Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Saturday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 3

Vancouver Christians Oppose Franklin Graham's "Crusade"

Franklin Graham, hate merchant

I often complain about the silence of "good Christians" in the face of the hatred that a pillar of the Christofascists' religious dogma.  Hence, when the foul agenda of the Christofascists and professional Christian class is in fact challenged by other Christians, the challengers deserve recognition.  Winning kudos today are both Catholic and Protestant church leaders in Vancouver, Canada, who are condemning a "crusade" to be held by Franklin Graham - a many who has made a lush living peddling hate and religious extremism - in that diverse and tolerant city.  The Vancouver Sun looks at the opposition Graham is deservedly facing.  Here are highlights:

Metro Vancouver Christians are colliding over the coming crusade of televangelist Franklin Graham, who is known for criticizing homosexuals, Muslims and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Saying that Graham is often “incendiary and intolerant,” some evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics are opposing his participation in the three-day Festival of Hope event at Rogers Arena in early March 2017, which many of the city’s mega-churches are supporting.

“Rev. Graham is a polarizing figure … His ungracious and bigoted remarks have the potential to generate serious negative impact on the Christian witness in Vancouver,” says a statement from five prominent evangelical and Catholic leaders.

“We … denounce the frequent incendiary and intolerant statements made by Rev. Graham, which he unapologetically reiterates,” said the letter, signed by Marjeta Bobnar of the Catholic archdiocese, City in Focus president Tom Cooper, Tenth Church pastor Ken Shigematsu, Calvary Baptist pastor Tim Dickau and First Baptist pastor Tim Kuepfer.

Franklin Graham, son of 97-year-old retired televangelist Billy Graham, has said homosexuals are “the enemy” and will “spend eternity in hell” if they don’t repent.

Earning more than $1 million a year as an evangelist and head of the charity Samaritan’s Purse, Graham led a crusade in Toronto in 2014 that was attended by 40,000 people of diverse ethnic origins.

After the Toronto event, Samaritan’s Purse terminated a Canadian volunteer because she refused to sign a standard statement opposing abortion and homosexual marriage.

In North Vancouver, another endorser of the Festival of Hope, Valley Church Pastor Owen Scott, declined to comment on the controversy other than to say, “I know Franklin is not the same as his dad. His dad is a pretty gracious person.”

While the opposition statement was signed by Catholic ecumenical relations official Bobnar, Paul Schratz confirmed the archdiocese also formally declined an invitation to take part in the Festival of Hope.

“Initially we were supportive of next year’s event, since it was intended to draw a large number of people to hear the gospel and grow closer to Jesus,” said Schratz, spokesman for the archdiocese, which includes more than 400,000 Catholics.

“While we obviously acknowledge Mr. Graham’s zeal in preaching the Gospel we had second thoughts about participating when we noted that American evangelicals, whom we were trying to work with on this event, were criticizing Mr. Franklin for various comments and stances that didn’t promote religious tolerance.”

The formal letter of opposition to the Festival of Hope’s leadership committee was signed by Christian leaders in Metro Vancouver whom the Billy Graham Association had asked for endorsements, including Cooper, Shigematsu, Dickau and Kuepfer.

Cooper — the president of City in Focus, which specializes in ministering to businesspeople —said those who signed the letter “were willing to provide suggestions for an alternative speaker. But the Festival of Hope leadership committee was content with having Reverend Graham give the major talks.  “We therefore, reluctantly, decided we could not endorse this event.

Franklin Graham is little better than a parasite who is living well living off his father's fame while peddling hatred and intolerance. 

Trump's New Campaign Leaders Are Rabidly Anti-LGBT

Homophobes Kellyane Conway and Stephen Bannon

While The Donald continues to pretend to be gay friendly and some gay Republicans continue to keep their heads firmly up their asses and support the man, his picks for the new leaders of his campaign tell the true story.  Both Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News and GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway have a history of being rabidly anti-gay.  As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words and Trump's picks speak volumes.   The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the history of anti-LGBT actions of Bannon and Conway.  Here are story highlights:

Donald Trump wrote on Facebook late Tuesday that he'll "fight to ensure that every American is treated equally" and "reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all its forms." 

Hours later, it was revealed that Trump is shaking up his campaign, naming Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon as executive director, and GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway as manager.   As it turns out, those appointments aren't exactly consistent with Trump's Facebook post. 

As recently as May, Bannon railed against transgender rights during an interview with the American Family Association's Sandy Rios. According to Right Wing Watch, Bannon accused retailer Target of “trying to exclude people who are decent, hard-working people who don’t want their four-year-old daughter to have to go into a bathroom with a guy with a beard in a dress.”

Media Matters has more on Breitbart News' penchant for anti-LGBT reporting:   

Breitbart.com regularly publishes articles with anti-LGBT slurs “trannies” and “faggot” in headlines. Breitbart contributor Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) -- an organization designated as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center -- is largely the face of Breitbart’s anti-LGBT coverage.

Meanwhile, Conway is a longtime pollster for the anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

In September 2014, Conway appeared on a panel with former NOM President Maggie Gallagher, where they encouraged Libertarians to take up socially conservative causes, Right Wing Watch reports: 

Conway told the crowd that “values voters and libertarians have a great deal in common” from opposition to “big government” and abortion rights to being “sick of lawyers in black robes making stuff up” to a refusal to “redefine” family to be “whatever feels cool.” She also saw an opening to win over libertarians with the Religious Right’s increasing reliance on persecution rhetoric, or what she called the “assault on religious liberty in so many parts of our culture.”

Saturday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Why Conservative Christians Are Backing Trump

As regular readers know, I hold few people in lower regard that far right conservative Christians whose most pronounced traits are incessant lying, hypocrisy, racism, and a desire to impose their religious beliefs on all citizens.  They talk constantly about their own supposed faith and religiosity even as they hate nearly everyone and back Republican policies that are the antithesis of the Gospel message.  Some pundits and others are shocked that so many conservative Christians are backing Donald Trump, whereas I see it as a match made in heaven, if you will: foul, self-centered hypocrisy filled pathological liars bonding to one another.  A piece in Salon puts forth an explanation for Christofascist support of Trump in less direct terms, but nonetheless shows the underlying hypocrisy of these people and their always self-enriching "leaders."   Here are excerpts:  

In theory, the religious right should hate Donald Trump. He’s a libertine, he clearly worships Mammon and not Jesus, he has been married three times, he has a long history of bragging about his sex life . . . . But the ugly truth is that the supposed guardians of American morality, religious conservatives, are lining up behind Trump. I spoke with Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way about why.
 Your piece is called “‘God’s Guy’: 25 Religious Right Justifications For Supporting Donald Trump.” What kinds of religious authorities did you look at for this piece?Well, there’s a range of people. There are religious right political figures like Tony Perkins and David Barton and David Lane, who are people that we cover pretty extensively, and then there are some folks who don’t show up on [our] website as much [as those] who are sort of in the “prophet and apostle” category of that wing of Pentecostal Christianity [who tend] to see things in terms of spiritual warfare and demons and the Antichrist. So it’s a mix. Since the primaries, most of the religious right leaders who were in Cruz’s camp are rallying around Trump, and it’s true that some of them are doing so kind of reluctantly. Some based on the Supreme Court, some based on the fact that they just really hate Hillary Clinton. And some have offered this range of religious rationales. 

Some of the folks that you’ve covered seem to believe that Trump is God’s emissary or that he’s here to do God’s will. What’s that about?The religious right hates Barack Obama. They really did everything they could and prayed very hard for him not to get elected or reelected. And some of them actually saw his reelection as a sign of God’s judgment on the country. That hatred also applies to Hillary Clinton.Some of the religious right leaders also distrust the Republican establishment and they think that God is using this sort of bulldozer strongman person like Trump to come in and knock down the establishment of both parties and really clean house. They’ve found examples in the Bible. One of the ones that people reference is King Cyrus, who was not one of God’s chosen people and was not a believer but God had his purposes and used King Cyrus in a way that advanced his wishes. So that’s one of the rationales that has come up for Trump. . . So when Trump destroys everything, why is that considered a good thing in their view?I’ll talk about David Lane in answering that. David Lane is a political operative who organized the event that Trump just spoke at this past week in Orlando and, in fact, Marco Rubio also spoke at. David Lane is a Christian nationalist who believes that America was founded by and for Christians and that it has a covenant with God and a mission to advance the Christian faith. He believes that we have gone far from that mission. And his goal is to use the political process to bring America back to his idea of a Christian nation. . . . for someone like him, the establishment Republican Party has been a disappointment because they haven’t aggressively pursued this idea of a Christian nation. He hopes that somehow kicking down all the walls is going to make that more possible. Somebody else like James Robison believes that God is going to give Trump some kind of high-profile conversion moment like the biblical story of Saul, who used to persecute Christians, having this vision of Jesus and then becoming Paul the Apostle.  Do you often see religious right figures grapple with the fact that the Democrat in the race, Hillary Clinton, is clearly more religious than the Republican?They do not want to grapple with that at all, no. You don’t see a lot of religious right leaders acknowledging her lifelong commitment as a Christian, as a member of the United Methodist Church, even though it’s very much out there. A lot of the religious right leaders, when they say “Christian,” they don’t really mean all Christians. They’re talking about a subset of Christians that share both their theological worldview and their right-wing politics. . . . It’s why we have people on this list talking about Hillary Clinton as channeling the spirit of the Antichrist. How much do you think this rallying around Trump has to do with his statements about Muslims?There are a number of reasons they’re rallying around him, and one is that he’s been a very outspoken critic of radical Islam with his call to keep Muslims from coming into the country. Some of these religious right leaders, as much as they like to posture as champions of religious liberty, they really don’t feel the same way about Islam. They try to make these convoluted arguments that the First Amendment doesn’t really apply to Muslims in the same way because Islam is not a religion but a totalitarian political ideology. I think they like his attacks on Muslims because they think this is a country by and for Christians. The question of religious freedom comes up here, and you see some of these pastors and religious right leaders claiming that Trump is for religious freedom. What do they mean by that?When the religious right talks about religious freedom these days, they’re mostly talking about the right of people to discriminate against LGBT individuals and couples and families. For them, religious liberty is not the kind of shield for everyone to exercise their religion [that] we think of when we think of the First Amendment.  . . . It’s about being able to use religious beliefs as a cudgel against people and policies that they don’t like.

New Study: Homophobes Try to Deny Their Own Same Sex Attraction

The findings of yet another study suggest that the males expressing the loudest homophobia may in fact be striving to deny and/or cover up their own same sex attraction.   These results come on top of studies going back to 1996 that found that homophobic men had the most penile stimulation when looking at gay pornography.  A summary of that study noted as follows:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men and a group of nonhomophobic men; they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

The new study took a different approach by recording eye-tracking when homosexual erotica was viewed and found - not surprisingly, in my view - that the most homophobic males lingered the longest on gay erotica.   Here's a summary:

Heterosexual men first completed a scale measuring their level of homonegativity. Then, they performed a manikin task to evaluate their impulsive approach tendencies toward homosexual stimuli (IAHS). A picture-viewing task was performed with simultaneous eye-tracking recording to assess participants' viewing time of the visual area of interest (i.e., face and body).  IAHS positively predicted the viewing time of homosexual photographs among men with a high score of homonegativity. Men with a high homonegativity score looked significantly longer at homosexual than at heterosexual photographs but only when they had a high IAHS.

The take away?  The next time you hear some politician like Rick Santorum or Ken Cuccinelli or some pastor or priest/bishop/cardinal bellowing about the evil of gays, just remember that they probably would love to get into the pants of some of the males in their audience or congregation. Never be duped by "oh, but he's married with children."  Been there and done that myself, and it means NOTHING other than the fact that the individual could not accept them self and their true sexuality, most likely due to religious brainwashing..

Saturday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Friday Male Beauty - Pt 3

Trump, Hillbillies, Rednecks and Race

If one wants to see some of the most dysfunctional and at times downright ugly elements of white society in America, look no farther than the base of Donald Trump's support.  The core of Trump's base is relatively uneducated working class whites who see their future going down the drain, at least according to their perspective because of the rising status of others, in particular, blacks, Hispanics and other immigrants.  Stated another way, they perceive their white privilege being diminished and rather than do some soul searching and looking in the mirror to see one of the roots of their problem, it's easier to blame others.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this phenomenon and references a book I have mentioned before, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” by J.D. Vance who I heard interviewed on a talk radio show some weeks back.  The column agrees with much of what Vance sees as the problem: poor choices, dropping out of school, drug abuse, single parenthood, among others, it also targets the spark that has ignited the rage so many of Trump's supporters evidence:  race and racism.  It is no coincidence that the mere existence of America's first black president has helped exacerbate this rage.  Here are op-ed highlights:

In other words, who are Trump’s voters and why do they stick with him? Sometimes a good writer with a keen eye can provide more insight than a dozen polls. J.D. Vance has done just that in his lovely book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” The book has rocketed up the best-seller lists — deservedly so. But it has some interesting and important gaps.
 We all now know that Trump’s rise has been fueled by the alienation and anger of the country’s white working class. That cohort has seen its incomes stagnate, cities crumble and dreams vanish. But Vance gets underneath the data and shows us what these impersonal forces mean to actual people. He describes the abandoned children, the poor work habits, the drug abuse, the violence, the rage. But he does it with sympathy and love. 

For Vance, the problem is ultimately cultural, one of values, attitudes and mores. “We hillbillies must wake the hell up,” he writes, and “stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what can we do to make things better.” His own life story — coming from low expectations, dysfunctional relationships and persistent poverty to end up a graduate of Yale Law School and a Silicon Valley executive — demonstrates that grit can conquer all.

But Vance got some help along the way. He tells us that his public schools were decent enough and, when he got motivated, his teachers helped him succeed. He notes that his trajectory changed when he was admitted to Ohio State University, which he was able to attend because of generous federal loans and grants. And the turning point in the book and his life takes place when he decides to enlist in the Marine Corps. He describes how the armed forces taught him discipline, hard work, high expectations and good values. 

This is federal bureaucracy engaged in shaping mores and morals, the ultimate example of government as nanny. When so much of what government does is under siege, it is odd that Vance seems to minimize the role that government can play in providing opportunities for others like him.

The other, larger gap in Vance’s book is race. He speaks about the causes of the anxiety and pain of the white working class, but he describes the causes almost entirely in economic terms. Their jobs have disappeared, their wages have stagnated, their lives have become more unstable. But there is surely something else at work here — the sense that people who look and sound very different are rising up. Surveys, polls and other research confirm that racial identity and anxiety are at the heart of support for Trump.

Vance touches on this sideways, when speaking about the almost pathological suspicion his hillbillies have for Barack Obama. Vance explains that it is because of the president’s accent — “clean, perfect, neutral” — his urban background, his success in the meritocracy, his reliability as a father. “And,” one wants to whisper to Vance, “because he’s black .” After all, over the years the white working class has voted for plenty of Republican and Democratic candidates with fancy degrees and neutral accents. That’s not what makes Obama different.

The white working class has always derived some of its status because there was a minority underclass below it. . . . Edmund Morgan argues that even before the revolution, the introduction of slavery helped dampen class conflict within the white population. No matter how poor you were, there was security in knowing there was someone beneath you.
 The rage that is fueling the Trump phenomenon is not just about stagnant wages. It is about a way of life under siege, and it risks producing a “politics of cultural despair.” That phrase was coined by Fritz Stern to describe Germany a century ago. The key to avoiding that fate is not a series of public policies — whether tariffs or tax credits — but enlightened politics, meaning leadership that does not prey on people’s fears and phobias.

Added to the racism of Trump's base is a heavy dose of religious extremism flowing from the Christofascists who are close to hysteria over the decline of Christianity in America and their growing inability to inflict their beliefs on all of society (and make a plush living, if one is a member of the professional Christian class).  Both the working class whites of Appalachia and elsewhere need to take a look at themselves and realize that they themselves are a major part of their perceived problem.   Years ago a family member worked at a government funded medical clinic in the nearly all white coal mining regions of Southwest Virginia and was appalled at the level of dysfunction in much of the low income white society there.  Squandering ones paycheck on alcohol and/or drugs, dropping out of high school, and/or making ridiculous purchases that actively kept them back financially and inflicted harm and even hunger on their children is not the fault of the government or other races. Likewise, if the Christofascists lament the decline of Christianity, it is they themselves and their hatred of others that have in large part made younger generations walk away form religion entirely.  It's not blacks, Hispanics or Muslims who are to blame, it is they themselves.  The GOP loves to talk about personal responsibility, yet its core base is all about playing the blame game and rejecting personal accountability.

Perhaps I sound harsh in my chastisement, but my father, the son of Austrian immigrants, was orphaned at 3 years of age  (he was the youngest of four children), lived in an orphanage until age 16 when he was basically put out on the street, yet managed to graduate from high school, got into college - he was drafted in 1942 and the GI bill paid the balance of his tuition - and was successful in life.  As were all three of his siblings  who had likewise lived in the same orphanage until age 16 and joined the working world while still in high school.  My big issue with Trump is that the rage he evokes from his supporters ultimately does nothing to improve their prospects or change some of their dysfunctional and racist lifestyles.