South Carolina: Will Economics Trump Religious Extremism?

I have written many times about the increasing correlation between a state's social conservatism -translate: religious extremism and social/cultural backwardness - and declining economic development and prosperity. South Carolina is a perfect example of this phenomenon where the extremism and intolerance of the states large numbers of far right evangelical Christians don't exactly make the state a welcoming prospect for progressive and cutting edge businesses. To the extent the state attracts jobs, it often lower paying lower skills jobs like those at Amazon’s new distribution center in Lexington County outside of Columbia. The end result is that South Carolina has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates - something that to some extent is self-inflicted in my view. Now, with the GOP primaries in the offing, GOP voters are faced with having to decide whether they will continue their Bible beating or start focusing instead on economic issues. The Washington Post looks at this coming intra-party conflict. Here are highlights (the image above is from the Post as well):
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The South Carolina Republican primary has accurately predicted the GOP presidential nominee for the past three decades, often in campaigns that revolved around guns, God and gays.
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But with South Carolina saddled with a 10 percent unemployment rate — one of the highest in the nation — the struggling economy is upending the priorities of many so-called values voters, forcing GOP candidates to rewrite their campaign playbooks.
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South Carolina’s pivotal role could be enhanced in 2012 because the state is suffering economic woes that both Iowa, with its 6 percent jobless rate, and New Hampshire, where unemployment is 4.8 percent, have managed to avoid.
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These days, the GOP candidates swinging through the state are playing up their economic credentials to appeal to such voters. Former Utah governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman was in South Carolina recently, telling voters about his business experience with his family’s chemical company.
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Meanwhile, all of the GOP candidates, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who served as a Pennsylvania senator, have promoted their conservative stances on social issues. . . . . “The Republican morality issues are still important, but they are not nearly as important as the economy,” said Chris Drummond, a GOP consultant in South Carolina.
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Like Romney, Huntsman is a Mormon. But with the state battling double-digit unemployment, some say the religious issue does not resonate as it might have in the past. “With 19 percent unemployment in Marion County, do you think I care where you go to church?” Christmas asked. Vacant tobacco warehouses and abandoned textile mills dot the landscape in Marion County, providing reminders of the area’s once-vibrant economy.
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The economic predicament in Marion County, where unemployment was high long before the recession hit, is similar in much of northeastern South Carolina, a region struggling with high unemployment, an undereducated workforce and an uncertain future.
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“This is a conservative area, a conservative state,” said Eric Fry, a high school teacher who chairs Marion County’s Republican Party. “I know people don’t want to compromise their beliefs, but with the economic situation being what it is, I know they want answers there as well.”

Under Cover Investigation Confirms Marcus Bachmann's Clinics Practice Ex-Gay Therapy

I'm sorry if of late I seem obsessed with Michele Bachmann and her lisping and mincing husband, but the two nut cases just keep doing things that make it hard to ignore their lunacy - especially given their vitriolic statements against LGBT citizens. Now, as The Nation is reporting, Truth Win's Out did an under cover investigation and has confirmed that Marcus Bachmann's "Christian counseling" clinics engage in reparative therapy - yep, the therapy that the American Psychological Association has declared to be unethical because it doesn't work and can do serious harm to patients who find themselves unable to "change." Like most of the quacks that practice this snake oil therapy, it appears Bachmann and his clinics are NOT licensed even though Minnesota law requires licensing for psychologists - which is what Bachmann holds himself out to be - family therapists, and counselors. One has to wonder what loop whole this disingenuous operation is using to avoid the state licensing requirements. And, of course, those who are so stridently anti-gay usually are the self-loathing closet cases. The obvious question is: can the country afford to have anyone who subscribes to such crazy, discredited bullshit in high office? Here are highlights from the story in The Nation:
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In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. “He said it was wrong, an abomination, that it was something he would not tolerate in his house,” Ramirez recalls. A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.
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There has been a great deal of speculation that his [Marcus Bachmann] clinics, which have received $161,000 in state and federal funding, try to cure homosexuality—and the chatter has only grown louder since his comments likening gays to “barbarians” who “need to be educated” and “disciplined” surfaced in the blogosphere last week. Marcus Bachmann has denied these allegations. “That’s a false statement,” he replied when the Minneapolis City Pages asked if his clinic tried to cure gays. And until now there was no firm evidence to back these allegations up. But information obtained by The Nation suggests that Bachmann & Associates therapists do, in fact, try to change sexual orientation. It also sheds new light on the Bachmanns’ embrace of the controversial ex-gay movement and related psychological approaches, which portray homosexuality as a disease to be rooted out.
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In late June, a Truth Wins Out activist named John Becker donned two hidden cameras—one embedded in a wristwatch—and attended five treatment sessions at Bachmann’s Lake Elmo clinic. Becker, who is openly gay, presented himself as a committed Christian who was struggling with homosexuality. The video he collected seems to confirm Ramirez’s allegations that staff members at Bachmann & Associates try to change sexual orientation. Becker’s therapist (another of Marcus Bachmann’s employees) repeatedly assured him that homosexuality could be overcome. “
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To curb Becker’s gay impulses, the therapist urged him to pray and read Scripture and suggested Becker “develop” his masculinity. He also encouraged him to find a “heterosexual guy” to act as act as an AA-type sponsor. Later, he referred Becker to Outpost Ministries, a church that helps “the sexually and relationally broken”—in other words, homosexuals—“find healing and restoration through relationship with Jesus Christ.”
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Both Bachmann & Associates and the Bachmann campaign declined to comment for this story, though in the past Marcus Bachmann has insisted his clinics don’t push people to change their sexual orientation. “If someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay a homosexual, I don’t have a problem with that,” he told the Minneapolis City Pages. Nevertheless, the techniques the therapist at his Lake Elmo clinic used were typical of so-called reparative therapies, which cast homosexuality as a mental disorder and see conversion to heterosexuality as the only healthy outcome.
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[T]he [APA] group concluded that there was scant evidence that sexual orientation could be changed. What’s more, it found that attempting to do so could cause depression and suicidal tendencies among patients. Based on these findings, in 2009 the APA voted to repudiate reparative therapy by a margin of 125 to 4.
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The obvious conclusions - beside the fact that BOTH Bachmann's are crazy - are (1)that Marcus Bachmann is a liar when it comes to telling the truth about his ex-gay therapy practices, and (2) state licensing requirements need to be imposed on quack operations like Bachmann's clinics to protect the public.

More Friday Male Beauty

Pentagon suspends DADTand Accepts Applications from Gays

Anyone remotely close to to Elaine Donnelly or Tony Perkins when they get this news had best be wearing foul weather gear - the spittle must be flying by the bucket full! What is the news? The Pentagon has announced that it has suspended any more discharges under DADT in the wake of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Better yet - assuming one is not a Christofascist - is that the military will begin accepting applications from prospective recruits who identify themselves as openly gay. What on earth will Ms. Donnelly and her bogus organization, the Center for Military Readiness, do to shake money from the pockets of the ignorant and bigoted. The Army Times has details on the Pentagon's announcement. Here are some highlights:

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The Pentagon has ordered a halt to all separations of gay troops under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and will begin accepting applications from prospective recruits who identify themselves as homosexuals.
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The moratorium issued Friday came after a ruling Wednesday by a federal appeals court in California ordering the Defense Department to immediately stop enforcing the law. The court said the law is unconstitutional because it treats gay Americans differently under the law.
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Meanwhile, defense officials will continue to prepare for the law’s formal repeal, which Congress approved in December. . . . . Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he expected certification to occur in late July or early August.
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In October, the Pentagon raised the bar for separation of gay troops by requiring the civilian service secretaries and the Pentagon’s top lawyer to approve any separation. Since then, four troops have been separated under the law.

Bachmann Pledges to Ban Porn; Says Homosexuality is a Choice

Erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann seems Hell bent to provide additional proof that she's a religious fanatic nutcase. Think Progress is reporting that Bachmann has signed a pledge created by THE FAMiLY LEADER, an intensely anti-gay Chrisitanist group in Iowa that helped spearhead the removal of three justices from the Iowa Supreme Court. The utter batshitery contained the pledge goes on and on and, while perhaps playing well with the Kool-Aid drinking Christianist set, ought to scare the Hell out of voters still tethered to reality who oppose a Christian Taliban theocracy in this country. Should other GOP candidates sign the pledge, it will be yet further proof that the Republican Party is now an anti-knowledge sectarian extremist party. As Think Progress notes:
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By signing the pledge Bachmann “vows” to “uphold the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman” by committing herself to 14 specifics steps. The ninth step calls for the banning of “all forms” of pornography. The pledge also states that homosexuality is both a choice and a health risk.

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The full details of the pledge signed by Bachman can be found here. Here are some highlights of the religious based lunacy:

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HOMOSEXUALITY IS A CHOICE: The preface to the pledge reads, “Social protections…have been evaporating as we have collectively ‘debased the currency’ of marriage…in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclination are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.” Footnote 8 reiterates this notion.

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HOMOSEXUALITY IS LIKE POLYGAMY, ADULTERY, POLYANDRY: Vow 4 requires the candidate to pledge “Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage…through statutory, bureaucratic, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex.”

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PORNOGRAPHY SHOULD BE BANNED: Vow 9 stipulates that the candidate must “support human protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” and protect them from “seduction into promiscuity and all forms of pornography…and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.”

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REJECT SHARIA ISLAM: Vow 11 requires the candidate to reject Sharia law.

Friday Male Beauty

Quote of the Day - John Aravosis

Over at America Blog Gay John Aravosis asks the question that I often raise on this blog in terms of why does anyone listen to anything the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy says on any issues of supposed morality given the self-displayed moral bankruptcy of these nasty men in dresses? Here's John's phrasing of the question:

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Once again it must be asked, why do we care what people who embraced the rape of children think about anything? They're the ones who should be banned from going anywhere within 1000 feet of a child.

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John asked this question in reaction to a Christian Post story about Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio directing all Catholic churches and schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn to ban state lawmakers who voted for gay marriage in New York.

Will the Spread of Gay Marriage Reduce "Mixed" Marriages With Straights?

One of the major points of disgust I have with the bogus "ex-gay" agenda pushed by Christianist organizations and so-called reparative therapy "ministries" is that they do not seem to give a tinkers damn about the straight spouses that knowingly or unknowingly find themselves married to a closeted gay or lesbian. The agenda is all about "changing" the gay or lesbian spouse straight and the favorite proof of the "ex-gay" conversion is marriage to an opposite sex spouse. The collateral damage that is almost guaranteed to flow to the straight spouse and any children of the marriage when it ends means nothing to the likes of the folks at Exodus International.
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Also missing from the mix is any concern that the straight spouse marrying an "ex-gay" has been cheated out of having a marriage to someone who is heterosexual even if the closeted LGBT spouse remains faithful and remains in the marriage. No, sadly, the political agenda of the Christianists to be able to parade "ex-gays" before the public, legislators and judges in their quest to denigrate and marginalize LGBT rights trumps all else. It's disgusting and, to me, demonstrates the utter moral bankruptcy of ex-gay proponents. People like, it appears, Marcus Bachmann, the husband of the seriously untethered Michele Bachmann.. A column in Huffington Post looks at how the spread of gay marriage may reduce these unfortunate marriages. Here are highlights:
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Whether straight men and women know it or not, New York's new Gay Marriage Act will have an enormous impact on them. The reason? It will eliminate or at least drastically reduce the likelihood of gays attempting to conceal or even change their orientation through heterosexual marriage.
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In the past, . . . . most lesbians and gay men married opposite-gender spouses and tried as best they could to fit into the heterosexual mould their society expected, not infrequently indulging in clandestine gay liaisons.
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These are the marriages that the Gay Marriage Act will mostly end. And some of its most fervent supporters have been the heterosexual spouses of closeted homosexuals. These gay husbands and their wives and ex-wives, and lesbian wives and their husbands and ex-husbands number in the millions, and number in the millions -- between 1.7 and 3.4 million -- and are increasingly speaking out about how their experience has affected them personally.
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The Straight Spouse Network, for instance, use a virtual community "for all the millions of us who find that we are married or in a long term relationship with someone who we find out is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or just not sure about that." Television's Fran Drescher's show Happily Divorced is inspired by her real-life experience as a straight woman whose husband reveals, post-divorce, that he is gay.
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But the right to gay marriage will reduce but not eliminate these marriages; only eradicating homophobia will do that. There remains a chasm between official policy and the realities of personal and social life: parental rejection, social ostracism or mockery, and physical danger that includes being bashed as a "fag." Coming out can still be perilous, and many young gays prefer the safety of being closeted.
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For the first time in history, young people are growing up in the presence of legally sanctioned gay marriage (and divorce), an experience that will influence how they shape their lives in a world that is marching away from homophobia and allowing gays and lesbians to unite in marriage, to raise their children, and to expect to receive the same rights and to be subject to the same obligations as heterosexual spouses. As more gay men and women decide to marry, they will shore up the very institution whose decline the wider society mourns.

More Thursday Male Beauty

FRC: Pray For The Criminalization Of Homosexuality

I've talked before about the bizarre upside down morality of the Christian Right which has taken a religion that per the Gospels themselves should focus on love of neighbor and forgiveness of others and turned it instead into and unrelenting message of hatred. Hatred of gays, hatred of blacks, hatred of Hispanics, hatred of immigrants - indeed, hatred of just about everyone but for the cadre of haters themselves. Among those leading the charge with the banner of hatred is Family Research Council ("FRC") which time and time again proves the Southern Poverty Law Center 100% on target when it added to FRC to its list of registered hate groups. FRC latest missive of hate is a call for its Kool-Aid drinking followers to basically pray for the criminalization of homosexuality. Never mind the destroyed lives - and murders - such laws produce. Right Wing Watch has details on this foul "call to prayer." Here are details:
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In the Family Research Council’s latest prayer target list, the organization asks people to pray for countries, Malawi in particular, that have laws criminalizing sodomy. The FRC believes that they are facing unfair pressure from the U.S. to decriminalize homosexuality, and accuses the Obama administration of “pushing homosexuality, using taxpayer dollars.” According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Malawi is one of more than 70 countries that outlaw “same-sex relations between consenting adults” and earlier this year “Malawi enacted a law criminalizing homosexuality among women. Homosexuality is already illegal for men in that county. If convicted, a defendant could receive up to five years’ imprisonment.” Last year, a gay couple in Malawi was sentenced to fourteen years in jail.
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The FRC’s support of policies like Malawi’s should come as no surprise, as the group backs the criminalization of homosexuality and has previously criticized the State Department for calling on countries to decriminalize homosexuality. Now, the FRC wants people to pray that God “give targeted nations courage to withstand U.S. coercion” and “forgive us for this evil”: May God restrain the Obama administration from promoting the LGBT agenda at home and abroad. May He give targeted nations courage to withstand U.S. coercion! Forgive us for this evil (Ps 94:16; Is 3:9-15; Jer 7:3-11; Lk 17:2; Rom 1:32; Jas 3:13-18; Jude 7).
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And people wonder why Christianity is dying in educated portions of the world! FRC makes the case for putting as much distance as possible between one's self and Christianity. Meanwhile, where are the "good Christians"? Once again yielding the field to the hate merchants with little more than a whimper. The Christianists at FRC are guilty of sins of commission. The "good Christians" by their silence are guilty of sins of omission.