Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Jon Stewart Slams Mike Huckabee On Gay Marriage
As Pam Spaulding - who is a sweetheart in person by the way - and other sites are reporting, extreme Christianist and nutcase, Mike Huckabee went on the Daily Show and got slammed by Jon Stewart. I view Huckabee as nothing short of a menace and hope more and more of his extremism will be exposed. Sadly, far too many in the media are afraid to take him on and ask biting questions that will force Huckabee to reveal that he is NOT the easy going as shucks figure he pretends to be. He wants to subvert the U.S. Constitution and borders on being a Christian Dominionist who believes that society should be governed exclusively by the law of God as codified in the Bible, to the exclusion of secular law. Here are some highlights from Stewart's interview of Huckabee:*
"You write that marriage is the bedrock of society...Why would you not want more couples to buy into the stability of marriage. Why would you want to precluded for an entire [group] of people."
"You write that marriage is the bedrock of society...Why would you not want more couples to buy into the stability of marriage. Why would you want to precluded for an entire [group] of people."
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Huckabee responded with a series of standard points, including "Marriage still means one man, one woman, life relationship. I think people have a right to live any way they want to, but even anatomically -- let's face it -- the only way that we can create the next generation is through a male/female relationship."
Huckabee responded with a series of standard points, including "Marriage still means one man, one woman, life relationship. I think people have a right to live any way they want to, but even anatomically -- let's face it -- the only way that we can create the next generation is through a male/female relationship."
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In a point that Stewart would press him on later by suggesting that his history is a bit skewed, Huckabee asserted, "For 5000 years of recorded human history that's what marriage has meant."
In a point that Stewart would press him on later by suggesting that his history is a bit skewed, Huckabee asserted, "For 5000 years of recorded human history that's what marriage has meant."
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..."30 states have had it on the ballot, and in all 30 states, it's passed -- even in states like California, that nobody would suggest are social conservatives..." Stewart: "30 states had Mike Huckabee on the ballot and they voted for John McCain. You can't trust those voters. The voters don't know."
..."30 states have had it on the ballot, and in all 30 states, it's passed -- even in states like California, that nobody would suggest are social conservatives..." Stewart: "30 states had Mike Huckabee on the ballot and they voted for John McCain. You can't trust those voters. The voters don't know."
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"I think it's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to 'make their case' that they deserve the same basic rights." ..."I'll tell you this: Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion? We protect religion -- and talk about a lifestyle choice -- that is absolutely a choice. Gay people don't choose to be gay. At what age did you choose not to be gay?"
A Day Without A Gay
Today is targeted to be a day where all across the country gays when possible will stay home from work and hopefully donate their time to a charity or other worthwhile cause. In areas such as Hampton Roads, I suspect many gays will not call in gay for fear of being fired - sadly Virginia has NO employment non-discrimination laws protecting LGBT workers. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how visible the impact will be in states where being gay isn't a possible basis for immediate firing. The Huffington Post has an article that struck my interest because it (1) mentions Jason Cianciotto, Director of Wingspan, Southern Arizona's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center who I got to know back in 2003 when I was a workshop panelist at the NGLTF Creating Change Conference in Miami, and (2) looks at the Mormon Church activities in Arizona, something that has not received enough attention. In addition, the article looks at the need for LGBT citizens to come out and tell their stories, something too few in this area have the courage to do. Here are some highlights from the HP article:*
In discussion of the setback suffered by gay rights proponents in the recent election, what happened in Arizona is often little discussed. While Proposition 8 in California has gotten most of the attention of the country, Arizona's Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender community is coming to terms with their own defeat. Arizona's Proposition 102 didn't actually change Arizona's law, which already defined marriage as between a man and a woman, but added that language to the state constitution.
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As Executive Director of Wingspan, Southern Arizona's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center, Cianciotto described the mood of the 200-250 workshop attendees. "They're hurting. Not only was the existing anti gay marriage law codified into the state constitution, but Arizona went from being the only state to actually defeat an anti gay marriage bill," (Arizona voters defeated Proposition 107 in 2008) "to having that victory taken away from us."
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For Cianciotto, the defeat came down to two significant factors: the way the amendment was sold in Arizona, and the way in which the GLBT and progressive community responded. Not surprisingly, Cianciotto sees money as the pivotal issue. Since election day, the huge amount of money pumped into the anti gay marriage initiative in California has been well documented, and Cianciotto sited similar statistics concerning Arizona. . . . And Cianciotto believes the source of the message had a huge impact too. "When potential voters receive an anti gay marriage message sent to them by a leader that they believe to have been ordained by God, you can't overlook that."
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Cianciotto discussed a web based campaign started by Wingspan. The campaign is called Families You Know, and features stories and videos from members of the GLBT community. Launched on November 14 of this year, stories told on Families You Know are very personal and often very moving, and Cianciotto hopes this will become a nationwide effort, one he sees as a way of laying a foundation for changing how people feel, even with-and perhaps especially with -those with the most entrenched anti gay marriage beliefs.
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This isn't a pipedream for Cianciotto, it stems from his own personal experience. Raised in an Evangelical household, Cianciotto was kicked out of his home as a teenager. As a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Cianciotto came out of the closet while attending a Wingspan youth group. He understands the stories told on Families You Know, and also understands the reactions of those who may view them. "Some people may come to the website and for the first time see a gay person tell their story. Or they may see a story like the straight grandmother who talks about the joy of spending time with her grandchild who happens to have two dads." Cianciotto sees Families You Know as a way for the GLBT community to channel their frustration and anger into something positive, "to connect that energy into a way to effect positive social change."
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As a human being and a gay person, I have three basic demands: Recognize my relationships. Allow me to make a living. And allow me to serve my country and my countrymen. Without those three basic fundamentals, we won't achieve equality. . . . Jacobs is hopeful that the activism they saw among participants in the Equality Arizona workshops continues to grow, and Cianciotto agreed: I sensed a definite feeling among everyone there. We are moving forward, and we are not going to hide anymore.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Iowa Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Gay Marriage Case
The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case challenging the constitutionality of the gay marriage ban in that state. The case Varnum vs. Brien involves six same-sex Iowa couples who sued Polk County Recorder and Registrar Timothy Brien in 2005, after his office denied them marriage licenses. To me, inasmuch as we are discussing CIVIL law marriage, if equality under the law means anything, then committed couples whether heterosexual or same-sex should be allowed to reap the civil law benefits of civil marriage. This is particularly true since sexual orientation is not - despite the lies and protestations of Christianists and Mormons - a choice. Just as in my view churches must at some point come into the 21st Century and recognize the advances in mental health and medical knowledge and accept the true nature of sexual orientation or else run the risk of dying out, so to must the civil laws recognize modern mental health and medical knowledge regarding sexual orientation. Otherwise, equal under the law becomes a farce. Here are highlights from the Des Moines Register:*
Varnum vs. Brien involves six same-sex Iowa couples who sued Polk County Recorder and Registrar Timothy Brien in 2005, after his office denied them marriage licenses. Polk County District Court Judge Robert Hanson sided with the couples in a ruling last year, but suspended his decision until the high court reviews the matter.
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Oral arguments today pitted the Polk County attorney’s office against the couples, financed and represented by the national gay and lesbian rights group Lambda Legal.An attorney for six same-sex Iowa couples insisted that allowing gay marriage would not open the door to polygamous marriages, despite challenges from several Iowa Supreme Court justices.
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Johnson criticized Polk County’s arguments about possible long-term damage to marriage as “highly speculative,” and cast the law as an intrusion on equal rights.“The question is: Why are same sex couples kept out?” Johnson asked. “They have families, they would benefit from the stability, the financial stability. Their children would benefit.”Johnson concluded his arguments 10 minutes over his allotted time.
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Assistant Polk County Attorney Roger Kuhle in his arguments said a ruling that allows same-sex marriage could harm children in future generations by eventually leading to belief that marriage is unneeded.“We’re saying that, after a generation, maybe two, people will see or could come to believe that if it’s not necessary to have its biological father, or its biological mother, then what’s the need for getting married?” Kuhle said. The statement came in response to a question by Justice Brent Appel, who quizzed Kuhl about their arguments that same-sex marriage could harm children.
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Kuhle took issue with assertions that gay marriage was a civil rights issue. The civil rights issue for gays, he said, was addressed largely in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which declared sodomy laws unconstitutional. Now, he said, same-sex couples are pushing an agenda beyond mere civil rights.
Gay Sex Obsessed Concerned Women
The perennially gay sex obsessed men over at Concerned Women for America would have you believe that Barack Obama is under control of the mean, nasty gays who are out to subvert marriage and the nation. The CWA website now has a special "Obama Watch" feature obviously aimed at stirring up the sheeple so that they will continue to send in their money contributions to CWA and keep the homophobic closet cases on the CWA payroll employed. The chart below (click for a larger view) shows the "gay agenda" that CWA alleges Obama will help implement. Here's a sampling of some of the other bat shit crazy propaganda on the CWA website (in reading it, remember that these folks claim that they do not hate gays - judge for yourself):
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Through a carefully crafted, decades-old propaganda campaign, homosexual activists have successfully cast homosexuals — many of whom enjoy positions of influence and affluence — as a disadvantaged minority. They have repackaged and sold to the public behaviors which thousands of years of history, every major world religion and uncompromising human biology have long identified as immoral and sexually deviant.
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As with every major political movement, the homosexual lobby is pushing a specific agenda. It is often called the “gay agenda.” At its core is a concerted effort to remove from society all traditional notions of sexual morality and replace them with the post-modern concept of sexual relativism. That is to say, when it comes to sex, there is never right or wrong. All sexual appetites are “equal.” If it feels good, do it.
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Ultimately, the homosexual lobby’s primary objective is to radically redefine our foundational institutions of legitimate marriage and the nuclear family by unraveling God’s natural design for human sexuality. In so doing, they hope to elevate their own spiritual and biological counterfeit and establish a sexually androgynous society wherein natural distinctions between male and female are dissolved. This creates cultural and moral anarchy.
Ultimately, the homosexual lobby’s primary objective is to radically redefine our foundational institutions of legitimate marriage and the nuclear family by unraveling God’s natural design for human sexuality. In so doing, they hope to elevate their own spiritual and biological counterfeit and establish a sexually androgynous society wherein natural distinctions between male and female are dissolved. This creates cultural and moral anarchy.
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They are quite affirmative in principle. But the principles they foist demand comprehensive acceptance of homosexual conduct — by force of law — through federal edicts such as “hate crimes” legislation, the so-called “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” (ENDA) and by imposing government sanctioned “same-sex marriage.” All such government mandates grant special protected “minority” status to those who define themselves by aberrant sexual preferences and changeable sexual behaviors. These laws put people with traditional values directly in the crosshairs of official government policy.
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Virginia Must Enforce Gay Visitation Rights
The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court providing that Virginia must enforce a Vermont court order awarding child-visitation rights to a mother's former lesbian partner. The now "ex-gay" Lisa Miller (pictured at far left) had claimed that the Virginia Supreme Court improperly ignored a state law and constitutional amendment that prohibit same-sex unions and the recognition of such arrangements from other states. Hopefully, this will bring to an end the legal circus put on by Lisa Miller and her homophobic (and probably closeted) legal counsel from Liberty Counsel, Matt Staver. Here are highlights from WRIC-TV 8 in Richmond, Virginia:*
The decision let stand a victory for Janet Jenkins, who has been fighting for visitation rights since the dissolution of the civil union she and Miller obtained in Vermont in 2000. Miller gave birth to the daughter, Isabella, in 2002, and the child was at the center of a legal battle closely watched by national conservative and gay-rights groups.
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More details on the Miller-Jenkins legal war are found in a new Newsweek article that went to press prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the case. Personally, I view Lisa Miller as the typical bogus "ex-gay" who is making a career out of being allegedly cured - she works for a Christian school - and has used her supposed cure as a hook by which she has garnered support from vehemently anti-gay groups and churches. Here are some highlights from Newsweek:
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[O]n July 1, 2004—the very day Virginia enacted a new statute (the Marriage Affirmation Act) prohibiting any legal recognition of same-sex marriages or civil unions—Miller filed for sole custody, and a Virginia judge awarded it to her. She'd also accepted pro bono representation from Florida's Liberty Counsel, a legal firm whose goal is "advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family." It receives partial funding from the late Jerry Falwell's church, and Miller's main attorney, Mat Staver, is its founder as well as dean of Falwell's Liberty University School of Law.
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Staver used Virginia's Marriage Affirmation Act and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (the latter says states can deny recognition of same-sex marriages that are deemed legal in other states) to bolster his client's case. Last June, it was decided that the kidnapping law trumped the marriage acts, and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in Jenkins's favor. Miller's legal firm hopes to challenge the rulings upheld in Vermont and Virginia by petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case (they've had two requests denied and recently filed a third). As it stands, the outcome of Miller v. Jenkins represents a victory for the rights of gay parents.
Newsweek Draws Fire on Gay Marriage; Bush: Bible Not Literal
As predicted, the regular Christianist loud mouths are in a frenzy hyperventilating over the Newsweek story on the Biblical basis for gay marriage that I talked about just yesterday. The always homophobic blowhards Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council make the same old disingenuous anti-gay arguments and Ralph Reed - who I met in person at a political meeting some years back where he sent my gaydar into overdrive - chimes in too, apparently seeking attention after his ill-fated political run in Georgia. What strikes me most is that without the pretext of always working to "protect marriage," these guys would all be basically out of jobs In other news, the Chimperator made comments that will likely cause James Dobson wet himself. First, here are highlights from Politico concerning the shrieking against Newsweek (btw, remember that Perkins has NO theological credentials of his own): *
Leading social conservatives blasted Newsweek for its current cover story, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," which they said misinterprets both biblical scripture and their own political movement. “It doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus,” said Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.”
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Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, agreed, calling Newsweek’s cover story “yet another attack on orthodox Christianity.” “I hardly think that Newsweek is a credible venue for theological discussion,” said Perkins. “I mean, I thought it was just full of holes.”
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In addition to contesting Newsweek’s specific scriptural arguments, some social conservatives took issue with the basic premise of the magazine’s story: that conservative opposition to same-sex marriage is based on specific biblical instructions. “I see it as an attempt to caricature and reduce to a cartoon the social conservative belief in the efficacy of traditional marriage, and try to reduce it to some formulaic, scriptural literalism,” said Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition.
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In an e-mail to Politico, Maggie Gallagher, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, took a similar line, calling marriage “the one necessary adult relation in society – the way we bring together male and female to bring the next generation to life in a way that connects those children in love to their own mother and father.”
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On a somewhat related note, during an interview, the Chimperator said what can only be considered as heresy by the most unhinged Christianists. Namely, that the Bible is not to be construed literally and that the theory of evolution is not incompatible with the Bible. Here are some highlights from Raw Story:
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US President George W. Bush said in an interview Monday that the Bible is "probably not" literally true and that a belief that God created the world is compatible with the theory of evolution. "I think you can have both," Bush, who leaves office January 20, told ABC television, adding "You're getting me way out of my lane here.
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"I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution," he told ABC television. Asked whether the Bible was literally true, Bush replied: "Probably not. No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it."
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