CNN Gets All Pissy When Confronted About Hate Group Guests

As long time readers know, nothing - well perhaps one of several things - drives me crazy like the mindless non-judgmental manner in which elements of the main stream media (e.g., CNN, the Washington Post, and many others) give platforms to hate merchants without ever mentioning or challenging their reprehensible backgrounds and/or actions. White supremacist lover Tony Perkins of Family Research Council ("FRC") is a case in point. The big question now is whether or not these alleged serious news outlets will have the balls to say "No" to those from newly registered hate groups such as FRC and the American Family Associations. These groups have been categorized in the same company as the Klu Klux Klan and other vile racist and anti-Semitic organizations which would never be given a main stream media platform. Make no mistake about it. Perkins and those like him are just as hateful and just as willing to resort to lies and potentially incite violence. And their goal is to brainwash the young and fill them with hate. It's time that CNN and every other news outlet that helps disseminate anti-gay hate be called out and held accountable. Dan Savage tried to do just that on CNN and CNN (not one of my favorite news outlets) failed the test and shut down the segment when Dan called them out. The video below shows what happened. Here's a highlight from Dan's comments:
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"There are no ‘two sides’ to the issue of LGBT rights. Right now one side is really using dehumanizing rhetoric. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels these groups as hate groups and yet the leaders of these groups, people like Tony Perkins, are welcomed onto networks like CNN to espouse hate directed at gays and lesbians. And similarly hateful people who are targeting Jews or people of color or anyone else would not be welcome to spew their bile on CNN."
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I applaud Dan's calling CNN out. We all need to be equally vigilant. Here's the video clip.
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Tuesday Male Beauty

Is America On the Edge of a Financial and Political Cliff?

There was a time when political parties of all stripes seemed to have concern for the overall well being of the country and some minimum shred of compassion for more unfortunate citizens. Sadly, that description seems no longer to apply to the Republican Party that seems concerned with the interests of two groups: (1) the extremely wealthy who want to pay less in taxes no matter the impact on the nation as a whole and (2) social conservatives who would be happy to see the nation revert back to a 17th century or earlier time frame when no social safety net existed. As for the nation's infrastructure or the health - indeed, the very lives - of the poor and down trodden, the mantra seems to be "who gives a damn, its all about me." As I have noted before many times, those who seem to care the least about the unfortunate (other than the extremely wealthy who have a Marie Antoinette mind set) are conservative Christians who display no compassion towards their fellow citizens. Indeed, hatred and open contempt are the main characteristics of how the "other" is viewed by these truly un-godly folk. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks at the possible blood bath that may approach as the GOP controlled House of Representatives seeks to weak havoc on the nation. Here are highlights:
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[O]ur nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize. . . . Some explanation: There’s a legal limit to federal debt, which must be raised periodically if the government keeps running deficits; the limit will be reached again this spring. And since nobody, not even the hawkiest of deficit hawks, thinks the budget can be balanced immediately, the debt limit must be raised to avoid a government shutdown. But Republicans will probably try to blackmail the president into policy concessions by, in effect, holding the government hostage; they’ve done it before.
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Now, you might think that the prospect of this kind of standoff, which might deny many Americans essential services, wreak havoc in financial markets and undermine America’s role in the world, would worry all men of good will.
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[T]he G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment. But, no . . .
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[O]n matters fiscal, the G.O.P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for. On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy — even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.
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Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits — an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.
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My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country. It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind.

Why People Should Not Give to the Salvation Army

As we move into the holidays, it is appropriate to again remember that one should walk past the Salvation Army's collection kettles without tossing in any form of contribution. The organization is decidedly discriminatory against LGBT citizens and vigorously endorse the deprivation of equal civil rights to LGBT Americans. I have made a point now for years to toss any mailings I receive from the Salvation Army directly into the trash and I most certainly do not throw coins or bills into the collection kettles all to frequently found in front of various shopping outlets. Bil Browning has a piece at The Bilerico Project that underscores why the Salvation Army should be shunned by LGBT individuals and their straight allies. Bigotry needs to carry a financial price. There are plenty of non-discriminatory charities that are far more deserving of your money and other contributions. Here are highlights from Bil's piece:
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In case you've forgotten, the holiday season is fast upon us. That means the Salvation Army bell ringers will be out in full force dunning shoppers for donations meant to help the needy and destitute. Unfortunately, the Salvation Army won't assist everyone - only those they deem sufficiently worthy.
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While many think of the group as just another charity, in truth the group is a religious sect that is notoriously anti-gay; you shouldn't give to the Salvation Army this holiday season if you support gay rights.
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Check out the video . . . for a laundry list of anti-gay policies and positions the Salvation Army has taken. You'll probably be shocked - and you definitely won't put any more coins in those big red buckets.

More Monday Male Beauty

U. S. Catholic Conference's Clueless New Leader

I previously noted the unfortunate signal from the American Catholic Church in the form of the election of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as the new Conference president. I'm not alone in my condemnation of the move towards reactionarism James Carroll, a columnist for the Boston Globe and Distinguished-Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University, has a pretty scathing piece in the San Francisco Sentinel which describes the American hierarchy as "willingly turn themselves into mascot-lobby for the Republican Right." With the pampered, corrupt, and thoroughly hypocritical hierarchy moving increasingly in an opposite direction from most American Catholics, one can only hope that more of the laity will vote with their feet and flee to the Episcopal Church and the ELCA which offer largely the same liturgy without the poisonous bitter queens in dresses. Here are some highlights:
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“My major priority,” New York’s Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said at his election last week as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “would be to continue with all vigor I can muster what’s already in place. It’s not like we’re in a crisis.”
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Hello? The Catholic Church not in a crisis? The moral authority of the Roman Catholic hierarchy is at its lowest ebb since the Inquisition. In the United States, the once-influential bishops have willingly transformed themselves into a mascot-lobby for the Republican right. “We bishops are the teachers,” one insisted this week, yet not even conservative Catholics actually take them seriously: Think of those right-wing Catholics on the Supreme Court who uphold the very same death penalty the bishops condemn. Vast populations of Catholic laity—not just liberals—are ashamed of the global episcopate for its persistence in enabling priestly sex abuse.
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That continues even now as the world’s Cardinals gathered in Rome on Friday for yet another do-nothing red-hat session on the abuse crisis. . . . . Catholic professional groups openly defy the hierarchy, as, for example, the Catholic Health Association did by supporting President Obama’s health care reform legislation, probably providing decisive Catholic legislators with just enough cover to vote yes. Even as the bishops met this week, the National Coalition of American Nuns denounced their silence about the scourge of suicides among young gays—yet what could bishops say, since their ferocious opposition to marriage equality is a pillar of gay demonization? No crisis? The same issue of the New York Times that featured Dolan’s election carried news of a growing movement of alternative, lay-run Catholic churches in the Netherlands and Belgium, where one priest said, “Something is beginning to crack.”
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But Dolan’s job, in sync with the mission given to every bishop by Pope Benedict XVI, is to reverse the changes of Vatican II—or what is left of them after the triumphal reaction of the last three decades. Cruelty is sacrosanct. . . . Timothy Dolan’s job is to put the best face on the reactionary hierarchy’s slow motion act of self-destruction. The surest sign of this crisis is the jovial conviction that there is no crisis.

Southern Poverty Law Center Adds FRC and AFA to Registered Hate Group List

OMG!! The spittle must be flying fast and furiously amongst the self-styled Christofascists at Family Research Council ("FRC") and the American Family Association ("AFA"), both of which have joined Traditional Values Coalition on the list of registered anti-gay hate groups compiled and maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC"). Make no mistake about it, it takes special dishonesty and viciousness to make SPLC's list which in effect puts FRC and AFA on a par with the Klu Klux Klan and some of the nastiest white supremacy groups. Given this new designation of these groups, it looks like its time for the IRS to reconsider any tax-exempt status heretofore afforded to these dishonestly named "educational" organizations. Give Tony Perkins' past ties to the Klan and other white supremacy groups, the ranking of FRC as a hate group is long overdue. Also now on the list of hate groups is Porno Pete's frightfully misnamed Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. Anyone who has followed LaBarbera's non-stop effort to denigrate gays knows that truth has nothing to do with his organization. Will the mainstream media finally stop giving a platform to these hate-based organizations? Sadly, probably not even though the common denominator with these groups is deliberate lies and the vicious dissemination of falsehoods. Here are highlights from SPLC's description of these newly registered hate groups:
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AMERICANS FOR TRUTH ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY: . . . AFTAH is notable for its posting of the utterly discredited work of Paul Cameron (of the Family Research Institute; see below), who has claimed that gays and lesbians live vastly shorter lives than heterosexuals. Among the Cameron propaganda published by AFTAH are 2007 claims that gays and lesbians in Norway and Denmark live 24 fewer years than heterosexuals. Reviewing that claim, Danish epidemiologist Morten Frisch found that it had no scientific basis . . .
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In 2007, LaBarbera claimed there was “a disproportionate incidence of pedophilia” among gay men — yet another false assertion (see story, p. 31). The same year, he posted an open letter to the Lithuanian people from long-time gay-basher Scott Lively (see Abiding Truth Ministries, above), who has made a series of false claims about gays running the German Nazi Party.
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FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL: Headed today by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia . . . in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”

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Perkins has his own unusual history. In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican State Rep. Louis “Woody” Jenkins of Louisiana, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Klan chieftain David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000 (reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure forms in a bid to hide the link to Duke. Five years later, on May 17, 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.”
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AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION: The AFA seeks to support “traditional moral values,” but in recent years it has seemed to specialize in “combating the homosexual agenda.” In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy. Taking a page from the anti-gay fabulist Scott Lively (see Abiding Truth Ministries, above), Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.”
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Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy.
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Gays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies. “Islam is a totalitarian political ideology,” Fischer said in August 2010. “It is as racist as the KKK. … Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different that granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.”
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One thing is clear: the leaders and supporters of these organizations are anything but "godly Christians" - they are hate merchants and liars, plain and simple.

Blogswarm of Love for Pam Spaulding!

A number of bloggers are creating a "blog swarm" of get well and best wishes to Pam Spaulding, the blog mistress of Pam's House Blend who had surgery today. Among the story lines being promoted are "how I met Pam" stories to which I would like to add my own. Here goes. I have been a fan of Pam's House Blend for several years but never had the privilege of meeting Pam until the LGBT Blogger Summit in Washington, D.C., orchestrated by Mike Rogers in early December, 2008. Pam is just as amazing and insightful in person as when she is analyzing and venting on the Blend. I often find myself wishing that I had her cutting flare with words and her ability to put out the facts and take down foes of equality for all citizens. Since our meeting nearly two years ago, I have been proud to count Pam as a friend and the boyfriend and I wish here a most speedy recover and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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Pam, please except hugs and kisses from Tidewater Virginia! You are truly an inspiration to many of us in the LGBT blogosphere.

The Real Reason Behind Opposition to DADT Repeal

I have long maintained that the real reason DADT exists is for the sole purpose of marginalizing gay Americans and institutionalize religious based anti-gay bigotry. Oh, yes, supporters of DADT whine and bleat about unit cohesion, troop readiness - anything and everything to avoid honestly admitting their real motivation: enshrining a particular religious belief/value into the civil and military laws. DADT's mere existence is an insult to the alleged freedom of religion promised by the U. S. Constitution - not to mention many state constitutions (like Virginia's) which likewise disingenuously purport to support religious freedom. DADT and the Marshall-Newman fly directly in the face of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a predecessor to the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. In separate pieces Andrew Sullivan and Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin wonderfully enunciate the point I have been making. First this from Andrew Sullivan:
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What we are asking of them [the Christianists and their puppets] is not simply to tolerate reluctantly the fact that some gay people refuse to be ashamed or closeted, but to conflate the symbol of the American soldier with a homosexual. There are very few emblems in American life that carry the weight, power and symbolism of the American soldier, the veteran, the men and women in uniform.
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To say that open gay men and women are serving their country in uniform is to say that they are fully citizens. It is this equal citizenship that simply cannot compute with the idea of homosexuality in the minds of a minority of the older generation.
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It moves the debate from "we tolerate you" to "we are you" and "you are us." The same with marriage equality. This is what the holdouts cannot tolerate. Because they realize they will not just have to tolerate but to honor a gay person.
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And over at Box Turtle Bulletin, Timothy Kincaid scores a direct hit with this analysis:
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[T]heir chief objection has nothing to do with the military, the fears of other soldiers, or even sensitivity to the religious teachings of chaplains. No. Their objection is based on the fear that open service would remove the stigma and hostility that is institutionalized by the DADT policy. They don’t care about military policy nearly as much as they do about condemning homosexuality and gay people.
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This fear of “mainstreaming” raises its head in the objections that Focus on the Family makes to anti-bullying campaigns. It’s present in debates over insurance for city employees. It shows up when a theme park has a gay day or when a television show creates a lesbian character or when a library includes a book with a plotline that speaks to the life of a gay youth.
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[They are] afraid that Americans are rejecting his [their] religion’s views including those about homosexuality and that it is – or soon will be – no longer mainstream thinking to engage in blanket condemnation of others based on their sexual orientation.
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If DADT is not repealed during the Lame Duck session, it will be a telling sign that religious freedom in the USA is dead and that the promises of the U. S. Constitution are a farce.

Pressure Builds in Australia for Gay Marriage

Yet another nation may be poised to soon leave the USA in the bigoted past as Australia's Prime Minister is finding herself faced with growing support across the country for same sex unions - and political costs if she continues to be a road block to progress. The phenomenon is but another example of the USA's failure to provide equality to all of its citizens while other nations deliver on America's false promise. The Sydney Morning Herald has two stories that look at the political and societal dynamics in Australia that suggest the country may soon move forward. The first story looks at Julia Gillard's political situation - here are highlights:
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It keeps getting harder for Julia Gillard to hold the line on gay marriage. Today's poll shows that not only do most Australians support the legal recognition of gay marriage by 57 per cent to 37 against. It also reveals that there could be political advantage for Labor to pursue this idea.
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The Herald/Nielsen poll shows that gay marriage is accepted by almost 90 per cent of Greens voters, two-thirds of Labor voters and 51 per cent of Coalition voters. So by supporting such a policy Gillard would not only be moving to put Labor into the new community mainstream. She would also be representing the great bulk of Labor voters, while making Labor more appealing to almost all Greens voters.
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By recognising same-sex marriages, Gillard would rob the Greens of a powerfully emotive point of differentiation. And today's poll shows that by running with gay marriage, Labor could stymie - the preferred word among political operatives is "wedge" - Tony Abbott's Coalition.
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By hewing to her position, Gillard is instead defending a view at odds with the mainstream and two-thirds of her own party's voters.
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A second piece looks at the growing frustration among progressives who are tired of religion interfering with civil liberties. Here are highlights:
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[I]t continues to be the rigid stance of Prime Minister Julia Gillard - who has ruled out changing the party's policy on the issue until Labor's national conference - that has arguably sparked the most discussion. And now, she's begun to attract some heavyweight celebrity criticism.
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Renowned expatriate actor Portia de Rossi today declared her dismay at Gillard's lack of leadership - and she did most articulately; with a passion hard to dismiss as mere Hollywood sideline sniping.
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[A] different type of gay dinosaur is still walking the earth with the political lay of the land for gay marriage remaining perfectly preserved in a tar pit of conservatism and tradition. The motion to be voted on today has ALP support but the PM remains firm against the idea of a conscience vote or a change to the Marriage Act, which currently defines marriage as between a man and woman.
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You've got to hope that as we enter a different paleontological age, these gay (marriage) dinosaurs evolve or die out.