Tuesday Male Beauty

John Boehner Kisses Pat Robertson's Ring and Intimates that GOP Will Defend DOMA

One of the draw backs of living in the Hampton Roads area is the frequent exposure to the lunacy eruptions of local religious extremist/nut case, Pat Robertson. With each passing year, Robertson gets crazier and crazier, yet members of the GOP continue to prostitute themselves to Robertson and his coven of extremists at Christian Broadcasting Network ("CBN") and similar "Christian" broadcasting outlets. Speaker of the House John Boehner apparently felt compelled to kiss Robertson's ring and those of other Christianist snake oil merchants at a recent gathering of the National Religious Broadcasters Association. Boehner also made an obligatory rant about the Obama Department of Justice's decision not to defend Sec. 3 of DOMA in federal court. As noted in a prior post, one can only hope that Boehner and his fellow GOP Christo-fascists rush into court and find themselves cut to shreds when they must provide serious evidence and legal arguments to support their religious based hatred toward gays. Here's some of CBN's coverage of Boehner's pandering:
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Speaker John Boehner: “I’m really disappointed in the President and the Department of Justice in the fact that they’re not going to defend a law that Congress passed overwhelmingly. It’s their responsibility to do that. Now, it’s happened before where administrations have decided they weren’t going to go out and vigorously defend a law that Congress passed but I really am disappointed in the President in his actions but if the President won’t lead, if the President won’t defend DOMA then you’ll see the House of Representatives defend our actions in passing a bill that frankly passed overwhelmingly.”
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Speaker John Boehner: “I’d be very surprised if the House didn’t decide that they were going to defend law.”

Speaker John Boehner: “It strikes me as something that’s just as raw politics as anything I’ve seen knowing that a lot of people who believe in DOMA are probably not likely to vote for him and pandering to the other side on this issue.”

Southern Decadence Protest Leader Arrested for Masturbating in Public Park

Why is it that it seems that hardly a day doesn't go by without some loud mouth Christianist homophobe or another getting caught up in some kind of kinky sexual escapade or some type of inappropriate sexual behavior that flies in the face of the "family values" they claim to champion? The hypocrisy is truly stunning. Today's addition to the list of gay haters who have been caught in their own sexual peccadillo is the Rev. Grant Storms, the Christian fundamentalist known for his bullhorn protests of the Southern Decadence festival in the French Quarter. It seems the good reverend was wanking off in Lafreniere Park (a public park) near the carousel and children's playground. Two women called police who took Storms into custody. Here are highlights from the Times Picayune:
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The Rev. Grant Storms, the Christian fundamentalist known for his bullhorn protests of the Southern Decadence festival in the French Quarter, was arrested on a charge of masturbating at a Metairie park Friday afternoon.
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The first woman told deputies she was taking her children to the playground and parked next to the van at about noon. As she was walking around her own vehicle, she noticed the van windows were down and the occupant [Storms] was "looking at the playground area that contained children playing, with his zipper down...," the report said. The woman noted that he was masturbating and quickly ushered her children out of her car.
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The two women flagged down a park employee who notified the Sheriff's Office. The employee detained the man, later identified as Storms, until deputies arrived. Storms told deputies he was having lunch at the park when he decided to urinate using a bottle instead of the restroom, the report said.
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Deputies booked him with obscenity. Bond was set at $5,000, but he was released from the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna on Sunday because of jail crowding.
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Storms could not be reached for comment on Monday. A self-styled "Christian patriot," Storms led a small West Bank congregation called The Reformer Church and for 10 years hosted "The Reformer Radio Show" on WSHO.
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He is especially known for arming followers with bullhorns, Bibles and picket signs to protest Southern Decadence, the three-day gay festival held in the French Quarter during Labor Day weekend. Storms grabbed national attention in 2003 with his failed attempts to shut down what Southern Decadence organizer Chuck Robinson called a peaceful festival that celebrates gay and alternative lifestyles.
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"He's done everything through the years to disturb that and try to make it into something nasty that it's not," Robinson said. "If the Rev. Storms is caught doing that in our city, it is ludicrous and heinous that he would have the nerve to complain about any kind of sexuality."

More Monday Male Beauty

LA Times: Allow Same-Sex Weddings, Now

The Los Angeles Times has a great main page editorial making the case for allowing same sex marriages now in support of the request of the plaintiffs in the Prop. 8 case to suspend the stay of the District Court ruling in Perry v. Schwarzenegger pending the 9th Circuit's decision on appeal. The editorial makes the case that each day that couples are denied the right to marry they are denied equal protection under the U. S. Constitution. As noted many times on this blog, the only reason that gays have been denied equality is because of the improper special rights and privileges given to anti-gay religious views. It is far past time that special privileges cease being given out to a particularly toxic and hate based set of religious beliefs. Here are highlights from the editorial:
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Enough already. Gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to wed while the case works its way through the system.
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The state Supreme Court was asked by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether supporters of Proposition 8 have the right — known as "standing" — to continue with their case. It indicated that it would hear arguments late this year, with a ruling likely to follow a few months later. Meanwhile, a stay pending the outcome of the appeal has kept gay weddings from going forward. Now, however, the lawyers challenging Proposition 8 have asked the 9th Circuit to lift the stay and allow the weddings to take place. We agree that it should.
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Every day that the case drags on, gay and lesbian couples who would like to marry are being deprived of their civil rights. That's not our wording; the federal trial judge decided that issue, at least for now. The denial of constitutional rights, even temporarily, is a deplorable situation that must meet high legal standards to be allowed to continue. In our view, those conditions have not been met.
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Those filing the appeal must show that they would be irreparably harmed if the stay were lifted; the courts also take into account where the public interest lies. During the trial, the supporters of Proposition 8 were unable to identify any harm that would befall them if same-sex weddings took place.
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Right now, same-sex couples are being deprived of their constitutional right to marry, and every indication is that unless the stay is lifted, they'll have to keep waiting for more than a year. That is real harm, and there is no valid reason to allow it to continue.
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Needless to say, I concur 100% with the LA Times' analysis.

GOP Budget Plan Would Cost 700,000 Jjobs

To me it's amazing how the GOP continues to dupe working class and middle class voters into supporting policies that are clearly against their own best interests. Indeed, many of the Tea Party crowd are working to support candidates who will quickly jettison them over the side of the economic ship once in office. A new independent study of the impact of the GOP budget plan reveals that the GOP plan would cost 700,000 jobs - yep, instead of creating jobs it would do the exact opposite. Yet the sheeple continue to listen to the disingenuous bullshit emanating from the GOP. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the study findings:
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A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.

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The report, by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, offers fresh ammunition to Democrats seeking block the Republican plan, which would terminate dozens of programs and slash federal appropriations by $61 billion over the next seven months.

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Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.
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"Significant government spending restraint is vital, but given the still halting economic recovery, it would be counterproductive for that restraint to begin until the economy is creating enough jobs to bring down the still very high unemployment rate," Zandi writes. "Shutting the government down for any length of time would also be taking a big chance with the recovery, not only because of the disruption to government services, but also due to the potential hit to the fragile collective psyche."

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One would hope that rational thought and analysis would kick in, but with the GOP base and the Tea Party set, objective reality means little.

Monday Male Beauty

British Cricket Pro Announces He is Gay

Professional sports continues to be a segment of society where life in the closet still predominates as homophobic jocks continue to show their ignorance and small mindedness all too much of the time. The only way hearts and minds are changed is by having individual muster the courage to come out and smash the bigoted stereotypes and prove them wrong. Steven Davies - an English Cricket star has joined the small but growing number of professional athletes who slowly but steadily destroying the old stereotypes and hopefully blazing a trail for younger generations to follow. I lived in denial and in the closet for decades. I know all too well how destructive it is and how it slowly kills one's soul. I congratulate Davies on his courage and wish him the best of luck as he moves forward in his career. Here are highlights from the Telegraph:
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In a frank and moving interview with today’s Daily Telegraph, Davies, who started his professional cricketing career with Worcestershire when he was 18, said he could no longer bear to lie about his sexuality.
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Davies, who told his family he was gay five years ago and has enjoyed their complete support, said it was a huge relief to finally come clean and be honest with the wider public.
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"I'm comfortable with who I am - and happy to say who I am in public," Davies said. And he said he hoped his decision would help other young gay people to have the confidence to follow in his footsteps.

Albert Mohler Tells Focus on the FamilyListeners to Face Inevitability of Gay Marraige

I typically view Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Convention to be pretty untethered from objective reality as he clings desperately to an inerrant approach to the Bible and argues against evolution and many other aspects of modernity. Thus it was a huge surprise to read at Right Wing Watch that Mohler has said during an interview on FOTF's radio programing that gay marriage was inevitable and that the wingnut elements of the Christianists needed start facing that reality. No doubt Daddy Dobson, Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, et al, nearly wet themselves as Mohler uttered these statements. The homophobia of the Christianists is driving more and more individuals - especially youths - from Christianity and, in my view, the Christianist need to change or they will be the ones responsible for killing off Christianity. Here are highlights from Right Wing Watch:
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Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, joined Focus on the Family's Jim Daly on his radio program to discuss the news that the Obama administration would no longer defend DOMA in court.
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During the discussion, Mohler said that it is all but inevitable that day is coming when marriage equality will "become normalized, legalized, and recognized in the culture" and that Christians had better be prepared for living in a nation where they find themselves in the minority.
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Mohler: Well Jim I appreciate your candor in that because I think a lot of Christian conservatives are going to try to deny the obvious. I mean, when we talk about same-sex marriage, we talk about something that is already legal in one form or another in basically twelve states. So whether they call it marriage, as they do in a few states, or marriage lite as they have now in twelve states, the reality is that a good number of Americans are living where they're already facing not just the inevitably, but the reality of same-sex marriage. I think it's clear that something like same-sex marriage - indeed, almost exactly what we would envision by that - is going to become normalized, legalized, and recognized in the culture. It's time for Christians to start thinking about how we're going to deal with that.
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I think in the United States, Evangelical Christians in particular, have kind of grown accustomed to having our beliefs and moral convictions and ways of life supported by the state, by the larger culture and we're going to have to learn what it means to live faithfully as Christians when we do not have those supports. You know, it's one thing to live believing that you're in the majority position - everything comes pretty easy that way ...
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Despite the inevitability of gay marriage nationwide, we can expect Maggie Gallagher and other self-enriching culture war whores to continue to milk opposition to gay marriage for every dollar they can wring out of the sheeple.

Sunday Male Beauty