Monday Male Beauty

Youth Pastor Used Bible Verses to Catch Prey

I am hard on the Roman Catholic Church when it comes to the sexual abuse of minors because of the failure of anyone in the hierarchy to be punished for the enabling and cover up of thousands of cases of abuse. But the problem is not unique to the Catholic Church and seems all to prevalent in more fundamentalist denominations who actively preach against gays and often promote witch doctor like "ex-gay" Programs. A case in point is Tree of Life Church in New Braunfels, Texas, where a youth pastor sexually abused a boy and quoted passages from the bible to convince him that God wanted their relationship to grow. Based on the church's website, it doesn't appear to be a gay affirming church in any form shape or manner. Here are some highlights from WOAI-TV:

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NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas -- A former youth pastor from Alabama will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for molesting a boy in Texas.Matthew Anderson has been described as sick, disgusting, and a wolf in sheep's clothing. Anderson moved to Comal County in 2003 and started attending the "Tree of Life Church" along IH-35, which is where he met his victim.

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De Lemos said what no one knew was that Anderson had been convicted of molesting a 15-year-old in Alabama and had been sentenced to probation. While attending Tree of Life, Anderson met a new family and started a relationship with them and their 16-year-old son.

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Anderson acted as a mentor to the boy. He then started using passages from the bible to convince him that God wanted their relationship to grow. That led to inappropriate touching between Anderson and the boy.

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The boy came forward and said Anderson molested him multiple times. Anderson was arrested by the New Braunfels Police Department in 2007 for sexual assault. . . . A jury agreed and this week convicted Anderson of sexual assault of a child and indecency of a child by contact. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences Thursday, which means he will likely never be eligible for parole.

Neither Free nor Fair

As turmoil in Iran continues the Washington Post's editorial correctly notes that even if Mahmoud "We Have No Homosexuals in Iran" Ahmadinejad won the election as he claims - something I tend to personally doubt - the manner in which protesters are being attacked, wounded and likely killed makes it clear that the Islamic fundamentalist government is a fraud and holds on to power by force and the use of terror. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into allegations that the country's presidential vote was marred by ballot fraud, but I suspect that the result of that investigation is already a foregone conclusion unless done under the eyes of international observers. Here are some highlights from the editorial:

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What we can say for certain is that the election was neither free nor fair. When a regime peremptorily chooses which candidates can run; shutters newspapers, Web sites and television bureaus; silences text messaging; and throws critics into prison -- such a regime should not expect its pronouncements on election results to garner any respect.

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[T]here are principles that the [Obama] administration could be defending even now, squarely supporting the rule of law and democratic expression in Iran. The United States could make clear that a government wanting to be taken seriously by the international community should not use violence against peaceful protests, arrest opposition leaders and their followers, jam radio broadcasts, or block Internet use. It could call for a transparent process to address opposition claims of fraud.

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But it is now undeniable that many, many Iranians reject the Ahmadinejad regime and much of what it stands for, at home and abroad. The presidential campaigns revealed tremendous popular ferment in Iran and large swaths of discontent with current economic, foreign and social policies, including the repression of women. U.S.-Iranian relations are unlikely to flourish as long as so many voices there remain suppressed. As Mr. Obama began doing in his Cairo speech, the United States has to find a way to speak to Iran's people as well as the leaders who claim to represent them.

More Sunday Male Beauty

Iranian Government Goons Attacking Protesters

Andrew Sullivan is doing a terrific job of trying to keep abreast of what is happening in Iran. Unfortunately, it appears gristly as fundamentalist goons are attacking protesting university students and breaking into their dorms. We need to take a close look because this is what the actions of a theocratic government run by religious fanatics looks like. It's not a pretty sight and it's what we would have here if the Christianists ever succeeded in taking over the government. It literally sickens me to know what's happening to young people who merely want freedom. Here are some twitter messages coming out of Iran via Andrew's blog:

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Guards are Shootings in Tehran and Police car being attack by protesters

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friend on phone from sadatabad. he says violent street battles between Basij and people. cars on fire.

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they push ppl & students into the dormitories then throw tear gas, sometimes attacking them with anything they have

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Basij Militia attacking people with teaser, stone, stick and knife like rabid dogs.

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moussavi demo at 4pm this afternoon in 19 cities announced. expect millions.

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Then, there is this You Tube post from a street incident:

Raw Story has additional videos of the various protests occurring in Iran and the USA here.

California AG's Brief Finds Proposition 8 in Violation of U.S. Constitution

In what is a stunning opposite to the Obama Justice Department's brief filed in support of DOMA, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a brief that states that that Proposition 8 violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Would that Obama would argue the law rather than Christianist talking points and stop apparently trying to kiss Rick Warren's very wide ample ass. Like many, I continue to be seething over the nasty and gratuitously insulting brief filed by the Justice Department and written by a Mormon hold over from the Bush administration. WTF was Obama thinking. Here are highlights from Box Turtle Bulletin on Jerry Brown's very different brief:

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What a contrast between the California Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice. On the same day in which the Obama administration filed a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court defending the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,“ California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a very different brief in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the Prop 8 challenge brought by Ted Olson and David Boies.

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In the brief filed on behalf of the State of California (PDF: 128KB/11 pages), Brown notes that:

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The Attorney General of California is sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States in addition to the Constitution of the State of California. Cal. Const., art. XX, § 3. The United States Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” Taking from same-sex couples the right to civil marriage that they had previously possessed under California’s Constitution cannot be squared with guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, the Attorney General answers the Complaint consistent with his duty to uphold the United States Constitution, as Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch did when he argued that Proposition 14, passed by the California voters in 1964, was incompatible with the Federal Constitution..

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The response by the Attorney General addresses each of the numbered paragraphs in the original complaint. The response begins with a stipulation that California’s Domestic Partnerships are not equal to civil marriage and therefore violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”

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In response to paragraph 1 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that in November 2008 California adopted Proposition 8; that Proposition 8 amended Article I of the California Constitution by adding section 7.5 which provides that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California;” and that the effect of Proposition 8 is to deny gay men and lesbians and their same-sex partners access to civil marriage in California and to deny them recognition of their civil marriages performed elsewhere. The Attorney General admits that lesbians and gay men and their same-sex partners may form domestic partnerships in California pursuant to California Family Code sections 297 through 299.6, and that such domestic partnerships are not equal to civil marriage, and that this unequal treatment denies lesbians and gay men rights guarantees by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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…In response to paragraph 7 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that Proposition 8 denies same-sex couples the right to civil marriage in California, and that it therefore violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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Brown also invokes Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which struck down laws banning marriage between people of different races:

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In response to paragraph 35 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that the United States Supreme Court found in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1. 12 (1967), that the “freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

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The brief then addresses the Due Process claims: In response to paragraph 38 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that, to the extent that Proposition 8 took from Plaintiffs their previously held fundamental right to marry, the measure violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on its face.

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Obama may have been a constitutional law professor, but he seems more concerned with imposing Christian Right religious based beliefs on LGBT Americans than he is in upholding equality under the United States Constitution. His promises are apparently not any more trustworthy than the Chimperator's.

Oppostion Members Detained in a Tense Iran

One of the ironies of history is that the western democracies seem to make the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to labeling monarchist regimes as dictatorial and then standing by as far worse regimes over throw them and make past alleged atrocities look like child's play compared to the bloodshed that the "reformists" unleash. The parallels between what happened in Tsarist Russian and Iran are amazing. In each case the monarchist regimes - whose secret police killed perhaps numbers in the few thousands - were labeled as murderous despots and over thrown by alleged reformers claiming to be populous leaders who went on to murder tens of thousands (if not millions in the case of the Bolsheviks) of people. Both the pro-western, pro-modern Russian Tsar exiled Lenin and the Shah of Iran exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, respectively, which actions ultimately had disastrous consequences for the world. Had they been the murderous despots alleged, these agents of revolution and forces of evil would have been executed.

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Now, it seems that the population of Iran may be waking up to the fact that Islamic rule is not such a wise choice even as the forces of theocracy appear to be likely rigging elections and using military force to cling to power. People forget that Iran under the Shah was modernizing rapidly and that it had a educated sizable class unlike a number of its neighbors. Note how Ahmadinejad's remarks parallel something out of the old Soviet Politburo. Here are highlights from the New York Times on the after math of last week's election:

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The Iranian authorities detained more than 100 prominent opposition members, and on Sunday unrest continued for a second day across Iran in the wake of the country’s disputed presidential election.

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The leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, issued a fresh statement calling for the election results to be canceled, as his supporters skirmished with a vast deployment of riot police and militia members on the edges of a victory rally organized by the government in central Tehran.

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A moderate clerical body, the Association of Combatant Clergy, issued a statement posted on reformist web sites saying the election was rigged and calling for it to be canceled, warning that “if this process becomes the norm, the republican aspect of the regime will be damaged and people will lose confidence in the system.”

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Calling the opposition protests “unimportant,” Mr. Ahmadinejad suggested that they were the work of foreign agitators and journalists. . . . . But Mr. Ahmadinejad’s electoral rivals appeared to be holding firm in their protest against the vote. Mr. Moussavi issued a statement saying he had asked Iran’s Guardian Council, which must certify the election for it to be legal, to cancel the vote. He also said he was being monitored by the authorities, and was unable to join his followers. His campaign headquarters have been closed down, he said. Another candidate, the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, echoed Mr. Moussavi’s demand for the election to be canceled.

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“No one led these people in the streets,” said Basu, a 28 year-old opposition supporter who, like many others, was afraid to give his full name. “This is the least we can do — we cannot stay at home and watch them celebrate a fake election.” He opened his shirt to show long red welts on his chest where a Basij militia member had whipped him with a chain. Next to him, a female friend dressed in a black Islamic chador stood with a bloody scar on her forehead; she said she had been attacked by the police.

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My thoughts go out to Iranians who want the nightmare of Islamic fundamentalist rule to end.

Sunday Male Beauty

Unfriendly Winds for the GOP

I talk a lot about what has happened to the GOP since the days years ago when I was a GOP activist. I believe that two forces in particular have been in play that are somewhat intertwined: the rising influence of the Christian Right in the Part and the Party's ever increasing refusal to accept objective reality that times and the country's demographics are changing. In my view, much of refusal to face reality seems from the Christianists in the party who deny science, mental health knowledge, and that others should have the right to live their lives as they - not the Christianists - choose. A piece in today's Washington Post looks at what is happening and the conclusions are not good for Republicans. For the rest of us, it hopefully means that the poisonous influence of the Christian Right will lessen even though it will not disappear. Here are some highlights:

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For the past few months, political analysts and demographers have been poring over the results of the 2008 election and comparing them with presidential results from the past two decades. From whatever angle of their approach -- age, race, economic status, geography -- they have come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Almost all indicators are pressing the Republicans into minority status.

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What has brought this about? It's not just one thing -- it's everything. Start with the Democrats' success in the suburbs. Lang's formula is that demography and density have combined to help Democrats: They dominate not just the cities but also the urbanized suburbs that contain the largest share of the suburban population in America.

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Democratic strength in the counties around Philadelphia, around Detroit and in Northern Virginia have squeezed Republicans dramatically. Increasingly, Republican strength outside the urban areas counts for less. "There's just not enough rural folks and small-city people left in America in the key states that determine the electoral college to offset that difference," Lang said. "You're out of people."

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That's one geographical reality. The other, which became acute in 2008, is that outside the South, Republicans are in trouble. . . . . The South now accounts for a greater share of Republican strength than at virtually any time since the party's founding. That base is too narrow, as even Republicans know.

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Demographically, the forces at work have chipped away at what was once a GOP-leaning majority in the country. The most important is minorities' rising share of the vote. Whites accounted for 76 percent of the overall electorate last November, down from 85 percent in 1988. . . . Opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's Supreme Court nominee, because of her pride in being a Latina won't help solve that problem.
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Younger voters are more diverse demographically than older voters. In 2008, 62 percent were white, compared with 74 percent eight years earlier. Projections show young voters will become increasingly diverse. They are also less religious and more culturally liberal, two indicators of Democratic support.

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GOP strategist Mike Murphy described this in Time magazine as a coming Republican ice age. Republicans will need a major shift to begin to reverse these trends.

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Can the GOP change? Personally, I doubt it as long as the Party remains beholden to and largely controlled by the lunatic Christianist element that refuses to accept objective reality.

A Response to Those Who Urge Patience with Obama

I published a long comment on one of yesterday's posts about Obama's betrayal of LGBT Americans in the Department of Justice brief in support of DOMA. The writer urges patience and argues that LGBT citizens have nowhere to go but to hang with Obama and the Congressional Democrats who take our money, accept our labor on their campaigns, and then ignore us or pat us on the head like children and tell us to wait for change. I'm sorry, but I do not buy that argument. If you want my support, then deliver on you promises. I was at the Obama rally in Virginia Beach last year with some other gay friends and Obama's words on gay rights literally brought tears to our eyes - yet he apparently meant none of it. As Jon Davidson, Legal Director of Lambda Legal points out in a message to one of my fellow bloggers, the Obama Justice Department could have defended DOMA with out the gratuitous insults to LGBT citizens. Here is Jon's message which he said could be shared:

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Whether or not the administration felt a need to defend, there are many ways one can defend. The administration could have rested on the first two arguments raised in their papers (jurisdiction and standing) that these plaintiffs were not entitled to sue without arguing at this point that DOMA is constitutional. Doing that would not have waived those arguments.

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What they need to be asked is why they gratuitously went out of their way to make the outrageous arguments they unnecessarily included such as that DOMA does not discriminate based on sexual orientation or that the right at issue is not marriage but an unestablished right to "same-sex marriage" or that DOMA is somehow justified in order to protect taxpayers who don't want their tax dollars used to support lesbian and gay couples (while it's apparently fine to make lesbians and gay men pay the same taxes but be denied the benefits provided heterosexual couples).

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Their public statements about the filing try to sidestep these points. They absolutely knew they did not need to make these additional arguments, especially at this time and consciously decided to do so. I am seething mad.

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The administration has a way to redeem itself -- by handling the DOMA challenge filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates far differently. Unfortunately. The very same lawyer who filed this brief (Scott Simpson, who is a Bush holdover) has been assigned by the Department of Justice to handle that case for the government. The White House and the higher ups in the Department of Justice have the responsibility of ensuring that similar arguments are not repeated in that case.

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I have to take the fall for any scew ups by my staff and the same applies to Obama who, through his Attorney General, ultimately controls what happens at DOJ on this type of case. People need to stop making excuses for Obama and demand that he be held accountable