Scott Taylor Defeats Homophobia Randy Forbes

Taylor at the 2016 Pride Fest launch

In yesterday's Republican primary for the Virginia 2nd congressional district and gay-friendly Republican, Scott Taylor, defeated the virulently anti-gay, pro-Christofascists Randy Forbes, a carpetbagger from the re-districted 4th congressional district.  (Taylor has personally donated as a sponsor of this weekend's HR Pride Fest).  Forbes represents everything that is wrong with today's GOP and I say go riddance.  Taylor has his short-comings, but at least he's living in the 21st century, unlike Forbes who wants to bring back all of the worst aspects of the 1950's.  Since the primary likely decided who wins in November, many in the LGBT community held their noses and voted for Taylor to rid Congress of Forbes' putrid, anti-LGBT presence.  Hopefully, other area Republicans will note that being anti-LGBT just might get them defeated as this  region becomes more progressive.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

An ebullient state Del. Scott Taylor won the 2nd Congressional District Republican primary Tuesday with a feisty grassroots campaign after being outspent almost 10-to-1 by U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, a eight-term legislator who was trying to move from his home district to a supposedly friendlier one nearby.

Taylor’s next challenge is the Nov. 8 general election, where he will face Democrat Shaun Brown, a relatively unknown Newport News businesswoman and former unsuccessful candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates and the Newport News City Council.

He emerged from a Town Center restaurant a few minutes after 8 p.m. to a fanfare of applause and handshakes.

“This is not done alone,” he said. “This is a team effort. People come together to sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves.”

Taylor’s victory came after a bruising primary campaign in which he and Forbes traded personal barbs that challenged each other’s character and ability to support national security and the region’s defense-centric economy.

Forbes’ defeat spells the end of his 15-year career in the House of Representatives as a lawmaker from the 4th Congressional District. When his House term ends later this year, he will have served 27 consecutive years in elected office after first being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1989.

Forbes said he regretted not enough people in the 2nd District agreed with his political vision.

There was a certain amount of vindication in Tuesday’s victory for Taylor, 36, who was twice elected to the state House of Delegates. He had been subjected to strong multimedia attacks in television ads, mailings and interviews where Forbes noted Taylor’s business failures and also implied his multiple speeding violations were criminal acts.

Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, ran against much of Virginia Beach’s GOP establishment, with several local elected officials as well as departing U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell endorsing Forbes’ candidacy. Rigell rented Forbes his former headquarters on First Colonial Road and sold him his email lists of supporters.

Rigell said Tuesday night he had “significant” differences with Taylor but would support the party’s nominee to replace him in Congress. 

More Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

It is Time to Recognize that Anti-Gay Bigotry is Not Religious Freedom

This blog has frequently noted the manner in which the concept of religious freedom has been grossly perverted by selfish, self-centered, hate and animus filled Christofascists and their sycophants in the Republican Party.   With the mass murder of members of the LGBT community on Sunday morning, it is time, regardless of the shooters motivation - which may well never be fully known, to put an end to the myth that the Christofascists deliberate campaign against LGBT rights and lives has anything to do with religious freedom.   Rather, it is ALL about bigotry, the embrace of ignorance and animus toward those who challenge the Christofascists  fantasy based world view.   A lengthy piece in the CBC News looks at this truth.  Here are highlights:

In December 1989, Marc Lépine armed himself with a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle and headed off to Montreal's École Polytechnique, hunting women.

He separated male and female students and ordered the men to leave. He then killed the women, execution-style.

By the time he turned the weapon on himself, he'd slaughtered 14 young women for the offence of being women, earning himself a place at the apex of misogynistic violence.
Lepine's suicide note read, in part:

"I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker … The feminists have always enraged me." 

The atrocity, and its stated motivation, immediately triggered an angry and overdue conversation in Canada about misogyny and collective male guilt.

And, at least partially as a result, open sexism and misogynistic humour became far less okay after Polytechnique, at least in polite company. It was a transformative moment.

Now, after Omar Mateen armed himself, reportedly professed allegiance to ISIS and went hunting gays in an Orlando night club, could there possibly be a better time to have the same conversation about organized religion, and what responsibility it bears for the pain and misery and death inflicted on gays for so many centuries in the name of god?

And not just the Muslim god. That is happening now because of Mateen, and deservedly so, but restricting the discussion to Islam is far too easy.

Islam may be more overt about its homophobia than the other major religions — anyone who's worked in the Middle East has heard some fool in high office declaring that there are no gays in Islam, and therefore no AIDS — but the fact is, conservative iterations of all the monotheistic faiths are deeply and actively and systemically anti-gay.

The sacred monotheistic texts contain prohibitions that would by just about any legal definition be considered hate speech in the modern secular world. . . . . Such prohibitions could be dismissed as antediluvian anachronisms, not to be taken seriously in the modern world.  But of course they are taken quite seriously. Deadly seriously.

Fundamentalists and traditionalists of all three faiths not only regard such passages as divine instruction, they actually portray their homophobia as a matter of religious freedom; something noble, protected by constitutions and essential to democracy, when in fact they are working to oppress and deny fundamental rights to people based solely upon the sexuality with which they were born.

A perfect example is Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative whose purpose was to block the advance of same-sex marriage . . . . Prop 8 proponents included the Roman Catholic Church, the Knights of Columbus, the California Catholic Conference of bishops, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), the Union of Orthodox Jewish Organizations of America and assorted evangelical Christian groups. Together, they poured a fortune into the campaign. The Mormons alone provided $20 million.

They won, then immediately lost when the initiative was vacated by secular courts.

Since then, organized religions have continued their anti-gay activities, often going to court to ensure their right to discriminate against gays in hospitals and schools and other religiously affiliated institutions.

Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, a British-born physician and imam, has spoken at public venues in the United States, softly and diffidently asserting that as a matter of compassion, homosexuals should be put to death.  There are many, many other sheikhs like Farrokh Sekaleshfar.

And while evangelical Christians don't seek the death penalty for homosexuality, many do want it punished. In 2004, Dr. Richard Land, the Oxford-educated former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told me on camera he thought gay sex should be outlawed. 

In any event, this much is singularly true: the worst mass murder in American history was directed at one group, and it was done by some one who had sworn allegiance to a fundamentalist religious group.

If casual misogyny and sexist humour helped create Marc Lépine, then organized religion must reflect on helping shape a culture that will this week have led to 50 funerals in Florida. It's not just the extremists who want to deprive gays of human rights.

People of faith might ask themselves this: even if they've never so much as lifted a hand to a gay person, have they smiled at a homophobic joke? Or overlooked mistreatment? Or nodded during an anti-gay sermon?  And if so, wouldn't this be a good time to speak up?

As often noted, yes there are "good Christians," but most of the time their voices are silent.  And through their silence and failure to vigorously oppose their fundamentalist coreligionists, they become complicit in the evil.  We need to cease giving them a pass for their silence.  They are either our allies or our enemies - the choice is theirs. 

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

Pastors and Republicans Show Their Hate and Hypocrisy

Many Republicans and more than a few fundamentalist pastors are showing the hate, lies and hypocrisy that under gird their poisonous beliefs.  Additional pastors have applauded the slaughter of gays in Orlando and foul hypocrites like Ted Cruz ignore their own role in creating the toxic, discriminatory atmosphere in which LGBT Americans continue to live.  Indeed, as the Sacramento CBS affiliate reports, a Baptist pastor's sermon on Sunday morning praised the deaths of the Orlando victims:

A Sacramento Baptist preacher’s sermon praising attack on an Orlando nightclub that killed 50 people has the local LGBT community outraged.

Recordings of the sermon by Pastor Roger Jimenez surfaced under the Verity Baptist Church’s YouTube account.

“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?” he said in the sermon. “Um no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight.”

The remarks were delivered on Sunday morning, hours after the attack happened.

Jimenez’s sermon went on to call for even more death at the hands of the government.  “If we lived in a righteous government, they should round them all up and put them up against a firing wall, and blow their brains out,” Jimenez said in the sermon.

While Christian apologists will fume and say that Jimenez's remarks do not define Christianity, sadly they do.  Through the centuries Christianity has left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

On the political front, in addition to Donald Trump, other Republicans have jumped on the "blame the Muslims" bandwagon even as a more bizarre portrait of the Orlando shooter is emerging.  Moreover, some of this self-prostituting Republicans ignore their own roll in fanning the flames of homophobia and encouraging anti-LGBT violence.  Ted Cruz perhaps best personifies this as Joe Jervis lays out:

Last fall Ted Cruz stood smiling on the stage with a Christian pastor who had just called for exterminating homosexuals in the name of White Jesus. But somehow that scandal seems to have slipped his feeble mind. From his Facebook page:

For all the Democrats who are loud champions of the gay and lesbian community whenever there is a culture battle waging, now is the opportunity to speak out against an ideology that calls for the murder of gays and lesbians. ISIS and the theocracy in Iran (supported with American taxpayer dollars) regularly murder homosexuals, throwing them from buildings and burying them under rocks. This is wrong, it is evil, and we must all stand against it. Every human being has a right to live according to his or her faith and conscience, and nobody has a right to murder someone who doesn’t share their faith or sexual orientation. If you’re a Democratic politician and you really want to stand for LGBT, show real courage and stand up against the vicious ideology that has targeted our fellow Americans for murder.

Take it away, Right Wing Watch:

We wonder why Cruz himself didn’t display such heroism when he spoke at a conference late last year where the main speaker, Kevin Swanson, a long-time and notorious advocate of the government instituting the death penalty for gay people, said repeatedly on stage that the Bible calls for gays and lesbians to be put to death and argued that America should introduce capital punishment against unrepentant homosexuals once society is moved in that direction.

That conference was also attended by Cruz’s father and his then-rivals Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal.

The summit, called the National Religious Liberties Conference, even distributed literature calling for the death penalty for gay people and others, mentioning stoning and throwing people off cliffs as possible forms of executions.

And yet now Ted Cruz has the gall to lecture liberals about the importance of showing “real courage” in the face of those who want to put gays to death.

More Tuesday Male Beauty

Continuing Hitler Like Path, Trump Goes to War With the Washington Post

One of the first things that tyrants do is silence the independent media.  Look no farther than China, Putin's Russia or North Korea to see current examples.   But the phenomenon has happened in western nations as well, with Germany being a prime example.  There, as with Trump, Adolph Hitler, a political leader likewise suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, made silencing the media one of the keys to assuming dictatorial powers.  Yesterday, Donald Trump revoked the press credentials of the Washington Post because the publication was reporting the truth about Trump and his insane accusation against Barack Obama in the wake of the Orlando massacre.  Maniacs like Trump simply will not tolerate reporting that doesn't feed their narcissism.  Politico looks at this telling move which one can only hope will lead to Trump's downfall.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump is rescinding the Washington Post’s credentials to cover his campaign events, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Monday in his latest attack on the press.

“Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post,” Trump posted on Facebook.

Trump had posted to Facebook nearly 20 minutes earlier “to show you how dishonest the phony Washington Post is.”

“I am no fan of President Obama, but to show you how dishonest the phony Washington Post is, they wrote, ‘Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting’ as their headline,” Trump said. “Sad!”

In a statement, Washington Post editor Marty Baron said the decision would be damaging to a free and independent press.

“Donald Trump’s decision to revoke The Washington Post’s press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press," Baron wrote in a statement. "When coverage doesn’t correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished. The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along – honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly. We’re proud of our coverage, and we’re going to keep at it.”

The Trump campaign has banned a number of news outlets from attending his events and press conferences over the past year, including POLITICO, Univision, The Des Moines Register, Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post.

“Trump in his campaign has repeatedly tried to control the coverage of news organizations by denying their journalists access to his campaign events. We believe that is a violation of the basic right of a free press to report — and if the goal is to squelch independent journalism about Trump it certainly won’t work,” said POLITICO editor Susan Glasser in a statement.

The Washington Post article Trump appeared to be balking at now has the headline “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting.” The report includes a series of comments the candidate made on the morning news shows about Sunday's mass shooting in Orlando that left 49 dead and at least 53 injured. It originally had the headline "Donald Trump Suggests President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting."

A piece in Esquire noted the stupidity of Trump's move as follows:

If He, Trump wants additional clarification, I suggest he contact Bernard Cardinal Law at the Basilica of Our Lady Of The Clean Getaway in Rome. Or, if that's too much trouble, he can find out what can come of getting in Marty Baron's sights on-demand in whatever hotel room he's in tomorrow.  Jesus, what a moron.

Trump's not a moron - he's dangerously mentally ill.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Pope Francis' Disingenuous Statement on the Orlando Massacre

If nothing else, I hope the bloodbath in Orlando will wake the LGBT community and its allies up and make disingenuous words of sympathy and feigned sorrow no longer acceptable.  As the sayings go, "talk is cheap" and "actions speak louder than words."  Applying either standard, Pope Francis' statement in the wake of the murder of nearly 50 LGBT individuals and their friends   falls within the category of rank hypocrisy.   First, nowhere in Francis' statement did he acknowledge that the murder victims were predominately gay.  Second, nowhere did he apologize for the Church's continued anti-gay jihad or the Church's continued categorization of LGBT individuals as "inherently disordered" and "inclined toward evil."  Until the Church changes its demonization of gays and its efforts to deprive us of our civil rights, his words in this statement have less value than a piece of toilet paper that someone has used to wipe themselves.  It's all window dressing and filled with rank hypocrisy.  Here are excerpts of the bullshit filled statement via Radio Vatican:

The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation, of pain and turmoil before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred. Pope Francis joins the families of the victims and all of the injured in prayer and in compassion. Sharing in their indescribable suffering he entrusts them to the Lord so they may find comfort. We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity. 

Like the  meaningless statements of numerous Republicans, Francis overlooks his own and the Church's culpability in fanning the flames of homophobia and making LGBT individuals the targets of hate and derision.  If Francis really meant what he says, he'd note the fact that the victims were LGBT and he'd immediately reverse the anti-LGBT language of his predecessors.  His failure to act speacks volumes.  

Was the Orlando Shooter Casing the Club or an Obsessed Self-Loathing Gay?

While much of the focus on Omar Mateen (pictured above), the shooter in the Orlando massacre at Pulse in Orlando in the early hours of Sunday morning, have focused on his reported call to 911 pledging allegiance to ISIS and his possible radicalization, now reports are coming out that he had frequented Pulse numerous times prior to the massacre.  Moreover, some are now coming forward who are stating that he also met men via a gay dating app.  Thus, the question becomes simply casing the club or was he a violence prone version of self-loathing closeted gays such as Rick Santorum and Ken Cuccinelli - men who are hysterically anti-gay while perhaps desperately wanting same sex relations condemned by their faith?  We will likely never know what was in Mateen's mind, but these reports certainly scramble what some thought was an open and shut analysis of his motivations.   Perhaps Donald Trump and others only too happy to rush to judgment may find that things are more complicated that they ignorantly thought.  Towleroad looks at some of these new reports in the wake of Mateen's photo being widely circulated.  Here are excerpts:

Reports have surfaced suggesting that Omar Mateen, the shooter responsible for the death of at least 49 people at gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, was a regular at that club and also messaged guys on a gay dating app.

According to The Orlando Sentinel, Mateen visited the gay nightclub at least 12 times, a fact corroborated by 4 witnesses.

Reports of Mateen’s visits to Pulse were also reported in the Canadian Press, as Gawker points out:

“It’s the same guy,” Chris Callen, who performs under the name Kristina McLaughlin, told the Canadian Press. “He’s been going to this bar for at least three years.”

Ty Smith, who also goes by the name Aries, also said he’d seen Mateen being escorted drunk from the club, Pulse, on multiple occasions.

"(He’d get) really, really drunk… He couldn’t drink when he was at home—around his wife, or family. His father was really strict… He used to bitch about it,” Smith told the Canadian Press.

“Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,” Smith also explained to the Orlando Sentinel, which spoke with at least four clubgoers who remembered seeing Mateen at Pulse at least a dozen times. “We didn’t really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times… He told us he had a wife and child.”

Both Callen and Smith, who are married, tell the Canadian Press they stopped speaking to Mateen after he threatened them with a knife, apparently after someone made a joke about religion.

Another individual has come forth saying they met Mateen on gay dating app, Jack’d. WABC News reports: 

Kevin West said the shooter, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, contacted him three months ago through a dating app called Jack’d.

“When he first contacted me, he was saying things like, ‘What clubs are popping and things of that sort, what are good places to go?'” West said. “And I remember telling him, ‘Oh, you can just look it up online because I don’t go out that much.”

West said he didn’t think anything of it at the time. On Sunday morning, he said he met with FBI agents and showed them his communications with Mateen.

West was dropping off a friend at the club when he noticed Mateen – whom he knew by sight but not by name – crossing the street wearing a dark cap and carrying a black cellphone about 1 a.m., an hour before the shooting.

“He walked directly past me. I said, ‘Hey,’ and he turned and said, ‘Hey,’” and nodded his head, West said. “I could tell by the eyes.” […]

As soon as West saw photos released of Mateen after the shooting, he said, he drove to his local police station, where officers summoned FBI officials, who showed him a photo of Mateen on a computer screen.

“I said, ‘That’s him,’” West said, and turned over his phone and Jack’d log-in information to the FBI, which still had the phone late Monday, he said.

As noted, above, all seems very bizarre, but note the references to his religiously strict father.  It seems like to many visits if he was only casing the club for his planned assault.