The GOP Now Mirror's Europe's Fascist Far Right

My Republican grandparents and even my Republican parents would not recognize today's GOP  on display at the CPAC gathering in Washington, D.C.  Indeed even during my own time as a GOP activist likely a majority of the attendees would have been viewed with outright horror given that the party base now consists of those that would not have been deemed politically, much less socially acceptable.  Sadly, as a piece in the Washington Post notes, the GOP looks more like one of European ethno-nationalist .  Ironically, one speaker attacked "European socialism" and ignored the reality that Europe now has more upward mobility than the United States, European citizens have better access to health care, and the social safety net does not view millions of individuals as disposable garbage.  Indeed, it was no accident that the niece of French far-right extremist Marine Le Pen (who has received funding from Putin's Russia) was in attendance and addressed the gathering yesterday.  Sane and moral people need to be afraid.  Here are column excerpts:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual conclave of the American right, is underway just outside Washington. President Trump will deliver a speech there on Friday, while Vice President Pence opened proceedings Thursday with a paean to his boss's first year in office, a recitation of his Christian bona fides and a Republican rallying cry ahead of pivotal midterm elections this year. But it has not gone off without controversy. Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the youthful niece of French far-right heavyweight Marine Le Pen, also addressed the gathering Thursday. Her appearance dismayed some establishment Republicans, who were not eager to associate with a political faction linked to the dark remnants of European fascism.
 The acceptance of people such as Maréchal-Le Pen and British anti-immigrant campaigner Nigel Farage, who is speaking Friday, seemed to underscore the hard-rightward drift of the Republican Party. “These are not conservatives; these are members of an international ethno-nationalist populist movement," Matt Lewis, a moderate Republican commentator, said to NBC News. But he added that this was in keeping with Trump's ultra-nationalism. CPAC has “featured speakers who raged against gays, Muslims and immigrants and, for years, it banned panel discussions about gay rights,” noted right-wing Washington Post blogger (albeit indefatigable Trump critic) Jennifer Rubin. “However, it was also a place where mainstream conservatives came to speak, and where policy gurus from think tanks had calm discussions. . . . Now CPAC encapsulates the GOP. Adherents of President Trump’s brand of Republican politics do not bother to disguise their extremism,  conspiracy theories, paranoia or xenophobia.” Maréchal-Le Pen displayed much of that paranoia and xenophobia during her 10-minute speech. “France is no longer free today,” the 28-year-old said. "After 1500 years of existence, we now must fight for our independence." She went on to bash the European Union, earning cheers from the CPAC crowd. Her remarks echoed Trump's own blood-and-soil rhetoric [first used by Hitler and the Nazi Party] over the past year. She decried what she called the scourge of immigration, bashed globalization, signaled a desire to quit NATO and cozy up to Russia, gestured at her opposition to same-sex marriage, and championed the “historical continuity” of her nation. . . . . It’s still hard to see what she gains at home by addressing this audience abroad: Public opinion polling regarding Trump in France finds widespread disapproval of the American president, even among National Front voters. . . . . She is also closer to her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front's founder who has a long record of Holocaust denial and other bigotry. More mainstream politicians on the center-right are aping Le Pen’s brand of identity politics. That is a phenomenon all too familiar to those watching Trump's America and the events unfolding in Washington this week.

David Gergen on Trump: "I Knew I Didn’t Like the Son of a Bitch.”

One of the ironies of Donald Trump's "victory" is that the narcissistic egomaniac believes that he has a "mandate" to force his racist, white supremacist, nativist, xenophobic agenda on all Americans. Never mind that he lost the popular vote by some 2,300,00 votes.  And never mind that he claims he will be a "unifier" even as he  selects racist and homophobes for most of his cabinet positions.  Oh, and did I mention his "victory rallies" that look like a scaled down versions of Hitler's Nuremberg Rallies that were used to incite Hitler's more extreme followers?  For those devoid of a knowledge of history, these rallies were held from 1923 to 1938 and were basically Nazi propaganda events. If you haven't ever watched it, you need to see  Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Watch it and see if you can't see Trump doing something similar.  But back to the caption of this post.  David Gergen has seen and worked with a number of presidents over the years.  His take on Trump is a milder version of my own.  Here are highlights from The Raw Story:

Political analyst David Gergen laid bare his feelings about Donald Trump Thursday after the president elect’s first “victory tour” speech in Cincinnati, Ohio wrapped up, telling a CNN panel, “I knew I didn’t like the son of a bitch.”

Trump beat his “populist” drum throughout tonight’s speech, calling back central pillars of a divisive campaign that netted 2.3 million fewer votes than its opposition. But despite the fractured electorate demonstrated by those numbers, Gergen said Trump made it clear he is going full-steam ahead with his vision of “Make America Great Again.”

 

“I think if there was any doubt that we’re putting an end to one chapter in American history and moving to a new one, he dispelled that tonight,” Gergen said. “This is goodbye to American leadership in the world. Goodbye to globalization. He’s bringing America home. He’s going to lead a nativist, nationalistic, populist movement and if you want to join up with him fine. If you don’t, forget it.”

Gergen argued Trump’s made it clear he’s going to push his nationalist agenda “and he’s going to do it in his pugilistic, narcissistic way.”

“He’s in charge,” Gergen noted. “And he has a lot of support in the Congress. That kind of speech will fire up his base, and it’s going to leave a lot of other people—”

I will finish the phrase: behind and/or targeted as not "real Americans." If we thought Sarah Palin was toxic, I suspect that we haven't seen anything yet. 

Trump Supporters Shout "Lügenpresse" At Rally

As much as the GOP establishment - and even some Republican friends - try to deny the ugliness that is now synonymous with the GOP, everyday Trump supporters continue to give evidence of the hatred and fascism that motivates much of the party base.  Trump has claimed repeatedly that the media is crooked and/or working against him and now we are hearing Trump supporters chanting a term much used by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party as they clawed their way to power. True, the term originated in World War I as Germany found itself surrounded on East and West, but it was the Nazis who took the term to prominence.  Is it a mere coincidence that Trump - who, like his BFF Vladimir Putin - has modeled his demagoguery on Hitler's model now has supporters shouting slogans favored by the Nazis?  Candidly, I think not.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the frightening phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

BERLIN — When a video of two Donald Trump supporters shouting “Lügenpresse” (lying press) started to circulate Sunday, viewers from Germany soon noted its explosive nature. The defamatory word was most frequently used in Nazi Germany. Today, it is a common slogan among those branded as representing the “ugly Germany”: members of xenophobic, right-wing groups.

Its use across the Atlantic Ocean at a Trump rally has worried Germans who know about its origins all too well. Both the Nazi regime and the East German government made use of it, turning it into an anti-democracy slogan.

The verbal attacks against journalists soon turned into physical violence in Germany.

It is without doubt that the word “Lügenpresse” has an extremely ugly meaning in modern-day Germany.

Its history is even worse, though.  The term emerged way before the Nazis took over in Germany. . . . the term was coined by Reinhold Anton in 1914. In books, Anton used the term mainly in a foreign context to refer to “enemy propaganda.”

A decade later, it had turned into an explosive and stigmatizing propaganda slogan, used to stir hatred against Jews and communists. Critics of Adolf Hitler's regime were frequently referred to as members of the “Lügenpresse apparatus.”

Until today, the word has an anti-Semitic connotation, and it implies hatred not only against journalists but against everyone who opposes the “will of the people.” That abstract concept emerged during World War II when Hitler sought to propagate the idea that Germans were a "master race" superior to all others, especially Jews and Slavic people.

The consequences of that rhetoric — of which the term “Lügenpresse” was an important component under propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels — were horrifying. Millions of people were killed in concentration camps by the Nazis, including Jews, political opponents and homosexuals.

Although the word disappeared from public discourse for almost half a century in democratic West Germany, it continued to flourish in communist East Germany, where it was used to condemn Western countries, including the United States.

As I have noted before, I was raised to remember that you are known by those with whom you keep company.  With much of the GOP base now acting like active KKK members and/or Neo-Nasis, how do supposedly "decent Republicans" justify the company that they are keeping? 

Sex, Lies and Houston

Frank Bruni has a column in the New York Times that looks at the hate and bigotry, and most importantly, outright lies that triumphed in Houston last week.  What is chilling is the fact that the anti-gay forces utilized the same type of tactics used against Europe's Jews in the 1930's and during World War II.  Tactics that resorted to vicious lies and efforts to make Jews into "the other" and thus worth of discrimination and ultimately extermination.  Leading the anti-gay charge in Houston were, of course, the "godly folk" who have inflicted so much harm on so many over the centuries.  Here are excerpts from the column:

I USED to be a child molester. Not in actuality. In the popular imagination. In public debate.

That’s how gay men were once portrayed — not just as sexual deviants but as sexual prowlers, sexual predators, their eyes lecherously trained on the young, the vulnerable, the recruitable.

Hatemongers spread this slander to argue that we mustn’t be teachers, shouldn’t be coaches, couldn’t be trusted.

I flashed back on that when residents of Houston voted last week against an anti-discrimination law that did all sorts of unimpeachable things because it supposedly did one thing that scared the bejesus out of them: enabled men in dresses to sneak into women’s restrooms.

This specter was invented by opponents of the law, who were fixated on just a part of it: its inclusion of transgender people among blacks, gays and other classes protected from being fired or denied access to public accommodations because of their very identities.

And we’ll someday cringe about this, just as most Americans now cringe about the verbal garbage that was thrown at gay people, the lies that were told, the lies that were believed. I recently ran across some research that made reference to a 1970 survey in which 73.5 percent of Americans agreed that “homosexuals are dangerous as teachers or youth leaders because they try to get sexually involved with children” and 71.1 supported the statement that “homosexuals try to play sexually with children if they cannot get an adult partner.”

Transgender people indeed puzzle many others — including me. I readily admit that I can’t relate, not specifically, to the feeling of having a gender at odds with certain anatomical signifiers . . . .

But I’m not too myopic to see or too forgetful to remember that many of the straight people who now support and even fight for my equality and dignity understand me no better. They’ve never fallen in full-bloom love with someone of the same sex.

And I do relate to the awful, shameful, fury-making feeling of having who you are reduced to a caricature.

Don’t you? If you’re female or black or Latino or Jewish or Muslim, the likely answer is yes, and it compels you to look at what happened in Houston with sadness and a resolve that it not be repeated.

[T]ransgender people — and their bid for inclusion — were trivialized and cast aside. Either way, they’re experiencing a chill that they’ve known too long, a sting that they shouldn’t have to suffer, a slap that could be of life-or-death consequence for a teenager struggling to come to terms with his or her difference and questioning the warmth of the world.

And transgender people aren’t raising their voices and risking rejection by the voters of Houston for a mere lifestyle. They’re embracing something infinitely more profound than that.

We’ve come so far and yet not far enough. That’s one big lesson from Houston, which is going to cast a long shadow. It won’t be the last battleground on which the “bathroom myth,” as it has come to be known, is deployed.

I can see this myth creeping into the 2016 election, a weapon wielded against candidates who are trying only to be fair and decent.

I marvel at the cynical political calculations behind it. I wince at how densely packed with willful misunderstanding it is. I shudder at the license it gives to cruelty and at the wounds it inflicts. How slowly, and how uncertainly, will they heal?

We cannot let the merchants of hate prevail.  Years ago AmericaBlog had a great side by side comparison of the Christofascist lies against those made by the Nazis against Jews.  It was chilling.  Change the word "Jew" for "gay" and the wording was nearly identical.  Sadly, that page is no longer online.  Perhaps it needs to be brought back least we forget where the "godly folk" found their blue print for demonizing gays and those who are transgender.

Holocaust Historian Debunks Christofascist Gays Are Nazi Lies

If one compares the propaganda the Nazi regime against Jews and the anti-gay propaganda of the Christofascists one thing becomes striking: the Christofascist campaign against gays utilizes the template perfected by the Nazi regime in the 1930's against European Jews.   E.g., gays/Jews are diseased, gays/Jews are out to prey on children, gays/Jews are a small rich minority harming Christians, etc., etc.  Yet despite this fact, leading mouth pieces for the "godly folks" continue to claim that gays were behind the Nazi regime.   Like everything that comes out of the mouths of these people, it is all a lie.  As Queerty reports, a Holocaust historian has again debunked this vicious lie.  Here are higlights:

Bryan Fischer boasts a huge radio audience, religious right fan base, and a dangerous obsession with homosexuality. Even when his propaganda is disproven by facts, he keeps right on repeating it, ad nauseam. There’s his constant conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia.

One particularly ugly canard, drawn from Scott Lively‘s discredited 1998 book The Pink Swastika, claims that gay men dominated the Nazi Party ranks and instituted many of the horrors of the Third Reich. The notion is so absurd even Lively’s absurd employer, the far-right American Family Association, distanced itself from the claim.

The demonstrably false claim serves several purposes for antigay activists like Fischer. For one, it turns gay men into jackbooted thugs rather than victims of the antigay right that they are today, not to mention in Nazi Germany, where tens of thousands were murdered or perished at concentration camps. It also justifies extreme antigay measures because we are defined as the moral descendants of the worst villains in history. Fischer and his far-right ilk view themselves as under siege, like Jews in Nazi Germany, but they also fancy themselves the conquering Army, led by General God.

[H]e received an email from historian Peter Black with a detailed destruction of the Fischer-Lively claims.

The response from the Holocaust historian, in full:

The Nazis shared the belief with many in the German population that same gender sexual relations were 1) unnatural and immoral; 2) undermined the cohesiveness of the family; 3) increased the habit and temptation to engage in other criminal behavior; 3) encouraged the seduction and corruption of minors; 4) and rendered public sector officials vulnerable to blackmail by foreign intelligence agents and (5) both public and private sector employees susceptible to using or demanding sexual favors in the workplace to obtain or grant discriminatory treatment in hiring, promoting, receiving assignments, rewarding and disciplining employees.

On a broader level, the Nazis also shared with many others among all classes of German society a notion that homosexuality undermined the vitality of the German male, and the capacity of Germans to stand up for themselves diplomatically or in war. Beyond this, the Nazis believed that homosexuals undermined the future of the German race by not devoting their sexual energy to reproduction. Even here, the Nazis had no exclusive ownership of this belief on this belief.

Hence when the Nazis came to power, over the first three years of Nazi rule, they 1) broadened the applicability of the law to criminalize even gestures without touching that might suggest a homosexual relationship or intent to engage in same-gender sex; 2) decreed stiffer penalties for persons convicted under the broader law; and 3) ordered more focused and consistent police enforcement of the law. Under Nazi rule, some 100,000 persons were arrested under the law; approximately 63,000 were convicted. . . . were sent to concentration camps, where hundreds, possibly thousands died under Nazi rule.

There are no records of 40,000 “confessions of Nazi Party members to having engaged in same-gender sex.  There is no record to confirm that the Nazi Party was founded in a so-called gay bar.

While SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm did place on his staff individuals who were homosexuals — primarily because he had known them for years and could count on their personal loyalty to him — neither he nor the SA commanders ever recruited on this basis.
There is no documentation that would confirm that the killers on June 30 1934 of Röhm and the other victims, were, as a group, homosexuals, either openly or “in the closet.”  The three main conspirators — Himmler, Heydrich, and Goring — were not homosexuals, nor were the best known of the executioners, Josef Sepp Dietrich and Theodor Eicke.

There is no reliable documentation that would confirm that Baldur von Schirach (Hitler Youth Leader), Franz Gürtner (Minister of Justice to 1941), Otto von Thierack (Minister of Justice (1942-1945) Hjalmar Schacht (Minister of Economics to 1938), Walter Funk (Minister of Economics,. 1938-1945), Hermann Göring, Hans Frank (Hitler’s personal lawyer up to 1939, or any of his personal bodyguards were gay.

There is no reliable documentation to confirm that Hitler worked as a male prostitute in Vienna.

While there is plenty of evidence that both Himmler and Hitler were implacably hostile to the Christian Churches and denominations, in particular the Catholic Church, there is no documentation that provides confirmation that either was, as the article says, “a closet homosexual”.

[T]he existing documentary evidence does not confirm that “many of the guards and administrators responsible for the concentration camp horrors were themselves homosexuals.” After 1941, conviction under paragraph 175 (sexual deviation) for an SS man meant at a minimum expulsion from the SS and could carry a death sentence.  

The Fear of Being Gay in Russia

As noted before on this blog, Vladimir Putin is emulating the tactics of Adolph Hitler and has used the pretext of "protecting ethnic Russians" to justify invading Crimea and interfering with Ukraine's internal affairs just as Hitler did with respect to Poland and Czechoslovakia.  In addition, as Hitler did to the Jews, Putin has unleashed hatred toward gays in an effort to (i) play upon existing bigotry and (ii) satisfy the Russian Orthodox and earn its fealty.  Meanwhile, life in Russia for gays has become down right frightening.  A piece in Politico looks at the ugly situation and the dangers that LGBT Russians increasingly face as well as the exodus of some from Russia seeking asylum.  Here are highlights:

[In 2006] Russia saw its first regional anti-gay law passed in Ryazan, 200 miles east of Moscow. It was the first official sign that the Russian authorities would resist the LGBT movement—a resistance that has grown and become increasingly violent as LGBT activism has grown over the last decade.

That violence hit Dmitry Chizhevsky in November 2013 when he attended a weekly meeting for the LGBT community and friends called the Rainbow Tea Party in Saint Petersburg. “It was a place to socialize, drink some tea and play some games,” Chizhevsky says. It wasn’t a political event, and Chizhevsky wasn’t much for protests. . . . . “I saw two guys next to the door wearing masks,” Chizhevsky recalls. “After that I heard shots. The first one hit my eye. They yelled, ‘Where will you run, faggot?’ and one hit me several times with a baseball bat. Then the attackers ran away. One of the small balls [from a pneumatic pistol] stayed behind my eye.” The police ran a rather lackluster investigation and no one was ever arrested.

He became an unsolved statistic—just one of a growing number in Russia’s LGBT community who’ve been attacked or harassed in what has become an unprecedented crackdown.

In a country that increasingly punishes the “other” and where violence against select groups and individuals is often tolerated—and even encouraged—by the state, there’s become no greater target than being LGBT. A community that was just beginning to organize found itself under assault, the target of a deep-seated Russian homophobia that had now been embedded in law.

And for Chizhevsky, although he thought about staying in his native land, the price of being gay in Russia was ultimately just too high. Like more and more gays and lesbians over the last two years, Chizhevsky had had enough of Russia, a place where his sexual orientation alone seemed to make him an enemy of the state.

In July 2014, a little more than six months after the attack, Chizhevsky arrived in New York. . . . He was one of many Russian gays and lesbians to make that trek. U.S. asylum applications from Russians rose 15 percent overall in 2014, when there were 969 new cases. The U.S. government does not release the reasons people seek asylum, but asylum seekers like Chizhevsky say the spike is at least in part a result of the crackdown on the LGBT community.

“This is happening across the country and LGBT programs are being closed systematically,” Vinnitchenko says. “Our friends are in fear of persecution. The LGBT community here is in a kind of moral panic.” 

The shooting of Chizhevsky is one of dozens of attacks that have occurred in Russia in the last few years, and especially since President Vladimir Putin signed the federal anti-gay propaganda law in 2013. 

At the end of 2014, Human Rights Watch documented a growing number of beatings, harassment and kidnappings by vigilantes on the subway, in the street, and at clubs. Out of 78 victims of homophobic and transphobic violence interviewed in the investigation, 22 were afraid to report the attack to authorities.

The public health consequences of these laws have been brutal, according to Beloglazov. “When people are hiding, they move around from place to place and gravitate toward secret relationships,” he says. “They are afraid of seeking medical assistance.”

Russia and Eastern Europe are among the few regions in the world in which the AIDS/HIV epidemic is worsening, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The number of deaths from AIDS increased in 2013 by more than 22,000,” Dr. Vadim Pokhrovsky of the Russian Federal AIDS Center told Politico. “There are at least 200 new HIV infections every day.”

Freedom of speech is shrinking in Russia. It began with gays, but now it is the whole opposition.”

People will ask at times how Hitler and the Nazis came to power - Putin is showing us step by step how it can still happen.

Remembering Kristallnacht and Remembering the Fruits of Religious Bigotry

Today is the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night that in Nazi Germany 1000 synagogues were burned; 7000 Jewish were businesses were destroyed; some 30,000 Jews were arrested and 91 Jews were murdered.  At the time, little did people know that the horrors of that night would pale compared to what was coming under the name the Final Solution.  Many decent people say, "that can never happen again."    Yet the mindset that was behind Kristallnacht is alive and well.  Here in America, much of the Christian Right's foulest propaganda against gays comes directly out of the Nazi play book.  Exchange gay for Jew and some of the claims are near identical: that we are diseased, that we threaten Christina civilization, that we prey on children.  The list goes on and on.  Then in Russia, we see Vladimir Putin's disgusting regime passing anti-gay laws that are reminiscent of Nazi laws against the Jews. Farther afield, we see ISIS murdering men, women and children who do not subscribe to ISIS's toxic form of Islam.  It is happening again and far too many once again are doing nothing to stop it.  A friend posted a link on Facebook to a blog post by a friend that remembers the horrors of November 9, 1938, and the fact that the ghastly mindset is still alive and well and that all too often, at least in America, backed by those who claim to be "godly Christians."  Here are some excepts (images included):

In a Weekend Edition Saturday piece [November 9, 2013] commemorating the 75th anniversary ofKristallnacht, the Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander notes of what translates to The Night of the Broken Glass, “I did not hear fire engines and we understood then that they didn’t come because they wanted the synagogues to burn. We never thought that Germans would stand by, and not do something about it.”

Kristallnacht more properly translates, colloquially, as “The Night of the Broken Crystal.” The symbolism was plain: Jews enjoy their ill-gotten luxury while “real” Germans starve; let us smash their riches, and their owners. The anti-Semitism had been building, of course, but with the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst von Rath by the Polish-Jewish Herschel Grynszpan, the Nazis (via the S.A.) finally had their excuse for widespread, and rampant, terrorism against the Jews of Germany and Austria.

Between 9 and 10 November 1938, 1000 synagogues burned; 7000 Jewish businesses were destroyed; 30000 Jews were arrested and 91 murdered—a tiny foretaste of the genocidal horror to come.

“Never again?” Hardly. The world has “stood by and done nothing” countless times since 1938, and will doubtless do so again.

In the Weekend Edition piece cited above, Stefan Redlich, spokesman for the Berlin police is quoted as saying, “The Berlin police protects all Jewish schools, all hospitals, all kindergartens and all synagogues in the city” [while] “noting that 250 policemen stand guard in front of Jewish properties throughout the city.

“But German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently said she is not proud of this fact: ‘I feel deep shame that there is not a single Jewish building in Germany without police protection because we still have to worry about anti-Semitic attacks.’

Meanwhile, in the former Soviet Union, where the population eagerly acts on Putin’s pogroms against gay Russians with salivating bloodlust, preparations are under way for the Winter Olympics. A good time, perhaps, to invoke this Jewish Chronicle cartoon, published as Herr Hitler and his minions played host to the 1936 Olympiad.

Never forget? Never again?  Don’t make me laugh.

Russian police with LGBT's

Family Research Council Video Says Gays Are "Unclean"

The Family Research Council is constantly whining over its designation as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation that puts FRC in the same category as the KKK and other vile groups.  Yet time and time again FRC resorts to deliberate lies and anti-gay propaganda reminiscent of what Hitler's Nazi regime used against the Jewish members of European society, namely depicting Jews as diseased and "unclean."  With the Boy Scouts of America possibly on the verge of allowing gay scouts (but not gay scout leaders), the folks at FRC - which garners much of its income from promoting the threat of the "gay agenda" - are simply hysterical over the normalization of gays that this would represent.  Hence a new  “Stand With The Scouts” webcast  that FRC is peddling which is down right heinous.  Truth Wins Out looks at this nasty, untruthful attack on gays.  Here are some highlights:

Wingnuts have always been obsessed with purity and contamination, but this weekend’s little “Stand With The Scouts” webcast from the Family Research Council hate group is a doozy.

The first half of this supercut [below] (put together by Right Wing Watch) features a spooky pastor-like figure explaining that we are living at the “end of days.” It is worth noting that apocalyptic Christians have always believed that they are living in the End Times. It’s as silly now as it was in 45 AD. The next section features a Boy Scout who explains that gay sex is “unclean,” according to Boy Scout law.

Then Tony Perkins comes on to assert, based on no evidence besides the putrid thoughts in his brain, that DADT repeal has caused lots of problems in the military, and therefore the Boy Scouts shouldn’t change their policies.

Finally, another Scout does the “I’m so creeped out” thing, where he says “but iiiiii dunnnooooo what i would doooo if another Scout came on me!” Why they always think we’re interested in them, I do not know. It’s really kind of sad, as wingnuts don’t tend to be attractive people in heart, mind or body.

 

Largest Anti-Gay Marriage Donor in Maryland Active in White Supremacist Organizations

Some readers scoff when I link anti-gay bigots and organizations to the larger realm of white supremacist organizations which have historically targeted gays, non-Christians and non-whites with their divisive vitriol.   But, if one tacks the leading "family values" organizations that incessantly disseminate anti-gay propaganda, it quickly becomes readily apparent that their hate and derision extends far beyond the realm of LGBT citizens.  Indeed, today's anti-gay, "family values" organizations are becoming synonymous with a modern day version of the KKK.  The Human Rights Campaign has connected the dots in Maryland and revealed that the largest individual supporter of the anti-gay marriage campaign in that state has ties to both white supremacists groups and secessionist organizations.  Today's Republicans mat protest that they are not racists and homophobes, but the objective data indicates otherwise.  Here are highlights from HRC:

HRC is calling on the Maryland Marriage Alliance to return the $10,000 donation of Michael Peroutka, an active white supremacist and secessionist sympathizer who was one of the three largest individual donors to the campaign against marriage equality in Maryland. HRC also calls on the Maryland Catholic Conference, which played a leading role in founding the Maryland Marriage Alliance, to publicly denounce Peroutka’s donation. Peroutka is an active member of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate, secessionist organization labeled an “explicitly racist” hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

Filings made available by the Maryland Board of Elections indicate that Michael Peroutka donated $10,000 to MMA on October 31, 2012.

The Maryland Marriage Alliance was founded and funded by the Maryland Catholic Conference and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

According to the SPLC, the League of the South “believes the ‘godly’ nation it wants to form should be run by an ‘Anglo-Celtic’ (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities.” The organization says that its relentless pursuit of white supremacy is “healthy and Biblical.”

League of the South President Michael Hill has written that white people possess a “God-ordained superiority” and that African Americans “have never created anything approximating a civilization.” Its Florida chapter chairman, Michael Tubbs, is, according to the SPLC, a convicted “Aryan” terrorist who amassed a stockpile of weapons and explosives along with a list of targets including businesses owned by Jews and blacks.

Peroutka appeared along with Hill and Tubbs in front of Confederate flags at the League of the South conference, said that he was grateful for the organization’s endorsement of his fringe 2004 presidential campaign and remarked that “If this be hate, let's make the most of it.”

He has also appeared on a white supremacist radio show called The Political Cesspool. The Montgomery Advertiser reported that one of the bedrock principles of the show Peroutka appeared on is the need to “grow the percentages of Whites in the world relative to other races.”

NOM is no stranger to exploiting race as a means of advancing its agenda. Documents obtained by HRC earlier this year revealed NOM’s racially divisive strategy to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks” and to “interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”

It is truly frightening to realize what the "family values" crowd and their political whores in the Republican Party have become: active racist, homophobes, anti-women extremists and anti-immigrant zealots.   Th only thing some of them haven done is to openly organize their own equivalent to the Nazi Schutzstaffel, a/k/a the SS.   Or perhaps they have and we just don't know it yet.

NOM Continues It's Third Reich Style Campaign Against Gays

The National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") routinely claims that it's sole goal is to "protect marriage."  Like virtually everything that comes out of NOM, the claim is a lie - particularly as we see constant claims that gays seek to destroy western civilization and that gays are diseased or a threat to public health.  Where did NOM and its hate group allies find their format for propaganda?   It's not hard to find an infamous parallel: Adolph Hitler and the Nazi campaign against the Jews.  The Jews were frequently referred to in Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and Hitler had made plain his hated for them. References to the "filthy Jew" litter the book. In one section, Hitler wrote about how the Jews planned to "contaminate" the blood of pure Germans:

"The Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end.......spying on the unsuspicious German girl he plans to seduce..........He wants to contaminate her blood and remove her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew hates the white race and wants to lower its cultural level so that the Jews might dominate."

Fast forward to 2012 and what does one find?  NOM and it's affiliate, the Ruth Institute arguing that homosexuality needs to carry a public health warning.  Then, of course there is the constant Christianist meme that gays are out to prey on children and "recruit them" to our diseased "lifestyle." Protecting marriage is just a smoke screen for NOM's larger agenda: demonize and stigmatize LGBT whenever and however possible.  Think Progress looks at this foul campaign.  Here are highlights:

The National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute is promoting the idea that being gay is as “harmful” as smoking. In a crosspost on its blog, the Ruth Institute asks, “How much worse do the risks of gay sex have to be before it rates the same public health warnings as smoking?” Here’s an excerpt from the full article:

Instead of discouraging homosexual behavior as smoking is discouraged, key elements of American society have been promoting homosexuality as a viable and safe option compared with heterosexuality. Gay organizations and gay influence in the government, the media, the mental health associations, academia, and the teachers’ union have all played significant roles in America’s normalization of homosexuality. All too often, gay political ideals have been given priority over the physical and mental health of sexually confused youth.  .  .  . 

 The dog whistle message of this comparison is that homosexuality is inherently disordered — that being gay is automatically going to cause disease. Certainly, the author’s use of “sexually confused youth” indicates that he does not believe gay identities are a natural part of human diversity, choosing instead to only focus on “homosexual behavior.”

Of course, the issue at stake is safe sex, which is a problem among all people who are sexually active, regardless of their sexual orientation. It’s ironic that groups like NOM (or infamously, Iowa’s The FAMiLY Leader) make these offensive comparisons as part a campaign against allowing same-sex couples to marry while simultaneously praising marriage for promoting family stability. If conservatives actually cared about the health of the LGBT community, they would advocate against the spread of HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections instead of advocating against the people who might contract them.

In the article itself, NOM's affiliate preaches about the dangers of "promoting" homosexuality as opposed to labeling it a public health danger:

The result has been increased sexually transmitted disease in young males identifying as gay and a significant increase in males identifying as gay. In 2010 the CDC estimated the percentage of MSM to be 4 percent of the United States male population (range: 2.8 to 5.3 percent).(10) In contrast, the 1993 Alan Guttmacher Institute study on male sexual behavior estimated the MSM population at 1.8 to 2.8 percent of the U.S. male population.(11) If the CDC figure is correct, these two figures suggest that the percentage of MSM to the American male population has doubled in the last twenty years.

Another CDC statistic stated that the incidence of HIV has increased dramatically in adolescent males and young men.  .  .  .  .  If America can actively promote non-smoking because of the health risks of smoking, shouldn’t America have programs to guide sexually confused male adolescents into heterosexuality?

Can't you feel the Christian "love" just oozing from these  "godly Christians"?  As for the "increase" in gays, maybe that has something to do with the striking down of sodomy laws that were used to terrorize and criminalize gays - much, of course, to the distress of folks like Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown. 

Matt Staver Says ENDA and Gays Seek to “Undermine the Very Concept of God"

Click image to enlarge

While spewing anti-gay lies and hatred the Christofascists always disclaim any responsibility for anti-gay bulling and the resultant suicides by LGBT teens that are a too frequent phenomenon.  Worse yet, these horrid individuals and their organizations claim to "love gays" even as they incite hatred and violence against us.  In the five years that this blog has been online, it is instructive that the ONLY death threats and threats of harm I have ever received (which why all comments are now moderated and a profile required for those leaving comments) have ALL been from "godly Christians."  As Right Wing Watch is reporting, Matt Staver, the head of the poor excuse of a law school known as Liberty University School of Law has gone beyond the pale in claiming that gays not only want to destroy "religious freedom" - which for Staver translates to Christianists being allowed to force their religious views on all citizens - but also to destroy the concept of God as well.  Meanwhile, Staver's fellow hate merchants at Traditional Values Coalition (a registered hate group) are pushing a truly vile ad - see the image above - opposing ENDA.  It doesn't take much to connect the dots and see that this kind of hate speech is an incitement to violence against LGBT citizens.  Here are highlights from Right Wing Watch on the type of "Christian love" being marketed by Mr. Staver:

Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver is ratcheting up the rhetoric in opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), even going so far as to say that if passed the legislation may lead to child molestation, sexual assault, and death. Staver told Jim Schneider of VCY America on Crosstalk yesterday that ENDA “will put individuals at risk and ultimately result in significant damage and even death of some individuals”

Staver: So you can go into these restrooms or changing rooms, if you’re a man, and want to go in and molest, or watch, or sexually assault young girls. So, I mean, the absurdity of this is just beyond understanding how someone could be in favor of it. This [ENDA] will ultimately, in addition to colliding with religious liberty, in addition to forcing a radical agenda on people, this also will put individuals at risk and ultimately result in significant damage and even death of some individuals. 

Schneider: How critical is it Mat that our listeners contact their U.S. Senators at this time pertaining to ENDA?

Staver: I think it’s absolutely critical, we cannot have this law pass, we just simply cannot have it pass, it will literally reshape America and business and you will have your religious freedom on a collision course with this radical homosexual agenda. This will be the biggest club that the homosexual agenda will have to ultimately beat down people of faith and moral values.
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Staver: Years ago I said what the ultimate goal of this homosexual agenda was not this sexual orientation where you are wired to a particular way but ultimately the abolition of gender. It’s hard for us to even comprehend that, how can you abolish the concept or the construct of gender, male and female, it’s so objective, it’s so obvious, how can you do that? But that’s exactly what they want to do: anything that you see is just fictitious; it’s only what’s in your mind. If you abolish the concept of gender you ultimately undermine morality, you ultimately have no morality and norms for men and women or sexual behavior. As Alfred Kinsey ultimately wanted to do, he wanted to undermine morality in marriage. Why? So he could undermine the very concept of God himself.

Don't be surprised to hear lunatics citing Staver and TVC as justification after they murdered or maimed some innocent LGBT citizen.    And what's equally frightening is that this is exactly the type of propaganda approach that Hitler and the Nazi regime utilized against the Jews of Europe in the 1930'2.  Staver and TVC are the ones who are truly evil.

Brazilian Activist Accuses Pope of Nazi-Like Attacks on Gays

Many of the falsely named "family values" organizations - a number of which have been registered as ant-gay hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center - have long utilized anti-gay propaganda modeled on the Nazi campaign of almost 80 years ago against those of Jewish faith. Now, the Catholic Church hierarchy is joining in on the act. Fortunately, a Brazilian activist has accused Pope Benedict XVI of something similar to the Nazi propaganda given his disgusting statement that same sex marriage is a threat to the "future of humanity itself." Frankly, I'd make the argument that Benedict XVI is a larger threat to the future of humanity than the legal recognition of loving, committed same sex relationships. Brazilian politician and activist Jean Wyllys made his challenge in the Spanish site Ocio Gay where he equates Benedict's statement to the “The Jews are our misfortune!” meme used by the Nazi regime. Here is a translation of the Spanish via Google translation:

Benedict can not continue spreading hatred and prejudice against gays. You can not say that we only love, only to claim that if our love is respected and recognized, we are “a threat.” Moreover, because such words have a history. “The Jews are our misfortune!” (“Die Juden sind unser Unglück!”), The historian Heinrich von Treitschke, and that unfortunate expression, published in the German magazine Der Sturmer and then used as a slogan by the Nazis, ended in it ended. Homosexuals know: our fate in Nazi Germany, where Benedict XVI spent his youth, was the same as the Jews, only instead of the Star of David, which we identified in the concentration camps was the pink triangle. The tragedy of Nazism should have served to learn than the other, the different, not a threat, not a misfortune, not the enemy. And we, the homosexuals, do not threaten anyone. Our love is so beautiful and healthy as anyone. And we deserve the same respect and rights as anyone else.

In the same way as happens now with the “gay marriage”, marriage between whites and blacks, called at the time, “interracial marriage” – and was considered “unnatural and contrary to the law of God” and a threat civilization. In a 1966 ruling of a court in Virginia upheld its ban used these words: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red and placed them on separate continents. The fact that he has separated the shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. ” The marriage of German “Aryan race” and was also banned Jews from Hitler. Even the evangelicals were denied the right to marriage in many countries for a long time, they were also a threat, the Catholic Church. It seems that some pastors do not remember, but it was so.

Given Benedict XVI's documented involvement in covering sex crimes against children and youths, the man for that alone ought to be behind bars. But now, reverting to Nazi-like conduct as he has done, Benedict XVI truly needs to be forced to abdicate from the thrown of St. Peter. He is a foul, nasty and morally bankrupt individual..

Creationists Warn That Teaching Evolution Leads to Gay Agenda

I always find it instructive that those who utilize propaganda practices strikingly similar to the NAZI model used against the Jews are always trying to say that it is others, not they themselves who are the perpetrators of NAZI like behavior. A case in point? The untethered loonies at the Creation Studies Institute are warning members that, like the Nazis, gay-rights activists are using public schools to indoctrinate students. Meanwhile, it is the Creationists and the Christianists who are seeking to inflict their religious beliefs on all citizens and the Christianists who are the main opponents of programs in schools that would try to stop students from literally being bullied to death. Right Wing Watch looks at the disingenuous bullshit being disseminated by the Bible clutching nut cases who are the real perpetrators of NAZI like lies about gays and others who they deem inferior. Here are some highlights:
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DeRosa goes on to compare homosexuality with polygamy and pedophilia, and asks members to purchase Focus on the Family’s Secure Daughters, Confident Sons booklet:
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Those who hold godless ideologies have long understood that the best way to transform societies and change the way people traditionally think is by indoctrinating children from the earliest stages of education. In the last century, this methodology was effectively employed by those who held the atheistic ideologies of Nazism in Germany and Communism in countries such as the Soviet Union, where the state assumed total control of the educational system—even to the extent of turning children against parents.
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In America, the adoption of evolution in our schools has paved the way for the introduction of the gay agenda. Those pushing it understand that nothing will more thoroughly and quickly undermine the traditional biblical foundations of our country than the normalization of homosexuality among our nation’s school children, regardless of their parents’ beliefs. Currently, under the banner of “tolerance” or “equal rights,” states like Massachusetts, New York, California, Wisconsin and Minnesota are actively implementing a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) curriculum in their public schools. But those behind the effort to legitimize LGBT lifestyles won’t be content until this kind of curricula is taught in all of our nation’s schools.
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From the patriarchal days of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Law of Moses to the New Testament, God’s Word consistently declares that homosexuality is sin and warns of the condemnation it brings to the individuals who practice it and to societies that promote it. Indeed, the rampant teaching of evolution in our schools that is effectively undermining belief in God and absolute moral standards is not only creating an atmosphere of “tolerance” for homosexuality, but for just about anything.