myself tearing up. It was at the LGBT Blogger Summit on December 5-7, 2008, that the boyfriend and I had the unique opportunity of seeing a special screening of the movie Milk and then engaging in a panel discussion session where Cleve Jones (one of Harvey Milk's fellow activists), Dustin Lance Black (the screen writer) and Bruce Cohen (the producer) took questions from the audience. The movie is now playing in Norfolk and we intend to see the movie again. As indicated in my post at the time:

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One message that I took away from the whole experience - not to mention specific portions of the movie itself - was that LGBT citizens need to come out of the closet and live openly. The fastest way to dispel the lies put out by our enemies is to allow friends and neighbors to come to realize that we - their doctors, lawyers, fellow business owners, etc. - are just like everyone else save and except who we fall in love with.

More Sunday Male Beauty

A Look Back at Senator John Warner

John Warner - who I got to meet a number of times during my incarnation as a Republican - is leaving the U.S. Senate next month after serving 30 years (he will be replaced by Democrat Mark Warner who is not related to him). Warner is perhaps one of the last Republicans that symbolizes what the GOP used to be about before the lunatic "Christian" Right obtained a strangle hold on the Party. Warner was never loved by the Christianist set, but enjoyed high approval ratings by moderates and independents - the keys to winning elections. Moreover, Warner never bought into the anti-gay wedge issues that have become the hallmark of today's GOP and voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, albeit on technical issues, to the horror of the Christianists. Warner has also been pro-choice, supported embryonic stem cell research, and on June 15, 2004, was among the minority of his party to vote to expand hate crimes laws to include sexual orientation as a protected category. Here are some highlights from the Virginian Pilot on Warner's career:

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Work and luck and sometimes a dash of bluster have sustained Warner through a political career that spans four decades, the terms of seven presidents, six other Virginia senators and 11 governors. A second-choice nominee after the Republican Party’s original candidate died in a plane crash, Warner won his seat in 1978 by the narrowest margin in Virginia history. But when he retires next month at 81, he will have cast more Senate votes – 10,728 – and received more votes – 5.36 million in five elections – than any other Virginian.

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In 2006, as the Senate headed toward a partisan showdown over judicial appointments, Warner joined a moderate “gang of 14” senators who brokered a deal to secure confirmation of several controversial GOP nominees but preserved the Democrats’ right to use Senate rules to block others.

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Independence has been central to Warner’s own Senate career, sometimes imperiling him. He was personally and politically close to Ronald Reagan, but infuriated Reaganites by refusing in 1987 to back Reagan nominee Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. In 1994, he effectively threw Virginia’s other Senate seat to the Democrats, refusing to back Republican nominee and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North. Incumbent Chuck Robb won the race.

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More recently, Warner showed his independence by backing a package of state tax hikes championed in 2004 by then-Gov. Mark Warner, the man who will succeed him next month. “I remember the day he came to Richmond” to deliver his endorsement, Mark Warner said. “He just said, 'Mark, I think I’m going to come down and say a few things.’ … That was the day he got up, as only John Warner could do, and said: 'Politics be damned. ’ It’s time to put Virginia first.”

Virginia's Split Personality Towards Gays

Living in a state that had a sodomy statue until 2003 and which otherwise has some of the most anti-gay laws in the nation - Arkansas may now be worse with it's new anti-gay adoption law - is often not easy. One finds them self frequently encountering bigotry - even at the hands of some judges who are supposed to be unbiased even in matters of sexual orientation under the Canons of Judicial Conduct. In contrast to this nasty legal reality, one does encounter open and accepting people. My experiences over the holidays to date is a case in point.

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The boyfriend is somewhat the social butterfly and we have been to a number of dinner parties at the homes of his friends - in some cases as the only non-family members - and in every instance we have been accepted as a couple and no one has had a second thought about the fact that we are gay. Last night for instance, I had a wonderful conversation with a member of the House of Delegates who has a progressive track record at a dinner party and the experience was light years away from the hate and homophobia that prevails in the minds of other members of that legislative body.

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What is the defining difference? I believe that one is that all of the people we have encountered are well educated - religious bigotry and anti-gay attitudes correlate with lower education levels. The second is that all of these people know gays socially and/or in the professional realm and know that we are "just like them." The message to be learned? That it is ever so important for gays of all walks of life to be "out" and open about who they are. Being out and living your life openly is our most powerful weapon against those who would seek to marginalize us. Yes, it is scary at times and not without challenges, but it is something that we all need to do to the maximum extent practicable.

Sunday Male Beauty

Why Court Action is Needed to Protect Gay Minority

Looking back over America's history it has often been the Courts who have been the first to uphold the legal equality of minority groups. Obviously, Brown v. Board of Education decide in 1954 is a prominent example of that phenomenon as is Loving v. Virginia in 1968, or even Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. The sad truth is that the majority of citizens have historically demonstrated a very poor track record of treating members of minorities as full, equal citizens. Eventually, the majority has followed the reasoning of the Courts, but often many years after the fact. The quest for gay rights and marriage is but another incarnation of this process which is well stated in a recent letter to the editor by Dane Youngblom of Duluth, Minnesota, that I came across via one of my google alert engines. Here are some highlights:

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A majority of folks are born straight. Most of us also realize there is a minority of folks born gay. It saddened me to read the Dec. 3 letter, “Don’t let the courts decide gay marriage issue,” which seemed to be an attempt to rally the straight majority to hurry up and prohibit the right of the gay minority to marry. The idea of the letter seemed to be to act before the courts have a chance to rule on the constitutionality of denying rights to this group of citizens.

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The writer seemed afraid the courts could rule that the issue is one of civil rights and as such cannot and should not be decided based on its popularity with the majority. The writer was probably correct in seeing that our courts do have a tendency to protect the minority from the majority in cases of oppression. The courts made this clear by outlawing segregation and racial, sexual and age discrimination, which were all favored by the voting majority at the time.

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Someday, we will be embarrassed by efforts we’ve made to classify any people as second class. Until then, we will have to rely on our courts to rule on the rights our founders wrote into the constitution, that the majority would not trample on the rights of the minority. We are not a democracy where majority rules, but rather a representative republic where we choose responsible, knowledgeable leaders to protect us from ignorant impulses.

Frank Rich on Obama and Rick Warren

Frank Rich at the New York Times is one of my favorite columnists. He has an amazing flare with words and can ever so eloquently slice and dice politicians, Christianist wingnuts and others that it's most pleasurable reading his columns. In today's New York Times, Rich turns his sights on Barack Obama and obese, gay-hating, Christianist snake oil merchant Rick Warren. And, as usual, it's a fun read. He also rightly takes Obama to task for his hubris and arrogance in the selection of Warren as the presenter of the inaugural invocation. He even equates Obama's hubris with that of the Chimperator. Personally, Obama has lost my confidence and unless and until he delivers on policy and legislative promises made during the campaign, he will not win it back. To me, it's telling that one of his first actions was to insult LGBT Americans who worked so hard for his election. Here are some highlights from Rich's column:

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Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush . . . But for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month. As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire.

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He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong.

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Unlike such family-values ayatollahs as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Warren is not obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. He was vociferously attacked by the Phyllis Schlafly gang when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at his Saddleback Church two years ago. . . . But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face.

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Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama’s, likes to advertise his “commitment to model civility in America.” But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, “comparing gay relationships to child abuse” is a “strange model of civility.” . . . Equally lame is the argument mounted by an Obama spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, who talks of how Warren has fought for “people who have H.I.V./AIDS.” Shouldn’t that be the default position of any religious leader? Fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card.

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Obama may not only overestimate his ability to bridge some of our fundamental differences but also underestimate how persistent some of those differences are. . . . Warren’s defamation of gay people illustrates why, as does our president-elect’s rationalization of it. When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable. It is even more toxic in a year when that group has been marginalized and stripped of its rights by ballot initiatives fomenting precisely such fears.

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By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.

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[I]t’s also time “for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn’t go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency.”

More Saturday Male Beauty

The History of Homosexual Acceptance

The professional Christians repeatedly make the claim that societies and cultures have never accepted homosexuality and that marriage of one man and one woman has been the norm for "5,000 years of human history." Like so much of what these theocratic hate merchants say, these claims are simply not true. The truth is that homosexuality has been a feature of human culture since earliest history. Generally and most famously in ancient Greece, certain forms of erotic attraction and sexual pleasure between males were often an ingrained, accepted part of the cultural norm. The love spoken of by Socrates and Plato among others involved same sex love, not heterosexual love.

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Moreover, many historical figures, including Socrates, Lord Byron, Edward II, Hadrian, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, and Christopher Marlowe had romantic or sexual relationships with people of their own sex. Here's a sampling of the history of homosexuality through the ages and in different parts of the world and examples of how Jewish tribalism continued into the Christian anti-gay obsession ran headlong into practices in other parts of the world.

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AFRICA: Though often ignored or suppressed by European explorers and colonialists, homosexual expression in native Africa was also present and took a variety of forms. Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships," named motsoalle. E. E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that male Azande warriors (in the northern Congo) routinely took on boy-wives between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in sex with their older husbands. The practice had died out by the early 20th century, after Europeans had gained control of African countries, but was recounted to Evans-Pritchard by the elders to whom he spoke.

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THE AMERICAS: Among indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European colonization, the most common form of same-sex sexuality seems to center around the figure of the Two-Spirit individual. Typically the two-spirit individual was recognized early in life, was given a choice by the parents to follow the path, and if the child accepted the role then the child was raised in the appropriate manner, learning the customs of the gender it had chosen. Two-spirit individuals were commonly shamans and were revered as having powers beyond those of ordinary shamans.

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Homosexual and transgender individuals were also common among other pre-conquest civilizations in Latin America, such as the Aztecs, Mayans, Quechas, Moches, Zapotecs, and the Tupinaba of Brazil. The Spanish conquerors were horrified to discover "sodomy" openly practiced among native peoples, and attempted to crush it out by subjecting the "berdaches" as the Spanish called them to severe penalties, including public execution and burning.

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EAST ASIA: In East Asia, same-sex love has been referred to since the earliest recorded history. Early European travelers were taken aback by its widespread acceptance and open display. None of the East Asian countries today have specific legal prohibitions against homosexuality or homosexual behavior. . . . This same-sex love culture gave rise to strong traditions of painting and literature documenting and celebrating such relationships. In Thailand "ladyboys," have been a feature of Thai society for many centuries, and Thai kings had male as well as female lovers.

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EUROPE: Western documents concerning same-sex relationships are derived from ancient Greece. They depict a world in which relationships with women and relationships with youths were the essential foundation of a normal man's love life. Same-sex relationships were a social institution variously constructed over time and from one city to another. In ancient Rome, the emperors with the exception of Claudius took male lovers.

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During the Renaissance, rich cities in northern Italy were renowned for their widespread practice of same-sex love, engaged in by a considerable part of the male population and constructed along the classical pattern of Greece and Rome. . . . The relationships of socially prominent figures, such as King James I [reviser of what became the King James Bible] and the Duke of Buckingham, served to highlight the issue.

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MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA: Among many Middle Eastern Muslim cultures egalitarian or age-structured homosexual practices were, and remain, widespread and thinly veiled. The prevailing pattern of same-sex relationships in the temperate and sub-tropical zone stretching from Northern India to the Western Sahara is one in which the relationships were—and are—either gender-structured or age-structured or both. . . . In Persia homosexuality and homoerotic expressions were tolerated in numerous public places, from monasteries and seminaries to taverns, military camps, bathhouses, and coffee houses. In one period, male houses of prostitution (amrad khane) were legally recognized and paid taxes.

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SOUTH PACIFIC: In many societies of Melanesia, same-sex relationships were, until the middle of the last century, an integral part of the culture.

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In short, homosexuals have existed and been accepted throughout the majority of history in most parts of the world. One could even argue that it is the Christianist and orthodox Jewish anti-homosexual precepts which are the anomaly when the issue is viewed over time and around the world. Some other web sites with historical reviews of the acceptance and prevalence of same sex love are here, here and here.

Saturday Male Beauty

Southern GOP Ideaologues Drag the Party Downward

UPDATED: An example of the lunacy now gripping the GOP comes from Raw Story which is reporting on Tennessee Republican John "Chip" Saltsman, a candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee, who is defending a song containing a racially insensitive term as mere "satire." These people truly do NOT get it. The song:

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[A] musical parody of "Puff the Magic Dragon" entitled "Barack the Magic Negro," sung by Shanklin imitating black civil rights advocate Rev. Al Sharpton, first played by Rush Limbaugh on his syndicated radio show in March 2007.

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Today's GOP is a faint shadow of the once respectable national party it once was. Now, one has to be either a racist, far right religious fanatic, or incredibly selfish and self-centered, caring only about one's tax rates, to belong to the GOP. And the signs are that things are going to get even worse as ultra-conservative GOP members of Congress sit poised to be obstructionists to measures much needed to help turn around the sinking economy. Rather than looking out for the best interests of the country, the increasingly reactionary GOP members of Congress seem more consumed with punishing those they dislike - e.g., the United Auto Workers - egged on by the Kool-Aid drinking GOP base. David Broder looks at the phenomenon in a new Washington Post column. Here are some highlights:

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All the signs are that the stimulus spending will be opposed by congressional Republicans, whose shrunken ranks are increasingly dominated by right-wing Southerners who care not what their stance does to harm the party's national image. The spectacle of LaHood facing off in congressional testimony against those naysayers will dramatize a split that is crippling the GOP.

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The danger became apparent as far back as 2007. With Bush weakened by the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the midterm election losses of 2006, a Southern-led revolt killed his immigration reform bill McConnell, unable to stem the insurgency, joined it. The price was paid in the 2008 presidential campaign. Despite his personal credentials as a sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform, John McCain was caught in the backlash of anti-GOP voting by Hispanics. It contributed to his loss of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and other states.

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The same thing happened this year when Bush supported a bailout for the Big Three auto companies. . . . . the defeat of this legislation at Republican hands will not be forgotten when GOP senators run for reelection in 2010 in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. It will also echo in industrial states such as Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, California, New York and New Jersey, when Republicans try to challenge for Senate and House seats.

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As point man for Obama's stimulus spending, he [transportation secretary, Ray LaHood] now poses the dilemma for his own party in the sharpest possible terms: Will congressional Republicans again sacrifice their political interest to satisfy their Southern-baked ideological imperatives?

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Having formally lived in the Deep South, I do not see much hope for moderation by the GOP. States like Alabama where I once lived have moved further to the lunatic far right over the last 20 years while the rest of the nation has tried to move forward to modernity.