Brandon's Beacon of Hope HIV AIDS Foundation - OBX Pridefest's Featured Non-Profit

This past weekend down at OBX Pridefest offered the boyfriend and me a great time as we had the opportunity to meet new people and also socialize with numerous friends from Hampton Roads who likewise made the trip down.  We drove back this morning and had a wonderful time last night at the cabaret production put on by the cast of The Lost Colony , one of the sponsors of OBX Pridefest, as well as Dame Edna's show. As a group the cast from The Lost Colony included very talented young people and, yes, some of the cast are gorgeous - one young man bore a striking resemblance to Baptiste Giabiconi.  And our stay at the First Colony Inn was most pleasurable and I would recommend the 1932 era Inn without reservation to anyone considering a trip to the Nags Head, North Carolina area. 

But OBX Pridefest did have it's tear jerking moments.  Particularly when Diane Midgett (pictured below), the chairwoman of Brandon's Beacon of Hope HIV AIDS Foundation spoke early on in the Saturday festival portion of the event.  The organization is named for her late son, Brandon Keith Finley, who was born prematurely on February 17, 1983, and who underwent a great number of blood transfusions as medical personnel tried to save his life after his premature birth.  Sadly, through one or more of those transfusions, Brandon contracted HIV/AIDS.   After a heroic battle with little or no help from the federal government in terms of AIDS research and support, Brandon lost his battle and died on  April 15, 1984.  Diane is candidly bitter when she recounts the lack of support from the federal government in the early years of the AIDS crisis with Ronald Reagan avoiding even saying the word for far, far too long.  But, from her family's tragedy, she has vowed to make a difference and to see that Brandon's short life was not in vain.  She is truly a woman on a mission.  During her presentation, Diane stressed that not only is HIV/AIDS present in North Carolina but also the alarming infection rate among those 13 to 24.  That more isn't being done borders in my view on the criminal.  

In her quest to make a difference and to help the lives of others, Diane Midgett founded Brandon's Beacon of Hope HIV AIDS Foundation ("BBH") which was selected by the OBX Pridefest board as the recipient of the net profits from OBX Pridefest 2012.  OBX Pridefest described the non-profit's mission as follows:

[Brandon's Beacon of Hope] is working with the regional medical professions to offer absolute private services and assistance to victims of HIV-AIDS in the Northeast region of North Carolina.  Up until now, those needing assistance had to travel to metropolitan areas to receive care, and thus, the number of victims in Dare County and the surrounding regions has gone unreported.  We are trying to change that and we hope you can help.  Even though people are living much longer lives with HIV, the average cost to these people is $367,000 for the rest of their lives.  Your donation or sponsorship of OBX Pridefest, our biggest fundraiser of the year, will help us help BBH.  Any profits made from OBX Pridefest (after we have paid our bills) will be donated to BBH.

As long time readers know, in 1999 I nearly lost one of my children to bacterial meningitis.  As harrowing and devastating as that experience was, it pales compared to Diane's nightmare.  Moreover, my child recovered and, indeed, was written up as a miracle case by Children's Hospital of the Kings Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia.   Consequently, I truly cannot imagine what Diane and her family went through.  She is a real trooper and so is her youngest son  (also pictured below) - her gay son - who was born after Brandon's death.  As she recounts it, God had a plan for her and gave her a gay son to replace the child she lost.

Please check out BBH and consider making a donation.  Their plan is to be fully operational by fall and to have an operational website and referral service.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Why DOMA Violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution

I have long argued that anti-gay laws in general and laws like DOMA in particular are illegal because they establish one religious belief system in violation the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion for all citizens and the ban on an established religion.  What DOMA in effect represents is the establishment of a conservative, gay-hating form of Christianity as the defacto established religion of the nation.  And as more religious denominations - e.g., the conservative Jews just joined the same sex marriage accepting ranks - come to accept same sex marriage, the discrimination against other religious beliefs is becoming more pronounced.  To date, most courts don't want to open their eyes to this unconstitutional defacto establishment of conservative Christianity as the nation's official religion or the special rights granted to this segment of religion.  A post in Towleroad looks at this legal reality.  Here are highlights:

Today, there are men and women of faith who are vocal supporters of gay rights, many of whom have taken their cues from religious leaders like the Reverends Troy Perry (right) and Brent Hawkes of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) and the Reverends John V. Moore and Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. These men and their religious orders have not only made waves advocating on behalf of LGBT persons, but they have also put the weight of faith behind opposition to Prop 8, DOMA, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell; in support of students' rights to identity-affirming expression in schools; and in support of marriage recognition legislation in New York, Maine, North Carolina, and other states

This leadership and bridge-building is of singular importance, second only to exercising power where it counts. To that end, religious groups from many faiths have come together to file amicus briefs against the Defense of Marriage Act and against Prop 8. In their brief in Gill v. OPM, the First Circuit case that recently declared DOMA unconstitutional, for example, we see the importance of religious dialogue and religious allies.
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To persons of faith, DOMA's definition of valid marriages for the purposes of federal law discriminates against those faiths that would define marriage differently. Whereas Gill's attorneys and the Department of Justice argued that DOMA fails a constitutional test because it treads on powers traditionally and exclusively left to the states and because it treats similarly situated individuals simply because of their sexual orientation, the amicus brief from our religious allies argued that DOMA departed from the federal government's traditional neutrality among various religious definitions of marriage, enshrining one -- a particularly conservative and arguably ahistorical Judeo-Christian definition -- as the only federal definition of civil marriage. In this way, DOMA violates the Constitution's ban on the establishment of religion, or the favoring of one religious doctrine over another.

This novel legal argument complements the moral weight and access brought by religious allies. We often find that our quest for equality takes us across religious territory and we shy away from those engagement all too often. The campaign against Prop 8 in California was decried for its anemic religious outreach, as were other campaigns. Granted, many religious houses spout hateful invectives against the gay community; but, it is also liberal reticence to engage in the language of morality, values, and piety that push our leaders to give up finding religious allies before they even try. After all, the libertarian language of freedom and rights is the balliwick of progressives. We feel most comfortable when discussing our right to do this or our freedom from that. But, true equality and honor for gay persons requires more than that. It requires that we dive into the language of values and morality and prove that our lives and marriages are worthy of state recognition.

Can the GOP Evolve?

The title of this post is a question I sometimes get  asked given that I am a former Republican.  My answer typically is an emphatic "No."  Not with the current Christianist/Tea Party base and the total lack of guts in the party leadership to stand up to hate and bigotry - not to mention calling out statements and positions that ignore objective reality.    Thus, I see only repeated electoral defeats as the route to any sort of evolution.    When and how such defeats will happen is anyone's guess, but sooner or later the aging bigoted core of the GOP will die off and defeat will be the norm for the GOP.  That process cannot happen soon enough in my book.  David Frum a rational conservative - something that is becoming an oxymoron - looks at this question of whether or not the GOP can evolve.  Here are some excerpts:

It’s 2024. The vast majority of baby boomers have arrived at retirement age. The pre-baby boomers are rapidly passing from the scene. (The youngest of them, born in 1945, are about to turn 80.) The long-predicted crisis of the American fiscal system has arrived.

The political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as a contest over “who gets what, when, and how.” Over the next dozen years, as the gap between the revenue lines and the expenditure lines of the federal and state governments widen, that definition could aptly be amended: Who gets disappointed—and by how much?   .  .  .  .  These harrowing questions have disconcerting political implications for the country’s two great political parties.

For Democrats, the trends pose a stark distributional question. The younger people of the 2020s, survivors of the Great Recession, will in the aggregate be poorer than their elders. Should these younger workers be taxed or see their own social services squeezed in order to support Medicare and public-service pensions in their full amplitude?

For Republicans, the trends pose a coalition-management question. Throughout the Obama years, Republicans built a powerful coalition of the rich and the old. The coalition was built on two principles: militant rejection of any and all new taxes, and unyielding defense of existing government benefits for those at or near retirement age.   But as Medicare costs rise, the no-new-taxes/no-cuts-in-Medicare combination will become increasingly difficult to sustain. Already, polls show that Republican voters (as opposed to activists) prefer tax increases on upper-income earners to Medicare cuts. So long as the choice between taxes and Medicare cuts remains latent, the preferences of rank-and-file Republicans may not matter much. But as budget gaps widen, that tension will surely come to the fore.
  
If the fiscal squeeze tightens enough, Republicans will be forced to choose between their limited government ideology and their older voting base. If they choose their ideology, they will need to locate some new voters in upper-income America. They will need to draw back to the Grand Old Party the kind of voters who defected to Barack Obama in 2008: affluent professionals, especially women, in major urban centers. This was the kind of Republicanism practiced in the 1990s by governors like Christine Todd Whitman, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, and George Pataki. Such a Republicanism would not need to jettison its pro-life message, just de-emphasize it, as Democrats have, for example, de-emphasized their message on gun control.

At the beginning of the Tea Party era, there was much talk that Republicans might switch to a more economic, less culturally exclusive message. That talk came to nothing. Instead, Republicans infused cultural exclusion into their economics, drawing a sharp distinction between the “earned” benefit of Medicare and Social Security and other programs that serve supposedly less deserving populations: food stamps, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid.

Yet it does not have to be this way. The GOP can remain a culturally conservative party without needing to endorse vaginal inspections of women or miring itself in fights over birth control. The coming generational shift within the GOP on gay rights points the way to such future change.

Such a GOP would look more like conservative parties elsewhere on the planet—and less like the Southern Democrats of the 1950s. And while some Republicans might dismiss those non-U.S. conservative parties as squishy, it’s worth noting that at least some of them—notably the Germans and Canadians—managed successfully to complete the fiscal consolidation that in the United States still looms terrifyingly ahead.

Frum's views make sense but for one thing: the Christian Right. Until the GOP sends the Christofascists back to the political wilderness, the type of conservatism he contemplates will not be possible.  The big question is when will the Party realize this and take the steps to regain its soul.

Will Gay Marriage Bring An End to Special Privileges for Christians ?

Currently the Roman Catholic Church is aging a war against civil marriage equality for same sex couples on a global basis, with particular open warfare raging in America, Australia and the the UK.    While the Catholic Church of has never enjoyed official special privileges as the established church in any of these countries, there has always been a de facto granting of of special rights and privileges to conservative forms of Christianity in all three countries.  Now, the Church of England - which has long been the established church in the UK - has joined the Catholic Church's anti-gay jihad.  In the final analysis, the battle comes down to whether or not the promise of religious freedom in all three countries will triumph over the the demand for special rights that have either been officially recognized as in the UK and by tacit approval in America and Australia.  A piece in The Telegraph  conjectures that in the UK the anti-gay agenda of the Church of England may lead to the end of the official privileges of the Church of England.  One can only hope that a similar demise may overtake the special rights too long granted to conservative Christianity in America.  Here are story highlights:

Two people meet and fall in love. They want it to be for life, so they get married. Simple, isn’t it? Theresa May, the Home Secretary, thinks so: “Put simply, it’s not right that a couple who love each other and want to formalise a commitment to each other should be denied the right to marry.”That’s why May wants to allow couples of the same sex to marry on exactly the same terms as a man and woman. The Government has asked for opinions on how this should be done, but not whether it should be done at all – which has upset those opposed to the move.

The Roman Catholic Church says the Government has no right to make such a fundamental, irreversible change, and it does not believe the Home Secretary’s promise of legal protection to ensure no priest is forced by European law to carry out a gay wedding: “As no Parliament can bind its successors, the Catholic Church and other religious bodies would be at risk indefinitely.” The Muslim Council of Great Britain has called the proposal “unhelpful and unnecessary”. 

The Church of England’s official response comes close to fury: “Such a move would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history.” Launching the response paper last week, senior figures predicted a clash between the laws of the Church and the laws of the state that is unprecedented since the Reformation nearly 500 years ago. 

On the face of it, then, the ground is set for a battle between the Church and the state. But it’s not as simple as that. Despite the impression given by the official paper, the Church is divided. Many priests and lay people are sympathetic to the idea of equality. 

Why is David Cameron persisting with this? There are several potential reasons: to keep the Liberal Democrats happy; to repay perceived debts; to help the Conservatives seem modern and caring; and simply because he believes in it. “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us, that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other,” he said last year. “So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”
What, though, will the change actually mean? Firstly, complete equality. Civil partnerships give almost the same legal rights as marriage, but not quite.

The Church of England is unique in seeing gay marriage as a threat to its existence. It was built to care for every soul in every parish, with priests who automatically become agents of the state. They have a legal duty to marry anyone in the parish who wants it and is eligible. Now, for the first time in 500 years, there could be a difference between the Church definition of marriage and the way it is defined in English law. The Church leadership believes this will undermine its unique position, rights and privileges as the established church – deeply ironic considering it was only created so that Henry VIII could defy the Pope and remarry. 

Frankly, though, it is as if those who speak for the Church can’t see what is really going on. Or else they’re playing politics, desperate to hold on to their last remaining threads of influence. If the end is nigh, it’s not because of gay marriage. That may be a snip in one of the ties that bind, but they’ve been snapping for a long time now.

Society has changed dramatically over 30 years. We no longer want to belong to anything much; we’re disenchanted with authority of all kinds; we have a remarkably improvisational approach to family life; and are open to cultural influences from all over the world.   At the same time, as congregations have shrunk and church leaders have been careless with their money, the Church of England no longer has the cash, the clergy or the people to carry out its historic mission in the same way. 

The Government is very clear that it has other voices to listen to as well, as it attempts to reflect the dramatic recent changes in who we are as a people, where we come from and what we believe in. 

In all three nations, the awarding of civil legal rights should not be controlled by archaic writings no matter how long revered which in the final analysis were authored by ignorant nomads who were devoid of modern knowledge.  If individual citizens want to hold on to old superstitions and what some view as mere myths, that's their prerogative.  They should not, however, be allowed to force those beliefs on others or limit the civil law rights of others. 

The Myth of the Gay Threat

Click Image to Enlarge

I saw this image on Facebook and it sums up why the Christofascists want to keep gays invisible.  Yes, it's Colbert acting as him usual self, but it speaks a great truth: if people find out that we LGBT individuals  are basically just like them, that we have similar hopes and dreams and, God forbid, that we have normal functioning families  the Christianist  anti-gay jihad falls apart.  It also underscores why living out and proud and refusing to hide you are is the greatest weapon in the fight for full civil equality.  It's easy to hate and oppose something/someone unknown.  It's far harder when the targets of hate are one's friends, neighbors and family members.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Is Foreign Money Funding Mitt Romney's Campaign

It's always fun to watch the conservative get into a cat fight and taking shots at each other.  A case in point is the current spat between John McCain and Mitt Romney and his campaign.  While in my view McCain will never fully recover his credibility after selecting the insane and despicable Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, from time to time he does still manage to hit the nail on the head.  Like when he accuses foreign money of  creeping into Mitt Romney's super PAC and when he vehemently states that corporations are not persons.  Think Progress looks at this latest contra tempts.  Here are excerpts:

Though he has been one of Mitt Romney’s most visible supporters, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took aim yesterday at both Romney’s Super PAC and one Romney’s most controversial talking points. In an interview on PBS’s NewsHour, McCain told Judy Woodruff that because casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson makes a huge portion of his profits from a casino in Macau, his massive spending in support of Mitt Romney and other right-wing candidates is a form of foreign money influencing American elections:

WOODRUFF: This question of campaign money, highlighted today by the announcement that there’s a huge amount of money coming in from one donor in the state of Nevada.

MCCAIN: Mmmm hmmm. Mr. Adeleson, who gave large amounts of money to the Gingrich campaign and much of Mr. Adeleson’s casino profits, that go to him, come from this casino in Macau.

WOODRUFF: Which says what?

MCCAIN: This which says that obviously, maybe in a round-about way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign, political campaigns.

WOODRUFF: Because of the profits that the casinos in Macau…

MCCAIN: Yes, that is a great deal of money. And, again, we need a level playing field and we need to go back to the realization that Teddy Roosevelt had that we have to have a limit on the flow of money and that corporations are not people. That’s why we have different laws that govern corporations than govern individual citizens. And so to say that corporations are people, again, flies in the face of all the traditional Supreme Court decisions that we have made — that have been made in the past.

 Romney, of course, said in August that “corporations are people, my friend,” a claim that he and his campaign surrogates have vigorously defended since.

Though it is illegal for non-citizens to spend any money to influence U.S. selections directly, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United ruling left the door wide open for the American employees of American subsidiaries of foreign owned corporations — and even sovereign wealth funds — to spend millions or billions from their corporate treasuries on “independent” expenditures.

The Gift of Being Gay and a Dad

With today being Father's Day, it's difficult  not to ponder the wonder and amazing love that my children have brought me.  Of course, it's an experience that the Christofascists want to deny to same sex couples that don't include a partner who was in the closet and deep denial and married an opposite sex spouse as part of the ill-fated effort to "pray the gay away."  It's all part of the "godly Christian" agenda to make life as awful as possible for LGBT individuals and keep us stigmatized and ideally less than fully human in the eyes of society (more on that below).  But first, a post in the New York Times by a gay dad who achieved parenthood though surrogacy celebrates the joys of fatherhood.  It also reflects on the advantage that I believe gay parents have over their straight counterparts.  Here are some highlights:

When I finally accepted in my 20s that I was gay and that in order to live a life true to myself I had to come out, I knew there were “risks.” When my mother let loose a stream of consciousness list of fears that the world would visit on me for being openly gay – including never finding happiness, or being bashed coming out of a bar with my lover – the one she settled on was “…and you always wanted to be a father.”

It was the thing that broke my heart: the feeling that by coming out, I was giving up the one thing I had always wanted since I was a kid – more than any profession or any pursuit – being a dad.

I didn’t have a choice, of course. Most gay men of my generation came out when we simply could not stand the lying or daily self-denial any longer. Still, I mourned for myself and for the children I would never have.

Even as an adult, even having come to terms with my sexuality, even having decided – after much searching, and periods of being an atheist and an agnostic – that God had made me as I am, somewhere I still felt that being denied fatherhood was punishment for being gay.

Then came the revolution. Scientific advances outraced laws (and conservatives’ imaginations), and surrogacy provided a route to parenthood .  .  . our boys are the best part of our lives. They are our little miracles.

Every time I look at them I understand that far from being cursed, being a little gay boy was a blessing. It taught me compassion. It taught me how to rise above fear and self-hatred. It made me stronger.

Unlike straight couples who can find themselves unplanned parents after a thoughtless night of drinking or careless sex, gay couples have to plan and often pay high prices to become parents.  They want their children and will make sacrifices that straight counterparts often will not.  One need only read all the stories of child abuse by straight parents to see this truth.  Yet the Christianists desperately want to bar gays from being parents.  They claim that their concerns are "about the children."  Of course, the children and their welfare are the last thing on the Christianists' minds.  An article in Religion Dispatches looks at the latest snake oil being used to demonize gay parents.  Yes, the new bogus "study" on the children of gay parents.  Here are article excerpts:

Focus on the Family can hardly contain its glee over a new study that purports to show that “children raised by homosexual parents are dramatically more likely than peers raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from a host of social problems.”

Calling this study “the gold standard” of same-sex parenting studies, FoF’s affiliate CitizenLink crowed that among those “social problems” were “strong tendencies, as adults, to exhibit poor impulse control; suffer from depression and thoughts of suicide; need mental health therapy; identify themselves as homosexual; choose cohabitation; be unfaithful to partners; contract sexually transmitted diseases; be sexually molested; have lower income levels; drink to get drunk; and smoke tobacco and marijuana.”


Sounds horrifying, right? And this study is the “gold standard” because, “All the other studies that have come out on how kids do in same-sex homes are all done by lesbian activist scholars,” according to Focus’ Glenn Stanton.

He’s obviously referring to the longitudinal study of same-sex parents conducted by Nanette Gartrell, M.D., who, according to her bio, “is a 2012 Williams Institute Visiting Distinguished Scholar, UCLA School of Law, and she has a guest appointment at the University of Amsterdam. She was previously on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco.” Oh, and she has a female spouse, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D., with whom she has a 35-year long relationship.

Being a lesbian, Gartrell obviously has a vested interest in those findings, right? Maybe, but her research has been backed up by the likes of the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of Social Workers, “who all confirm that LGBT parents make good parents,”  .  .  .  .

The researcher for the new study, Mark Regnerus, isn’t free from his own bias, however. As Freedom to Marry points out in a press release on the study, Regnerus, ”is well known for his ultra-conservative ideology and the paper was funded by the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation - two groups commonly known for their support of conservative causes. The Witherspoon Institute also has ties to the Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage, and ultra-conservative Catholic groups like Opus Dei.”

It’s no shock that the religious right would be touting a flawed study to shore up their battle against granting even the basic of human rights to LGBT people. A Gallup poll, published in May, revealed that their argument that homosexuality is somehow “immoral” is faltering with the public. The poll showed that 54% say gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable. Among Catholics, that number jumps to 66%. Protestants still lag behind, but 41% say gay and lesbian relationships are moral.

Resorting to pseudo-science is the last gasp of anti-gay groups and they will certainly tout this study, flaws and all, as proof that same-sex couples make awful parents and raise terribly troubled kids .  .  .  .

The case being made against gays and lesbians by the religious right has always been a spurious one, based on religious bias, bad science and outright lies. This latest study is just more of the same.

Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage, and Opus Dei - it doesn't get much more extreme or viciously anti-gay.  And that's who ultimately backed this "study."

World Congress of Families Seeks a New Dark Ages

It's no secret that conservative - might we better say ultra-reactionary - "family values" want to turn back time.  But the question really isn't turning the clock back to the 1950's.  No, they truly would prefer a period more akin tot he Middle Ages when religion trump almost everything and when dictatorial Popes could intimidate and threaten kings and rulers.  And that's not counting when they sent their own armies to invade noncomplying countries. A worldwide display of this deeply reactionary thinking recently took place at the World Congress of Families (WCF) gathering in Madrid where the purported goal was to to share tactics in defense of the “natural family.” In reality, the gathering was a planning session on how to usurp the civil rights of other citizens and inflict far right Christianist views on all.  Their version of the "natural family" not surprisingly is modeled on a 13th century model and relies on scientific and sociological knowledge from that ignorant and backward era.  And not surprisingly, they claim that they are being persecuted if the rights of others are recognized.  And as for gays?  We are clearly viewed as enemy number one.  Religion Dispatches looks at the gathering and the messages is that these people need to be stopped if civil liberties for those other than Christofascists are to be protected.  Here are highlights:

Last month the World Congress of Families (WCF), an international conservative network, met at the Palacio de Congresos in Madrid to share tactics in defense of the “natural family.” For its participants the natural family is a standard for social values that harkens back to a mythical era when men headed the household, women tended the kitchen and children, and sex was for procreation only.

[I]t’s tempting to dismiss the WCF as a gathering of out-of-touch extremists. Scratch the surface, though, and what you find are well-connected and well-funded groups hard at work codifying their “traditional values” through national and regional legislatures and judiciaries. 

While drolly retrograde panels like “Authentic Women and Rediscovering Homemaking” and “Solutions to Homosexual Behavior” featured prominently, embedded in these and most other panels were serious themes articulating a conservative worldview and strategies for protecting and promoting them in the public sphere.

What emerged after three days was a clear tension between agitating against governments, courts, and international human rights bodies that had “corrupted the meaning and dignity of marriage, devalued parenting, encouraged easy divorce and births outside of marriage, confused sexual identities, promoted promiscuity, created conditions that increased child abuse, isolated the elderly, and fostered depopulation,” and figuring out how to best manipulate those same systems into defending their particular religious values.

One concern undergirding the varied topics covered by the speakers was that the protection of individual rights (youth rights, gay rights, reproductive rights) was taking place at the expense of “fundamental” religious, cultural, and parental rights. .  .  .  .  Human rights were oppressive when they protected reproductive and gender rights (or “new” rights), whereas, when it came to protecting “traditional” rights to freedom of religion and speech, they were suddenly fundamental. New rights, they argued, cannot supersede traditional human rights. 

Stand Up For Religious Freedom, one of the lead networks agitating against health care reform, explicitly states that: “the American ideal of religious liberty is at stake. This isn’t really about contraception—it’s about the First Amendment.”

The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), one of four World Congress of Families co-conveners, has been extremely active in “defending religious organizations and businesses that refuse to comply with the mandate and abandon their faith.” .   .   .   .    The ADF is also actively litigating religious freedom cases overseas. Because U.S. justices are increasingly citing progressive international jurisprudence in their opinions and decisions, much of the ADF’s international litigation is aimed at ensuring that foreign rulings serve its domestic objectives.

“How to Fight Back against International Law,” included a four-point strategy that, while not revealing too many trade secrets, was notable for its venomous tone toward “humanists” and others who, he says, accuse Christians of demanding preferential treatment.

While WCF participants make the case that they’re being denied their fundamental rights, they are in fact using “religious freedom” as a cover to deny women, children, sexual minorities, and others access to basic needs and protections. The WCF may want to take us back to the Dark Ages, but they’re not afraid to use modern human rights systems to get there.

On the final day of the conference Paul Herzog Von Oldenburg, the Belgian president of the right-wing Catholic group Tradition, Family and Property, summarized it best: “our great aim, our great ideal, is to build a Christian civilization from the ruins of the modern world just as the medieval world arose from the ruins of the Roman world.”

These people are frighteningly self-centered and do in fact want preferential rights - rights that trump the rights of everyone else.  As for the comparison of the Christian Middle Ages versus the Roman Empire, the former was based on ignorance and superstition while the latter despite its many flaws was a period of knowledge and creativity.

It may sound mean, but I truly believe that these ultra-far right Christianists suffer from a form of mental illness.  Life is short and all too fragile.  It should be lived and enjoyed while doing good by others.  In contrast, the Christianists dwell in a world of guilt, hate and condemnation of others.  Moreover, they are terrified of anything that challenge their childish beliefs and superstitions, or worse yet, requires that they have to think and make their own moral decisions.  I truly cannot fathom how one becomes so delusional.