Bullied Gay Minnesota Teen Jumps to His Death

With an anti-gay marriage amendment on the November ballot, the anti-gay vitriol from the "godly Christian" crowd and child rapist protecting Catholic Church hierarchy has been high in Minnesota.  We'll never know if some of that anti-gay rhetoric encouraged Jay “Corey” Jones' tormentors in their bullying.  Bullying which Jones' father says played a major factor in the 17 year old's leap from a pedestrian bridge.  The blood on the hands of the Christianists continues unabated and what is most disturbing is that the godly folk don't even seem to give a damn.  The level of callousness and plain evil is shocking and certainly is part of what is prompting the millenial generations growing exodus from organized religion.  Here are excerpts from the Post Bulletin on this sad but all too familiar story:

Bullying because of his sexual orientation played “a big part” in the suicide of a 17-year-old Century High School student on Sunday, according to the boy's father.  Jay'Corey Jones knew he was gay from a young age and was bullied for a number of years because of it, suffering depression as a result, said to his father, JayBocka Strader of Rochester.

"He said all of his life they always picked on him," Strader said. "He'd still try to keep his head up at school, but then he'd come home and be really sad about it."

Jones, a member of Century's gay-straight alliance, had an image on his Facebook page that said, "Gay & Proud." He was open about his sexuality and occasionally wore tight, colorful tank tops and short-shorts to school, Strader said.

"He just got really depressed about it because the guys weren't accepting him," Strader said.  Jones jumped from a pedestrian bridge near Century High School on Sunday, according to police.

In response to an inquiry from the Post-Bulletin, schools Superintendent Michael Muñoz issued a statement acknowledging there are issues related to bullying in the district. He did not directly address Jones' situation.  The district is in the planning stages of providing training and support for students, staff and families, Muñoz said, and will continue anti-bullying collaborations with Gov. Mark Dayton’s recently formed anti-bullying task force, Rochester police and others in the community.

I hope Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, the Catholic Church hierarchy and similar hate merchants are happy with this latest fruit of their handiwork.  

 

Will the GOP Evolve or Die?

Michael Gerson, a former head speech writer and a senior policy adviser to President George W. Bush, has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the GOP's long term suicide if it doesn't "evolve" on the issue of gay rights and gay marriage.  Like it or not, the aging gay-hating white Christianist base of the GOP is literally dying off (and none too soon, in my view) leaving the party increasingly at odds with the younger generations.  While they may not always vote currently, younger voters reflect the political future and the Republican Party seems Hell bent in permanently  on gay rights issues and women's issues.  Here are some column highlights:

Principled or calculating or a bit of both, President Obama’s choice on gay marriage is a bet on the political future — a wager on the views and values of the millennial generation making its long march through American institutions.    It is a group in which Obama still has broad support but which he no longer inspires as he once did. “The Obama generation,” says Brookings scholar William Galston, “lasted about five years.” Those ages 18 to 24 are less enthusiastic about Obama than are those ages 25 to 29.  .   .   .  Obama’s gay-marriage shift is not likely to change this dramatically.

But looking beyond a single election, it is undeniable that America is in the midst of a large, consequential shift in the attitudes of the rising generation. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Berkley Center at Georgetown University found millennials to be less religiously affiliated than their parents. A majority thinks that government “is getting too involved in the issue of morality.”

 In the 2006 data sample that informed the first edition of Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s indispensable “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” 25 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds described their religious preference as “none.” The result of the 2011 sample, printed in the second edition, was 33 percent. In five years, support for gay marriage in that age group went from 48 percent to 60 percent. Those describing premarital sex as “never wrong” went from 34 percent to 44 percent.

[T]he baseline of social liberalism is starting higher than in previous generations, with major political consequences as this cohort works its way through the decades. It is easy to infer that the Republican Party — as the more religious and culturally conservative party — is doomed in the long run.

Republicans and conservatives will be forced to make some adjustments over time. The millennial shift will influence the way conservatives argue. The tone of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum on social issues during the recent primary season — itself a throwback to the early days of the religious right — will not be an option.

This trend will influence the coalitions that Republicans build. It will make less and less sense to aggressively alienate groups of voters holding socially conservative values — Latinos in particular — based on other issues. Lost ground among younger, unmarried voters will need to be gained somewhere.  And the generational shift will inevitably influence the fights conservatives choose to make. Even a significant portion of millennials who regard homosexuality as immoral support gay marriage out of a commitment to pluralism.

The immediate political influence of cultural debates is overestimated. But the impact of a generational shift in cultural attitudes is only beginning.

As the shift continues, we can expect to see and hear even more hysteria and stridency from the Christianists and Tea Party crowd - a segment of society that, if we are lucky, will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Anne Hathaway - An Amazing Ally

Click image to enlarge

My oldest daughter posted this quote from Anne Hathaway that to my think states the real measure of common human decency - something lost to the Christianists and the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.  Like myself, Hathaway is a former Catholic who had had enough of the Church's anti-gay bigotry and hypocrisy.

Being Out Can Change Lives - Other Evolutions

For a long time now a number of LGBT organizations have stressed the importance of living out of the closet and through your daily lives going about the task of changing hearts and minds.  It's not always an easy thing to do, especially for those of us living in what are basically gay hating states like Virginia where official government policy seeks to denigrate our rights and dignity on a daily basis.  But over time being out and proud if you will can and does lead to others coming to the realization that they need to reevaluate past views and prejudices.  I was flattered to see these remarks by North Carolina blogger Bob Felton who like myself sees the insidious damage that is done to lives and the nation under the guise of religiosity.  Here are some excerpts:

Twenty-five years ago, for instance, I doubt that I would have thought well of same-sex couples adopting children. But after I became an adoptive father and learned how much genuine harm our child welfare system actually does to children, I became an early but cautious supporter, reasoning that an untraditional home couldn’t possibly be worse than what was (and still is) happening.

Nor did I understand how deeply and needlessly estranged gays too often are from the mainstream of civil life until I began to read Andrew Sullivan’s and Michael Hamar’s blogs.

I was raised among, and worked among, decent and well-educated people, and it wasn’t until I moved to a seminary-dominated town in North Carolina that I began to sense the squalor and inexhaustible malice that are, for too many, the daily reality — the hatred of all learning, the hatred of all ambition, the hatred of all … ‘others.’

Thank you to Bob for saying I've made some small difference through this blog.

Thought on a Daughter's Upcoming Wedding

I haven't mentioned this soon to occur significant life experience event yet, but my youngest daughter - pictured above with me before the Last Dinner on the Titanic event last month - is getting married on May 26, 2012.  Moreover, the wedding will take place in the back yard of the home I share with the boyfriend in Hampton.  My oldest daughter eloped due to her now military husband's orders scheduling issues and my free spirited hippie-like son may never officially marry.  Thus, this could be the main wedding experience I get to have as the father of a member of the wedding couple.

If one listens to the lies and hate disseminated by the Christianists, one would believe that gay parents are incapable of having a profound loving parental relationship with children they raise.  Like so much of what the Christianists say about LGBT individuals, it's a lie.  I feel I have an amazing relationship with my children and my youngest daughter in particular since she works at my law office and we see each other so much each and every week.  I treasure her.

Given that this will be the first time that my former wife and her new husband (and other members of her family) will be at out home, the boyfriend - a/k/a "Martha Stewart" - has me working to have the place as immaculate as possible.  We are tenting in part of the back yard that overlooks the tidal creek that forms two sides of our yard, coordinating with a caterer and orchestrating wine, champagne, and flowers among other things for the event.

The far right can denigrate gay parents all they want, but we love our children as much or more than anyone else and I hope the event will make a statement to guests that no one makes a parent set of parents than two gay dads.  As an added bonus, my oldest daughter and her new husband are flying in from Washington State for the event.

Romney: A High School Gay-Basher

The Washington Post is unleashing an unwanted headache for Mitt Romney with it's coverage of Romney's nasty gay bashing - "pranks" as he calls - them in high school. The story hit the online version of the Post today and will be the front page story in tomorrow morning. For many of us in the LGBT community, these stories bring back a great deal of hurt an misery as we recall the bullying we withstood - and in the case of some, such as myself, actual physical violence. Romney's actions years ago might be forgivable if he genuinely apologized fore the hurt he caused others. But his apologies have been half ass at best and involved laughing in the audio tapes that I have heard. The impression one is left with is that once an insensitive bully, always a bully. Bob Felton at Civil Commotion was rather kind when he described Romney this way"|: 

It all bespeaks what looks like a lifelong inability to actually see other people — a privileged snot who is not really aware of others and, insofar as he is, regards them as obstacles to somehow be bent to his will or pushed aside. 

Sadly, Romney seems to be still unaware of others and that they are real, living, breathing, feeling humans with hopes, dreams and the ability to feel pain and anguish. Sadly, Romney is typical of the wealthy and the Christianists who seem incapable of viewing those different than themselves as fully human and worthy of the same civil rights and respect that they themselves demand.  Here are some highlights from the Washington Post's bombshell story:

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

 “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

 A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors. 

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be identified.
The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall. 

ABC News has a story that recounts the incident as related by one of Romney's fellow students.  Here are excerpts:

A high school classmate of presidential candidate Mitt Romney told ABC News today that he considers a particular prank the two pulled at Michigan’s Cranbrook School to be “assault and battery” and that he witnessed Romney hold the scissors to cut the hair of a student who was being physically pinned to the ground by several others.

“It’s a haunting memory. I think it was for everybody that spoke up about it… because when you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with,” said Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney and still considers Romney an old friend.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” said Maxwell, of the anecdote first reported by the Washington Post. Maxwell said Romney held the scissors helping to cut the hair of a student, John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay and who had long hair. “It was a hack job… clumps of hair taken off.”

Andrew Sullivan has these thoughts on Romney's despicable character flaws:

Romney has now apologized. He claims he didn't know the classmate was gay:

I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual,” Romney told Kilmeade. “That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.” 

 But I thought he had no memory of this incident? That was his position this morning. And there was no homophobia in the 1960s? Seriously: Etch-A-Sketch.   .   .   .   .   I conclude two things: Romney was a high school bully of gay or effeminate kids and is also a brazen liar.

I was in high school in the 1960's and believe me, we all knew about "fags," "faggots," "homos" and a host of other derogatory terms.  I certainly heard them often enough.   Romney's statements of ignorance on the terminology and the anti-gay bullying that was rampant in the 1960's are total lies.  But then again, those who profess their religiosity and who incessantly kiss the bigoted asses of the Christofascists are the biggest liars of all.
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The Continued Christianist Myth of "God's Creation" of the Institution of Marriage

You have to hand one thing to the Christianists and their political whores in the Republican Party - they are some of the most consistent liars one might ever meet.  Nothing, including the truth and actual real history are never allowed to get in the way of the lies they spin to support their anti-gay marriage agenda.  Time and time again, both in North Carolina before Tuesday's horrific vote and now in the wake of Barack Obama's embrace of marriage equality yesterday, they spout the myth that "God created marriage as one man and one woman."  It's a complete lie, of course, but then again, these people think the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness doesn't apply to them.  So much for actually honoring the Bible and the Ten Commandments.  Several pieces I came across today, not to mention two old newspaper clips that my LGBT blogger compatriot Jeremy Hooper posted at Good As You underscore the grossness of  lies being disseminated by the Christianists and their pandering prostitutes in the GOP.  The first newspaper clip is at the top of this post.  The date of the article is July 29, 1937 - and note the emphasis on marriage being a CIVIL law institution first and foremost.   

Even more damning is a piece in the New York Book Review Blog that tarces the history of marriage in the first 1200 years of the Christian church.  The truth is that through the end of the Roman Empire, Roman civil law controlled marriage.  Even after the Empire fell, it was another nearly 750 years before the Church adopted a uniform marriage policy.  That's right, for the majority of Christianity's history marriage was not even a Church sacrament.  Here are some excerpts:

Why do some people who would recognize gay civil unions oppose gay marriage? Certain religious groups want to deny gays the sacredeness of what they take to be a sacrament. But marriage is no sacrament. Some of my fellow Catholics even think that “true marriage” was instituted by Christ. It wasn’t. Marriage is prescribed in Eden by YHWH (Yahweh) at Genesis 2.24: man and wife shall “become one flesh.” When Jesus is asked about marriage, he simply quotes that passage from Genesis (Mark 10.8). He nowhere claims to be laying a new foundation for a “Christian marriage” to replace the Yahwist institution. 

The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.” 

Only in the twelfth century was a claim made for some supernatural favor (grace) bestowed on marriage as a sacrament. By the next century marriage had been added to the biblically sacred number of seven sacraments.  .   .   .   .   And bad effects followed. This sacralizing of the natural reality led to a demoting of Yahwist marriage, the only kind Jesus recognized, as inferior to “true marriage” in a church.
Those who do not want to let gay partners have the sacredness of sacramental marriage are relying on a Scholastic fiction of the thirteenth century to play with people’s lives, as the church has done ever since the time of Aquinas. The myth of the sacrament should not let people deprive gays of the right to natural marriage, whether blessed by Yahweh or not. They surely do not need—since no one does—the blessing of Saint Thomas.  

 Also of interest is a November 11, 1915 newspaper article set out below that looks at the "evolution of marriage" via Good As You. What noteworthy is that part of the evolution is the trend from polygamous marriage - the standard in the Old Testament - and the movement from women being the property of their husbands toward equal partners.  Not surprisingly, the author, Cyrus Towsend Brady, an ordained Episcopal priest who died in 1920 was none too happy with the "evolution of marriage."  The bottom line is that marriage was never "created by God" and has always been about property rights and control of women.  Not that the truth matters to the Christianists or their GOP minions.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

British diver Chris Mears

Was Obama Sending A Message to the Supreme Court?

With several gay marriage related cases moving up the federal court hierarchy towards the U. S. Supreme Court some have conjectured that Barack Obama's gay marriage announcement yesterday was a way to message - and perhaps influence the Supreme Court justices.  Some like Scalia and Thomas will be deaf to the message, however, some others may get it and understand the arch of history that is racing towards them.  When Loving v. Virginia was decided, support for racial equality was nowhere near where it is today and the Court's decision helped tip the balance towards acceptance of interracial marriages.  Marriages that in no way threatened same race marriages - just as gay marriages in no way threaten straight marriages other than in the minds of Christofascists.  A Brookings Institute column looks at the message that Obama may have tried to send to the Court yesterday.  Here are highlights:

Count me stunned that President Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage, after years of straddling and waffling. I was among those who said he would (a) stay on the fence through the election, uncomfortable though that might be, because (b) there's more political downside than upside in bringing the issue forward and taking a stand that still alienates many swing voters.  Why, then, did he do it? And what does it mean?

As to why, various press accounts speculate that pressure from gay donors played an important role .  .  .  .  To me, those explanations sound unconvincing, or at least incomplete. Gay money knows that the choice between Obama's Democrats and Mitt Romney's Republicans is as stark on gay issues as the divide ever has been. With Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, much of the progress that gay rights made under Obama would be endangered.

Although bringing forward a divisive social issue in an "economy, stupid" year seems unlikely to help either candidate, I suspect that the Romney camp is pretty happy about Obama's announcement. I'd guess that endorsing gay marriage mostly reinforces Obama's appeal to people who were going to vote for him anyway .   .   .   . 
If counting electoral votes were all the president was doing, I'd advise him to stay away--against my own convictions as a gay-marriage proponent.

What happened? Harry Truman was fond of quoting Mark Twain: "When in doubt, do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." Now and then, politicians have a "goddammit"  moment. .  .   .  .  there was never going to be a better time to make the switch than now--at least not while he is certain to be a non-lame-duck president.  So Obama decided it's worth a roll of the dice to make history. Which is what he has done.

As of his announcement, favoring gay marriage is now fully, indisputably, and permanently a mainstream political position. All hint of weirdness or stigma is gone. It is also now the stated position of one of the two major political parties  .   .   .   .   Precisely because the issue is unlikely to decide the election this year, November's result will not revoke the issue's promotion in status even if Obama loses. Though gay couples have not achieved full legal equality, gay marriage, as an issue, has achieved full political equality. That is a landmark in the ongoing marriage debate.

The courts, as Obama, the former law professor, must be well aware, will take notice. Two big gay-rights cases--one challenging California's revocation of gay marriage, the other challenging the Defense of Marriage Act--are on their way toward the Supreme Court. With his switch from ambivalence to advocacy, Obama is sending a signal to the courts that the country is ready for gay marriage, giving them more cover to uphold it. Courts may not go by poll results, but they do like to stay within the mainstream. And Obama has just moved it.

Why Does the GOP Want to Repeat Europe's Failures?

The true goal of GOP economic policy

It's amazing how the far right and their GOP lap dogs always malign "Old Europe" yet the current GOP economic policy seeks to mirror what has not worked in Europe and in fact has led to the overthrow of conservative leaders in France, that most maligned of nation in GOP Kool-Aid drinking circles.  It doesn't make any sense unless one realizes that the GOP austerity kick is all about wrecking the U.S. economy so that Barack Obama can be beat by Mitt "Etch A Sketch" Romney in November.  Nothing else - including the millions of Americans harmed in the process - truly matters to the hyper partisan GOP.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP effort to emulate failed European policies.  Here are excerpts:

Can a Republican primary in Indiana have even the remotest connection to a presidential election in France? Richard Mourdock, the tea party giant-killer who defeated Sen. Richard Lugar on Tuesday, clearly thinks so.

Don’t scoff. There is a point behind what Mourdock said. It’s just not the point he had in mind.
Mourdock’s success is decisive proof, if any more was needed, that the Republican Party has lurched far to the right of where it once was. Lugar was regularly described in the course of his reelection campaign as a “moderate.” But he is not a moderate, and never has been. He is a conservative who happens to be civil.

Being a good tea party Republican, Mourdock is all about slashing government spending without regard to the impact of the cuts on the economy or on those who need government help. He cast his campaign as a battle against “the nightmare of ever-growing government” that would turn the United States into a “Western European-style nation.”

This gets us to the irony: Right now, it’s conservatives who want to follow the Western European path of austerity that voters in France and Greece rejected last weekend. The Obama administration, by contrast, has chosen a distinctly American path that kept austerity at bay. As a result, the American economy has climbed out of the Great Recession more quickly than most of Europe. Had Obama accepted the right wing’s assertions that cutting government is the one and only route to prosperity, we would have gone the way of Britain, which is slipping toward recession again. 

What European voters are demanding, in other words, is a more moderate, American-style course. Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister and the leader of its Labour Party, nicely summarized the center-left’s middle-of-the-road approach. “You can’t have economic growth unless you also have stability,” he said, “but neither can you have stability without growth.”  France’s Francois Hollande may carry a Socialist label, but he, too, favors a balanced policy that would use public spending primarily to induce more private sector growth. 

On the other hand, the Mourdock Republicans — and they now very much include Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive nominee, in their ranks — would have the United States embrace an even more radical program of government cutbacks at the very moment when Europe’s voters are telling us that this simply doesn’t work.  In the more reasonable Washington to which Lugar arrived in 1977, Republicans accepted the need to boost the economy during a time of recession.

Europeans are moving toward the center-left not because they are doctrinaire but precisely because they are sick of the rigid approaches the advocates of austerity have imposed upon them. Why would we now want to imitate Europe’s failures?