Magical Elves, sparkleponies and other assorted gay shit

Pro-gay ally NFL player Chris Kluwe’s colorfully titled book is due out next month. Kluwe earlier this month was dropped by the Minnesota Vikings but was picked up by the Oakland Raiders. I’m glad and proud to have him as a fellow Californian; Minnesota’s loss is California’s gain.

I usually comment on gay-rights issues in the news in a timely fashion, but I’ve been slacking as of late. So here I’ll try to catch up:

It was great to see basketball player Jason Collins, the first active player from one of the “Big Four” sports organizations (the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League ), come out late last month, even if there is at least a grain of truth to gay writer Bret Easton Ellis’ criticism that Collins’ treatment by the media “as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and — yes — infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated” also made Collins a “Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude.”

And I also was happy to hear the news that pro-gay ally NFL player Chris Kluwe, who was dropped by the Minnesota Vikings earlier this month (perhaps at least in part due to his vocal pro-gay-and-pro-gay-marriage stance), shortly thereafter was picked up by the Oakland Raiders.

If Minnesota didn’t appreciate Kluwe, I’m happy to have him here in California, where Kluwe already has done us some good: Kluwe and another pro-gay ally, NFL player Brendon Ayanbadejo, per Wikipedia, “filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on February 28, 2013, regarding Hollingsworth v. Perry, in which they expressed their support of the challenge to California Proposition 8,” which in 2008 amended California’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, a right that California’s Supreme Court had ruled was guaranteed to Californians by the state’s Constitution before the haters later amended it with Prop H8.

I admire the very apparently heterosexual Kluwe, who is heterosexually married and has two children. According to Wikipedia, Kluwe wrote a blog called “Out of Bounds” for a Minnesota newspaper before he quit the blog last year in protest of the newspaper’s having run an editorial in support of the euphemistically titled “Minnesota Marriage Amendment,” which, just as Prop H8 did in California, would have amended the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. (That amendment failed at the ballot box in November, with the haters losing by just more than 5 percentage points, and subsequently the Minnesota Legislature legalized same-sex marriage this month.)

It takes balls and selflessness to fight for a historically discriminated against and oppressed group of people of whom you apparently aren’t a member. Kluwe did the right thing by boycotting the anti-gay newspaper.

Kluwe also has been outspoken about the facts that not all athletes are dumb jocks and that there is more to life than football, even for an NFL player.

And yeah, I’ll probably buy his upcoming book, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities, which is due out next month.

Also this month, three states approved same-sex marriage: Delaware, Rhode Island, and, as I mentioned, Minnesota. (I find it ironic that just after the Minnesota Vikings dropped Kluwe, very possibly at least in part due to his advocacy for same-sex marriage, the state’s Legislature enacted same-sex marriage.)

True, Rhode Island and Delaware are only our 43rd and 45th most populous states, respectively, but Minnesota is our 21st most populous state, and it joins Iowa as another Midwestern state with same-sex marriage. Once the Midwest goes, how far behind can the rest of the nation be?

Finally, I found it to be a pleasant surprise to learn that President Barack Obama, this past weekend in his commencement speech to the graduates of the all-male, historically African-American Morehouse College, remarked, “… and that’s what I’m asking all of you to do: keep setting an example for what it means to be a man. Be the best husband to your wife or your boyfriend or your partner. Be the best father you can be to your children. Because nothing is more important.”

True, Obama’s wording was inelegant.* If you were a man who had married your boyfriend, he would be your “husband” or your “spouse” or your “partner” or however else you chose to refer to him (hell, call him your “wife” if you want to and if he is OK with that; it’s your marriage, not mine). But if you had married him, you probably wouldn’t still be referring to him as your “boyfriend.”

Still, I found it at least a bit encouraging for the president of the United States of America, whatever his other many flaws and missteps might be, basically state in a college commencement address before an all-male audience that marrying a member of the same sex is perfectly fine if that is what is right for the individual.

You never would have heard George W. Bush, or even Bill Clinton, utter those words at a commencement ceremony.

I noted above that Chris Kluwe is “heterosexually married.” I did that on purpose; “married” no longer should automatically mean heterosexually married; “married” should include the possibility of being homosexually married — in all 50 states and in every nation on the planet that recognizes marriage between heterosexuals.

And one day, it won’t matter; “married” will just be married, and no one will much care, if he or she cares at all, whether it’s a same-sex marriage or an opposite-sex marriage.

But it still matters now, and we Magical Elves and our allies have a lot of work to do between today and the day that it no longer matters because everyone (or at least almost everyone) realizes that each and every one of us is a beautifully unique sparklepony.

–

*Slate.com’s William Saletan reports that Obama’s prepared remark was “Be the best husband to your wife or boyfriend to your partner or father to your children that you can be,” but, again, what Obama actually said was, “Be the best husband to your wife or your boyfriend or your partner.”

Saletan writes:

… But this time, the speech didn’t go according to script. Literally. Obama changed the “boyfriend” line from hetero boilerplate to explicitly gay-inclusive. He ad-libbed. And this was a heck of a time to do it. The speech was about what it means to be a man. The president of the United States, who until a year ago didn’t support same-sex marriage, has just put an official stamp of masculinity on male homosexuality. …

That’s certainly a possibility; it’s a valid interpretation, and it would be my interpretation, too, more or less, but, in my viewing of the clip of the remark, it appears to me as though Obama does stumble and/or hesitate a bit in getting the words out, with a nervous-and-unsure-of-himself-sounding inflection on the final word of that sentence, “partner,” and it’s not 100 percent clear to me whether he stumbles over these words because he’s messing them up or because he’s not sure how what he is saying — that it’s perfectly OK for a man to marry a man — is going to be received by his audience (Morehouse College, after all, is in Georgia, a state that isn’t exactly known as a gay-friendly state).

Indeed, sadly, if you also watch the clip, you will hear and see that after Obama asks his audience to “keep setting an example for what it means to be a man,” he has to pause for applause, but then, after he says next, “Be the best husband to your wife or your boyfriend or your partner,” very apparently his audience at first is silent in momentary confusion but then breaks out in some derisive laughter and mumbling and grumbling.

Indeed, in response to this very apparent derision over his remark that a man may marry a man, Obama puts his index finger up to his audience in apparent admonishment over their apparent homophobia.

As I said, we still have a way to go.

Barack Obama’s cold calculation on same-sex marriage

President Barack Obama made headlines today by having proclaimed in an interview with ABC News, “…[A]t a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go  ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

I can tell you what that “certain point” was: the point at which Obama finally calculated (correctly) that his stubborn refusal to publicly endorse same-sex marriage was causing him more political harm than political gain.

On Saturday, I presciently raked Obama over the coals for having yet to fulfill what I had considered to be at least a strongly implied 2008 campaign promise: his endorsement of same-sex marriage — of full marriage equality, regardless of gender or sexual orientation – in all 50 states.

Among other things, I wrote:

Instead of delivering upon his relentless, ubiquitous [2008] campaign promises of “hope” and “change,” [Obama] for the most part has maintained the status quo and has told us dreamers of full equality for all that our dream must be deferred.

No, it doesn’t have to be deferred. It’s that Barack Obama lacks the character, the courage and the moral conviction to deliver upon what he promised (explicitly and implicitly…) …

On Sunday I felt fairly psychic, for the big news of that day was that Vice President Joe Biden had come out in support of same-sex marriage. But, as I wrote on Sunday, Biden’s endorsement of same-sex marriage was not nearly enough.

To a commenter on Saturday’s piece, I responded:

Nationwide polls taken over the last year or so show that about 52 percent of Americans, when asked to give a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down to legalized same-sex marriage, give it their thumbs-up. (The spread is about 51 percent to 53 percent. See http://pollingreport.com/civil.htm.)

As Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote in 2008, there probably is great overlap — at least 90-something percent, I venture — among those who voted for Obama in 2008 and those who support same-sex marriage.

So I don’t see what Obama gains politically, especially in terms of votes for re-election, by claiming that he’s still “evolving” on same-sex marriage. For any support from the homophobes that he might get (and most of them hate him because he’s black), Obama is losing the support of those like me who used to support him but who no longer do, in large part because he is still “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Sacrificing your base in order to cater to the “swing voters” is, I think, a huge fucking mistake.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Mittens becomes the next president. And after Election Day we can say that it was completely avoidable, that Barack Obama fucked it up royally.

Again, while it’s hard to calculate and thus hard to prove, I do believe that any political gain that Obama might have garnered from refusing to “evolve” already and publicly endorse same-sex marriage was canceled out by the loss of support from his base. And it’s your base, not the fucking “swing voters,” who give you money, who enthusiastically give you their votes, who talk up your candidacy to their associates, and who even volunteer for your campaign.

And we gay men and lesbians (and other non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals) long have been sick and fucking tired of the Democratic Party asking us for our money and our votes — the term “gAyTM” was coined for this phenomenon — while refusing to fight for our equal human and civil rights, instead perpetually telling us that it’s not the right time yet.

A recent nationwide Gallup poll (which was taken between May 3 and May 6 and was released after I wrote the paragraphs above) put support for same-sex marriage at 50 percent and opposition at 48 percent, with 2 percent “unsure.”

Now, it seems to me that if you’re vehemently against same-sex marriage you are vehemently against same-sex marriage, so I surmise that more than half of those who are “unsure” would support same-sex marriage if they had to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, so, I surmise, we’re looking at at least 51-percent support.

A Pew Research Center nationwide poll taken last month showed that 47 percent favor same-sex marriage, 43 percent oppose it, and 11 percent are unsure (yes, that’s 101 percent — which Pew says is due to rounding). Let’s give the freedom-hating homophobes more than half of the unsures — 6 percent — and the lovers of liberty and justice for all only 5 percent of the unsures. That still is 52 percent for same-sex marriage. I stand by my earlier assertion that we’re at about 52 percent of Americans favoring same-sex marriage.

Indeed, an ABC News/Washington Post nationwide poll in March found that 52 percent of Americans favor same-sex marriage, while only 43 percent oppose it, with 5 percent unsure. Give the pro side only 2 percent of the unsures, and that’s 54 percent support.

Again, Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote in 2008 — which very apparently is within a percentage point of the percentage of Americans who support same-sex marriage.

Obama had nothing to gain, but, I surmise, had a lot to lose by continuing to hold out on same-sex marriage.

If we cannot agree on that, well, then, at least we had better agree that we cannot call Obama’s new-found stance on same-sex marriage an epiphany or even a change of heart — not when he put himself on record as being a supporter of same-sex marriage way back in 1996, when he answered a question of a campaign questionnaire as follows: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

Politico.com reported back in January 2009, the month that Obama took over the Oval Office, that this response was typed out and that the document was signed by Obama, and Politico included this graphic with the January 2009 story:

Image from Politico.com

So: Of course it has been cold, political calculation on Obama’s part.

But at least this is one clear contrast between Obama and the multi-millionaire Mormon Mittens Romney, who today in response to Obama’s surprise pro-same-sex-marriage pronouncement affirmed his homophobic, “Christo”fascist, anti-liberty-and-justice-for-all stance on same-sex marriage.

(The patriarchal, misogynist, homophobic, racist Mormon cult, which is led by a cabal of stupid old evil white men in Salt Lake City, did, after all, give millions of dollars in support of Proposition H8 here in California, as did Mitten’s fellow “Christo”fascist nutjob Prick Santorum’s Catholick cult, which is led by a cabal of stupid old evil white men in the Vatican.)

Mittens — who, if elected, might as well move the Oval Office to the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City — proclaimed today: “Well, when these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name. My view is [that]domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.”

Whether or not it’s too late for Obama to recapture enough of the love that he has lost over the past few years in order to ensure his re-election remains to be seen. He has disappointed millions within his base, and he has only six months to try to woo them back.

He might find that mere words aren’t enough; after all, it was the words “hope” and “change” that took him all the way to the White House (on the wave that Howard Dean had created in his ill-fated 2004 quest for the White House), and it has been the fact that those words have remained, for the most part, just words that accounts for the gap of enthusiasm for Obama of today from a few years ago.

P.S. I note that Obama apparently hasn’t abandoned his “states’ rights” “argument.” In a fundraising e-mail that he sent out today titled “Marriage,” he wrote: “I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.”

That is not the same as saying that no state should be allowed to outlaw same-sex marriage, of course, even though he had just finished asserting, “But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally.”

“All Americans” means all 50 states.

This very much reminds me of the days of slavery, when some states retained slavery and others rejected slavery.

Speaking of which, North Carolina was a slave state, of course, so it’s no fucking shock that the backasswards state’s voters decided to write discrimination into their state’s constitution yesterday by banning same-sex marriage.

None of the former slave states is exactly enlightened.

(To wit, the haters of North Carolina voted not only to ban same-sex marriage, but voted to ban even separate-and-unequal civil unions and domestic partnerships as well, to be extra hateful.)

The wingnuts’ very bad day

Updated below (Wednesday, February 8, 2012)

Wow.

So the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled that Proposition 8 — the anti-same-sex-marriage measure that passed by a small majority in California in November 2008 after a hateful, lie-filled campaign by the right (financed largely by the Mormon cult and the Catholick church) – violates the freedoms guaranteed to Californians by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, a.k.a. the Equal Protection Clause.*

Sure, the case will go to the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court, but even if the current right-leaning U.S. Supreme Court rules that banning same-sex marriage is not unconstitutional, the composition of the court will change over time, and one day same-sex marriage will be legal in all 50 states.

These things take time — it wasn’t until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Loving vs. Virginia, that no state may outlaw mixed-race marriage.

And it was in 2003 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence vs. Texas that, per Wikipedia, “private sexual conduct is protected by the liberty rights implicit in the due process clause of the United States Constitution.” Yet it was just in 1986 that the same court had upheld “sodomy” laws in Bowers vs. Hardwick. The court reverses itself all the time.

Also today, anti-choice wingnut Karen Handel resigned from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation after the foundation took well-deserved truckloads of shit for having decided to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood — a decision that Handel denies that as the Komen foundation’s vice president for public policy she influenced, but that insiders say of course she did.

Before she went to the Komen foundation, the Repugnican Tea Party’s Handel had run for governor of Georgia in 2010 on an anti-choice platform (never mind that the issue of a woman’s right to an abortion was settled waaay back in 1973 with Roe vs. Wade) and had received the endorsement of fellow wingnut and misogynist Sarah Palin.

Today is a great victory for women and for non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals.

The treasonous, ignorant and hate-filled wingnuts among us hate the ideas of equality, of liberty, justice and freedom for all, but the ideals of equality, of liberty, justice and freedom for all — and not just for the oppressive wingnuts — march on nonetheless.

–

*The Fourteenth Amendment reads, in part: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Updated (Wednesday, February 8, 2012):

Wow. Yesterday also was a bad day for the wingnuts because the utterly unelectable Prick Santorum came in at first place in all three Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary contests yesterday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Gilded Boy Mitt Romney came in at second place in Colorado and Missouri and third place in Minnesota.

A protracted Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary fight can only help Barack Obama. Indeed, the media have been reporting that Obama’s favorability ratings are up, and that the latest polls have him beating all of the Repugnican Tea Party presidential contenders in hypothetical matchups.

Again, yesterday was a pretty bad day to be a wingnut.

P.S. Prick Santorum’s attacks against Obama are pretty fucking hilarious, such as this one: “He [Obama] believes he’s the smartest guy in the country and he should tell people what to believe and how to live their lives.”

Yet it’s the Catholick Prick Santorum and his “Christo”fascistic cohorts who want to ban abortion – and perhaps even contraception – and decide who may and may not get married, and otherwise cram their backasswards, patriarchal, misognyist, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-science worldview down our throats.

But nooooo, it’s Barack Obama who wants to “tell people what to believe and how to live their lives.”

Will the Orcs in the audience hurt the Repugnicans in November 2012?

 

Bloodthirsty Orcs in the audiences of the 2012 Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary debates scream out their demand for manflesh. Who, oh, who, will be their Saruman?

I tried to watch all of the last Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary debate (which was Thursday night in Orlando, Fla.) so that I could blog on it. I really did.

But after about 10 to 15 minutes of the usual free flow of Repugnican Tea Party lies from those who would be king – we should deregulate everything, we should privatize everything, we should not raise taxes for the rich and the super-rich by a single red fucking cent, guv’mint is evil, labor unions are evil, welfare benefits are evil, etc., etc. — I couldn’t take it anymore and I had to close the live-streaming window.

I can stand to be in hell, where demonic lies reign, for only so long.

What’s interesting about the three Repugnican Tea Party debates thus far is that the biggest news that has come out of them — aside from not-ready-for-prime-time Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s lackluster performance — is the spontaneous outburts of hatred by the debates’ far-right whackjob audience members.

At the first debate, the audience burst out in raucous applaud when it was mentioned that as Texas governor, Perry holds the record as the most-executing top state executive. (Really, the cold-blooded, bloodthirsty Perry seems to take the title of “executive” waaay too literally.)

I watched that audience-reaction debacle as it happened live, but I missed the next two.

Apparently at the second debate, the audience burst into applause over the idea of letting someone without health insurance die because he or she cannot afford to pay for his or her own medical care.

Woo hoo! Survival of the fittest! It’s what Jesus would do — let the weakest among us die!

And at the third debate (after had I stopped watching it live), the audience booed Stephen Hill, a U.S. Army soldier who is stationed in Vietraq, after he asked a question (via video) regarding the U.S. military’s recently repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – and they booed him because he is gay.

(You can watch all three shameful clips here.)

So the Repugnican Tea Party’s base — aside from the minority of treasonous plutocrats and corporatocrats who don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes but who want to continue to tank our nation’s economy at our expense for their selfish benefit, and who want to see the gaping chasm between the rich and the poor widen even farther – is comprised of bloodthirsty, cold-hearted, bigoted haters who nonetheless claim to be such great fucking “Christians.”

Will these shameful audience reactions hurt the Repugnican Tea Party brand in upcoming national elections? (After all, none of the fascists who are vying for the 2012 Repugnican Tea Party presidential nomination rebuked the audiences’ sickening displays during the debates.)

Salon.com editor and writer Steve Kornacki tackles this question, noting that as it is, only about a third of Americans view the Repugnican Tea Party favorably. This percentage seems about right to me (and is in line with recent polls).

In hypothetical November 2012 matchups against Barack Obama, even Michele “Like Deer in Headlights” Bachmann pulls in around 40 percent, which indicates to me that the far-right-wing nutjobs have as much as 40 percent of the electorate’s support (that is, the support of the staunch right-wing nutjobs, who are about a third of the electorate, plus those “swing voters” whom they are able to dupe). That’s a minority, but it’s a sizeable minority, and, given the “swing voters’” ability to vote for fascists like George W. Bush (and potentially for George W. Bush II, a.k.a. Rick Perry), Obama’s re-election certainly is not certain.

(Against Obama, by the way, as of late Perry has been pulling in around 41 to 45 percent, which to me suggests that right now he has the support of at least some of the “swing voters.” The question would be how many of those who for some God-damned reason are undecided right now he could pull in between now and Election Day in November 2012.)

Kornacki concludes of the shameful Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary debate audience reactions that we’ve been seeing lately:

…[T]hese debate outbursts end up generating considerable attention and helping to establish (or to reinforce) a sense among non-Republican voters that the GOP has gone off the deep end.

[But it] could be that this won’t end up mattering in the end. If the economy is rotten enough, swing voters might end up voting straight ticket Republican next year no matter how extreme the GOP seems to them.

But when members of a Republican crowd at a nationally televised Republican event start booing [active-duty] members of the military, it’s safe to say [that] the GOP is playing with fire.

Agreed.

The Repugnican Tea Party fascists in the audience at the third debate clearly had a dilemma: Members of the U.S. military, especially those on active duty in the post-9/11 crusade in the Middle East that is bleeding the American empire to death, are considered to be heroes, and the right wing’s post-9/11 hero worship generally applies to them, but at the same time, the right-wing fascists hate non-heterosexuals like the Nazis hated the Jews (and like the Nazis also hated non-heterosexuals…), so what to do?

Clearly, for those who booed, where it came to the gay soldier, the “gay” part canceled out the “soldier” part.

But for the majority of even the dimwitted “swing voters,” it seems to me, the “soldier” part trumps the “gay” part. Nor, I surmise, are even the “swing voters” on board with just allowing those without health insurance to die.

(I surmise that most of them support the death penalty, however. The more ignorant one is, the more fearful he or she is, and the biggest fear is probaby the fear of death, and the “thinking” apparently is that executing convicted murderers will protect the rest of us from death.

That said, I surmise also that the majority of the “swing voters” aren’t on board with executing those whose guilt is questionable [as was the case with
Troy Davis, whom the state of Georgia executed this past week], which the deep-red states [like Georgia] have no problem with, especially if the executed are black or otherwise non-white [as was Davis].)

So I hope that these Repugnican Tea Party presidential primary debate audience outbursts continue.

In a roundabout way, they’re good for the country.

Facts never get in the haters’ way

I have a new slogan for the Repugnican Tea Party: “The Repugnican Tea Party: We Hate Everyone YOU Hate!”

Seriously, though, that’s what I imagine wingnuts saying about wingnutty political candidates: “I’m going to vote for him/her — he/she hates everyone I hate!”

Just when everyone was learning the definition of an “anchor baby,” the Repugnican Tea Party decided that the hatees de la semaine would be Muslims again. (I read in some news article that 9/11 is still “fresh” to some. If something that happened nearly nine fucking years ago is still “fresh” to you, unless an immediate family member or very close loved one of yours died in the 9/11 attacks, you really need to get a fucking life.)

Lots of articles are now pouring in about the facts of the proposed mosque near the former site of the World Trade Center.

Such as this one stating, correctly, that it’s actually incorrect to call the proposed new building a “mosque.” It’s much more accurate to call it a Muslim center that would include a mosque. But which is more dramatic? “Mosque” or “Muslim center”?

Um, yeah.

And there’s this news story about how Muslims have been praying inside of the Pentagon, not far from where the Pentagon was hit on 9/11, for years now.

This news story, titled “Fact check,” notes that the proposed Muslim center actually is more like six blocks (not two blocks) away from the nearest of the two towers that were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, that law enforcement officials have found no link between the individuals behind the proposed Muslim center and any suspected terrorist-related activity, that the old building that would be replaced with the Muslim center already is used by Muslims for prayer, and that an established mosque, the Manhattan Mosque, already is only five blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center.

And then there is this Politico article, which posits that the proposed Muslim center is unlikely ever to be established anyway, not only because of the bigoted political attacks against it, but because fundraising for the $100 million Muslim center has been sluggish, to put it mildly.

So, all in all, the proposed mosque Muslim center at Ground Zero that’s two six blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center is no big fucking deal. There already are plenty of Muslims in New York City — and even a pre-existing mosque in Manhattan. Who knew?

But when did the members of the Repugnican Tea Party ever pass up an opportunity to exploit 9/11 yet once again? And when did the facts ever stop them?

This is what the Repugnican Tea Party is reduced to: which minority group it’s hating this week.

Last week it was the “anchor babies.” This week, it’s the Muslims who want to build a mosque as a big ol’ “Fuck you!” to the victims of 9/11.

Who will it be next week?

Maybe the leaders of the Repugnican Tea Party can make it interesting and exciting and let their members vote, like they would vote for a contestant on “American Idol.”

P.S. I have to share this Tweet: “In fairness, we’ve been building ‘ground zeros’ near Iraqi mosques since March 2003.”

And this Associated Press news story notes:

Republican candidates around the country seized on President Barack Obama’s support for the right of Muslims to build a mosque [sic] near ground zero, assailing him as an elitist who is insensitive to the families of the Sept. 11 victims.

From statehouses to state fairs on Tuesday, Republican incumbents and challengers unleashed an almost unified line of criticism against the president days after he forcefully defended the construction of a $100 million Islamic center two [sic] blocks from the site of the 2001 terror attacks.

Recalling the emotion of that deadly day, Republicans said that while they respect religious freedom, the president’s position was cold and academic, lacking compassion and empathy for the victims’ families.

“He is thinking like a lawyer and not like an American, making declarations without America’s best interest in mind,” said Andrew Harris, a Republican running for Congress in Maryland against first-term Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil.

So respecting the U.S. Constitution, and demanding that it — and not the demands of the lynch mob – be followed, is “elitist,” is “cold and academic,” is “thinking like a lawyer and not like an American.” (Because true Americans sure the fuck don’t think!)

Yes, when it comes to the U.S. Constitution and the rights it guarantees, clearly we should go by our gut. We should let passion, not intelligence, reign! (No wonder these right-wing fucktards loved George W. “Go By Your Gut” Bush so fucking much.)

Finally, the same AP news story notes:

In Ohio, where the president was headed [today] as part of a three-state political swing, Republican congressional candidate Jim Renacci took issue with Obama’s position and challenged his opponent, first-term Democrat John Boccieri, to do likewise.

“Just because we may have the right to do something, doesn’t necessarily make it right to do it,” Renacci said.

I like Jon Stewart’s comeback to that Repugnican Tea Party “argument”: “You can build a Catholic church next to a playground — but should you?”

9/11 is back — just in time for 11/2/10!

AFP photo

“Intellectually the president may be right” on the freedom-of-religion issue regarding the establishment of a Muslim complex near the former site of the World Trade Center (which would replace the building on Park Place in Manhattan shown above), one Repugnican Tea Party strategist concedes, but adds: “But this is an emotional issue … and it’s going to be a big, big issue for Democrats across this country” for the upcoming mid-term elections. Because emotion always should trump the rights guaranteed to all by the U.S. Constitution.

President Barack Obama actually seems to have resisted, for once, the urge to sell out those of us of the “professional left.” On Friday he stated, correctly, that to block the opening of the planned Muslim center near the former World Trade Center would be a violation of the freedom of religion, guaranteed to all by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

This is the freedom that the “Christo”fascists want for themselves, like free speech — but, also like it is with free speech, they want freedom of religion only for themselves.

As I have noted before, I believe that Islam, Judaism and Christianity — at least as they are practiced by the bloodthirsty zealots who claim to follow these patriarchal, backasswards religions – all are bullshit religions, but if we’re going to let the members of one bullshit, psychopathic religion establish a place of worship, fairness (as well as the freedom of religion) dictates that we allow all of them to do so.

But Repugnican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, that bastion of equal human and civil rights, has declared that the establishment of the Muslim center near the former WTC site is not an issue of freedom of religion. Reuters reports:

“This is not about freedom of religion because we all respect the right of anyone to worship according to the dictates of their conscience … but I do think it’s unwise to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as the result of a terrorist attack,” Texas Republican John Cornyn said on the “Fox News Sunday” program.*

Cornyn’s “logic” apparently is that “freedom of religion” is “the right of anyone to worship according to the dictates of their conscience” — but that the majority religion (in this case, what passes for Christianity) may dictate to a minority religion (in this case, Islam) where it may and may not establish centers of worship.

It seems to me that the establishment of places of worship is central to freedom of religion, but Cornyn tries to weasel out of this somehow.

Cornyn, because he cannot win on the matter of the Muslims’ constitutional right to establish a place of worship, then appeals to the tyranny of the majority, to the mob mentality: “To me it demonstrates that Washington, the White House, the administration, the president himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America,” Cornyn said.

So Cornyn’s “argument” becomes that if the majority of Americans — the majority of whom call themselves “Christians” — don’t want Muslims to establish a place of worship at a certain site, then the Muslims should not be allowed to do so.**

The Muslims’ constitutional rights, therefore, in effect, are to be put up for a vote.

Just like my equal human and civil rights — my constitutional rights – were put up for a vote when the Mormon-cult-backed anti-same-sex-marriage Proposition H8 narrowly passed here in California in November 2008 (with 52 percent of the vote).

A federal judge earlier this month ruled that Prop H8 violates the rights guaranteed to California’s citizens by the U.S. Constitution — and he ruled that same-sex marriages must be allowed again in the state of California as of 5 p.m. this Wednesday.

The right wing’s insane response to this is to claim that the haters who voted for Prop H8 are the victims.

The Sacramento Bee actually published a guest editorial on the matter that actually began:

The true victims of prejudice in the decision of federal Judge Vaughn Walker to overturn Proposition 8 are the 7 million Californians who voted for the measure.

So I suppose that the slave owners were the true victims when the slaves were freed. Or, if that’s too far out there for you, we at least can argue that the “rights” of those who believed that mixed-race marriage is wrong were absolutely trampled upon by the tyrannical U.S. Supreme Court when the court ruled in 1967 that no state may outlaw mixed-race marriage.

The “argument” of the right wing here very apparently is that to be a hateful bigot who wishes to curtail the equal human and civil rights of others itself is an inviolable constitutional right.

Uh, I don’t see that right enumerated anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.

As insane as the members of the right wing want to be, calling themselves the victims when they are not allowed to victimize others, those of us Americans who are sane and who truly believe in freedom and liberty and in the U.S. Constitution cannot let stand this new wave of right-wing attacks against the constitutional rights of our fellows — be they brown-skinned immigrants (or brown-skinned citizens mistaken for immigrants), Muslims, or non-heterosexuals. Or even, for fuck’s sake, babies.

The checkered-at-best history of the United States of America demonstrates that during economic downturns, the majority of (or at least a huge chunk of) frustrated (mostly white) Americans, instead of going after the plutocrats and the corporatocrats who are the actual cause of their financial pain and suffering, go after relatively weak minority groups that have little to nothing to do with the nation’s economic downturn — but who, for the most part, can’t fight back.

This dysfunctional, insane dynamic will continue until enough of us real Americans stand up and stop it.

It’s time to stand up.

First they come for the non-heterosexuals who wish to marry, then for the brown-skinned immigrants who want to make a better life for themselves, then for the Muslims who want to establish a place of worship.

Then, they come for you.

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*I also believe that it is unwise for the Muslim center to be established, but for a very different reason than do Cornyn, Sarah Palin-Quayle and their ilk. As I noted last month:

I agree with Palin-Quayle that the Muslim complex should not be opened, but for entirely different reasons.

Palin-Quayle wants to milk the whole 9/11 thing and appeal to her Muslim-hating, “Christo”fascist base, but I think that the Muslim complex is a bad idea because the safety of everyone who ever enters the building would be in jeopardy at all times.

I mean, think about it: a Muslim complex opens just two blocks away from where the WTC once stood, and all of the Cooters and Skeeters and Zekes of the backasswards parts of the nation are going to get ideas in their tea-baggin’ heads about gettin’ revenge on them Mooslems for 9/11. If the Muslim complex opens, I envision shootings and/or bombings and/or other violent attacks upon it.

However, as bad of an idea as I believe the Muslim center is (for safety reasons), I never would posit that the center should not be allowed to open merely because its existence would — gasp! – offend the tyrannical majority.

You believe in freedom or you don’t. I believe in freedom. The wingnuts do not — or rather, they want freedom only for themselves.

**Indeed, apparently a majority of Americans, blinded by their identification with their brand of “Christianity” and their ignorance of constitutional rights, oppose the establishment of the Muslim center. Notes Reuters:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll showed a majority of Americans across the political spectrum opposed the project being built near the site of the attacks.

The survey, released on Wednesday, showed nearly 70 percent of Americans opposed it, including 54 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents.

Of course, we don’t know how many of those Democrats oppose the establishment of the Muslim center also for safety reasons, but it’s a pretty sure bet that the majority of the Repugnicans and the “independents” (I use the quotation marks because the majority of the “independents” and “swing voters” always lean to the right) are just Muslim-haters.

Judge’s haters only prove their hate

As I had predicted they would, the wingnuts are trying to make an issue out of the fact that federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who recently overtuned Proposition H8 — ruling that to prohibit same-sex marriage (yes, even at the ballot box) violates the equal rights guaranteed to all Americans in the U.S. Constitution — himself is gay.

Ironically, the wingnuts, by claiming that Walker should have recused himself from the case because of his sexual orientation, only prove that they’re a bunch of hateful, discriminatory bigots — and that such venomous discrimination is routinely leveled at non-heterosexuals.

Suppose that a heterosexually married judge had heard the case and that he had ruled to uphold Prop H8. Could I, as a gay man, then have argued that of course the judge should have recused himself — that a heterosexually married judge couldn’t have been unbiased in ruling on a case about same-sex marriage? And what would the victorious homo-hating wingnuts’ response to that argument have been?

Um, yeah.

I suppose that, following the wingnuts’ “logic,” no non-white judge ever can preside over a case involving racial discrimination, and that no female judge ever can preside over a case involving sex discrimination. Only conservative, heterosexual, “Christian” white males can be impartial judges, the right wing apparently believes. That itself, of course, is incredibly discriminatory and biased and unfair, but when were the wingnuts ever about fairness? 

Oh, well. The wingnuts can piss and moan all that they want. They’ve lost the battle over same-sex marriage.

Repugnican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who will succeed Schwarzenegger, both have asked Walker not to stay his ruling, but to allow same-sex marriages to resume in California as soon as possible, just as same-sex marriages were conducted in California in 2008 after the California Supreme Court ruled in May 2008 that to prohibit them violates the state’s constitution until Prop H8 in November 2008 wrote discrimination against non-heterosexuals into the state’s constitution.

The Schwarzenegger administration’s filing with Walker urging him not to stay his decision proclaimed, “The administration believes the public interest is best served by permitting the court’s judgment to go into effect, thereby restoring the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Doing so is consistent with California’s long history of treating all people and their relationships with equal dignity and respect.”

Yup.

What flies at Mormon cult headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah doesn’t fly here in California.

Yeah, it’s too bad that the Mormon cult and its anti-Christian allies spent more than $40 million to force their backasswards, ignorant, hateful “Christo”fascist beliefs on everyone in the state of California, and it’s too bad that we real freedom-loving Californians had to spend almost that much money to defend ourselves against the unprovoked attack from the Mormon meddlers in Utah, but the fact is that the Mormon motherfuckers were incredibly fucking stupid for having taken on California. They bit off waaay more than they could chew.

Ironically, the unprovoked attack on California by the cabal in Salt Lake City is likely to make legalized same-sex marriage the law of the land.

My official prediction: The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will uphold Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling, and then the U.S. Supreme Court either will refuse to take up the case, leaving Walker’s ruling intact, or will hear the case and explicitly uphold Walker’s ruling. Then, in all 50 states it will be illegal — because it is unconstitutional — to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Shit. I’m starting to think that we non-heterosexuals might thank the Mormon cult for (quite inadvertently) bringing us same-sex marriage in all 50 states before we ever would have achieved it on our own…

As of right this very moment, only the residents of Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C., have the right to marry whomever they wish to marry. It took years just to gain those victories.

Now, same-sex marriage will be legal again in California shortly.

And as goes California, so will go the nation.

Suck on that, “Christo”fascist motherfuckers.

Lynchings begin before Labor Day

The concept of the “melting pot” and the motto E Pluribus Unum (Latin for “out of many, one”) on the seal of the United States of America (and also on the seals of the U.S. president, of both houses of Congress and of the U.S. Supreme Court – and on most of our money, as well) mean absofuckinglutely nothing to the “tea-party” dipshits who claim to hold a monopoly on American patriotism and define a “patriot” as only a conservative, white, “Christian,” capitalist heterosexual.

There must be an election day approaching, because the wingnutty politicians — most of them stupid white Repugnican males — are working overtime trying to divide and conquer the American people for their own personal political gain at the expense of the nation as a whole.

So much for the fucking “melting pot.”

The members of the Repugnican Tea Party aren’t waiting to campaign until after Labor Day, however; their assault on those who are different from them already is in full force.

There is Repugnican has-been Newt Gingrich calling the planned Muslim complex near the former site of the World Trade Center part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” (Repugnican Tea Party star Sarah Palin-Quayle had already pleaded with Muslims — via Twitter [if Palin-Quayle runs in 2012, maybe Lindsey Lohan can be her running mate] – to “refudiate” the establishment of the Muslim center.)*

Come on, Newt. The unelected BushCheneyCorp (and other Repugnicans, like Rudy Giuliani) got to shamelessly milk 9/11 for political gain for at least five years (at least from September 2001 through November 2006, when the Repugs lost the U.S. House of Representatives and bogeywoman Nancy Pelosi became speaker).

The 9/11 cow is  bone dry.

Estimates of the number of Muslims in the United States vary widely, from around 1.3 million on the low end to 7 million on the high end, with 7 million being the estimate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which I surmise is inflated for political purposes, and from the estimates available, I surmise that there probably are around 5 million Muslim Americans at most.

So I hardly think that we Americans need to worry about the “Islamo”fascists taking over and destroying the nation.

Ironically, it’s the “Christo”fascists we need to worry about. While I can’t think of one right that the Muslims have taken from me, here in California, the Mormon cult, working with the Catholick church and other wingnutty haters, stripped me of my right to marry anyone of my choosing — a right that the California Supreme Court had ruled was mine under the California Constitution.

This Mormon website states: “In the United States the [Mormon cult] is the fourth largest individual ["Christian"] denomination, with over 5.5 million members, a population about equal to the number of Muslims.” [Emphasis mine.]

Ironic, eh?

Yeah, ya know, I’m not worried about the Muslims, but the fucking Mormons already have pushed their theocratic “Christo”fascism on me — and succeeded, at least with Proposition H8.

And one of the Mormon cult’s zombies, Mitt Romney, wants to be president. (Over this dead faggot’s body will an operative for the “Christo”fascist cabal in Salt Lake City become president of the United States of America. [And the wingnuts called Barack Hussein Obama a "Manchurian candidate"...])

The “Christo”fascists won’t stop trying to shove their fucking bullshit beliefs down the entire nation’s throat.

This title from amazon.com demonstrates what I’m talking about:

This book is No. 10 on amazon.com’s best-seller list as I type this sentence. (My guess is that it was hyped up on Faux “News” and other right-wing “media” outlets, and thus its success on amazon.com right now.)

Would a book linking Islam and American patriotism be acceptable? No? Why not? Why would a book linking what passes for Christianity in the United States and American patriotism be OK, then?

Why is it that the “Christo”fascist wingnuts don’t oppose theocracy — but that they just want to make sure that it’s their bullshit religion that runs the show, and not Islam or another bullshit religion?

As an American citizen — born and raised here — I resent the assertion that any one religion has a monopoly on patriotism in the United States of America, and I find the conflation of “Christianity” and patriotism to be nauseating as well as unconstitutional, un-American and “Christo”fascist.

To me, a theocratic fascist is a theocratic fascist — whether he or she is an “Islamo”fascist or a “Christo”fascist (or, for that matter, a “Judeo”fascist).

Yet the Newt Gingriches of the world talk about such things as “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization” while they fucking orchestrate their own cultural-political offensive, based upon their hatefully twisted-beyond-recognition teachings of Jesus Christ, to undermine and destroy our civilization. That’s why I think of them as the “American Taliban.”

Mine is a secular nation, not a “Christian” or “Judeo-Christian” nation, no matter what the wingnutty fucktards claim. Memo to the wingnuts: Keep your fucking stupid, backasswards beliefs off of my constitutional rights, fuck you very much!

It’s not just the stupid white men — it’s the stupid white women, too, such as Palin-Quayle, the grand dragoness of the “tea party” crowd, and the racist, white supremacist Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the Wicked Witch of the Southwest, who has tried to use the persecution of the brown-skinned peoples in Arizona for her November election but who has been foiled by the federal courts, which refuse to decide on Arizona’s anti-browned-skinned-person law, now on hold, until after the November elections.

And then there’s John McCainosaurus, also trying to win election in Arizona on the backs of the wetbacks, proclaiming that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constititution should be changed so that children born on U.S. soil to parents who aren’t citizens aren’t automatically U.S. citizens by birth.

On board with McCainosaurus is Alabama’s Jeff (short for Jefferson, but Jeff sure sounds a lot folksier to your Joe the Plumber set) Sessions, the top Repugnican on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Reports Politico:

Sessions … said a re-examination of the 14th Amendment “deserves serious discussion” and that he supports hearings [on changing the amendment].

“People do not believe you should be able to break into America, have a baby and then the baby becomes a citizen, and the whole family says, ‘We can’t go home. My child is a citizen,’” Sessions told reporters on Capitol Hill. “It’s an unfair way to gain priority in the application for legal immigration into America.”

Fortunately, on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee it’s Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont who calls the shots, not assbite Sessions, and Leahy wisely says that no such hearing will happen before the November elections.

Of course, after the November elections, it won’t be so much of an issue for the race-baiting Repugnicans and their “tea-partying” ilk anymore.

A person could, I suppose, make at least a semi-legitimate argument that at least one parent should have U.S. citizenship before a newborn squeezed out here or in U.S. territory could be a citizen, but tampering with the U.S. Constitution (or a state’s constitution), especially in order to strip individuals of their rights, is walking upon perilously thin ice. And tampering with the U.S. Constitution (or a state’s constitution) should not be used primarily as a political ploy to win the hater vote.

And it’s funny how the right wing thinks that the purpose of amending our federal and state constitutions is to roll back, rather than to expand, human rights. I had thought that the wingnuts were all about freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, blah blah blah — and against tyranny. But they sure love their tyranny by the (shrinking white) majority, don’t they?

And very apparently, only conservative, white, “Christian,” heterosexual, capitalist Americans (especially those possessing the XY chromosomes) are to have any fucking freedom at all.

So this is the Repugnican Tea Party’s obvious strategy for November 2010: to pit groups of people against other groups of people in order to take the voters’ attention away from the Repugnican Tea Party’s stark record of failure and its allegiance to the super-rich instead of to the common American. (Palin-Quayle, for instance, opposes allowing the Bush tax cuts for the filthy rich to expire, but at the same time she fucking claims that she’s a populist – just one of us. You betcha!)

Yes, the Repugnican Tea Partiers are uniters, not dividers. And they’re such great “Christians.” And, being the uber-patriots that they are, upholding the national ideal of E Pluribus Unum, they just love to stir that red, white and blue American melting pot, because they’re all about diversity.

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*As I have noted, my only problem with the planned Muslim complex near the former site of the World Trade Center is that I don’t think that anyone visiting it would be safe from violence from the unhinged, self-righteous Muslim-haters.

Prick Warren speaks with forked tongue

I noticed this yesterday but didn’t comment on it at the time. I should have.

In his little “news and views” (nice euphemism for “propaganda”) video for his congregants, Prick Warren tells his congregants that he absolutely never compared same-sex marriage to incestual marriage or pedophilic marriage. He stated that his comments during his interview with Beliefnet had been taken out of context, distorted.

I had thought that maybe he was telling the truth.

But then I saw the actual video clip of his interview with Beliefnet, and yeah, it’s pretty fucking inarguable that the motherfucking liar indeed compared same-sex marriage to pedophilic and incestual marriage (and to polygamy, too; for some reason he left bestiality out…).

It’s a long video on Prick Warren – almost 15 minutes long — with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, but it’s worth watching in its entirety. Maddow rocks to the extent that Prick Warren sucks ass to the point that he should just donate his organs now so that someone else can make better use of them.

Oh, and you have to see San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in his interview with Maddow, tap dance around the fact that in San Francisco he has to be pro-gay and lesbian in order to survive politically, but President-elect Barack Obama, like Prick Warren, publicly opposes same-sex marriage and has thrown gay men and lesbians under the bus, yet Newsom has to cozy up to the president-elect, too.

In his interview Newsom doesn’t quite make it work with Maddow, who lets him off way too easily (I guess that she wanted to be able to interview him again…), and if you have a pulse you will see that Newsom has sold his soul to the Democratic Party machine — which is why when he ran for mayor in 2003 I gave his opponent, Matt Gonzalez of the Green Party, a campaign donation even though I live in Sacramento. (Despite the fact that Newsom brought in the Democratic Party machine’s biggest guns, including Billary Clinton and Al Gore, to campaign for him, despite the fact that he outspent Gonzalez by at least 4 to 1, and despite the fact that the number of San Francisco residents registered under the Green Party was less than 5 percent, Gonzalez lost to Democratic Party hack Newsom by only single digits.)

But back to Prick Warren:

That he feels the need to bold-facedly lie to his own congregants about his hateful, ignorant, bigoted comments on same-sex marriage demonstrates that increasingly, open homophobia, just like open racism, is becoming less and less socially acceptable among polite/”polite” company.

Not that someone isn’t a homophobe because he or she doesn’t make overtly homophobic remarks.* But when the haters are in an environment that is not conducive to their hate, it’s harder for their hate to thrive.

And you know what? Lying is a sin, even if you’re a stupid white male baby-boomer pastor who has made millions of dollars from “The Secret”-like bullshit books and spin-offs. (I love how baby boomers – who have nearly destroyed the nation – write self-help and advice books, because clearly they know what they’re doing and thus we should follow them. I mean, the proof is in the pudding, no?)

And if Prick Warren will lie through his fangs to his congregants about what he said on camera, what does that say about his character?

Prick Warren is one of the false prophets that the Bible warns you about.

P.S. OK, another video clip of Rachel Maddow on Prick Warren. If you don’t want to watch the full almost-15-minute video clip that I referenced above, you can watch this shorter one (it’s under three minutes) that captures Warren’s bold-faced lie using the two clips of him side by side.

And also in this clip of Maddow’s show, Warren pretty much asserts that when his opponents voice their opposition to him, it’s “hate speech,” but that everything that he and his supporters can only be construed as wuv. Fucking hypocrite.

And it’s funny (in a deeply unsettling sort of way) when wingnuts like Prick Warren talk about how much they just wuv free speech when you know that if they could silence their detractors, they wouldn’t hesitate to do so.

In the video clips of Warren that I’ve watched, it’s pretty apparent that he claims that he “loves” gay men and lesbians only because the Bible instructs that we all must love one another, and that he advocates free speech only because it’s enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Warren very apparently does not feel the spirit of love or the spirit of free speech within his being, and it’s only written codes, apparently, that stop him from expressing what’s truly in his heart, which is hatred and violence (silencing your opponents falls under violence, in my book).

I mean, if the wingnuts could alter the U.S. Constitution to strip their opponents of free-speech rights, do you think that they’d hesitate for a fucking heartbeart to do so? With Proposition 8, the wingnuts tried to strip gay men and lesbians of their equal human and civil rights guaranteed to them by the California Constitution. (The Repugnican-dominated California Supreme Court, which in May ruled that the California Constitution guarantees the right to same-sex marriage, will, I surmise, strike down Proposition 8 as California’s attorney general, among others, has asked the court to do.)

Last but certainly not list, in this second video clip of Maddow’s show, Warren also uses the term “Christophobia” to describe his opponents. Let me set the lying, motherfucking false prophet straight (so to speak…) on that:

If “Christians” of Warren’s ilk actually followed the teachings of Jesus Christ, I’d love them to death. See, I’ve actually read the New Testament, and Jesus Christ says not a single fucking word on the topic of homosexuality. The “Christo”fascists pull all of their homophobic rhetoric from the Old Testament, because the Old Testament is full of ignorance and fear, and thus the “Christo”fascists gravitate to the Old Testament. (About the only thing they like about the New Testament is the Book of Revelations, which, like the Old Testament, is chock full o’ ignorance and fear, and which has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, but which was fabricated long after his death.)

Now, to me, if you are a Christian, that means that you actually follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught things like love and acceptance – true love and acceptance, not the kind of “love and acceptance” in which you try to strip gay men and lesbians of their constitutionally guaranteed equal civil and human rights and/or assert that they’re (probably) going to hell – but still claim that you wuv them nonetheless.

Jesus Christ was not like a red-state fucktard (boy, that’s redundant). Jesus Christ was a flaming liberal, a progressive radical:

from Wikipedia.org

Jesus Christ rocked.

I’m not a “Christophobe.” I’m a pseudoprophetophobe.

I don’t hate Jesus Christ or true Christians, who are exceedingly rare. I hate false prophets like Prick Warren, who claim that when you attack them for their evil you are attacking Jesus Christ – because the Prick Warrens of the world, in their arrogance and in their blasphemy, compare themselves to God and to Jesus Christ, when, in fact, they paradoxically are about as anti-Christian as you can get.

*My maternal grandmother, who waited far too long to die, was a huge fucking racist who knew that it was politically incorrect to make overtly racist comments in “polite”/polite company. But her racist views were glaringly apparent nonetheless from her “nice” racist statements. 

Prick Warren WUVS you — even though you’re going to HELL

Reuters photo

President-elect Barack Obama pals around with Pastor Rick (Prick for short) Warren at Warren’s mega-church in Orange County, Calif., in August. Warren, whom Obama has chosen to deliver the invocation at his inauguration next month, believes that the only sexual activity that is acceptable is sexual activity between a man and a woman who are married to each other for life. (He says so explicitly here. And yes, he says “for life,” which indicates that he opposes divorce and remarriage as well as homosexuality.) Gee, I had thought that the Obama Era of “hope” and “change” was going to end the Dark Ages…

Oh. My. God.

I just watched (more than once) a six-and-a-half minute video of Prick Warren – it’s a video message to his congregation that is less than a week 0ld — and he is almost as smooth as is Barack Obama. He hates fags and dykes, he makes clear in his message — it’s not difficult to read between the lines – but he tells you so oh so nicely.

Warren doesn’t hate gay men and lesbians, because he has to love everyone, he tells us – but, of course, he informs us ominously, all of us have the choice as to whether we follow God’s mandates or not. (Translation: Fags and dykes are going to hell. But he wuvs us fags and dykes. Because the Bible says he has to.)

Warren makes the rather bizarre “argument” that he has nothing against gay men and lesbians — even though he says that the only sexual activity that is acceptable is between a man and a woman who are married for life — but that gay men and lesbians just can’t use the word “marriage.” Really? Why? He’s OK with same-sex couplings (“partnerships,” he calls them) but he’s going to quibble over what we call such couplings?

Shit. I wish Warren would just call for the execution of us gay men and lesbians. It would be more direct and more honest as to what’s really in his heart. Clearly he believes that he and his brainwashed followers are going to heaven and that gay men and lesbians are going to hell. But that’s not hate ’cause he’s not a hater!

Warren reminds me of a co-worker I once had who told me that she didn’t hate gay men and lesbians — because she was no hater! – but that she fully believed that gay men and lesbians were going to suffer whatever punishments are prescribed for them in the Bible (hellfire was the punishment, I believe she asserted, but that was years ago). Actually, come to think of it, I have had (at least) two different co-workers who told me that they have nothing against gay men and lesbians but that they believe that homosexuality is a sin — no offense!

Anyway, first in the video, Prick Warren bashes the mainstream media — and bloggers — and warns his audience of churchgoers to be careful not to believe everything that they hear or read. Because only he is the purveyor of absolute truth, of course! (Kind of like how when a new weight-loss program is rolled out, the purveyors of it claim that all of the other weight-loss programs don’t work but that this one does!)

Warren also pontificates that the media love to “create” conflict and he asserts that where no conflict exists, the media will create it. What he’s really saying is that he’s as innocent and pure as the driven snow, and that all of the controversy about him in the media has been just the fabrication of conflict.

No, it’s real fucking conflict; it’s not media-created. President-elect Barack Obama is palling around with a stupid white man who opposes women’s reproductive rights and same-sex marriage rights, and we, Obama’s base, those of us who put his ass into office, have a real fucking problem with that. Our anger is quite real, fuck you very much, Prick Warren.

And Warren’s rant against bloggers sure makes it sound like he thinks that the First Amendment for the masses is a pretty bad idea.* Those American citizens who actually exercise the First Amendment — only when Warren disagrees with them, of course — should “get a life,” he proclaims. Which really means: Shut up! Only mega-churches that can afford to get their messages out — and those who agree with the mega-churches – should be allowed to excercise the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, thank you.

Yes, Prick Warren is yet another friendly fascist (and also a “compassionate conservative”?), which makes you have to wonder about Barack Obama: He wuvs us fags and dykes too, he claims, but he won’t publicly support same-sex marriage either, because while separate sure isn’t equal for him, he asserts that separate is equal for us gay men and lesbians.

*“A lot of people think that because they can sit in the quietness of their own home and hide behind the screen, they can hurl all kinds of bombs at people and get away with it,” Warren huffs in the video. That sure sounds like a thinly veiled threat to bloggers to me, but then he concludes: “Well, no, they’re just being rude.”

But gee, Prick, can we bloggers with whom you disagree “get away with it”?