Woman Faces Prison Time After Beating Gay Son

I have long believed that raising a child in a far right Christian home is a form of child abuse.  While adults are free to believe and live their lives as they desire, I have a real problem with children being forced to embrace a form of religion that has at its core a message of embracing ignorance, hate, fear and bigotry.  The children of such homes - and I would most definitely include far right Catholic homes - come out emotionally and psychologically damaged.  My own Catholic upbringing, despite the best intentions of my parents left scars that it took years of therapy to overcome and escape.  A woman in Texas has demonstrated that far right Christianist beliefs can carry physical harm for children as well, especially gay children.  Here are excerpts from a piece in LGBTQ Nation:

FOREST HILL, Texas — A Texas woman is facing felony charges for badly beating her 15-year-old son after she caught him receiving oral sex from a male cousin last December.  Police in Forest Hill have charged Erica Moore with assault with bodily injury to a family member and felony child abuse after she admitted to beating her son with with an electrical cord.

Moore said it is a form of discipline she was taught, and that she “doesn’t believe in homosexuality.”  “My cousin at the time, he was 18. My son, he was 15, and I had walked in the room on [my cousin] giving oral sex to my son and I started whooping my son, and I’m the one who got in trouble as a result of me whooping him,” Moore told KTVT-TV.

“The police department told me that it was consensual, but they was committing a homosexual act in my house and we are totally against that. So I whooped my son, and about three or four months later they came and arrested me for abuse,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Forest Hill Police department said that the incident was brought to their attention after the boy’s grandmother had taken him to a local hospital.  The staff there alerted Texas Child Protective Services who launched an investigation.

Police officials said that Moore’s actions went beyond legally acceptable standards of discipline as she caused bleeding and leaving marks on the boy’s thighs, forearms, hands, torso and back.

[A] spokesperson for Child Protective Services said, “If you are leaving the child with severe injuries or bruises, then obviously we might be talking about abuse.”  A spokesperson for the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment saying that there is still an active investigation into the matter, but did acknowledge that Moore faces prison time if convicted.

Frankly, I hope Moore does prison time.  Beating one's child to the point of hospitalization all because of a belief in the rantings of uneducated nomadic herders of 2,500 years ago.  There is no excuse and it is far past time that the Bible be recognized as a very toxic work that deserves little respect in the modern world.

A Mother's Wish: Give my Son and His Partner the Right to Marry M

I know I sound like a broken record at times when I talk about the religious based bigotry behind the bans on same sex marriage. The laws are all about punishing the wayward gays and lesbians who refuse to live their lives according to hate and fear based Christianist religious dictates. A corollary of that agenda is to dehumanize and attack the inherent worth of LGBT lives and loves. Fortunately, more and more of the younger generations seem ready and able to see the inherit unfairness of the homophobic Christianist agenda. One New York mother has a great op-ed in the New York Daily News attacking this unfairness and talking about the gift that she wants for her son. It's the same sort of mindset my own late parents demonstrated in their acceptance of my relationships with my partner, past and present. In my view, any parent who truly cares about their child - as opposed to what others might think - ought to embrace the view expressed in Iris S. Blumenthal's op-ed piece. I'd even go so far as to state that any parent who doesn't do so is placing them self and/or the prejudices of others ahead of the best interests of their child. Here are some column highlights:
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It was quite a Mother's Day gift. At long last, just as his older brother, Michael, had years earlier, my younger son, Jonathan, had found "the one." From the moment he enthusiastically introduced my husband and me to the new person in his life, I knew this was it. For months after, I witnessed their relationship blossom - watched as his eyes lit up, listened as his "I's" gave way to "We's." And like any mother, I was elated to see my son so in love and so happy.
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It's a joy and a relief that both of my sons have entered that special, slightly mysterious realm that spouses share. That deep, abiding love and commitment. That bedrock knowledge that even if everyone else does not, that one person will remain true to the end. The simple pleasure of sleeping better at night, warm and snug in the knowledge that you are not alone in this world.
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Every mother wants that for her children, to know that even when we parents are long gone, they will still be loved with every bit of fervor that we've loved them with from the moment they were born. It is a human condition, at the most basic level.
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And while I am overjoyed that both of my sons have found such happiness — and that from their happiness I have gained another son and a daughter - I can't help but feel sad to Jonathan. The right to marry is, as it happens, not a right at all. . . . He is denied the rights and protections civil marriage provides.
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Even children understand that this is unfair. Michael and Teri's two sons, both years away from voting age, have written to their state senators for help - they want to see Uncle Jonathan and Uncle Eric get married, here in our home state of New York and in front of their friends and family. And so do I. Because what matters — the only thing that matters — is love. And that is universal. It's time that marriage was universal, too.
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This Mother's Day, I don't want another scarf. I don't want any flowers. My dear son can't give me the gift I want now — he's done all he can do. Who would have thought that the best gift this mother could ever receive would come from the New York Legislature? It's time to pass marriage equality legislation. I've got a wedding to plan.

Gay Marriage vs. Only a Mother and Father Can Raise a Child

The Wall Street Journal has an anti-gay marriage editorial that sounds like it was co-authored by far right Christianist Robert Knight and Pope Benedict XVI. Naturally, the editorial gets into the "bodily parts fitting" dissertation and then moves on to the usual whine that only a heterosexual couple can best raise children. Of course this latter argument utterly ignores all of the unfit straight parents in the world and that same sex couples would frequently be a vast improvement over the what many children find themselves saddle with. First, here are some highlights from the WSJ op-ed:

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Lawyers challenging traditional marriage laws liken their cause to Loving v. Virginia (which invalidated laws against interracial marriages), insinuating that conjugal-marriage supporters are bigots. This is ludicrous and offensive, and no one should hesitate to say so. The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.

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Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.

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And only this view can explain why the state should regulate marriage (as opposed to ordinary friendships) at all—to make it more likely that, wherever possible, children are reared in the context of the bond between the parents whose sexual union gave them life. If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union—and thus to procreation—will be undermined.

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The marriage culture, already wounded by widespread divorce, nonmarital cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing will fare no better than it has in those European societies that were in the vanguard of sexual “enlightenment.” And the primary victims of a weakened marriage culture are always children and those in the poorest, most vulnerable sectors of society. Candid and clear-thinking advocates of redefining marriage recognize that doing so entails abandoning norms such as monogamy.

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Pompous assholes like this author make my blood boil because they utterly discount LGBT Americans as equal humans. As a result, I am going to look at a story where a heterosexual marriage failed to protect and raise children. The incident happened a week or so ago, but new toxicology results indicate that this married heterosexual mother was not more fit than a gay or lesbian parent would have been. She was in fact far, far worse. At the risk of sounding mean spirited, here are some highlights from 1010WINS.com:

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NEW YORK (1010 WINS/AP) -- A mother drank vodka and smoked marijuana while taking a vanload of children home from a weekend camping trip that ended in disaster when she went the wrong way on a highway and crashed into an SUV, killing eight people, police said Tuesday.

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Diane Schuler, who died along with her 2-year-old daughter and three nieces in her red minivan, had more than 10 drinks of alcohol in her system and a high level of the main ingredient in marijuana, authorities said. A broken 1.75-liter bottle of Absolut vodka was found in her wrecked minivan, police said.

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The revelations from the 36-year-old Long Island woman's autopsy helped explain how the woman her family called "an accomplished working mother who always put her children before any other priorities'' wound up driving the wrong way for nearly two miles on a suburban parkway before slamming into the SUV. The July 26 crash on the Taconic State Parkway, about 35 miles northwest of New York City, also killed three men in the SUV. Schuler's 5-year-old son, in her minivan, survived.

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Schuler's blood-alcohol level was well above the legal limit, and she still had undigested alcohol in her stomach, State Police Maj. William Carey said Tuesday. Blood tests also showed she had smoked marijuana 15 minutes to an hour before the crash, said Betsy Spratt, chief toxicologist for the Westchester County medical examiner.

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I wish the late Ms. Schuler no ill will. But, PLEASEEEE, stop the bullshit blather that gays cannot make equally good parents.

And the Christianists Say Gays Are Unfit to Be Parents?

One of the reasons espoused by the Christianists for pushing for passage of Proposition 8 in California is to "protect children. The ever disingenuous Randy Thomasson says it is vital for Californians to approve the constitutional amendment in order to protect "[c]hildren's innocence" and he argues that adult choices should not be pushed upon small children. Of course the Christianist like Thomasson oppose gay adoption and claim that gays are not fit to raise children, saying only straight couples should raise children. They conveniently ignore the fact that countless numbers of children remain warehoused in foster homes where they are often shuffled from one home to another. Worse yet, they ignore just how unfit some heterosexuals are when in comes to child rearing. Nonetheless, they STILL would prefer, apparently, that children be raised by unfit heterosexuals.

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Two recent cases underscore the reality that being straight does not make one automatically a fit parent and demonstrate that child WOULD be far better off with loving and responsible gay parents. The first example is a couple in California who were charged Thursday with 62 felony counts for child abuse and could spend the rest of their lives in prison. Here are highlights from KNBC-TV 4 in Los Angeles:

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A mother and father accused of binding their children's hands and ankles for hours were charged Thursday with 62 felony counts and could spend the rest of their lives in prison, prosecutors said.

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The charges include 21 counts of false imprisonment by violence, 21 counts of child abuse, 18 counts of corporal injury on a child with great bodily injury and two counts of torture, Simmons said. If convicted, the maximum sentence for the torture charges is life in prison, Simmons said.

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The parents did not allow contact between the children and their grandparents, and they were seldom allowed outside the home and apparently had never been to school, Simmons said. "They were always basically with mom or dad," she said. The mother maintained that she home-schooled them, but there is no proof she complied with home-schooling requirements, and the children are not at grade level, Simmons said.

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As if that case isn't horrible enough, a story from Alabama in a small town just north of Mobile involving an evangelical preacher is even more shocking. This "Godly Christian" molested his daughter and when caught in the act by his wife, murdered her and placed her body in a freezer. But I guess since the guy was heterosexual, somehow he automatically was a more fit parent than say a nice gay couple. Note how just as in the California case, the whack jobs were home schooling their children. Here are highlights on this case of heterosexual parenting from CNN:

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(CNN) -- An evangelical preacher killed his wife several years ago and stuffed her body in a freezer after she caught him abusing their daughter, according to police and court documents. Anthony Hopkins, 37, was arrested Monday night at the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Jackson, Alabama, just after he had delivered a sermon to a congregation that included his seven other children, officials said. He faces charges including murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest.

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The affidavit related the daughter's story as follows:
Her mother, Arletha Hopkins, 36, caught her father abusing her in a bathroom in November 2004. Afterward, her parents argued, and her mother locked her father out of the house. The father came to the daughter's window and asked her to let him in, and she did so. The next morning, her father asked her to help him hide her mother's body in the freezer in the laundry room of the home.

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The girl said she moved out of the home about two weeks ago and was living with a neighbor. She told police that her mother's body was still in the freezer. When authorities went to the home, no one was there, as Hopkins and the other children were at the church. A body was found in the freezer, the affidavit says.

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He said Anthony Hopkins did not have a regular church but apparently preached in various areas around the South. "Part of the mystery here is that, apparently, none of these children were in school" but were being home-schooled, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson said. "Home schooling, under this situation, removes almost any chances of us catching up with these kinds of things until there is a catastrophe."