U.S. Justice Department Files Brief in Support of Glouster County Transgender Student

As noted, the husband and I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Gavin Grimm, a transgender male high school student in Gloucester County, Virginia - Gloucester is across the York River from Yorktown - a week ago this past Monday at an event at our home.  In the process we heard of Gavin's plight with the Gloucester County public schools after "a concerned community member" complained about Gavin's use of the boys' rest room facilities.   To date the identity of this "concerned community member" has not been revealed by school authorities, but in past Gloucester County actions against LGBT individuals and even the barring of library books in the public library, the culprits have been one or more local ignorance embracing pastors.  Now, as BuzzFeed is reporting, the U.S. Department of Justice is getting involved in the lawsuit brought on Gavin's behalf by the ACLU.  Here are story highlights (the court brief can be viewed at the end of the article):

A transgender teenager in rural Virginia got a powerful ally this week in his legal fight to use the boys restroom at his public high school.

Lawyers at the U.S. Justice Department filed a statement of interest in federal court that argues the Gloucester County School Board violated Gavin Grimm’s rights by passing a policy prohibiting transgender students from using restrooms that don’t correspond to their “biological genders.”

“Discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status, is discrimination based on sex,” Justice Dept. lawyers state in a brief filed Monday in U.S District Court in Virginia. Lawyers in the department’s Civil Rights Division further argue that discrimination based on an individual’s nonconformity to sex stereotypes also discriminates on the basis on sex.

“The United States has a significant interest in ensuring that all students, including transgender students, have the opportunity to learn in an environment free of sex discrimination,” the brief says. “[I]t is the view of the United States that it is in the public interest to allow [Grimm], whose gender identity is male and who presents as male in all aspects of life, to use the male restrooms at Gloucester High School.”

Grimm had initiated a lawsuit against his school board in June. Filed by the ACLU, the complaint asked the court to strike down the school board’s restroom policy and impose an injunction that allows him to use the boys restroom when he returns to school in September.

Previously, Grimm had filed a complaint against the school board with the Justice Dept.
At the crux of Grimm’s lawsuit and the Justice Dept.’s filing is Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which bans schools that receive federal money from discriminating on the basis of sex.

By stepping into the lawsuit, the Justice Dept.’s further carves out the Obama administration’s role as transgender-rights disputes grow litigious over restroom access in schools.

[T]he Justice Dept. argues, the definition of “sex” is broad under Title IX and that “an individual’s gender identity is one aspect of an individual’s sex … Consequently, discrimination on the basis of gender identity is ‘literally’ discrimination on the basis of sex.”

Compared to Gloucester County, the rest of Hampton Roads is a bright center in a liberal universe.  What I find shocking is that in order to appease Bible beaters, the school board is seemingly willing to lose federal funding.  One can only hope that sane residents wake up and read the school board the riot act. 

Genesis Myth of Noah's Ark Derives from Older Mesopotamian Myth

The brain dead Bible beaters who claim that the Bible is inerrant and literally true just experienced another serious set back.  Already reeling from the human genome project's confirmation that the Adam and Eve of Genius never existed as historical people, new archaeological evidence seems to confirm that the Bible story of Noah's Ark is just a reheated version of a false myth dating from an earlier time in Mesopotamia.  I suspect that as time goes on, more and more scientific knowledge and new archaeological discoveries will further demonstrate that the Bible is anything but literally true much less the "inspired word of God."  Here are highlights from Jerry A. Coyne's blog (he is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago):

We’ve known since at least 1872 that the Great Flood detailed in Genesis is a descendant of earlier flood myths from Mesopotamia.  And there may be some credibility to the presence of at least some serious floods then, based on the fact that Mesopotamia is a giant flood plain and the presence of some archeological evidence for a big flood around 5000 BC. But what we didn’t know until now is that those earlier flood myths also incorporated a boat onto which species of wild animals were sequestered to save them—two by two!  This clearly shows, as if we didn’t know it already, that the Genesis story of Noah and the Ark isn’t true, but was simply an embroidery of earlier flood stories. (It will be interesting to see how Biblical literalists like Ken Ham react to this finding.)

This has all come to light since the recent deciphering of a clay cuneiform tablet first shown to curators at the British Museum in 1985, but not surrendered by its owner for translation until 2009.  Now the remarkable results are detailed in a book by Irving Finkel, Assyriologist and “assistant keeper” of ancient writings at the British Museum.
 [T]he “Ark tablet” . . . . contains 600 cuneiform characters and is dated between 1900 and 1700 BC, which makes it roughly a millennium older than the book of Genesis. According to Finkel, Genesis was assembled between 597 and 538 BC during the Jewish exodus in Babylonia.

Here’s a quick overview of what’s old and new; quotes from the articles are in italics:

• We’ve known since 1872, from another cuneiform tablet that came to the British Museum, that there were Mesopotamian flood myths that long antedated the one in Genesis. Other tablets surfaced, and their contents are famously detailed in Tablets XI and XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh, written beginning about 2000 BC.
•  The boat described as the earlier Ark was a huge coracle: a shallow round boat made from coiled ropes of palm fiber. Finkel describes it as being 230 feet in diameter (Chivers’s piece says 70 feet, but he must mean meters, since 70 meters is almost exactly 230 feet). 

[O]f course there’s no way they could have fit the world’s 7-million-plus species (in pairs) on either the Genesis ark or a 230-foot-diameter coracle, so of course literalists have to explain where the later species came from. The usual answer is “evolution” from a limited set of “kinds,” but this disguises the fact that evolution was admitted to occur! So what were taken on the Ark were a set “kinds” that split into all the species we know today.  The fruitless study of what the kinds really comprised is the subject of “baraminology,” which I mentioned above. It’s the world’s most useless (and, to a scientist, funniest) area of scholarly “research.”

The upshot is, of course, that the Ark story is fiction, which won’t surprise any of us. But when I debated those creationists in Arizona a while back, they all held firmly to the literalism of the Ark Story . . . ..

[T]he solution, of course, is to recognize both documents as myths that probably embroidered real-life but smaller floods occurring thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia.

Two More U. S. Senators Embrace Gay Marriage, Including GOP Senator Mark Kirk

The spittle will be flying in sheets in conservative circles in  backward areas of the states of Illinois and Delaware now that Delaware U.S. Senator Tom Carper and GOP Illinois Senator Mark Kirk have both endorsed full gay marriage.  Here is what Carper said on his Facebook page:

As our society has changed and evolved, so too has the public's opinion on gay marriage – and so has mine. I pray every day for God to grant me the wisdom to do what is right. Through my prayers and conversations with my family and countless friends and Delawareans, I've been reminded of the power of one of my core values: the Golden Rule. It calls on us to treat others as we want to be treated. That means, to me, that all Americans ultimately should be free to marry the people they love and intend to share their lives with, regardless of their sexual orientation, and that's why today, after a great deal of soul searching, I'm endorsing marriage equality.

More significant was Senator Mark Kirk's announcement which will cause the Bible beaters in the GOP base to go berserk.  BuzzFeed has deatils.  Here are excerpts:

Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk came out in support of marriage equality Tuesday shortly after the Supreme Court heard two potentially historic cases on gay rights.  "When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others," Kirk wrote on his blog.

"Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back-- government has no place in the middle."

Kirk is the second sitting Republican Senator to endorse marriage equality, following Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman last month.

The state senate in Illinois recently voted in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in the state in a vote on Valentine's Day. Lawmakers in Illinois did not call the matter for a vote before they adjourned for their spring break.

Kirk supported Illinois Republican party chairman Pat Brady when attempts were made to oust him after he announced his public support for the bill to allow gay marriage in Illinois.

 It will be interesting to await the reactions of the hate merchants of the "family values" crowd and the rabid elements of the Tea Party.

GOP Social Conservatives Fight Back

I have often lamented the foolish short sightedness of those in the GOP establishment who for short term gain and expediency welcomed the Christofascists and then their Tea Party cousins into the Republican Party.  Worse yet, they allowed these reality untethered individuals to infiltrate and in many cases take over the local party committees and caucuses.  Now, having created a veritable Frankenstein monster that is taking over the GOP at all levels, the Politico looks at the efforts of the far right knuckle draggers to fight back against efforts to sideline them and their culture war issues.  Here are highlights:

GOP establishment id finding out that the Christofascists and Neanderthals will not go easily or quietly.  A piece in

The preferred plot line for many in the GOP establishment for revitalizing their party goes something like this: They move to a more libertarian stance on key social issues — particularly same-sex marriage — and the Bible-thumping, evangelical wing of the party meekly complies, realizing times have changed.   One problem with that scenario, however: The Christian Right, while a diminished force, doesn’t like how that story ends at all.

Leading cultural conservatives, including the movement’s standard-bearers from the past two presidential campaigns, have had it with Republican elites faulting them for the party’s losses and are finally ready point a finger back at the establishment.

Huckabee and Santorum are reacting to the conventional wisdom that has swept through much of the Republican political class since the party’s latest presidential thumping last November: We’re getting our hats handed to us because young voters, minorities and women are turned off by our social stances and rhetoric.

[D]uring this season of Republican soul-searching, comparatively little has been heard from the party’s social conservatives. It has been the would-be reformers — citing gay marriage, politically damaging comments on abortion and the need for immigration reform — who have dominated the discussion. Given the makeup of the modern Republican coalition, the social conservatives’ relative absence has been striking.

Yet as some party intellectuals openly wonder if the heyday of the religious right has come and gone, social conservatives are responding with ferocity, indicting John McCain and Mitt Romney for their losses and bluntly warning that the GOP will cease to exist if the party abandons those voters who are in the party because of, not despite, its platform on values. If cultural conservatives are headed toward extinction, they are making clear they won’t go away without a fight.
“You win in politics by broadening your appeal, not narrowing it to white guys over 60,” said longtime Republican strategist Mike Murphy, who supports same-sex marriage rights. “And gay marriage is becoming a litmus test issue for voters under 35.”

“If the party elites think we can win by getting across the idea that we’re no different on values issues, they are really clueless to the fact that they’re going to lose voters that they only get because of those issues,” said social conservative leader Gary Bauer, who ran for president in 2000.

To the likes of Murphy and other reformers, though, the we’ll-stay-at-home threat is as stale and empty as the plea for social moderation is to the Christian conservatives. After all, liberals dismayed by Clinton’s moves to the center and right ultimately swallowed hard and supported him, at least most of the time.  “Will some drop out? Maybe,” said Murphy. “But will most of those who agree with us on economic issues stay with us? I think so.”

Social conservatives are particularly — and understandably — bothered that the elites rarely want to discuss the elephant in the room: that the party’s economic policies don’t necessarily appeal to the the rank and file, who vote Republican because it is the party of traditional values.

There is more that is worth a read.  The bottom line is that some of us in the GOP quite a few years back - myself included - warned against allowing the Christofascists into the party and against allowing them to transform the GOP into a  de facto religious party.  Our protests fell on deaf ears.  Now, the party know it alls are reaping what they sowed.  All I can say is "I told you so."

Kentucky Legislature Overrides Veto of Bill Protecting Right to Discriminate Against Gays

Illustrating the problems facing the GOP is the state of Kentucky where the GOP controlled legislature passed a bill that would allow Christofascists to discriminate against gays and largely ignore any law they did not like based on professed religious belief.  Kentucky governor Steve Beshear vetoed House Bill 279. Now,the knuckle draggers and Bible beaters in the legislature have overridden Beshear's veto.  The selfishness and belief that they can ride rough shod over the rights of others are among the most notable aspects of today's conservative Christians.  Put simply, they are NOT nice people.  USA Today has details:

The Kentucky legislature voted Tuesday night to override the governor's veto of a controversial "religious freedom" bill.  The House's 79-15 vote sent House Bill 279 to the Senate, which voted 32-6 to override the measure.

During the House debate Tuesday, Democratic state Rep. Darryl Owens said the U.S. and Kentucky constitutions already protect religious freedom -- a freedom he said he does not see under threat.

"This is a piece of legislation looking for a reason," Owens said.

But Republican Rep. Stan Lee said, "It wasn't so long ago we had prayer in the schools, but they made us take it out."  

Gay-rights and human-rights groups have warned that the bill could be used to challenge local laws in Louisville, Lexington, Covington and Vicco designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination.

Gov. Steve Beshear added additional concerns in his veto message Friday, saying the bill's unintentional consequences also could harm economic development efforts and enforcement of drug laws.

Kentucky has sent a clear message to the world: if you're not a far right religious nutcase, you probably do not want to locate to Kentucky.   Hopefully, businesses will get that message and locate in states that embrace modernity and equality for all citizens.

Tony Perkins Gets Beat Up Over His Defense Of DOMA

It goes without saying that the Christofascist circles are big time unhappy with the way in which the oral arguments in United States v. Windsor seem to have played out.  Ultimately, the arguments of the supporters of DOMA come down to religious belief and nothing else - a fact that Bill O'Reilly in a moment of candor noted (see the image below).  Indeed, Justice Kagan read from a portion of the Congressional Record covering DOMA's enactment where it flat out stated that the objective was to codify moral disapproval of homosexuals.  Despite this literal, documented historic reality, the Christofascists try to fall back to whining that "children deserve a mother and father" while totally ignoring the millions of children already living in homes headed by same sex couples.  In truth, folks like Tony Perkins don't give a flying f*ck about the children of gays.  A piece at Mediate looks at the beat down Tony Perkins received on MSNBC.  Here are highlights:

NBC News reporter Luke Russert engaged in a thorough grilling of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Wednesday over his defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. On several occasions, Russert put Perkin’s on the defense and challenged the assertions he made to justify DOMA’s constitutionality. The interview became heated and somewhat hostile when Perkins asked how, if love is the only boundary for marriage, America would be able to prohibit polygamy.

He [Perkins] then claimed that studies show that children fare better when they are raised in a two-parent household with parents of the opposite gender. Russert challenged that assertion:

“There are studies also, especially from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which say that a two-person home, even if it is a same-sex couple, is beneficial for children,” Russert contended. 

Crosstalk ensued as Perkins attempted to refute Russet’s contention. He said that the study Russert cited ignores other research into that topic. Russert fired back that the study Perkins’ cites was dismissed because of the wording of some questions and its having been funded by conservative backers.

“What do you fear the most about a couple being together – a same-sex couple being together over 60 years like we saw in the Windsor case – what do you fear so much about them getting the same federal benefits for their marriage as an opposite-sex couple would?” Russert asked.

“I don’t fear anything,” Perkins replied. “Then why do you oppose,” Russert interjected.

It is refreshing to for a change an anchor challenging Perkins' hate, bigotry and fraudulent claims.  We need to see much more of it - enough where Perkins won't even show his racist, homophobic face on television at all.  Here's the image of O'Reilly summing up the argument of Perkins and those like him:

Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves

With Barack Obama's recent endorsement of same sex marriage and the vote for bigotry in North Carolina, there are fortunately more and more stories hitting the news media that look at the real model of "traditional marriage," and it is NOT a model based on "one man and one woman."  As the title to this post, the real millennial old model of marriage was one man and many women, some of who were mere children and some were slaves.   Would that the simple minded cows like Maggie Gallagher would learn some accurate history.  Or even bother to read their Old Testaments beyond limited passages in Leviticus.  As seems to always be the case, ignorance, gullibility and intellectual laziness are the three pillars of fundamentalist religion.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the real history of marriage and it's not the image the Bible beaters and Neanderthals ignorantly embrace:

Well, it’s been quite a whirlwind week for same-sex marriage, from North Carolina to Obama to Colorado—and, of course, to the many outraged conservatives concerned with preserving traditional marriage, i.e., the time-honored sacred bond between one man and one woman. Why, just last week, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said that marriage has meant just that for over five thousand years.  Huh?

Time to break out your Bible, Mr. Perkins! Abraham had two wives, Sarah and her handmaiden Hagar. King Solomon had 700 wives, plus 300 concubines and slaves. Jacob, the patriarch who gives Israel its name, had two wives and two concubines. In a humanist vein, Exodus 21:10 warns that when men take additional wives, they must still provide for their previous one.

But that’s not all. In biblical society, when you conquered another city, tribe, or nation, the victorious men would “win” their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. It also commanded levirate marriage, the system wherein, if a man died, his younger brother would have to marry his widow and produce heirs with her who would be considered the older brother’s descendants. Now that’s traditional marriage!

Later Islamic and Jewish sources, unclear on these parameters (the prophet Muhammad, of course, had several wives), debated whether it is permissible for a man to marry a three- or four-year-old girl.

And of course, even until the present day, traditional marriage has meant arranged marriage. The notion that two adults would enter into a marriage on their own volition is a radical innovation in the institution of marriage, at most two hundred years old.

Oh, and let’s not forget that in Europe and North America, marriage was considered a commercial proposition first and foremost—not a romantic one. Princes married princesses not because of fairy tales, but because their parents had political alliances to consider. Further down the economic ladder, people married for a variety of biological, commercial, and genealogical reasons—but rarely for love.

Oh, and that’s right, I almost forgot about interracial marriage, which in some parts of America was seen as a crime against nature and God up until the 1960s. (Of course, Moses himself was in an interracial marriage, but the anti-miscegenation crowd overlooked that inconvenient fact.)   .   .   .   .   let’s remember that a century ago, African Americans were not considered fully human by religious conservatives.

Traditional marriage is one man with multiple wives, multiple concubines, wives conquered in war and wives acquired in levirate marriage, possibly including girls under the age of ten, but definitely not including anyone of a different ethnic group, in an arranged marriage with disposition of property as its purpose. That seems very different from “one man, one woman,” does it not?

Perhaps this is why the Tony Perkinses of the world simply ignore the Bible when it doesn’t suit their purposes  .   .   .   .   The Bible’s truths are just too inconvenient.

Are Evangelicals Sure They Want to Claim the Bible is Inerrant?

One of the ironies is that evangelical Christians scream the loudest about "protecting Marriage" from the gay agenda, yet meanwhile they have the highest divorce rate of any religious group in America. And they also use the Bible - which they describe as the "inerrant Word of God - to regularly condemn gays and others who they deem to be sinners. As the image above suggests, they apparently do not know their Bible very well. Otherwise, executions of women should be widespread across the South's Bible Belt. As I have noted many times before, the ignorance and hypocrisy of the Christian Right knows few limits.

Suffolk, Virginia Public Schools Seek to Ban Cros Dressing

In a move that is being disingenuously described as motivated by" safety concerns" - even though zero problems have been reported - the City of Suffolk School Board appears headed toward imposing dress code regulations that would bar what they describe as "cross dressing." The move seems to be the pet project of one school board member - Thelma Hinton - who I suspect is perhaps motivated less by any real safety concerns and more by her own prejudice and/or religious beliefs. Hampton Roads overall is a backwards region and Suffolk is nowhere near the top of the list of more enlightened local cities and most likely has a higher percentage of Bible beaters amongst its citizenry. Quite frankly, the move seems guaranteed to provoke a well deserved lawsuit since transgender students will be ridden over rough shod. But then, this is Virginia, and if one is watching the actions of the Virginia General Assembly, the clear message from that GOP controlled body is that LGBT Virginians have no rights. Here are some highlights from the Virginian Pilot coverage:

Last summer, when a School Board member shared concerns about teen boys wearing long wigs, dresses and makeup to class, the principals of the three city high schools insisted they hadn't seen it. Superintendent Deran Whitney said he had heard no complaints and had observed only one boy - in jeans and a shirt - dressed in "what is traditionally viewed as female clothing."

Now, Whitney has proposed modifications to the student dress code that include a change that addresses cross-gender clothing. The regulations, to be considered by the board tonight, ban clothing "that is not in keeping with a student's gender and causes a disruption and/or distracts others from the educational process or poses a health or safety concern."

No other South Hampton Roads school division includes that type of reference in its student dress code. Board Vice Chairwoman Thelma Hinton, who initiated the dress code discussion, said Wednesday that she's pleased with the superintendent's proposal.

The gender-related dress restriction Suffolk is considering is "deeply flawed," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. It's too vague to be understood by students, entirely subjective and based on gender stereotyping, which is a violation of federal law, Willis wrote in an email. "If a boy were to wear a dress to school, he would almost certainly create a buzz that could be interpreted as a distraction," Willis said, "but it would be perfectly legal for him to do it."

In June, when Hinton first raised a concern, she said teachers and parents had contacted her about male students at one school wearing nail polish, lipstick, sundresses, strappy sandals and spandex. Teachers considered it a distraction, Hinton said, but were afraid to speak about it publicly. She would not identify the school.

John Whitehead, an attorney and president of The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties organization, also described the proposal as vague and added that it doesn't use the proper legal language. Students can express themselves as long as they don't cause "a substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school," he said. "Will that really detract from learning today - a boy wearing a dress?" Whitehead said. "That's ridiculous."

At the suggestion of board member Phyllis Byrum, Whitney also is proposing a detailed dress code for employees. Those regulations list denim, spaghetti straps, flip-flops and excessively tight clothing as attire considered inappropriate. Exceptions for some of the rules would be made for special events, including "school celebrations" and "thematic instructional days."

With all the problems in public schools today, one would think that both the Division Superintendent and the School Board would have more important issues to worry themselves about.

Virginia - A Microcasm of Obama's Re-election Problems

The GOP presidential candidate line up continues to be a circus where the only sane candidates - Romney and Huntsman in my view - do not score well with the lunatic Christianist?tea Party base. However, should Romney or by some miracle Huntsman be the GOP nominee, Obama's campaign stratagem relying on the obvious insanity of his GOP opponent will take a major hit. Obama has recently visited Virginia - including the Tidewater area - in an effort to resuscitate his popularity. Given the general malaise of Democrats in Virginia, it will be an uphill battle in my view. Rightly or wrongly, Obama is viewed as devoid of leadership and one who has failed to deliver on 2008 campaign promises. Some of the failings are not of Obama's making. Other failings - such as the perception that he has constantly allowed himself to be rolled by the GOP - are of his own making. The other problem Obama faces is the reality that Virginia continues to be the home of large numbers of Kool-Aid drinking, reality denying members of the Christian Right and/or delusional Tea Party adherents. A New York Times looks at the campaign on the ground in Virginia. Here are some highlights:

President Obama arrive[d] in Virginia on his bus tour [earlier in the week], just as some Democratic candidates for the state legislature are running away from him. Ward Armstrong, the top Democrat in the House of Delegates, is one of several incumbents up for re-election in the state’s off-year elections three weeks from now. And he’s one of several who have been tied to Mr. Obama by Republican rivals.

To win re-election next year, Mr. Obama’s team is eager to keep Virginia and its 13 electoral votes in their column. But with polls showing Mr. Obama’s approval ratings slipping here, Republicans, including Virginia’s governor, say a repeat of his 2008 victory is increasingly unlikely.

A poll by The Richmond Times-Dispatch released Monday showed that Mr. Obama would face a tight race with either Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, or Rick Perry, the governor of Texas (Mr. Romney narrowly led the president 45 percent to 42 percent; and in a matchup with Mr. Perry, he and Mr. Obama were tied at 43 percent).

Democrats in the state disagree that a victory in Virginia is out of reach for the president — though they concede that the race will be a tough one. Mike Henry, a veteran Democratic strategist who is managing Tim Kaine’s United States Senate race next year, said the growth of minorities and suburban votes in the state, as well as the Republican efforts to cut government spending, will help Democrats, including Mr. Obama.

The pledges to slash the size of the federal government — Ron Paul on Monday proposed cutting spending by 10 percent across the board in a single year — would hit Virginia’s many government contractors particularly hard. That could fire up anger at Republican candidates and Republicans in Congress.

And Democrats are counting on shifts in the state’s population that helped Mr. Kaine win the governorship in 2005. Those include increases in Hispanics, especially in the exurban communities around Northern Virginia, and the movement of traditionally Democratic voters like African-Americans into the suburban rings around the big, Democratic-leaning cities.

Parts of the state remain extremely difficult for a Democratic presidential candidate. The rural communities in the state’s southwest remain bastions of Republicanism. And Democrats have long struggled to win in places where textile factories and tobacco farms have largely disappeared. Obama campaign officials are counting on the demographic changes to help Mr. Obama’s chances in the state. The population centers are shifting inexorably away from the rural communities to the suburban ones.

The irony, of course, is that the Republican bastions in Southwest Virginia continue to embrace policies and religious based discrimination that make the region a hard sell when it comes to luring new industries to replace the largely extinct furniture, textile and tobacco industries. Bible beating by Republicans plays well with the local electorate but scares away anyone who doesn't want to live in the midst of religious extremists and KKK sympathizers.

The So-Called GOP Presidential Debate

Like it seems most everyone else, I did not watch the recent debate of would be GOP presidential contenders since - to use Pam Spaulding's term - it looked like a clown car act. For a political party that once prided itself on intelligence and some minimum level of being in touch with objective reality, the list of would be contenders who were present certainly seemed to exemplify a party wide lobotomy. Dana Milbank has a column in the Washington Post that equates the event with an old movie “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” Milbank indeed has a point. And what is truly scary is the fact that since the GOP base - those folks who will have a great deal of say in who does well in the primary contests - is now so controlled by the utterly ignorant, religious extremists, and unhinged that it will be hard for a sentient candidate to win the primaries. It's all self-inflicted damage that started when the party leadership sold its soul out of short term expediency to the Christofascists. The emergence of the "Tea Party" has only accelerated the descent of the GOP into the world of the mentally unbalanced. Here are highlights from Milbank's column:
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Hollywood is reportedly at work on a remake of the 1991 film “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” This, however, is unnecessary, because a remake is already playing. It’s called the Republican presidential primary. In the original, a mom leaves her kids with a babysitter for three months, but after the babysitter dies of a heart attack, the children fend for themselves for the summer.
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The GOP nominating contest so far follows a very similar plot. With the grown-ups (played by Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels) out of town, the field has been left in the custody of caretakers (played by Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich). When even the babysitters fail to show up at the first debate of the season, the juveniles run the thing themselves.
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If there’s any good news for the Republican Party to come out of the first presidential debate, it’s that the Associated Press and Reuters didn’t cover it.
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In the absence of adults, the first presidential debate favored the noisiest, and the least likely to win. Cain, a man who wants to return to the gold standard, had the most successful line of the night when he defended his inexperience. “I ask people, ‘Most of the people in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office before. How’s that working for you?’ ” the former Godfather’s Pizza boss said. “We have a mess!”
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There remains a hope that a white knight will arrive to rescue Republican primary voters from this lackluster field, but there is growing concern among party elders that such a person may not exist.
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There’s Mitt Romney, but he’s the paternity-denying father of Obamacare. There’s Donald Trump, but he’s the midwife of the birther campaign. Gingrich has been rejected by his peers and married three times. Could it be that Herman Cain really is the best they’ve got?
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Late in the debate, Santorum was asked about a suggestion by one of the missing grown-ups, Daniels, that Republicans should call a “truce” on social issues. “Anybody that would suggest that we call a truce on the moral issues doesn’t understand what America is all about,” Santorum inveighed. We’ll just have to let the kids fight it out on the playground.
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Frankly, if Santorum - aka, frothy mix - represents what America's all about, then I suspect a majority of Americans will want to leave the country. Rather than run for office, Santorum ought to be spending his funds on quality mental health care.

What Women Want: Gay Male Sex - UPDATED

On Tuesday I wrote about the hot new trend in romance novels popular with married straight women - gay male romances written by straight women. Since booksellers like Barnes & Noble allegedly carry such books, I stop by the huge brand new Barnes & Noble in Hampton's totally rebuilt Town Center. Not only did the store not have False Colors or any other books by Alex Becroft, it had NO GLBT section whatsoever. None, Nada, zero. Likewise, not a single gay title that I could think of was in stock. That's right, not a one. In contrast, however, the Hampton Barnes & Noble had a huge Christian section and countless versions of the Bible, that source of so much hate and suffering in the world.

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Since Barnes & Noble seems to believe that I and other LGBT consumes are no-existent in this area, I have vowed that my expenditures at Barnes & Noble will be similarly non-existent. Why give one's hard earned money to those who either out of bigotry or cowardice in the face of local Christianists write off an entire segment of the community.

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While not a huge matter, this situation is yet another reason why - despite occasional bright spots and being blessed with good friends - living in Virginia sucks if one is an LGBT citizen. The state is a Bible thumping backwater. It's symptomatic of why the boyfriend and I have no desire to remain in Virginia long term if we have any choice in the matter.

Daily Press Coverage of HRBOR/City of Hampton Meeting

I previously reported on the very positive meeting that representatives of Hampton Roads Business OutReach ("HRBOR") had on June 6, 2010 with representatives of the City of Hampton Department of Economic Development concerning investment opportunities in connection with the revitalization of the Phoebus area of the City of Hampton (the main street is pictured at left). My post can be found here on this blog and here on The Bilerico Project. Yesterday, the local paper, the Daily Press, ran an overall positive story about the meeting, citing Richard Florida's work on the "creative class' and referencing other cities/neighborhoods where LGBT businesses and residents have sparked a gentrification and economic blossoming. Unfortunately, the story - which referenced me by name - has set off a firestorm among Christo-fascists and the truly ignorant and prejudiced who apparently would prefer to live in a seedy economic backwater than have more upscale, legitimate LGBT owned businesses move into the area. The irony, of course, is that some are already in the area but the Neanderthals apparently don't realize it.

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The running commentary on the article can be found here and I would encourage readers to create a simple log-in and leave supportive statements to counter balance those posted by knuckle draggers. Comments can be posted here. So far, City personnel have remained steadfast in their support of the HRBOR/DED meeting. Obviously views other than those posted by Pat Robertson's Kool-Aid drinker crowd would be most appreciated.

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As I explained to a Daily Press columnist, overall my experience with Hampton has been most positive - particularly among the educated, well to do, and professional class. The nasty comments posted to the Daily Press article obviously do not appear to be from the better elements of Hampton's population. Instead, they appear to represent the ignorant, Bible beating segment of the population which would drag the city and the nation back to the Dark Ages if given the opportunity.

Biblical Argument for Gay Marriage

While it's clearly of a story coming out several months too late, Newsweek has a new article that looks at the Bible and makes the argument that the message of love argues FOR supporting same sex unions. Needless to say, some of the fundies are having their heads explode and the spittle is flying as they convulse on the floor over Newsweek's heresy as evidenced by some of the comments to the story. Apparently, the wingnuts are upset that someone has had the audacity to look at other things the Bible supports if it is taken literally as argued by the Christo-fascists when it comes to maligning gays. As I have argued many times, if the Bible is inerrant and to be taken literally, then ALL of it is to be taken literally rather than on the highly selective basis utilized by fraudulent bigots like James Dobson, Tony Perkins, et al. I will not be the least bit surprised to read in a few days that the article's author, Lisa Miller, has received numerous death threats from "godly Christians" and that AFA is calling for a boycott of Newsweek. Here are some highlights from the article:

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Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust.

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The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."

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To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two.

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In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." . . . . Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew. Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce (leaving a loophole in some cases for the husbands of unfaithful women).

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The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

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Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). . . . . We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future. The Bible offers inspiration and warning on the subjects of love, marriage, family and community. It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving pairs.

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The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."

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My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad."

Embracing the Gay Gift

For the majority of my life, I considered my sexual orientation a curse. Something to be denied even to myself at all cost and which I always saw as ruining my life. As a result, I spent years racked with self-hate and made myself and most likely others miserable. In retrospect, I should have admitted the truth to myself many, many years earlier and come to terms with it. If I had done that, I probably would have left a marriage that in hindsight had stopped working long before I ultimately came out to my ex-wife. But instead, I stayed closeted doing every kind of mental contortion imaginable to avoid admitting who I really was. I in no way regret my children and would do it all again to have them, but I should have come out at least a decade earlier and allowed both myself and the ex-wife to move on sooner.

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Now, having found the self-acceptance that eluded me for so many years (over three decades, in fact) , I feel that my sexual orientation is a gift that God gave me for some mysterious unknown reason. Yes, the gift carries an enormous burden with it in this still far too homophobic society where ancient texts written by ignorant writers devoid of any scientific and medical/mental health knowledge - who largely sought to differentiate the Jewish people from their neighbors who did not consider same sex love a problem or a sin - are still maliciously used by those with their own severe psychological issues to condemn us simply because we are different. But the upside is that I believe we LGBT individuals have been given a whole different insight on love and what it means to be human - something the straight world will never understand fully. This gift frightens them, in fact.

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My advice to those who are married and in the closet? Do not make my mistake and stay closeted "for the children," because you dom't want to lose possessions," or out of some sense of guilt or unworthiness. Long term, everyone will be better off if you live honestly both to yourself and those around you. In my case, I believe that my children can now see that I am a far different and happier person than during my years in the closet. True, the path of coming out is difficult and there are many who will do their damnedest to layer on the guilt and make the journey Hell - including former spouses and many judges hearing divorce cases. But don't allow yourself to listen to them because you are not guilty of anything other than being who God made you to be for some unknowable reason. None of us chose to be gay. The issue is what do we do with what has been given to us. Embrace who you are and find a way to self-acceptance. If you are lucky, you will also find true love along the way.

Will the GOP Become Even More Extreme?

Even though the general public may be trending away from the culture wars as I posted earlier, should McCain/Palin go down in defeat tomorrow, that does not mean that the Republican Party will get the message that racism, gay-bashing, mindless fetus worship, and hate in general are possibly not going to sell with voters as much as in the past. The right wing of the Party - which now comprise the bulk of those still not embarrassed to call themselves Republicans after the Chimperator's disastrous regime and the rise of Bible Spice Palin - will likely believe that they lost because they were not extreme enough. These folks live in an alternate universe and what to rational people would seem self-evident gets totally lost on them. For these Kool-Aid drinkers and Bible beaters, ideology trumps reason, logic, and objective facts. Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times looks at this likely phenomenon:

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[R]ight now the Democrats seem poised both to win the White House and to greatly expand their majorities in both houses of Congress. . . . . You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

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Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

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Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place.

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[T]he Republican base, egged on by the McCain-Palin campaign, thinks that elections should reflect the views of “real Americans” — and most of the people reading this column probably don’t qualify. Thus, in the face of polls suggesting that Mr. Obama will win Virginia, a top McCain aide declared that the “real Virginia” — the southern part of the state, excluding the Washington, D.C., suburbs — favors Mr. McCain.

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But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat. This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.