Why Pence Must Go Down with Trump

As unfit for office and as large a threat Donald Trump may be to the nation, should he be forced from office due to collusion with Russia, out right treason or some other cause, it is imperative that Mike Pence be caught up in the maelstrom and forced from office along with him.  Why? First, because I believe that Pence's "Sergeant Schultz routine" is a charade and that he was very much aware of the activities of the Trump/Pence campaign.  Secondly, because Pence represents as much of a clear and present danger to America as Trump poses. Pence is just as dishonest as Trump and, perhaps, more frighteningly, the man is deranged religious zealot who believes that he is on a mission from God to impose the equivalent of a Christofascist theocracy on the nation.   A column in the New York Times focuses on Pence and just how dangerous he is for constitutional government and secular society.  Indeed, the author of a biography on Pence says Trump is the lesser evil.  Here are excerpts:

There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.

That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He’s also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.

To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn’t genuinely possess: the conviction that he’s on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy.

That’s the takeaway from a forthcoming book by the journalists Michael D’Antonio, who previously wrote “The Truth About Trump,” and Peter Eisner. It’s titled “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” it will be published on Aug. 28 and it’s the most thorough examination of the vice president’s background to date.

The book persuasively illustrates what an ineffectual congressman he was, apart from cozying up to the Koch brothers, Betsy DeVos and other rich Republican donors; the clumsiness and vanity of his one term as governor of Indiana, for which he did something that predecessors hadn’t and “ordered up a collection of custom-embroidered clothes — dress shirts, polo shirts, and vests and jackets — decorated with his name and the words Governor of Indiana”; the strong possibility that he wouldn’t have won re-election; his luck in being spared that humiliation by the summons from Trump, who needed an outwardly bland, intensely religious character witness to muffle his madness and launder his sins; and the alacrity with which he says whatever Trump needs him to regardless of the truth.

“People don’t understand what Pence is,” D’Antonio told me. Which is? “A religious zealot.”

And D’Antonio said that Pence could end up in the White House sooner than you think. In addition to the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, there’s the chance that Trump just decides that he has had enough.

So it’s time to look harder at Pence. “The Shadow President” does. It lays out his disregard for science, evident in his onetime insistence that smoking doesn’t cause cancer and a belief that alarms about climate change were “a secret effort to increase government control over people’s lives for some unstated diabolical purpose,” according to the book.

It suggests callousness at best toward African-Americans. As governor, Pence refused to pardon a black man who had spent almost a decade in prison for a crime that he clearly hadn’t committed. He also ignored a crisis — similar to the one in Flint, Mich. — in which people in a poor, largely black Indiana city were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead. D’Antonio told me: “I think he’s just as driven by prejudice as Trump is.”

At Trump’s urging and with taxpayer money, he and his wife, Karen, flew to a football game in Indianapolis just so he could make a big public gesture of leaving in protest when, predictably, some of the players took a knee during the national anthem.

And, following Trump’s lead, he rallied behind the unhinged former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. . . . The conservative columnist George Will seized on Pence’s speech to write that Pence had dethroned Trump as “America’s most repulsive public figure.”

“He is absolutely certain that his moral view should govern public policy,” D’Antonio told me.

D’Antonio then recounted two stories that he heard from college classmates of Pence’s after the book had gone to bed, so they’re not in there. . . . . Another involved a college friend of Pence’s who later sought his counsel about coming out as gay. D’Antonio said that Pence told the friend: “You have to stay closeted, you have to get help, you’re sick and you’re not my friend anymore.”

I asked D’Antonio the nagging, obvious question: Is America worse off with Trump or Pence?

“I have to say that I prefer Donald Trump, because I think that Trump is more obvious in his intent,” he said, while Pence tends to “disguise his agenda.” D’Antonio then pointed out that if Pence assumed the presidency in the second half of Trump’s first term, he’d be eligible to run in 2020 and 2024 and potentially occupy the White House for up to 10 years.  Heaven help us.

Pence must never occupy the White House.  Nothing would be more fitting than seeing his sanctimonious, cruel, bigoted ass go down in flames with Trump.  

Inconvenient and Ugly Truths about Billy Graham

Some say that it is bad form to speak ill of the dead.  I view it as even worse form, however, to rewrite history and avoid the truth about public figures, especially when the truth involves bigotry and self-enrichment.  While much of the mainstream media is engaged something akin to self-felatio in mourning over the death of Billy Graham - I omit the designation "Reverend" since I hold bible colleges and the Southern Baptist Convention in very low esteem - very little is being said about the ugly side of Graham who was a homophobe, a make chauvinist, and an anti-Semite.  Yes, unlike most Southern Baptists of his era, Graham disavowed outright segregation, but that hardly merits forgiving his other transgressions  against decency.    It also bears remembering that Graham set the model for today's self-enriching scamvangelists - i.e., so called pastors and evangelists who laugh all the way to the bank - and played a role in evangelical Christians' toxic role in American politics.   A piece in The Raw Story looks at the ugly underbelly of Graham's "career."   Here are excerpts:

Graham is getting tributes from all corners right now. And he deserves praise for supporting the civil rights movement, supporting Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment and embracing Muhammad Ali during the fall-out of his conversion to Islam. All those good deeds will be covered in great detail today.

But while Graham certainly did many great things, he also said and did some awful things. And because he was so respected, his deeds were very influential.

Graham helped normalize ultra-rich pastors. Graham’s wealth, and focus on more wealth, was modest compared to the televangelists preaching the prosperity gospel today. His net worth was estimated at $25 million.

Graham once preached that AIDS was the judgement of God. “Is AIDS a judgment of God? . . . Graham quickly backtracked on this one, saying that he didn’t believe that and didn’t know why he said it. Nevertheless, this dog-whistle was heard by too many.

Graham wrote a memo to President Nixon urging him to commit a war crime in Vietnam. Unlike many Christian leaders, Graham supported a very specific military strategy in the Vietnam war. He wanted Nixon to use nuclear weapons to destroy the dikes that manage flooding in North Vietnam. This plan was something Henry Kissinger dismissed as “just too much.”

Graham was anti-Semitic. . . . . For example, after taped conversations revealed that Graham made anti-Semitic statements to President Nixon. Specifically, he told the president that Jews control the media, and that this was dangerous: “This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.” Nixon agreed with this, and Graham suggested that if he got elected to a second term “we might be able to do something.” Graham would later point out that he had Jewish friends.
 Graham had backward views on women. He criticized feminism, and is the namesake of that weird rule that Mike Pence lives by, never spending any time alone with any woman besides his wife.
 Graham raised his boy wrong. In his 1997 autobiography, Graham was regretful of his involvement in politics, writing that, “If I had to do it all over again, I would also avoid any semblance of involvement in partisan politics… And yet, Graham failed to impart this wisdom on his son Franklin Graham, who took over the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and who has taken the lead in defending and legitimizing Donald Trump to evangelicals.

The comment in the piece about Graham's son is an understatement as to the lengths Franklin Graham has thrown aside supposed "Christian" values in supporting Trump, Roy Moore and other morally bankrupt Republicans.  His sister Ann Graham Lotz is no better and fully fits the scamvangelist model established by her father who made being a "professional Christian" a route to personal financial wealth.  Graham and his children excelled at claiming the Bible inerrant yet ignored any passages not supportive of their personal and political agendas. 

One of Billy Graham's last public acts was in 2012 - possible under his son's coercion - when he was trotted out to endorse North Carolina's Amendment 1 that banned marriage equality.  As a piece in Huffington Post by an activist friend notes, Graham's statement appeared in full page ads in 14 newspapers across North Carolina.  Graham was no friend to the LGBT community and he was no supporter of equality under the law. 

The Core of the GOP Base: America’s Angriest White Men Up Close

The ugliness of the Republican Party base seems to be intensifying and the GOP continues to direct most of its policy formulation efforts - if one can even call it that - towards appealing to angry white men who seem primarily motivated by racism, bigotry and general hatred for everyone others than those who are similarly white and at least token conservative Protestant Christians.  Long term, the approach seems to be a slow form of political suicide given the changing demographics of the nation.  But even putting this fact aside, those whom the GOP most wants to court are not nice or decent people.  At least not in my view.  A piece in the Social Reader takes a good look at these angry white men who are the darlings of the GOP.  The picture that emerges is both ugly and frightening.  It certainly describes much of the areas of Virginia that voted for the GOP candidates in the 2013 elections.  Here are excerpts:

Who are the white supremacists? There has been no formal survey, for obvious reasons, but there are several noticeable patterns. Geographically, they come from America’s heartland—small towns, rural cities, swelling suburban sprawl outside larger Sunbelt cities. These aren’t the prosperous towns, but the single-story working-class exurbs that stretch for what feels like forever in the corridor between Long Beach and San Diego (not the San Fernando Valley), or along the southern tier of Pennsylvania, or spread all through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, across the vast high plains of eastern Washington and Oregon, through Idaho and Montana. There are plenty in the declining cities of the Rust Belt, in Dearborn and Flint, Buffalo and Milwaukee, in the bars that remain in the shadows of the hulking deserted factories that once were America’s manufacturing centers. And that doesn’t even touch the former states of the Confederacy, where flying the Confederate flag is a culturally approved symbol of “southern pride”—in the same way that wearing a swastika would be a symbol of German “heritage” (except it’s illegal in Germany to wear a swastika).

There’s a large rural component. Although “the spread of far-right groups over the last decade has not been limited to rural areas alone,” writes Osha Gray Davidson, “the social and economic unraveling of rural communities—especially in the midwest—has provided far-right groups with new audiences for their messages of hate. Some of these groups have enjoyed considerable success in their rural campaign.”  

They tap into a long history of racial and ethnic paranoia in rural America, as well as an equally long tradition of collective local action and vigilante justice. There remains a widespread notion that “Jews, African-Americans, and other minority-group members ‘do not entirely belong,’” which may, in part, “be responsible for rural people’s easy acceptance of the far right’s agenda of hate,” writes Matthew Snipp. “The far right didn’t create bigotry in the Midwest; it didn’t need to,” Davidson concludes. “It merely had to tap into the existing undercurrent of prejudice once this had been inflamed by widespread economic failure and social discontent.”

They’re certainly Christian, but not just any Christian—they’re evangelical Protestant, Pentacostalist, and members of radical sects that preach racial purity as the Word of Jesus. (Catholicism is certainly stocked with conservatives on social issues, but white supremacists tap into such a long and ignoble tradition of anti-Catholicism that they tend to have their own right-wing organizations, mostly fighting against women’s rights and gay rights.) Some belong to churches like the Christian Identity Church, which gained a foothold on the Far Right in the early 1980s. Christian Identity’s focus on racism and anti-Semitism provides the theological underpinnings to the shift from a more “traditional agrarian protest” to paramilitarism. It is from the Christian Identity movement that the Far Right gets its theological claims that Adam is the ancestor of the Caucasian race, whereas non-whites are pre-Adamic “mud people,” without souls, and Jews are the children of Satan.

A large proportion of the extreme right wing are military veterans. . . . . Some veterans believed they were sold out by the government [in Vietnam], caving in to effeminate cowardly protesters; they can no longer trust the government to fight for what is right.  . . . . Many of the younger guys are veterans of the first Gulf War, a war that they came to believe was fought for no moral principles at all, but simply to make America’s oil supply safer and to protect Israel from possible Arab attack. They feel they’ve been used, pawns in a larger political game, serving their country honorably only to be spit out and stepped on when they returned home to slashed veteran benefits, bureaucratic indifference to post-traumatic stress disorder, and general social contempt for having fought in the war in the first place. They believed they were entitled to be hailed as heroes . . .

Perhaps what binds them all together, though, is class. Rural or small town, urban or suburban, the extreme Right is populated by downwardly mobile, lower-middle-class white men. All of the men I interviewed—all—fitted this class profile. When I compared with other ethnographies and other surveys, they all had the same profile as well. 

In the United States, class is often a proxy for race. . . . Among the white supremacists, when they speak of race consciousness, defending white people, protesting for equal rights for white people, they actually don’t mean all white people. . . . . They mean middle-and working-class white people. Race consciousness is actually class consciousness without actually having to “see” class. “Race blindness” leads working-class people to turn right; if they did see class, they’d turn left and make common cause with different races in the same economic class.

American men—lacking confidence in the government and the economy, troubled by the changing relations between the sexes, uncertain of their identity or their future—began to dream, to fantasize about the powers and features of another kind of man who could retake and reorder the world. And the hero of all these dreams was the paramilitary warrior.” The contemporary white supremacist movement is the embodiment of these warrior dreams.

They cobble together a theory that explains their plight—grafting together fringe elements of evangelical Christianity, traditional anti-Semitism and racism, and general right-wing paranoia into an amalgam that is loosely held together by a nostalgic vision of hardy, independent frontier manhood. Like the guys who go postal, they externalize their rage . . . . it’s larger, more powerful, and pernicious social forces—Jews, Muslims, minorities generally, women.

So, who are they really, these hundred thousand white supremacists? They’re every white guy who believed that this land was his land, was made for you and me.   . . . . But instead of becoming Tom Joad, a left-leaning populist, they take a hard right turn, ultimately supporting the very people who have dispossessed them.

You might think that the political ideology of the white supremacist movement is as simple as their list of enemies: put down minorities, expel immigrants, push the women out of the workplace, and round up and execute the gays and the Jews. But it’s not nearly so simple.  

There are three parts to their ideological vision. For one thing, they are ferociously procapitalist. They are firm believers in the free market and free enterprise. They just don’t like what it’s brought. They like capitalism; they just hate corporations.

Second, the extreme Right is extremely patriotic. They love their country, their flag, and everything it stands for. These are the guys who get teary at the playing of the national anthem, who choke up when they hear the word America. They have bumper stickers on their pick ups that show the flag with the slogan “These colors don’t run.”   The problem is that the America they love doesn’t happen to be the America in which they live. 

Finally, they believe themselves to be the true heirs of the real America. They are the ones who are entitled to inherit the bounty of the American system. It’s their birthright—as native-born, white American men. . . . This persistent reversal—white men as victim, the “other” as undeservedly privileged—resounds through the rhetoric of the extreme Right.

It is through a decidedly gendered and sexualized rhetoric of masculinity that this contradiction between loving America and hating its government, loving capitalism and hating its corporate iterations, is resolved. Racism, nativism, anti-Semitism, antifeminism—these discourses of hate provide an explanation for the feelings of entitlement thwarted, fixing the blame squarely on “others” whom the state must now serve at the expense of white men. The unifying theme is gender.

This is the group that the GOP has staked its future on.  Much as Hitler and the Nazis used the resentful and those seeking to blame others to fuel their rise to power.  I see it as frightening and am thankful that fast changing demographics will hopefully kill this political movement sooner rather than later. 

Seven Reasons Obama Will Beat Mitt Romney

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I don't typically read the Washington Times since the publication often requires that one take a huge gulp of Kool-Aid before reading it.  However, there is an interesting column that lays out Mitt Romney's electoral problems and why he's likely to lose to Barack Obama.  Given the Washington Times' copyright policies, I will not publish quotes from the piece which can be found here.  However, I do want to summarize the points because I believe that they are valid and because some are of Romney's own creation.  Here's the summary of some of the points (read the article for the rest):

1. Romney is a radical capitalist who has furthered some of the most ruthless characteristics of unfettered capitalism while at Bain Capital.

2. Romney is utterly out of touch with average Americans and try as he might, he just can't relate to them.  Ditto for his wife despite her "stay at home mom" image.

3. Romney is a hostage of the Christofascists - as demonstrated by the quick demise of Richard Grenell - and he will find it difficult to now Etch A Sketch himself into a moderate thanks to Bryan Fischer and others who will continue to inflame the Kool-Aid drinker set.

4. Women are turned off by Romney's policies that despite Romney's efforts to dance around the subjects, track the Christianist opposition to abortion under any circumstances, contraception, and same sex marriage.

5. Romney is a hard sell to Hispanic voters because of his anti-immigration talk which aligns with the far right's animus towards Hispanics and immigrants.

6.  The GOP primaries force Romney to the right and he will be hard pressed to escape many of his words and positions.

7. If Ron Paul hasn't left the scene and may force Romney to tale positions unpopular with independents and moderates.

America’s - and the GOP's - Christian Hypocrisy

A piece in Salon looks at an issue that this blog looks at frequently: the hypocrisy of this country's conservative Christians and their puppets in the GOP.  As the sub-headline of the piece notes "The Bible preaches tolerance and liberal economics. So why do its proponents embrace right-wing politics?"  The positive news is that more and more of the so-called millennials are apparently waking up to this reality an walking away from institutional religion all together according to a new report by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.  The denomination suffering the biggest losses?  The Roman Catholic Church - even among Hispanics.  The U. S. Bishops and the porcine Timothy Dolan may like to claim that all is well in Catholicism, but the numbers of millennials fleeing the Church tells a very different story.  As for the cause of the exodus, I would argue that much is the handiwork of far right Christians and the professional Christian set who are slowly but steadily killing the Christian brand.  Here are highlights from Salon:

As the Pew Research Center recently discovered, “Most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party” and its ultra-conservative economic agenda. Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and “proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.”

The good news is that this may be starting to change. In recent years, for instance, Pew has found that younger evangelicals are less devoutly committed to the Republican Party and its Tea Party-inspired agenda than older evangelicals. 

The better news, of course, is that the far right is not only losing allegiance to its hate and hypocrisy filled agenda with millennials, but it's losing more and more of this generation completely.  In terms of LGBT issues and immigration, here are some findings from the report of the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs:

• Nearly 6-in-10 college age millenials favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. 
• 8-in-10 college millenials attending a private college or university support same sex marriage.
• Almost two-thirds of millennials say that "anti-gay" describes present day Christianity.
• 6-in-10 say that present day Christianity is judgmental.
• 58% agree that "hypocritical" describes present day Christianity.
• Milleninials across all major religious groups favor the DREAM ACT.

Obviously not good news for the GOP long term.

Why You Shouldn't Donate to the Salvation Army Bell Ringers

I've written about this topic before, but as we head into the holiday season it's worth stressing that some charities such as the Salvation Army are NOT worthy of our donations. Yes, the organization's web site pretends to be accepting regardless of one's sexual orientation, but as my friend, Bilerico Project editor Bil Browning, notes in a recent blog post, actions speak far louder than words. With many, many worthy charities that do not engage in religious based anti-LGBT discrimination, there is no excuse for donating funds to the Salvation Army. I have absolutely no problem walking right on by the donation kettles. The bigger challenge is to not say what I really think. Here are highlights from Bil's post:

As the holidays approach, the Salvation Army bell ringers are out in front of stores dunning shoppers for donations. If you care about gay rights, you'll skip their bucket in favor of a charity that doesn't actively discriminate against the LGBT community.

The Salvation Army has a history of active discrimination against gays and lesbians. While you might think you're helping the hungry and homeless by dropping a few dollars in the bright red buckets, not everyone can share in the donations. Many LGBT people are rejected by the evangelical church charity because they're "sexually impure."

The church claims it holds "a positive view of human sexuality," but then clarifies that "sexual intimacy is understood as a gift of God to be enjoyed within the context of heterosexual marriage." The Salvation Army doesn't believe that gays and lesbians should ever know the intimacy of any loving relationship, instead teaching that "Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life."

On its webpage, the group claims that "the services of The Salvation Army are available to all who qualify, without regard to sexual orientation." While the words are nice, their actions speak volumes. They blatantly ignore the position statement and deny LGBT people services unless they renounce their sexuality, end same-sex relationships, or, in some cases, attend services "open to all who confess Christ as Savior and who accept and abide by The Salvation Army's doctrine and discipline." In other words, if you're gay or lesbian, you don't qualify.

The organization also has a record of actively lobbying governments worldwide for anti-gay policies - including an attempt to make consensual gay sex illegal. (Yes, you're paying lobbyists with those donations.)

Since 1986 the Salvation Army has engaged in five major assaults on the LGBT community's civil rights and attempted to carve out exemptions that would allow them to deny gays and lesbians needed services as well as employment.

***When New Zealand considered passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986, the Salvation Army collected signatures in an attempt to get the legislation killed. The act decriminalized consensual sex between gay men. The measure passed over the charity's objections.

***In the United Kingdom, the Salvation Army actively pushed passage of an amendment to the Local Government Act. The amendment stated that local authorities "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." The law has since been repealed, but it led many schools and colleges to close LGBT student organizations out of fear they'd lose their government funding.

***In 2001, the organization tried to extract a resolution from the White House that they could ignore local non-discrimination laws that protected LGBT people. While the commitment would have applied to all employees, the group claimed that it needed the resolution so it "did not have to ordain sexually active gay ministers and did not have to provide medical benefits to the same-sex partners of employees." After lawmakers and civil rights activists revealed the Salvation Army's active resistance to non-discrimination laws, the White House admitted the charity was seeking the exemptions.

***Also in 2001, the evangelical charity actively lobbied to change how the Bush administration would distribute over $24 billion in grants and tax deductions by urging the White House deny funding to any cities or states that included LGBT non-discrimination laws. Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, issued a statement saying the administration was denying a "regulation sought by the church to protect the right of taxpayer-funded religious organizations to discriminate against homosexuals."

In 2004, the Salvation Army threatened to close all their soup kitchens in New York City to protest the city's decision to require all vendors and charities doing business with the city to adhere to all civil rights laws. The organization balked at having to treat gay employees equal to straight employees.

I've seen the discrimination the Salvation Army preaches first hand. When a former boyfriend and I were homeless, the Salvation Army insisted we break up before they'd offer assistance. We slept on the street instead and declined to break up as they demanded.

Instead of donating to the Salvation Army, choose a different charity that will help everyone without prejudice. Find a local secular charity - or here are some national organizations that provide help to anyone who needs it.

Amen to Bil's recommendations. Give your hard earned money to non-discrimiatory charities and hopefully in time the Salvation Army will "see the light" or wither away and cease being a cesspool of bigotry.

Courage versus Bravery – The Danger of the Closet

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In to the Vortex - Moore v. Virginia Museum of natural History

With all of the political maneuvering by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell in the wake of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's directive to Virginia public colleges and universities to rescind non-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation as an enumerated class - including the Governor's Executive Directive 1 (2010) issued yesterday - would think the situation could not get more convoluted and confusing. Yet, now the Supreme Court of Virginia will hold oral arguments on the case of Michael Moore v. Virginia Museum of Natural History on March 31, 2010. Moore was an employee of the Virginia Museum of Natural History who was terminated in November, 2006, for being gay. The Williams Institute has references to the case here as an case where an gay employee was terminated because of his sexual orientation by a public entity in Virginia. The irony is that yours truly, who is neither a litigation attorney nor an appellate case attorney, now finds himself schedule to to present oral argument on March 31, 2010 before the Supreme Court of Virginia on March 31, 2010. Little did I know when I agreed to assist Michael Moore (pictured above) back in late 2006 because he could find no other attorney in Virginia to help him that circumstances would lead to this point.
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The case has been fully briefed - the Virginia Attorney General's briefs make statements diametrically opposed to statement is Gov. Bob McDonnell's Executive Directive 1 (2010) - and it is hard to tell what the Virginia Supreme Court will rule in the matter. If the Court adopts the Attorney General's arguments in the case, it will confirm that McDonnell's Executive Directive 1 (2010) is a meaningless political stunt. If the Court accepts the arguments in the briefs submitted on behalf of Moore, employment discrimination - at least when involving state agencies and departments - based upon sexual orientation/religious belief will be struck down as illegal under the U.S. Constitution. I am clueless as to how the Virginia Supreme Court will rule, but if the Court rules against Moore, it will likely cut the Governor's latest move off at the knee caps and endanger the prospects of Northrop Grumman moving its headquarters of Virginia. If the Court rules for Moore, Pat Robertson, The Family Foundation and other Christian Right puppeteers of Gov. McDonnell and Attorney General Cuccinelli will be having apoplexy.

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Truth be told, Virginia has a major problem in terms of negative PR and should the Court rule against Moore, chances of Northrop Grumman - not to mention other corporations that afford equal rights and protections to LGBT employees - coming to Virginia may be toast. Candidly, I never envisioned myself involved in a case that could have such severe consequences on the entire Commonwealth of Virginia, not to mention my client. I guess one never knows what fate may lay at one's feet.

Colin Powell Slams GOP

As a former Republican I have been dismayed to watch as the GOP has become a party of intolerant bigots which excludes basically anyone who is not white, an extreme evangelical Christian, back woods redneck, and a hater of all minority groups and immigrants. The party name needs to be changed to the "Christian Taliban Party" since it's becoming virtually impossible for anyone who is a rational thinking person to remain a member. And as for the party's alleged principals of small government, personal freedoms, and fiscal conservatism, those have all been thrown on the dung heap. Now, Colin Powell has joined the many already decrying what has become of the GOP and its divisional tactics. Here are some highlights from CNN:

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(CNN) — The Republican party must stop "shouting at the world" and start listening to minority groups if it is to win elections in the 21st century, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for Sunday's "GPS" program, President Bush's former secretary of state said his party's attempt "to use polarization for political advantage" backfired last month.

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"I think the party has to take a hard look at itself," Powell said in the interview, which was taped Wednesday. . . . if the party wants to have a future in this country, it has to face some realities. In another 20 years, the majority in this country will be the minority."

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"Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh?" Powell asked. "Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?" Zakaria's full interview with Powell will air Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on CNN.

LGBT Section Causes Virginia GOP Delegation to Cancels Order for Minneapolis-St. Paul Guide

If you want to get an idea of just how fucked up the Republican Party of Virginia has become, this story from KSTP-TV 5 in Dayton, Ohio, gives you a good idea (thanks to the reader who sent me the story link). Back in the days when I was involved in the Republican Party of Virginia, I felt the vast majority of party members were rational and not foaming at the mouth homophobes. My, my how things have changed. There must be some severe self-hating closet cases for this kind of insane reaction (maybe Mike Rogers needs to check up on Lt. Governor Bill Bolling). On the other hand, this irrational behavior is consistent with the desire of the Christianist faction that now controls the GOP to have gays simply become invisible if not cease to exist. Maybe the GOP needs to hold it's convention in Bum Fuck Nowhere so none of us homos are around. Here are some highlights:

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The Virginia delegation canceled their order of The Rake magazine's Secrets of the City guide because it includes a section for gays and lesbians. The publication is a guide to various attractions in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The campaign for Virginia's Lt. Governor Bill Bolling ordered 150 of the guides to give to Virginia delegates as gifts when they arrived in the Twin Cities. But after reviewing the guide and finding it had a six-page section for gays and lesbians, they canceled their order, said AJ Kiefer, The Rake's advertising director.

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The original cancellation request e-mail from Melissa Busse, Bolling's political director sent to Tom Bartel, of The Rake:

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I am so terribly sorry to do this, especially when the both of you have been so "out of your way" helpful, generous and easy to work with. But, we need to cancel the order for 150 of the "Secrets of the City" guidebooks.

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Thanks for sending a copy to me so expediently, Tom. Upon looking at it, though, having a section dedicated solely to GLBT will be a BIG problem for many of our folks. We simply can't hand them out.

Jonathan Crutchley Dumped by Manhunt Board

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Christianity and the Dark Side -- What About Halloween?

If one reads some of the leading Christianist groups' web sites - I do so from time to to "know the enemy" - it quickly becomes apparent that Halloween sends these folks almost into the spasms arising from the thought of a same sex couple kissing one another. Some of the discussion would be almost funny if the Chimperator was not often acting at the beck and call of these folks. Here are some highlights from wingnut Albert Mohler's web site:

The issue of Halloween presses itself annually upon the Christian conscience. Acutely aware of dangers new and old, many Christian parents choose to withdraw their children from the holiday altogether. Others choose to follow a strategic battle plan for engagement with the holiday. Still others have gone further, seeking to convert Halloween into an evangelistic opportunity. Is Halloween really that significant?

The pagan roots of Halloween are well documented. The holiday is rooted in the Celtic festival of Samhain, which came at summer's end. As Rogers explains, "Paired with the feast of Beltane, which celebrated the life-generating powers of the sun, Samhain beckoned to winter and the dark nights ahead." Scholars dispute whether Samhain was celebrated as a festival of the dead, but the pagan roots of the festival are indisputable. Questions of human and animal sacrifices and various occultic sexual practices continue as issues of debate, but the reality of the celebration as an occultic festival focused on the changing of seasons undoubtedly involved practices pointing to winter as a season of death.

Note how an obsession with sex always creeps in. A less studious approach is found on a joint conservative Catholic/Focus on the Family discussion of Halloween:

It is impossible to be middle of the road or neutral when it comes to whom a Christian serves. The Bible says that we must "choose ye this day whom ye will serve." (Joshua 24:15) Since Halloween belongs to Satan, it is he who is served when one participates in "Christianized" Halloween rituals and it is he who gains the right to spiritually afflict those who fellowship with him in this manner. God's people must purpose to reject all rationalizations for sin, no matter where they come from. Quench not the Holy Spirit when he convicts you about the sin of yoking what is holy (the Lord Jesus Christ) with what is evil (Halloween.)

One has to wonder how some of these folks got so crazy. However, for a really over the top rant, check out this site (which also links to a web page that trashes "Gay Friendly Christians): http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Apostasy/making_halloween_holy.htm

Obama, the Gospel Singer and Gays

Barack Obama is demonstrating that talk is cheap and that actions speak louder than words. As I (and many other LGBT bloggers) previously posted, Obama is making a three-day tour through South Carolina, starting on this Friday and finishing Sunday with a concert that includes Grammy Award-winning Gospel artist and anti-gay Donnie McClurkin. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what Obama is doing unless he secretly agrees with McClurkin's views (on several occasions, Obama's religious statements have caused me to doubt whether he is an ally of the LGBT community or not). Yesterday, Obama released the following statement concerning retaining McClurkin on the tour:

“I have clearly stated my belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens. I have consistently spoken directly to African-American religious leaders about the need to overcome the homophobia that persists in some parts our community so that we can confront issues like HIV/AIDS and broaden the reach of equal rights in this country," Obama said in the written statement.

"I strongly believe that African Americans and the LGBT community must stand together in the fight for equal rights. And so I strongly disagree with Reverend McClurkin’s views and will continue to fight for these rights as President of the United States to ensure that America is a country that spreads tolerance instead of division."

If he disagrees with McClurkin, why the Hell is he touring with him?? The words and the action simply do not add up. For those who missed my prior post, here's more on McClurkin and Obama's pandering to anti-gay sentiments via the Chicago Tribune Blog (http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/obama_the_gospel_singer_and_ga.html):

McClurkin, who is also a Pentecostal minister, has been a prominent advocate of the view that homosexuality is a lifestyle and that gays can will themselves to heterosexual behavior. McClurkin has said he struggled with homosexual "demons" for 20 years--which he attributes to molestation as a child by male relatives--but is now straight.

Yes, and I am Queen Victoria too. Additional political analysis is here from the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obama-should-repudiate-an_b_69244.html):

Obama has hitched his string to McClurkin's high flying gay bash kite in part out of religious belief (he purports to be somewhat of an evangelical), in bigger part because he's falling further and further behind Hillary Clinton with the black vote in South Carolina and everywhere else, and in the biggest part of all because he hopes that what worked for Bush's reelection will work for him. Enter McClurkin. He's black, he's popular, and gospel plays big with blacks in South Carolina, especially black evangelicals, and many of them openly and even more of them quietly loathe gays.

A Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies poll in 2004 found that blacks by a far larger margin than the overall population opposed gay marriage. That raised a few eyebrows among some political pundits, but there were much earlier signs of blacks' relentless hostility to gays and gay rights. A survey that measured black attitudes toward gays published in Jet magazine in 1994 found that a sizable number of blacks were suspicious and scornful of them.

This lesson isn't lost on Obama. Desperate to snatch back some of the political ground with black voters that are slipping away from him and to Hillary; Bush's black evangelical card seems like the perfect play. Obama wouldn't dare go down the knock gay path, and risk drawing the inevitable heat for it, if he didn't think as Bush that anti-gay sentiment is still wide and deep among many blacks. And that's what makes Obama's ala Bush pander to anti-gay mania even more shameless and reprehensible.

Obama has spent months telling everyone that he's everything that Bush isn't. He can proof it by saying a resounding no to McClurkin and to gay bashing. He can cancel and repudiate the South Carolina "gospel" tour, and do it now.

It looks to me that Obama is throwing gays under the bus in his quest for black evangelical votes. I'm sorry, but I do not trust Obama any more.

New Book Puts a Focus on Antigay Activist Robert Knight

Ex-Gay Watch is reporting that Activist Alvin McEwen has published an excerpt from his upcoming book, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Exposing the Lies of the Anti-Gay Industry. (The website for the book can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/holybulliesandheadlessmonsters/index.htm) From some of the excerpts, McEwen has a good take on the dishonesty and hatred that permeates these so-called "pro-family organization:"

. . . in order to prove that gays and lesbians should not have any protection of laws, so-called “pro-family” groups have created a written and oral pattern of deception that is not only blatant in its attempts but shameful in its audacity. In their zeal to prove the worst about the gay community, the antigay industry run roughshod over science and truth. They have created a house of pseudo-scientifi c studies based on distortions, lies, headless monsters, and legitimate studies taken out of context which are then pushed by fake experts, Ph.D.s, conservative columnists and bloggers, and ignorant people of faith all willing to sacrifice their integrity on the altar of an alleged higher calling."

I have had e-mail debates with Robert Knight in the past and no lie is too outrageous for him and even when he concedes factual error, he no sooner turns around and is caught lying again. My personal read on Knight is that he is an extreme self-hating closet case. The level of his anti-gay hysteria can not otherwise be explained. He did not take kindly to my suggestion that he ask John Paulk (Focus on the Family's ex-gay poster boy until he was photographed in a D.C. gay cruising bar) for advise on Washington, D.C. cruising spots so he could find himself a trick and maybe calm his hysteria a bit.

Pope Praises Anti-Gay Protestors

The AP and 365gay.com are reporting that Pope Benedict XVI, the Nazi Pope (who reportedly loves his red Prada shoes), sang the praises of anti-gay protestors in Rome. Here's a portion of the story:

"(Vatican City) Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday praised a recent demonstration in Rome against proposed legislation granting legal rights to unmarried couples, including gay ones, saying it showed that traditional family was at the core of Italian society. Benedict called the May 12 Family Day rally, organized by Catholic groups and family associations, a "great and extraordinary popular festival."

Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the demonstration to protest a bill that would grant legal rights to unmarried couples, including hospital visits and inheritance rights. The bill does not legalize gay marriage, as was done in other European countries, such as Spain.

The bill has angered the Vatican, which under Benedict has been conducting a fierce campaign to protect traditional family based on marriage between man and woman."

Meanwhile, even though the family and morality are supposedly so important to Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, neither of them have yet to punish the Cardinal and Bishops who covered up the priest sex abuse scandal, reassigned known pedophile priests to unsuspecting parishes, and/or tried to brow beat parents and victims into remaining silent. A few years back, the Dallas Morning News did an article that calculated that over 1/3 of the bishops in the USA had covered up sexual abuse. Why anyone continues to listen to Benedict and the corrupt and disigenuous Catholic Church hierarchy dumb founds me. The guy is a fraud and hypocrite.

Poison from the "Family" Values Crowd

Pam Spaulding's blog posted the information set out below about the lies and disinformation being put out by Traditional Values Coalition (one of the "Christian" groups that loves to quote the false research of Paul Cameron discussed in my earlier post). While I still monitor the TVC web site, from time to time, the amount of hate spewing from the site can make one literally feel ill. I would love an opportunity to debate Sheldon on camera and expose him for the liar he is. Last fall when I was in a debate on the Virginia Marriage Amendment sponsored by the Libertarian Party, a member of the audience (who turned out to be on the faculty at Pat Robertson's Regent University) tried to quote some of Paul Cameron's garbage and I was able to shut him down by citing some of the data in my earlier post. All of us need to educate ourselves so that we can expose these liars so that fewer LBGT individuals suffer the horrible death of Matthew Shepard (the photo is of the fence above where Matthew died). Here's Rev. Sheldon's latest poison:

"Homosexual/Drag Queen Hate Crimes Bill On Fast Track
We must defeat H.R. 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan.
Without your action, this anti-Christian legislation will pass -- under the guise of hate-crime prevention -- and accomplish the following homosexual goals:

* Silence the Bible-believing Churches, Pastors and Christians
* Criminalize so-called "hate speech," - which is any speech that is critical of homosexuality or cross-dressing behaviors. The suppression of free speech will be justified by the claim that such speech "incites" individuals to commit violence against homosexuals, cross-dressers etc. Any remarks about homosexuality, such as reading Bible passages, preaching on these passages, telling a person they can come out of the homosexual lifestyle, etc. will be deemed critical remarks and will be ruled to be outside the bounds of First Amendment protections for pastors, business owners and individuals.
* Elevate homosexuality and gender confused individuals such as drag queens, cross-dressers, she-males, etc. to the status of federally-protected minorities. These behaviors will be considered equal to race under the federal law.
* Interfere with local law enforcement by elevating every alleged incident of "hate" against a homosexual or cross-dresser into a federal crime.
* Fund anti-Christian curriculum for children K-12, through the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to promote homosexuality and cross-dressing as normal behaviors."

I find it interesting that Jesus spent most of his time condemning the self-righteous of his time (who acted not unlike Rev. Sheldon) as opposed to condemning so-called "sinners" who did not conform to the legalism and hypocrisy of the the scribes and Pharisees.

Ex-Gays and Paul Cameron's Bogus Research

Richard Rothstein over at QueerSighted (http://www.queersighted.com/) has a post that rings all too true to my experience:

“While the other adolescent boys were learning how to be themselves, I was learning how to be like them. I was an observer and a chameleon. By the age of 12, I fully understood that I was profoundly different from other boys. While they were discovering girls, I was discovering them--and I knew it was wrong. How did I know it was wrong? Because it was completely different from everything I saw on TV, in the movies and read in books and comics. Prince Charming wanted Cinderella and Snow White not Robin Hood and Tarzan. I was completely alone. No one and nothing wanted what I wanted.”

Needless to say, my sense of isolation was nearly overwhelming at times. Sadly, those who seek to perpetuate the “it’s a choice” myth continue to cite false and discredited research, cause in my view deliberate harm to gays of all ages. The latest example is Exodus International which has references to long discredited “research” of Paul Cameron on its website as discussed by Mike Airhart (who I have met while visiting D.C) on Ex-Gay Watch (http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2007/04/exodus-web-site-promotes-discredited-research-of-paul-cameron/). My comments in an August, 2003, e-mail debate with Peter LaBarbera fully describe the fraud worked by Paul Cameron and those who cite his “research:”

“Mr. LaBarbera,

You asked for back up regarding PaulCameron's anti-gay statements. I have set forth below a web address for a web page on the hatecrime.org web site that sets out a number of "loving" statements by Paul Cameron.

Hatecrime.org: http://www.hatecrime.org/subpages/hatespeech/cameron.html

I have also set out the web addresses for two web page with articles by Cameron.

1. "What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?" at:

http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html#footnote

2. "MEDICAL CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT HOMOSEXUALS DO" at:

http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html#info

Some of his statements are truly outrageous and are anything but objective medical analysis. My personal favorites are: (1) "gays average somewhere between 106 and 1105 different partners/year," (2) "A large minority of gays engage in torture for sexual fun, " (3) "25% of white gays admitted to sex with boys 16 or younger as adults." I don't for the life of me know who these individuals were that gave Cameron such wild and inflammatory information. Certainly none of the gays I know, know of, or have read about support these claims. The vast majority in reality hold responsible jobs and lead regular and fairly dull lives, etc.

As indicated below, Cameron's studies were in fact bogus. I have found no reputable medical authorities that agree with Cameron's incredible claims. Instead, one finds that he has been publicly censured and thrown out of professional organizations for his conduct. Yet, he is regularly cited by "Christian" Right organizations as authority for their statements.

As further evidence that Cameron should not be relied on as a legitimate authority, the following information is off of a Psychology site at the University of California at Davis:

Paul Cameron Bio and Fact Sheet

Paul Drummond Cameron was born November 9, 1939, in Pittsburgh (PA).
He received his BA from Los Angeles Pacific College in 1961; his MA from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1962; and his PhD from the University of Colorado in 1966. His dissertation was titled Age as a determinant of differences in non-intellective psychological functioning.1

He was affiliated with various colleges and universities until 1980. They include Wayne State University (1967-68), University of Louisville (1970-73), Fuller Graduate School of Psychology [part of the Fuller Theological Seminary] (1976-79), and the University of Nebraska (1979-80).

On his curriculum vitae, he describes himself as a "Researcher/Clinician." According to the web site of the Nebraska Department of HHS Regulation and Licensure, his license as a Psychologist is "inactive."

He is chairman of the Family Research Institute, PO Box 62640, Colorado Springs, CO, 80962-2640. Telephone: (303) 681-3113. Fax: (303) 681-3427. E-mail: pdcameron@juno.com

In the mid-1980s, the gay press labeled Paul Cameron "the most dangerous antigay voice in the United States today."2, 3, 4. Here are some important facts about him.

On December 2, 1983, the American Psychological Association sent Paul Cameron a letter informing him that he had been dropped from membership. Early in 1984, all members of the American Psychological Association received official written notice that "Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists" by the APA Board of Directors.5 Cameron has posted an elaborate argument about his expulsion from APA on his website, claiming that he resigned from APA before he was dropped from membership. Like most organizations, however, APA does not allow a member to resign when they are being investigated. And even if Cameron's claims were accepted as true, it would be remarkable that the largest professional organization of psychologists in the United States (and other professional associations, as noted below) went to such lengths to disassociate itself from one individual.

At its membership meeting on October 19, 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that it "formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality."6

In 1985, the American Sociological Association (ASA) adopted a resolution which asserted that "Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism" and noted that "Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research."7 The resolution formally charged an ASA committee with the task of "critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron."
At its August, 1986 meeting, the ASA officially accepted the committee's report and passed the following resolution:

The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Information on this action and a copy of the report by the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, "The Paul Cameron Case," is to be published in Footnotes, and be sent to the officers of all regional and state sociological associations and to the Canadian Sociological Association with a request that they alert their members to Cameron's frequent lecture and media appearances."8

Cameron's credibility was also questioned outside of academia. In his written opinion in Baker v. Wade (1985), Judge Buchmeyer of the U.S. District Court of Dallas referred to "Cameron's sworn statement that 'homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals,'" and concluded that "Dr. Paul Cameron...has himself made misrepresentations to this Court" and that "There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron" (p.536).9”

Notwithstanding being provided with this information, LaBarbera continues to spin blatantly false propaganda against gay Americans. Obviously, anyone who cites Cameron’s “research,” has little desire to tell the truth and is obviously further some disturb religious or political agenda. Unfortunately, the mainstream media NEVER challenges these false Christians with the true facts of their alleged underlying expert research.