Gay Bar Owner Shot At By Police After Giving First Aid to Peaceful Protesters

Ruby Deluxe owner Tim Lemuel.

The ongoing protests over police brutality have underscored something that I have believed for a long time: America's police departments have a serious problem of officers who should never been hired because of their bigotry and/or a mindset where they feel free to abuse the citizens who they are supposed to protect.  Sadly, most internal affairs offices are far more focused on protecting officers than weeding out the bad apples - something I learned first hand after I filed a complaint against Norfolk police officers years ago (before phones had video options) for anti-gay harassment and mistreatment I experienced. Obviously, better screening of applicants is needed as is a thorough review of existing officer ranks to rid them of bullies and bigots.  Perhaps too, strict liability for chiefs of police for the misdeeds of their officers might make the department leadership finally stop protecting those who should not wear a badge and carry a gun. A piece in The Advocate looks at a case of police brutality in North Carolina where police shot at a bar owner while on his own business premises.  Here are story highlights:

Over the weekend, police targeted a queer bar in North Carolina amid ongoing protests across the nation following the death of George Floyd.

According to The News and Observer, Tim Lemuel, owner of the bar Ruby Deluxe in Raleigh, North Carolina, discovered on Sunday evening the bar had been vandalized with a white supremacist symbol and that the doors and windows were broken.

The next day, he and his staff showed up to protect the building from more damage as protests continued in downtown Raleigh.

Lemuel and his staff had set up a first aid station in the parking lot to treat peaceful protestors who had gotten injured. They also handed out water bottles and light snacks to the near 1,000 people who took to the streets. 

According to Lemuel, they had been doing this work for almost seven hours without interruption from authorities when law enforcement approached them with weapons. 

In video that has since gone viral, an officer can be heard screaming at Lemuel, “Move! Move!” to which Lemuel yells back, “This is my business. I rent this place. I rent here!”

The group of officers didn’t stop. As they kept approaching, wielding their guns, one screams out, “You’ve been told!” followed by, “I don’t care where you go, you gotta go!”
Two shots were then fired, after which the officer yells, “Move! The game is over. Get out!”

[W]e weren’t chanting. We weren’t yelling. We weren’t gesturing to them. There was nothing that we were doing to instigate a response like that."

According to Lemuel and Varani, the deputies had been watching them for hours but chose not to approach them or express any concerns until the moment they pulled out their weapons.

Lemuel later took to Facebook in response to a heated discussion on Reddit about the situation.  “I own a business," he wrote. "I was there during normal operating hours. I was on my lot and kept my friends contained within the lot. We had been there for 7 hours. The deputy sheriffs could have, at any point, come over to see what we were doing or voiced their concern. This basically sums up the reason folks are mad. No thought what-so-ever [was] put into the decision to come at us guns blazing.

“I also think they had no business using riot control cs, tear gas, firing foam batons, or whatever blanks they fired," he continued. "I was out the day before and witnessed so many officers shooting grenades at civilian's chests and heads.

When the video hit the Internet, city council members were quick to disavow the act — including council member Saige Martin, one of two out LGBTQ+ people elected to the council last year.

“It is a safe space for so many people,” Martin the Observer of Ruby. “It is a home to queer folks. For the response to be the game is over? When I heard that, it made the hair on my body stand up.”

Martin added that the experience reminded him of “Black and brown trans and queer bodies that started the queer liberation movement in New York in Stonewall,” adding, “We are still dealing with those same issues for those same people today. And hearing those words echo so aggressively as if there was a game to be had? I think (it) speaks perfectly well to the kind of culture and thinking that exists and pervades law enforcement today.”

Raleigh city council member Nicole Stewart was also distraught at the situation, telling the Observer, "Had it been anybody, it would have been bad enough. The idea that it was an individual, a business owner, trying to help other individuals in our community made it that much more startling. And I couldn’t let it sit.” Stewart has called on police chief Cassandra Deck-Brown to investigate the incident.

The country has a very real problem with a toxic segment of its police personnel.  The bigots and those too ready to use violence need to be removed and never allowed to wear a badge again. 

Is the Media Putting Lipstick on the Pig, Donald Trump?

As noted previously, much of the main stream media, after normalizing Donald trump's toxic, bigotry filled campaign and constantly conveying false equivalency between trump and Hillary Clinton's "scandals", is now acting as if Trump's election and transition are normal and not an affront to decency.  I book marked a piece in The Daily Beast a while back that deserves note.  The bottom line message?  That the media and pundits alike need to stop putting lipstick on the foul demagogue known as Donald Trump.  Here are article excerpts:

What is happening in America right now is not normal.

It is not normal that a presidential candidate with no prior government or military experience, who unambiguously and repeatedly vowed to violate the Constitution should he be elected president, will soon become commander in chief of the nation’s armed forces.

It is not normal that an individual helming a vast family business empire with holdings domestic and international will soon be in a position to use the instruments of the world’s most powerful government to enrich himself and his kin.

It is not normal that the preferred candidate of conspiracy theoristslike radio host Alex Jones will soon have access to the nation’s top secrets. 

And yet here we are being told to act like all of this is normal. That the voters who willed this unmitigated disaster into being have legitimate grievances and that their collective decision must be respected. While the democratic expression of the American people should of course be respected, that does not make it respectable. To use an analogy to which our insult-strewing president-elect can relate: I refuse to put lipstick on this pig.

We’re hearing a lot these days about how this election result represents a “backlash” to left-wing political correctness gone berserk. There’s no question that many self-described liberals patronize ex-urban and rural Americans. But the call for empathy goes both ways. If it were African-Americans overwhelmingly voting for a black demagogue who bragged about “grabbin’ pussy” (imagine that!), called upon his followers to assassinate his opponent, and asked the Russians to hack her email, would we be treating this hypothetical phenomenon with even one-tenth the amount of sympathy and understanding we’re being asked to confer upon Trump voters?

To comprehend what the electorate has just done, consider that 63 percent of Americans believe Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president, yet 20 percent of those people voted for him anyway. Figures such as this leave one asking: What sort of man would Trump have to be for his supporters—and those rationalizing their decision as deriving from anything other than ignorance, racism, and misogyny—to conclude that he is not fit to serve as president of the United States?

Would he have to be a sexual predator? A sociopath? A mountebank? What if he were the willing instrument of a subversion operation mounted by a hostile foreign power?  Because all of those things are true of the man who will be swearing the oath of office on Jan. 20.
 “Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress,” 

Rahn is right about the media’s piss-poor predictive capacities. But the normative assessment about what last week’s election result forebodes is another story entirely. Rahn and many others seem to think it justified that people who feel condescended to by liberal elites would respond to this condescension by putting a demagogic clown in the White House (whereas I’m inclined to believe such spiteful behavior confirms the condescension).

Here’s the thing: Hillary Clinton was without question a “deeply flawed candidate,” as Rahn writes. The economy is not working as well as it should be for a large number of Americans. Our society is becoming increasingly stratified in all sorts of discomfiting ways. All of these things are true. And yet none of them justifies a vote for Donald Trump.

The temptation to do so, to normalize the very disturbing things that Trump’s election portends about our democracy and the fate of the world as we know it, is entirely understandable. It’s comforting to tell ourselves that, Trump’s eccentricities aside, everything will turn out OK in the end; that American democracy is resilient and has endured far worse events.

The paradigmatic example of this reasoning’s erroneousness is Nazi Germany, where a movement that nearly destroyed Western civilization came to power democratically in one of the world’s most advanced societies. More recently, a large majority of Venezuelans voted into power Hugo Chavez, and now they’re rioting over toilet paper. Most people used to believe the Earth was flat. I have no doubt that within 40 years—if Trump doesn’t launch the Third World War he warned Clinton would plunge us into—we’ll look back on those who voted for him as the equivalent of flat-earthers.

[E]ven in the best-case scenario, where he abjures the behavior and ideas that have characterized him for 70 years and governs as some sort of latter-day Rockefeller Republican, Trump would still have irreparably poisoned our democratic culture by moving it into a post-modern realm where words and actions have no meaning. Under his reign, America risks become the sort of place where, to cite the title of Peter Pomerantsev’s brilliant book about contemporary Russia, “nothing is true and everything is possible.”

Well said.  Trump and those who voted for him are a toxic evil.  We all need to be honest about this reality and stop being apologists for the indefensible.

Marco Rubio Fear Mongers to Chritofascists

With the leading hate merchants of the "Christian Right" falling in line behind the always foul Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio is making a new push to utterly prostitute himself to America's Christian Taliban.  In a new ad, Marco plays on the delusions of the elements of the religious extremist party base who feel persecuted if their ability to persecute and debase others is in anyway challenged. These folks - and apparently Rubio - have no problem making others feel out of place in their own country, but god forbid that they cannot inflict their beliefs and views on others.   CNN looks at Rubio's whore like self-prostitution.  Here are highlights:

Marco Rubio is making a play for "traditional values" voters with a new campaign ad targeting those who Rubio says "feel out of place in our own country."

Challenged by the rise of GOP rival Ted Cruz, Rubio appears to be going after the same bloc of social conservative voters that has propelled Cruz to first place in Iowa in recent polls and previously buoyed Donald Trump and Ben Carson's campaigns.

In the spare new 30-second ad, titled "About," Rubio speaks directly to the camera as he frames the stakes of the 2016 election. 

"This election is about the essence of America," he says. "About all of us who feel out of place in our own country."

"A government incredibly out of touch, and millions with traditional values branded bigots and haters," Rubio said. 

The pitch is a pointed appeal to the Republican Party's social conservative base, which is critical to success in the Republican primary, and has been energized in recent years by political fights over same-sex marriage, religious liberty and abortion.

The question to me is this: when is Rubio going to get a tattoo on his forehead that says "I am a whore"?

Scalia: Affirmative Action Sends Blacks To Schools Too Advanced For Them

I have long argued that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia needs to be removed from the United States Supreme Court for continued violations of the conduct and impartiality of a federal judge (dimwit Clarence Thomas also needs to be removed).  Indeed, if Scalia were still on the U.S. District Court or U. S. Court of Appeals level, he would likely have already been removed from the bench and/or would be facing removal charges for flagrant violations of the Canons of Judicial Conduct.  Now, right after hearing oral arguments in an affirmative action case out of Texas, Scalia has made the statement that affirmative action was hurting minority students by sending them to schools too academically challenging for them. Keep in mind, the Court has not yet ruled in the case and if a lower federal court judge made a similar statement, he or she would have their ass handed to them in a sling.  No doubt Scalia thinks blacks should be majoring in grounds keeping and/or restaurant wait staff services.  The man is both a racist and a religious - and he so arrogant can't even hide his bias by keeping his mouth shut until after the Court issues it ruling. Talking Points Memo looks at Scalia's improper conduct and bigotry.  Here are highlights:

In the oral arguments Wednesday for a Supreme Court affirmative action case, Justice Antonin Scalia—a well known critic of affirmative action—suggested that the policy was hurting minority students by sending them to schools too academically challenging for them.

Referencing an unidentified amicus brief, Scalia said that there were people who would contend that "it does not benefit African-Americans to -- to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less -- a slower-track school where they do well."

A decision in Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin is expected by the end of the Supreme Court's term next summer.

Scalia would have been a perfect judge for the Spanish Inquisition.  He is one foul individual. 

Accused in Case Scalia Used to Justify Death Penalty Proved Innocent

I did not intend to rightfully bash Antonin Scalia twice in one day, but a reader sent me a link to a column in the Miami Herald that takes Scalia to task for his bigotry and certainty over a death penalty case.  Indeed, Scalia used the supposed facts of the case to justify the death penalty.  The only problem is that in the meantime, DNA tests have proven that the alleged rapist and murderer was innocent.  It's yet another case of Scalia being dead wrong and more motivated by his own prejudices than facts and questionable prosecutions.  Here are column highlights:

To the Honorable Antonin G. Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States:

Dear Sir:

Twenty-one years ago, your then-colleague, the late Justice Harry Blackmun, wrote what became a famous dissent to a Supreme Court decision not to review a Texas death-penalty conviction.

You mocked him for this stance in an opinion concurring with the majority, invoking as justification for capital punishment the horrific 1983 case of an 11-year-old girl who was raped then killed by having her panties stuffed down her throat. “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection,” you wrote, “compared with that!”

A few months later, the very case you had referenced came before the court. Henry Lee McCollum, a mentally disabled man who was on death row in North Carolina after having been convicted of that rape and murder, applied to the court for a review of his case. You were part of the majority that rejected the request without comment.

The demagoguery of your response to Justice Blackmun is pretty standard for proponents of state-sanctioned death. Rather than contend with the many logical and irrefutable arguments against capital punishment, they use a brute-force appeal to emotion.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article23877205.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article23877205.html#storylink=cpy

As you have doubtless heard, it now turns out McCollum was innocent of that crime. Last year, he and his also mentally disabled half-brother Leon Brown (who had been serving a life sentence) were exonerated by DNA evidence and set free.   A few days ago, McCollum was pardoned by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory.

The case against him was never what you’d call ironclad. No physical evidence tied him to the crime. The centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was a confession McCollum, then a 19-year-old said to have the mentality of a child 10 years younger, gave with no lawyer present after five hours of questioning. 

“I had never been under this much pressure,” he told the News & Observer newspaper in a videotaped death row interview, “with a person hollering at me and threatening me...I just made up a false story so they could let me go home.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article23877205.html#storylink=cpy

You and your colleagues had a chance to intervene in that injustice and chose not to. Not incidentally, the real culprit avoided accountability all that time.

The argument against the death penalty will never have the visceral, immediate emotionalism of the argument in favor. It does not satisfy that instinctive human need to make somebody pay — now! — when something bad has been done. Rather, it turns on quieter concerns, issues of inherent racial, class, geographic and gender bias, issues of corner-cutting cops and ineffective counsel, and issues of irrevocability, the fact that, once imposed, death cannot be undone.

Those issues were easy for you to ignore in mocking Blackmun. They are always easy to ignore, right up until the moment they are not.

This is one of those moments, sir, and it raises a simple and obvious question to which one would hope you feel honor-bound to respond. In 1994, you used this case as a symbol of why we need the death penalty.  What do you think it symbolizes now?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article23877205.html#storylink=cpy

Personally, I despise Scalia.  He is symptomatic of what is wrong with much of the judiciary.  Judges are supposed to be unbiased and, if unable to be unbiased and objective, they are to recuse themselves from the case.  Scalia is ALWAYS biased and has prejudged cases before hand based on his sole based on his own prejudices and preconceptions.  The prospects of a fair trial - or appeal in the case of the U.S. Supreme Court - is impossible with judges and justices like Scalia and his dimwitted cohort, Clarence Thomas. Both need to be removed from the Court.  Kudos to Leonard Pitts for this much needed column. 

Conservative Blog Slams Wayne Coleman for Desegregation Remarks

While most of the GOP base in Virginia has become comprised of a mix of white supremacists, raging homophobes, religious fanatics and angry whites resentful over the loss of the white privilege that they long enjoyed, there are still pockets of sanity within the Virginia GOP.  Admittedly, these pockets of sanity are growing increasingly scare.  Some of these still sane Republicans can be found at the blog Bearing Drift.  They may not win any points with the Tea Party, but they do still have a grip on reality -something sadly missed from the GOP overall.  Here are highlights from Bearing Drift that trash GOP candidate Wayne Coleman (at right) who sought to blame all of Virginia's education challenges on scholl desegregation:

On a recent local morning radio program in Hampton Roads, Republican state Senate candidate Wayne Coleman decided that it would be a good time to comment about how busing in the 1970s was the downfall of education – despite not being asked that question specifically.

We live in an era where the black community votes as a bloc nearly 9:1 for the Democrats. And, in the urban environment of Norfolk, where the black population is 43%, and predominantly makes up the 6th Senate District, saying something that can only come across as offensive is not only wrong, but a losing proposition.

This was nothing but an unforced error.

The reality is that Coleman is, in the vernacular, an OWG (Old White Guy). Having an OWG say something on the radio that seems to come across as “things were better before desegregation” is not only likely to offend black voters, but to inspire them to vote Democrat. 

Coleman was already facing an uphill battle in the 6th District, which has only been held by a Republican for a handful of years over the past several decades. He needed to run a gaffe-free, perfect campaign in order to win.

He hasn’t. And all the explanations, retractions, and clarifications won’t help him now.

Additionally, it is well past time for blacks and whites to have a reasonable discussion on race. That won’t happen until everyone starts looking forward, with a vision of equality and community. Looking to the past and laying blame is not acknowledging the present and looking for solutions.

I hate to break the news to the author at Bearing Drift, but most of the GOP base is made up of OWG's.  And that's who Coleman was speaking to in the hope that their racism, homophobia and bigotry would make Coleman their darling.

Nevada Republican: I'd Bring Back Slavery If Constituents Wanted It

There are days when I shake my head in disbelieve at how low the Republican Party has fallen.  Any embrace of intellect and knowledge is seemingly gone completely and open insanity, bigotry and racism are the norm.  And the examples of the GOP's shocking extremism just keep on coming out of the woodwork.  A prime example is Jim Wheeler (pictured above), a Nevada GOP assemblyman, who came under fire Monday after a YouTube video surfaced in which he told a Republican gathering he would vote to allow slavery if that is what his constituents wanted him to do. But, Wheeler is now the GOP norm.  One need look no farther here in Virginia than GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli who on Fox News stood resolutely by his statements expressing surprise that the United States has not yet experienced "God's judgment" over a woman's constitutional right to make her own health care decisions (he also followed up on his recent comparison of abortion to slavery by comparing the consequences he anticipates for abortion to those the country suffered as a result of segregation.).  Talking Points Memo looks at the GOP batshitery in Nevada:

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) -- A Nevada assemblyman came under fire Monday after a YouTube video surfaced in which he told a Republican gathering he would vote to allow slavery if that is what his constituents wanted him to do.

"If that's what they wanted, I'd have to hold my nose ... they'd probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah," Assemblyman Jim Wheeler told members of the Storey County Republican Party at a meeting in August.

His comments were swiftly denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike.

At the August GOP meeting, Wheeler referenced a blog post from conservative activist Chuck Muth, who in June 2010 wrote about Wheeler's candidacy and said, "what if those citizens decided they want to, say, bring back slavery? Hey, if that's what the citizens want, right Jim?"

Wheeler told his audience he responded to Muth and said, "yeah, I would."  Reached late Monday, Wheeler said he was falsely being portrayed as a bigot.

 OK.  Perhaps not a bigot.  Just stupid beyond belief.

Hate, Homophobia and Delusion in Full View at Values Voter Summit

Image via Bilerico Project.  It captures the sex obsessed mindset of the "godly folk" perfectly

In a recent post I highlighted some of the synopsis that Right Wing Watch had compiled concerning the foul hate, homophobia and racism that was the principal take away from the so-called "Values Voter Summit" over last weekend in Washington, D.C.  John Becker, a blogger friend and fellow Bilerico Project contributor attended the Values Voter Summit to report first hand on some of the virulent hate and bigotry (and, yes, unvarnished homophobia) that dominated the gathering of haters.  Here are highlights from his post on The Bilerico Project:

Last weekend the Family Research Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group, held its annual "Values Voter Summit" here in Washington, D.C. The VVS is the nation's largest gathering of conservative activists from the religious right; over 2,200 people (mostly white middle-aged and older evangelicals) registered for the conference this year. Nowhere is the religious right's alliance with the Republican Party more readily visible: literally dozens of that movement's biggest stars turn out, along with senators, representatives, and future GOP presidential hopefuls seeking to burnish their social conservative credentials. 

The Values Voter Summit is also heavily attended by members of the media and progressive activists, both because it's important to keep tabs on one's political and ideological opponents and because the event is a veritable gold mine of insanity.

I went to the Values Voter Summit myself for the first time this year, and let me tell you: it did not disappoint in the batshittery department.

The civil war currently roiling inside the Republican Party between its rabidly extreme Tea Party wing and shrinking crowd of marginally-less-crazy political pragmatists was in full view, with open partisan bickering and speakers taking potshots at other, less conservative Republicans. It was clear right from the beginning whose side these so-called "values voters" were on: the first person to speak after FRC president Tony Perkins delivered his opening remarks was Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, one of the primary architects of the Republican shutdown of the federal government. 

And then came the shutdown's chief proponent and public face: Texas Senator Ted Cruz. . . . Cruz was introduced by Fox News pundit, conservative activist, and Catholic League board member Brent Bozell, who whipped the crowd into a frenzy by repeatedly slamming Sen. John McCain (an outspoken critic of Cruz and his shutdown strategy) as intellectually dishonest, a "whiner," and a "faux conservative." "Will you stand with Ted Cruz?" Bozell asked. The crowd roared its approval.

Cruz fed the crowd the red meat they wanted, rattling off talking points peppered with Biblical references, and nearly every sentence he uttered met with shouts of affirmation. When pro-immigration reform activists from the group United We Dream interrupted him, Cruz didn't miss a beat, suggesting that President Obama had sent "paid political operatives" to derail his speech. At least half a dozen other hecklers interrupted Cruz, but the crowd drowned them out with shouts of "shut up!" and chants of "USA! USA!"

By the time Cruz's speech was finished, it was clear that the religious right had found its new golden boy. If he survives this shutdown fiasco, expect him to be the Michele Bachmann/Rick Santorum crowd's choice for president in 2016.

Perhaps no two speakers personify the delusional world in which the GOP's insurgent right flank operates than Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck. Both spoke at the Values Voter Summit, and both spewed out all kinds of crazy.

[Bachmann's] peech was mostly devoted to attacking health care reform, which she called "Deathcare." She said she was "weeping" the night the Affordable Care Act passed the House, and she wondered if in a future shutdown, our horrible socialist president would stop C-sections and kidney transplants in progress or "place padlocks on a private clinic" like the ones she and her husband Marcus owned.

Did Bachmann's allegations have any factual basis whatsoever? Nope, but as usual, that didn't stop her.

Perhaps the most revealing moment of Beck's 50-minute rant -- and for this listener, certainly the most disgusting -- came when he whipped out a binder full of concentration camp badges from his extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia. (Yes, Glenn Beck has an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia. Let that sink in for a minute.) Beck flipped through page after page of these gruesome artifacts, explaining which group wore which symbol.

He then asked the crowd if anyone knew what group wore purple triangles. (The correct answer is Jehovah's Witnesses.) One member of the audience guessed gays, to which Beck replied that no, gays' concentration camp badges were pink. And how did the crowd of so-called "values voters" respond? With laughter.

The world these Tea Party, religious-right, mostly white, middle-aged and elderly conservatives thought they knew is evolving all around them and rapidly morphing into something they no longer recognize -- and it scares the hell out of them. But instead of challenging their preconceptions and growing along with the rest of America, they've chosen to dig in their heels, wrap themselves in the Gadsden flag, climb up onto crosses of their own making, and fight desperately to cling to their prejudices for as long as possible.

And yes, that includes anti-LGBT bigotry. Stay tuned for my second and final report, where I'll go into detail about homophobia and transphobia at the Values Voter Summit.

Let's be honest.  These are NOT nice or decent people.  They are racists, bigots, homophobes and anti-Semites who wrap themselves in religion as an excuse for their vile evilness.  They deserve no respect and no deference whatsoever.  The majority of Americans need to figure this out and expedite the marginalization of these people from both politics and polite society.

Justice Alito: 'The Idea That Romantic Love Is a Prerequisite to Marriage' is the Problem

If there's any doubt about the backward thinking of supposed "thinkers" and "intellectuals on the far right, one need look no further than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's (Alito is pictured at left) recent dissent in United States v. Windsor in which this Neanderthal bemoans that the idea of romantic love should be a part of marriage began all the problems surrounding marriage and gay marriage in particular.  Alito seemingly longs for the days when women were bartered by their male relatives for livestock and other financial or political benefits with out a care as to whether the woman involved could even tolerate her often much older husband.  Alito's creepy views are certainly in keeping with the Christofascist agenda of subservient wives and sex being only for procreation (and male pleasure).  Huffington Post looks at Alito's batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

There's been lots of discussion about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's off-the-rails DOMA dissent, but if you really want a peek into the mind of someone living a couple of centuries in the past -- and using pseudo-academic rationales rather than pure emotion, like Scalia -- you've got to read Justice Samuel Alito's concurring dissent on DOMA.  In it we learn that the problem with the decline of marriage really began with "the ascendence of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage."

This makes me think that a) Justice Alito purchased his wife at an auction, or from her parents in exchange for a plot of land and a couple of mules, or b) she kicked him out of the house the moment he walked in the door after she read his dissent.

Is this what conservatives really think, that the real problem is that we're marrying for love?

The family is an ancient and universal human institution. Family structure reflects the characteristics of a civilization, and changes in family structure and in the popular understanding of marriage and the family can have profound effects. Past changes in the understanding of marriage -- for example, the gradual ascendance of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage -- have had far-reaching consequences.... We can expect something similar to take place if same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted. The long-term consequences of this change are not now known and are unlikely to be ascertainable for some time to come.

I can't imagine that Alito really believes we should go back to arranged marriages. But the man who stated during oral arguments on DOMA that gay unions are "newer than cellphones and the Internet" does appear to believe that the shift to "romantic love" was a dramatic change that caused such a jolt to the institution of marriage

"At present, no one -- including social scientists, philosophers, and historians -- can predict with any certainty what the long-term ramifications of widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage will be," Alito warns. And for that reason Alito believes the court should have upheld DOMA. The logical conclusion of this reasoning is that if the government could have enforced arranged marriage with a federal law, it should have, since no one could predict the outcome of these newfangled romantic-love marriages, which altered the institution of marriage forever.

The descent of the far right into utter insanity continues and it is frightening that someone as out of touch with normal reality is on the Supreme Court.

Scalia’s Dishonest Gay Adoption Claim

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, this blog reviewed a number of the amicus briefs filed in the two cases, including the filings by the American Sociological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, both of which supported gay marriage and stated that there was no legitimate research - i.e., research not funded by and manipulated by Christofacist organizations and their stooges such as the deliberately flaw study by Mark Regnerus - that supported the claims by Prop 8 and DOMA proponents that children suffered if they had same sex parents.  Despite these filings, bigot in chief on the Court, Antonin Scalia made statements that “there’s considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.”  Ezra Klein takes Scalia to task in a piece in the Washington Post for his deliberate effort to distort the real science on the issue.  Here are highlights:

On Wednesday, I wrote about Justice Antonin Scalia’s comment that “there’s considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.”

That’s not what the American Sociological Association thinks. Here’s its official statement on the matter:

The claim that same-sex parents produce less positive child outcomes than opposite-sex parents—either because such families lack both a male and female parent or because both parents are not the biological parents of their children—contradicts abundant social science research. Decades of methodologically sound social science research, especially multiple nationally representative studies and the expert evidence introduced in the district courts below, confirm that positive child wellbeing is the product of stability in the relationship between the two parents, stability in the relationship between the parents and child, and greater parental socioeconomic resources. Whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on a child’s wellbeing.

The clear and consistent consensus in the social science profession is that across a wide range of indicators, children fare just as well when they are raised by same-sex parents when compared to children raised by opposite-sex parents.

Pretty definitive. And here’s the punchline: That paragraph isn’t buried in a press release on its blog or in an editorial from its trade magazine. It’s from the amicus curiae brief that the ASA filed in the very case Scalia was commenting on.

In other words, the official organization representing American sociologists went out of their way to provide the Supreme Court with their “consensus” opinion on the effect of same-sex parents on children. And yet, when struggling for a “concrete” harm that could come from gay marriage, Scalia went with “considerable disagreement among sociologists.” So we’ve gone from a weak claim — “considerable disagreement” over harm is not the same thing as actual harm — to an explicitly wrong claim. Scalia offered no details or evidence of this considerable disagreement among sociologists, and it’s hard to believe he’s a better judge of the profession than the ASA, whose brief he notably declined to mention.

As this blog has argued before, Scalia is so bigoted and so unable to demonstrate even a shred of objectivity on a host of issues that the has come for him to either resign or be removed from the Court.  His continued presence on the Court undermines its integrity and standing.

George Wiil - A Bigot Tries to Mask His Bigotry

UPDATED:  A comment was left on this post that takes on George Will's anti-gay bias head on and underscores the harm being done to the children of gay parents due to the prohibition against same sex marriage.  Here is part of the comment that deserves to be highlighted:

It seems that he has not read the policy statements by the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsing marriage for same-sex couples in 2006. After their exhaustive review of the published science, these nationally recognized child health experts affirmed that children’s outcomes were comparable in two-parent homes regardless of parental gender, and endorsed same-sex civil marriage to benefit the children by providing them with federal and local financial security. Children have a right to know and be cared for by their parents. The frequent assertion that children have a right to a mother and a father is as incorrect as saying that they have a right to rich or good-looking parents.

Does Mr. Will know that the National Association of Social Workers endorsed marriage equality in 2004? The American Sociological Association reviewed all the published scientific data on same-sex marriage effects on children, and filed an Amicus Brief asserting that “there is no evidence that children with parents in stable same-sex or opposite-sex relationships differ in terms of well-being. Indeed, the greater stability offered by marriage for same-sex as well as opposite-sex parents may be an asset for child well-being.” The Child Welfare League of America and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry both issued policy statements stating that gays and lesbians have equal parenting skills in 2006.

This raises one unaddressed aspect of Mr. Will’s support for restricting marriage: Gays, like straights can and do have children from prior relations, by adoption, or from assisted reproductive technology. The current status is harmful to today’s and tomorrow’s children in same-sex parented families by limiting them from having two legal parents, limiting their recognition in cases of disability or death of the non-biological parent, and telling them that their families do not count and are less valued. Just because gay folk cannot have children by accident, as heterosexuals often do, is not a reason to emotionally, socially, financially, and legally continue to harm and disadvantage these children.

What do George Will, Cal Thomas and Pat Buchanan have in common?  The fact that they are so-called conservative columnists and pundits is obvious.  But they also share an open bigotry - based on their Medieval religious beliefs - against gays and gay equality under the civil laws.  The only difference now is that Will is trying to mask his anti-gay bigotry in a column in the Washington Post by pretending that gay marriage should be opposed because "guidance from social science is as yet impossible."   (Thomas and Buchanan don't even bother trying to hide the basis of their bigotry.)  Like many of the religious extremists who are grappling for justifications for their opposition to marriage equality other than pure religious based animus, Will is acting as if granting marriage rights to same sex couples will somehow change heterosexual marriages and/or that we don't have enough clinical data to justify it.  Here's a sampling of Will's double speak:

[R]esearch about, for example, the stability of same-sex marriages or child-rearing by same-sex couples is “radically inconclusive” because these are recent phenomena and they provide a small sample from which to conclude that these innovations will be benign.

Today “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.” Hence there can be no “scientific basis for constitutionalizing same-sex marriage.”

In addition endeavoring to mask the religious belief roots of his own prejudice and bigotry, Will is intentionally ignoring obvious facts: (1) gays and gay relationships have existed throughout recorded history; (2) same sex couples have in the past, now at present and in the future will be parenting children and denying marriage rights will not change this reality; (3) millions of children will never be raised in homes headed by a stable heterosexual couples, and this reality will not change; (4) since gay marriage first emerged in Massachusetts divorce rates both in Massachusetts and nationwide are down. 

Given these objective reality truths, Will's opposition to marriage equality only serves to deprive same sex couples and their children of rights, stability and often financial security that heterosexual couples unthinkingly take for granted.Will's reason makes about as much sense as the rantings of the radical anti-abortion crowd that worships fetuses up until the time they are born and yet vote for GOP demagogues who seek to slash programs for poor children and who would leave millions of children without health care coverage.  The hypocrisy is palpable.

Let's be clear the real basis on Will's anti-gay marriage agenda rests on one thing: his clinging to a few passages on the Bible authored by those utterly ignorant of modern knowledge on sexual orientation, biology, medicine and virtually every other form of modern knowledge.  Will knows that admitting this truth destroys his credibility with a majority of Americans.  Hence the ruse that a denial of equal protection under the Constitution is justified because of a supposed lack of clinical data.  Two comments on Will's column summed things up well:  

Sound reasoning, Bubba Will. I suppose we better go back and get us some social science evidence for how black folk integrate into society before we allow that to go too far as well, right, Bubba?

The argument that we can't allow gay marriage because we haven't allowed it long enough to get any solid data points is too ridiculous to engage in.

Quote of the Day: When Conservative Refuse to Accept Change

By all accounts since election day earlier this month the data shows that America is changing rapidly both racially and socially.  Yet the far right and the Republican Party refuse to see this objective reality.  Instead, if they admit that they face a problem at all, they state in obvious delusion that they merely need to "improve their messaging" or find the right non-white face to represent they party.  They simply will not grasp the reality it's their message and their world view that have been rejected and that until those change, it is insanity to expect a different result in future elections.  A post by David Simon sums up the situation well.  Here are excerpts:

[The country is changing. And this may be the last election in which anyone but a fool tries to play — on a national level, at least — the cards of racial exclusion, of immigrant fear, of the patronization of women and hegemony over their bodies, of self-righteous discrimination against homosexuals. Some in the Republican party and among the teabagged fringe will continue to play such losing hands for some time to come; this shit worked well in its day and distracted many from addressing any of our essential national issues. But again, if they play that weak-ass game past this point, they are fools.

America is different now, more so with every election cycle. Ronald Reagan won his mandate in an America in which 89 percent of the voters were white. That number is down to 72 percent and falling. Fifty thousand new Latino citizens achieve the voting age every month. America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. The America in which it was otherwise is dying, thank god, and those who relied on entitlement and division to command power will either be obliged to accept the changes, or retreat to the gated communities from which they wish to wax nostalgic and brood on political irrelevance.

[U]nless these white guys who have peddled “normal” for so long — normal as in racial majority, normal as in religious majority, normal as in sexual orientation — unless they have a hard moment of self-reflection and self-awareness, well, it [a presidential election] will not be this close again.

For lost and fretful white men, unwilling to accept the terms of a new America, Congress is the last barricade against practical and inevitable change. But there, too, the demographic inevitabilities are all in play. All the gerrymandering in this world won’t make those other Americans, those different Americans, go away. And the tyranny of minority and lack of compromise that you employ to thwart progress now will likely breed an equal contempt when the demographics do indeed provide supermajorities.

Hard times are still to come for all of us. Rear guard actions will be fought at every political crossroad. But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable.

This election marks a moment in which the racial and social hierarchy of America is upended forever. No longer will it mean more politically to be a white male than to be anything else. Evolve, or don’t. Swallow your resentments, or don’t. But the votes are going to be counted, more of them with each election. Arizona will soon be in play. And in a few cycles, even Texas.

And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment. And those who continue to argue for such retrograde notions as a political reality will become less germane and more ridiculous with every passing year.

What Simon summarizes needless to say frightens the Hell out of those who have built political and religious careers based on the stigmatization of others based on the color of their skin, who they love, and/or where they were born.  Their house of cards alternate reality is about to come crashing down and, if they are smart - perhaps a huge if - they will embrace change.

Would Be Eagle Scout Denied Award Because He Is Gay

As the Los Angeles Times has demonstrated in its recent investigative report , the leadership of the Boy Scouts of America has no problem covering up and protecting serial sexual predators who have molested countless young scouts.  But recognizing an honorable and worthy scout who just happens to be gay?  Well that's a whole different story.  As NBC News is reporting, Ryan Andresen who recently completed the requirements to earn his Eagle Scout award got kicked to the curb by the Boy Scouts for the simple reason that he's gay and doesn't lie about himself and cower in the closet.  The hypocrisy of the Boy Scouts represents a small scale version of the foul hypocrisy of the Catholic Church hierarchy which on the one hand is pushing an incessant  anti-gay jihad while masterminding a world wide conspiracy to enable and/or protect sexual predators.  Here are some highlights from NBC News:

Ryan Andresen had recently completed the requirements to earning his Eagle Scout award, including his final project of building a "tolerance wall" for victims of bullying like himself, but his Scoutmaster would not sign off on honoring him with the Boy Scouts’ highest ranking because he is gay, his mother said.

And late Thursday, the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement that because of Andresen's sexual orientation and that he did not agree to Scouting’s principle of "Duty to God," “he is no longer eligible for membership in Scouting.”

The Boy Scouts of America have a longstanding policy denying membership to gay leaders and Scouts, which they reaffirmed earlier this year after a two-year confidential review of the controversial ban. The Scoutmaster for Troop 212 in Moraga, Calif., told Andresen’s father, Eric, the troop's chief administrator, on Sunday that Ryan wouldn’t be able to get the award, his mother, Karen, and Eric Andresen told NBC News.

“I want everyone to know that [the Eagle award] should be based on accomplishment, not your sexual orientation. Ryan entered Scouts when he was six years  old and in no way knew what he was," said Karen Andresen, 49, a stay-at-home mother of three. "I think right now the Scoutmaster is sending Ryan the message that he’s not a valued human being and I want Ryan to know that he is valued … and that people care about him.”

Ryan, 17, came out in July. Andresen said the Scoutmaster knew about Ryan's sexual orientation and they had no idea he wouldn't sign off on the paperwork. It was “a total shock," she said, adding that Ryan was led all along to believe he would be able to get the award.

I ceased donating any money to the Boy Scouts a number of years ago and candidly, if my son were younger, I'd think twice about involving him in such a bigoted and breath takingly hypocritical and dishonorable organization. 

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on "Republican Islamists"

This blog looked at the batshitery of Missouri Republican Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (pictured at left) yesterday.  For those who missed that post, Akin claims that "legitimate rape" doesn't lead to pregnancies.  It's part of his defense of his position seeking to outlaw abortion in all instances.   Andrew Sullivan calls it like it is:

[W]hat's striking to me is the enduring reality that alleged fiscal conservatives in today's GOP almost uniformly have social views that one normally associates with soft-Islamists. It should be possible to be a total fiscal tightwad and still adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy in government - and yet that is emphatically not the GOP we have today. Akin is a classic Islamist-Republican, seeing women entirely as temptations for men who somehow have responsibility for their fate even when being raped. Women are entirely objects - their lives and crises simply requiring an air-brush to keep the whole neurotic ideology intact.

Andrew goes on to cite other Republican candidates who have held this insane notion.  He finishes by describing this behavior as follows:

That's simply the public tidying up that the fundamentalist psyche constantly requires to keep messy, human reality at bay. It's a function of a backwardness and cultural panic that cannot be entirely disguised by an open and affirming convention stage.

Frankly, I'd be embarrassed to call myself a Republican nowadays.  The party has become something truly ugly.

GOP Senate Candidate: "Legitimately Raped" Women Don't Get Pregnant

Just when you think the batshitery from the GOP cannot get any worse, someone like Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) - who is running against Senator Clair McCaskill - comes along.  Adkin opposes abortion in all instances because Adkin says "legitimately raped" women don't get pregnant.  I don't know if I want to know what Adkin considers to be a "legitimate rape" - although something tells me that if the woman is white and the man is black, then it'd be legitimate in Adkin's mind.  One can only wonder what cave or from under what rock Akin has slithered.  Yet, in Missouri, Adkin is frighteningly leading McCaskill in the polls at the moment - not a very good commentary on the people of Missouri if you ask me.  Has the state of Missouri had a collective lobotomy?  Here's a video clip of Adkin's lunacy:

Like most of the loons who inhabit today's GOP, Adkin doesn't let the facts get in the way of his cretin like pronouncements as noted by Joe Jervis:

A 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found “rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency” and is “a cause of many unwanted pregnancies” — an estimated “32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.” In a tweet, McCaskill said she was “stunned” by Akin’s comments. Akin is perhaps the boldest among a crop of conservative 2012 nominees who could hamper GOP efforts to take back the Senate in the fall. Akin has called for an end to the school-lunch program and a total ban on the morning-after pill.

Yet despite this all too typical insanity (never mind the racism, hate and bigotry) people seriously tell me that I should go back to the GOP!   Adkins opponent had this to say:

“It is beyond comprehension that someone can be so ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape,” McCaskill said in a statment. “The ideas that Todd Akin has expressed about the serious crime of rape and the impact on its victims are offensive.” 

When the GOP decided to embrace the Christianists for political gain, they also made the conscious decision to embrace ignorance as well.  To be a Republican today, one needs to be a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, motivated by greed, and ignorant by deliberate choice.  The GOP itself has become offensive.