More Sunday Male Beauty

Would that the world was more accepting of love and tenderness.

Santorum launches C.U.M - WTF Was He Thinking?

Proving once again that he's not only a bigoted homphobe but also a complete idiot, Rick Santorum has launched a fundraising effort called Conservatives Unite Moneybomb, a/k/a CUM. Given his Google search problems and his associated nickname of "Frothy Mix", you would think that someone on Santorum's staff might have thought through the consequences of this new acronym. But apparently that would be expecting to much who wants to be the leader of the world's leading super power. Needless to say, may in the LGBT blogosphere are laughing their asses off. Here's a sampling from my blogger friend Pam Spaulding:

This comes from the land of “you can’t make this sh*t up.” GOP Clown Car occupant, ace homophobe and bearer of a redefined surname that has become a giant political problem for him on Google, Rick Santorum is not doing himself any more favors by launching the Conservatives United Moneybomb, or C.U.M. for shorthand. Hat tip to Daily Kos front-pager Scott Wooledge on Twitter.

Admittedly, we already knew that Santorum is obsessed with gay sex, but this is over the top.

14 Year Old Tennessee Boy Commits Suicide to Escape Bullying

The death toll from anti-gay bullying sadly continues to rise. Even as Rick Santorum, the Catholic Church hierarchy, the National Organization for Marriage and the leading anti-hate groups such as Family Research Council and American Family Association continue to ratchet up their anti-gay demagoguery. Anti-gay bullying continues unabated for the simple reason that anti-gay religious and political forces continue to make anti-gay bigotry socially and politically acceptable at least in some circles. As I have noted before, those who market in anti-gay bigotry have blood on their hands and are equally responsible with those who have bullied LGBT youth and driven them to see suicide as their best option. It's one of the principal reasons I have come to have little but contempt for far right Christians and their political whores in the Republican Party. LGBT youth are literally dying as a result of the religious based hate and shameless political opportunism.

The latest victim of this campaign of hate is 14 year old Phillip Parker of Gordonsville, Tennessee. As seems to be the norm with these tragic deaths, Parker's parents reported the bullying problem to their son's school which true to form did nothing. Meanwhile, the "good Christians" continue to sit on their thumbs rather that challenge the hate merchants who wrap themselves in false piety and the banner of Christianity. Here are highlights from WSMV-TV 4 on the latest bullying victim:

A Gordonsville boy's parents say bullying caused their son to take his own life. Phillip Parker, 14, died this week. His parents said he was constantly bullied for being gay. More than 100 people gathered in Gordonsville on Saturday night, grieving the loss of Phillip.

Phillip's family said they reported their concerns over their son's bullying to Gordonsville High School on multiple occasions, but the bullying by a group of students just got worse.

An official with Smith County Schools told Channel 4 they are now planning how to handle a crisis situation with students Monday. Friends added they are planning to set up a memorial fund in Phillip's name but haven't made the arrangements just yet.

As I noted to the boyfriend, until "good Christians" begin to start loudly and actively challenging the haters of the Christian Right, my shadow is not going to darken a church door for any reason or occasion. Christianity has become something truly foul and toxic.

Former Newt Campaign Staff - Callista Gingrich, "It's All About Her"

As noted before, Newt Gingrich is a thoroughly self-centered and egotistical man. And based on a story in The New Yorker, he may be perfectly matched with his former mistress, now wife Callista Gingrich, who according to a former Gingrich staffer is "the single most self-centered person I’ve run into in politics — it’s all about her." Bizarrely, Callista Gingrich makes quite a show of her Catholicism which is surprising given the fact that per the official Catholic Church teaching, she's an adulterer. Some might think me bitchy for looking at Ms. Gingrich, but given the far right's penchant for maligning Michelle Obama, what's good for the goose ought to be good for the gander. Here are some excerpts from The New Yorker story:

As a couple, the Gingriches are a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife in reverse: he is pudgy and soft-featured, with droopy jowls and hooded eyes, while she is slender, with a sharply angled nose and bright-blue eyes that are always wide open. Her hair is platinum blond and very stiff, with one remarkable lock styled into an immobile, upward swoosh.

Though Callista is central to Gingrich’s life, her public role in his campaign has been largely ornamental. She accompanies him on the trail, smiling behind him at events; in December, she appeared with him in a Christmas video to ask, “Is there anything more inspiring than American towns and neighborhoods brightly lit for the holidays?” But she does not have a stump speech, and though she’s happy to exchange pleasantries with reporters, she has not been granting interviews, with the exception of a brief on-camera conversation with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Callista Gingrich is a reminder of her husband’s wayward past, which may explain why she is the only one of the Republican candidates’ spouses to keep quiet.

According to current and previous staff members and friends, Mrs. Gingrich wields a great deal of decision-making power. Of the notorious Greek cruise, one former Gingrich strategist told me, “She said, ‘Either go on this vacation or we’re done.’ ” There were rules, he said, about “how many nights he could be away and what time he had to be home for dinner—which led to a huge abuse of private planes which we could not afford. There’s a sense that, I’m not gonna have a third failed marriage.”

[A] former strategist had a different assessment. “She’s the single most self-centered person I’ve run into in politics—it’s all about her. . . . The strategist allowed that the marriage has been good for Newt: “This is the most adult relationship the guy’s ever had.” But he suggested that it hasn’t been good for his campaign. “The core problem was that he was not willing to do the things he’d have to do to run for President. And Callista did not want him to run for President. That’s why he had to buy her so much damn jewelry.”

She does not seem like a forty-five-year-old, or at least not like a forty-five-year-old of this era. She has the style and smile of an astronaut’s wife, even in her downtime. Once, in Cedar Rapids, I happened to run into her in the women’s bathroom at the airport. In her suit and pearls, with her stiff coiffure, she looked as if she had just exited a beauty parlor in 1962.

Callista met Newt Gingrich while she was working for Gunderson, and, after she took a job as a clerk with the House Agriculture Committee, they began their affair. Her parents learned about it only when they returned from a camping trip and found dozens of messages from reporters on their answering machine. . . . At that time, Gingrich was leading the charge against Bill Clinton for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, an intern more than twenty years his junior. As it happened, Callista was a congressional staffer twenty-three years Gingrich’s junior, the same age as his daughter Jackie.

Many conservative voters, particularly evangelicals, do not want to see just evolution or mellowing, though; they want to see repentance for what they view as profound transgressions. “Initially, my reaction to Newt Gingrich and to Callista is that the third wife doesn’t get to be the First Lady,” Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, told me.

Jason (Molotov) Mitchell, a Christian television producer who has linked Obama to Nazism, released a video in which he accused Gingrich—“the Kim Kardashian of the G.O.P.”—of being “the walking, talking definition of untrustworthy,” sneered at Callista for being “quite the missionary,” and asserted that “Newt and Callista are the last role models we want our sons and daughters looking up to.”

Callista was at his side, wearing a bright-red skirt suit and pearls, nodding in approval as her husband said the same things he’d been saying all week: That he wanted to give Americans “paychecks, not food stamps.” That he would be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. That he would change “the entire pattern of how Washington operates.” Callista watched and smiled and listened, the things she has to do the most these days. On the campaign bus, asked if her mind ever wanders at these events, she had replied, “No,” with a cheeky smile. “I hang on his every word.”

Santorum's Honorary Florida Chairman: Gays "Make God Want to Vomit":

Having taken a third place drubbing in South Carolina, Rick Santorum apparently believes he needs to step up his gay bashing as he moves on to Florida. Hence his scheduled appearance today at the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, home of homophobe extraordinaire and Santorum honorary Florida Campaign chairman, Rev. O'Neal Dozier (pictured at left). Dozier doesn't hold back on his anti-gay hate nor does he hold back carrying water for white Christianists that would be most happy if segregation (or perhaps black slavery) were still the law of the land.

Dozier claims to be an unabashed Christian dominionist and has stated that gays "make God want to vomit." Frankly, Dozier makes me want to vomit not only because of his anti-gay extremism, but also because of his stupidity - i.e., if one looks carefully at the dominionist agenda, the ruling Christians are all going to be white. I'd also question how long it will be - given Dozier's hysteria over gays - before we see Dozier accused of misconduct like disgraced bishop Eddie Long. Mother Jones has a piece that looks at Santorum's truly nasty honorary campaign chairman. Here's a sampling:

While the network news shows spend this Sunday marveling over Newtmentum in South Carolina, Rick Santorum will quietly make his first stop in Florida, site of the next primary on January 31. He'll be dropping in to see the honorary chairman of his state campaign—a Bush-connected Islamophobic pastor who says gays "make God want to vomit."

Dozier opened his church in 1985 and immediately began preaching a different kind of gospel. "We teach and preach on the cultural issues," he says in a recent video. "We also teach and preach on the war on terror. We teach and preach on the dangers of Islam and Islamic fascism here." He says he was heavily influenced by the work of the Rev. D. James Kennedy, a founding father of the Christian right who started the annual Reclaiming America for Christ political conference at his church complex just down the street in Fort Lauderdale.

As Republicans courted him, Dozier continued to express some of his most extreme views. At a Reclaiming America convention in 2003, Dozier declared that "We should take control of every facet of society." He added that God was "100 percent for capital punishment. Oh, yeah, God knew some were going to slip through, a few innocent ones. He knew that. But you cannot have a society without capital punishment."

He reserved his greatest fervor for that "paramount of sins," homosexuality—which he declared was "something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit."

In 2006, he declared war on a local Islamic group trying to build a mosque in the neighborhood. "One day," he intoned, "our grandchildren will live under the grips of sharia law. . . . By the summer of 2006, Crist and Jeb Bush had both dumped him.

But the rise of tea party politics gave Dozier a new calling. He campaigned vigorously for Rep. Allen West, an African-American conservative who shares Dozier's views on gays and Muslims. . . . "The tea party is a godly ordained party," he's said. At one recent event, he expanded the thesis: "God would never ordain a government to take from the rich to give to the poor, you see, so therefore God is not a socialist. God is not a Robin Hood."

Those sentiments, and Dozier's revitalized reputation in the black community, seem to have struck the right chord with Santorum's campaign.

Sunday Male Beauty

MSNBC Continues to Give Hate Group Leader a Platform

Few things drive me more crazy that the lazy main stream media and its continued use of hate group leaders for interviews as if they were legitimate spokesman who had either relevant credentials or lead legitimate organizations. If that's the standard for an interview invitation, why not invite the Imperial Wizard of the KKK? Especially, if the invitee is Tony Perkins who certainly has his white supremacist ties. Once again MSNBC proved that it has no journalistic standards by having Perkins appear on its Friday morning show where Perkins laughably claimed social conservatives weren't judgmental (not once was Perkins challenged). By that standard, I guess whites who lynched blacks in the old South weren't anti-black. Think Progress looks at the ongoing bullshit being given a platform by vile hate merchants like Perkins. Here are some highlights:

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins appeared on MSNBC this morning to discuss last night’s GOP presidential debate and the recent revelations that Newt Gingrich allegedly asked his second wife for an open marriage.

The conservative leader — who regularly condemns gay people, “churns out brochures that compare same-sex marriages to those bonds which might exist between a man and a horse,” likens gays to terrorists, calls LGBT rights a battle of “good versus evil,” and claims gay teens kill themselves because they know that they’re “abnormal” — expressed concern about Gingrich’s personal past, but also raised questions about the wisdom of asking about his marriage during the debate. Ultimately, he suggested that Evangelical Christians are “not judgmental” and understanding, and could embrace a candidate who has sinned:

PERKINS: More than anybody, Evangelicals understand the story of Redemption, that people make mistakes and there can be a turning point. The tension becomes — have we reached that turning point on these issues and were they mistakes, were they character flaws that remain….People don’t want to be seen as that judgmental, because they’re not judgmental, but at the same time, they’re having some serious questions about the character of the candidate.

Does anyone have a vomit bag handy? Shame on MSNBC for providing a platform for a man who is best defined by his hatred of others - and not just hatred of gays.

A Christianist Sexual Morality Chart

Click image to enlarge.

Nothing gets the Christianists more in a sweaty dither than SEX. Their emotional/psychological problems on the issue are immense even though in their hearts most I suspect desperately want wild rambunctious sex desperately - especially the tortured closeted gays (and, of course, Catholic priests and Baptist pastors, preferably with minors). The chart set out above from the Friendly Atheist - I found it via Joe.My.God - lays out the twisted analysis of when sex is OK for the tortured fundamentalist/conservative Catholic crowd. Obviously, the most important criteria is that sex NOT be enjoyable.

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on Gingrich

BREAK DOWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRIMARY VOTERS:

I believe Newt Gingrich is a despicable man who is willing to say and do whatever advances his agenda and further inflates his already Goodyear blimp sized ego. But he is also symptomatic of a political party that is becoming more sick, racist and divisive by the day. Andrew Sullivan summed Gingrich and his win in South Carolina most succinctly:

In a state where African-Americans make up 28 percent of the electorate and 1 percent of the voters in the primary today. . . . . what an indictment of a party that in a diverse state, 99 percent of the voters were white.

If I were a Republican, I'd be ashamed. But Gingrich won, I think, because shame is alien to him. Especially when it comes to race.

Gingrich Wins South Carolina - Panic Grips the GOP Establishment

With serial adulterer Newt Gingrich's strong win in South Carolina several things are notable. The first is that obviously a considerable number of moronic evangelical Christians fell for Gingrich's phony contrition and victim-hood spin because Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum came in a distant third place finish. The second is that when one tries to be all things to all people and flip flops like a bouncing ping pong ball as Mitt Romney has done, you can end up losing large portions of those you are seeking to court. The question soon become one of who are you pretending to be today? The other notable thing is the panic - if not out right terror - within the GOP establishment that a loose canon like Gingrich is derailing their planned coronation of Romney and likely going to continue the demolition derby series of primary contests. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the aftermath of Gingrich's win. Here are some excerpts:

Reactions to Newt Gingrich's stunning and impressive victory in the South Carolina primary form a symphony. First, of course, we hear the cheers of South Carolina Republicans who have chosen their champion. From Ronald Reagan in 1980 through John McCain in 2008, the winner of this primary has always gone on to be the Republican nominee.

Then, of course, we can hear the buttons popping from Newt Gingrich's shirt as his ego swells to Macy's parade size. If you listen carefully, you can hear the soft sobs of Mitt Romney and his consultants, crying in their chocolate milk.

But above it all we can hear the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth of the Republican establishment as Gingrich's victory sends them into full-blown panic. I'm not talking about mere fear, nor normal nervousness. Not even the feeling you get when the captain says, "We've lost power in one of our four engines." No, this is worse. Worse even than when your doctor says, "I don't like the looks of that shadow on the X-ray."

This is terror. Chest-clutching, breath-sucking, soul-shaking panic. This is your teenage daughter telling you, "I think I'm in trouble." This is a Turkish border guard pulling you into a holding room when you've got a baggie of coke in your pocket. This is what George H.W. Bush famously called "deep doo-doo."

The Republican Party has never seen anything like it. Republicans are hierarchical, orderly, disciplined—everything the Democrats are not. They nearly always nominate the guy who was runner-up last time . .

Gingrich won the South Carolina primary not because of advertising, but rather because of his debate performances. Eighty-eight percent of South Carolina Republicans said the debates were important to making up their minds, and in the two key debates, Gingrich hit every GOP erogenous zone. . . . Gingrich knows his party's base, and the base loves both the coded language and attacking anyone who calls them on it.

Between now and the Jan. 31 Florida primary, we will hear a furious, frenzied response from the Republican establishment. Team Romney has already spent $7 million on TV ads there—Team Gingrich just $800. Not $800,000. Just 800 bucks. Look for popular former governor Jeb Bush to endorse Romney in the Sunshine State, leading a parade of establishmentarians.

Yep, the entertainment will continue as the free for all moves to Florida.