Thanks to Obama, Jesse Jackson, et. al., seem to have evolved

Um, let’s not call Barack Obama “the first gay president,” but let’s credit him with being influential within the black community where equal human and civil rights for non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals are concerned.

Newsweek’s May 21 cover pronouncement of Barack Obama being the nation’s “first gay president” is typically-for-Newsweek hyperbolic — Obama is no more the “first gay president” than Bill Clinton was the “first black president” – but Obama’s belated pronouncement of last week that he supports same-sex marriage (although he hasn’t changed his “states’ rights” “argument” and thus he has not argued that same-sex marriage should not be prohibited by any of the states) might have the benefit of easing some of the homophobia within the black community.

Seventy percent of the black voters who voted on California’s Proposition 8 in November 2008 voted “yes” and thus voted against same-sex marriage here in California – on the very same election day that brought us the nation’s first black president, mind you.

Seventy fucking percent. (Overall, 52 percent of the state’s voters passed Prop H8.)

The Washington Post at the time of Prop H8’s passage reported that “Similar [anti-same-sex-marriage] measures passed easily in Florida and Arizona. It was closer in California, but no ethnic group anywhere rejected the sanctioning of same-sex unions as emphatically as the state’s black voters, according to exit polls.”

This, I think, was for two primary reasons:

One, most black Americans have adopted the toxic, backasswards, ignorance-, hatred- and fear-based religion of those who once were their enslavers. They and their equally fucktarded and bigoted white counterparts call this patriarchal, misogynist and homophobic bullshit “Christianity,” but I’ve read the New Testament, and Christianity this ain’t.

It’s unfortunate that so many black churches are just like white churches. The only significant difference between the black Protestant churches and the white Protestant churches, it seems to me, is the race and the racial identity of the churchgoers. The ignorance, hatred, bigotry and the us-vs.-them, fear-based bullshit pretty much are the same.

Two, many if not most blacks refuse to share the victimization pie. These blacks don’t want to acknowledge that any other historically oppressed minority group also has been oppressed in the United States of America. Their victimization (real and/or fabricated) is their identity, after all.

Of course we cannot exactly compare gay rights and the historical oppression that non-heterosexuals and the non-gender-conforming have experienced to race-based rights and the historical oppression that blacks and other non-whites have experienced in the United States of America.

Slavery, and being discriminated against for your race, are a whole other ball of wax from being discriminated against for your sexual orientation and/or your gender expression. Obviously and of course.

However, it’s also true that gay males and lesbians and other non-heterosexual and non-gender-conforming individuals are the only minorities who routinely are rejected even by their own families. Racial minorities, on the other hand, almost universally are accepted by the members of their own families. (There are exceptions, of course, such as in the cases of biracial children; a white supremacist white family probably would to some degree reject a biracial child born into the family, for example.)

But getting into arguments over which historically oppressed minority group has had it worse probably isn’t very constructive, and fuck it, I will say it: Those blacks who make stewing over the injustices that were done even primarily to their forebears their second or even their first job probably are quite stuck in their development, and since they have a difficult time living in the present, but remain stuck in the past — even others’ past — their chance of making significant progress in the present is slim. They are sad cases who not only are miserable themselves, but who do their best to make those around them miserable.

I mean, shit. I can’t marry my same-sex partner of five years here in the supposedly liberal and progressive state of California, and I can think of no other minority group that isn’t allowed to get married. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967, in Loving vs. Virginia, that no state can outlaw mixed-race heterosexual marriage, but here I am, decades later, and I don’t have marriage rights. Gay indeed apparently is the new black. (Maybe that is reason No. 3 for rampant black homophobia: Many if not most blacks want to ensure that there is at least one minority group that they still can shit and piss upon. In this dogpile that we call the U.S. of A. it’s still better to be next to the bottom than to be at the very bottom of the dogpile, isn’t it?) I could stew over this gross injustice a lot more than I do, but I would like my life to be about more than stewing over this injustice.

All of that said, same-sex marriage rights and other equal rights and human rights for non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals are civil rights.

Civil rights is a large umbrella — an umbrella that doesn’t cover only blacks. Wikipedia notes in its entry “civil rights”:

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals’ freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one’s ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.

Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples’ physical integrity and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as physical or mental disability, gender, religion, race, national origin, age, status as a member of the uniformed services, sexual orientation or gender identity; and individual rights such as privacy, the freedoms of thought and conscience, speech and expression, religion, the press, and movement.

Fuck it, I’ll say it: If you maintain that civil rights cover only your group, you’re a selfish fucking hypocrite who demands that your group be treated with fairness and with justice, but you don’t give a flying fuck about other groups. Therefore, you don’t fucking deserve the same respect that you demand that others show you.

Therefore, I was incensed when Jesse Jackson announced some time ago that gay rights (or at least same-sex marriage rights) aren’t civil rights. As recently as two years ago, Jackson reportedly declared, “Many African-Americans believe gays are discriminated against, but they don’t believe marriage is a civil-rights issue. [Really? Loving vs. Virginia, which allowed mixed-race heterosexual marriage, was not over a civil-rights issue?] There are issues of acceptance [of gays], but there is no back of the bus; there are no lynchings.” Um, Matthew Shepard and countless other non-heterosexuals who have been killed for their sexual orientation and/or non-gender-conformation have not, in effect, been lynched? Jackson at that time added that being non-heterosexual “is not immutable” and “is not an externally observable characteristic unless you want to flaunt it.”

Actually, for most non-heterosexuals it is not a choice, any more than heterosexuals have a choice as to who they are and are not sexually attracted to, and of course, that word choice — “flaunt it” — reeks of homophobic bigotry (the only way for effeminate males and masculine females not to “flaunt it” is to [try to] pretend to be who and what they are not, which is soul-crushing), and of course the “immutability” “argument” is bullshit where civil rights are concerned. Civil rights protect one’s religious beliefs, for example, and certainly one’s religious beliefs are not immutable. (And why, oh, why, must so many “Christians” flaunt their mutable, bullshit, backasswards beliefs that they wish to inflict on all of us? And why do the “Christians” want to convert our defenseless children to their perversion?)

However, Jesse Jackson seems to have evolved on the issue of same-sex marriage since his earlier effective public proclamations that blacks have the monopoly on civil rights.

The Los Angeles Times on Thursday surreally reported (emphases are mine):

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Thursday praised President Obama’s decision to support same-sex marriage, comparing the battle for such unions to the fight against slavery and anti-miscegenation laws intended to keep blacks and other ethnicities from mingling and marrying with whites.

“This is a bold step in the right direction for equal protection under the law for all citizens,” Jackson told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday morning. But, he said, he wished the president had gone further, pushing for federal protection for all citizens instead of leaving the controversial issue of gay marriage up to the states to decide. [!!!]

If other hard-won civil rights battles had been left up to the states, Jackson said, African Americans would have been on the losing end of those battles.

“If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote,” Jackson said. “If we had to vote on the right [for blacks] to vote, we would have lost that vote.” …

Wow. Here is Jesse Jackson now more or less comparing the fight for same-sex marriage in all 50 states to the fight to eliminate slavery in all 50 states, a comparison that I recently made myself and was expecting to get shit for (but miraculously did not).

Of course, not being allowed to marry the one you wish to marry absolutely is not just like being involuntarily owned and involuntarily worked like livestock instead of being treated as a free human being, but the idea of allowing any of the states to put the treatment of and the equal human and civil rights of any minority group up for a fucking vote is anti-American. And I do believe that while of course we cannot directly compare the prohibition of same-sex marriage to slavery, we can more or less directly compare laws that banned mixed-race marriage to laws that ban same-sex marriage. Yes, marriage rights are civil rights.

I have been critical of Barack Obama for still not having gone far enough on same-sex marriage — and, by and large, most Americans, even non-heterosexual Americans, seem to be letting him off of the hook for his willingness to go only so far thus far – so it is gratifying to see Jesse Jackson’s proclamation that Obama hasn’t gone far enough on same-sex marriage.

The L.A. Times reports further of Jackson’s recent pronouncement (emphases mine):

His statement comes as a growing number of African-American leaders and civil-rights activists are stepping forward to voice their support for same-sex marriage. Their positions are significant because there is a stronghold of opposition to same-sex marriage within African American communities. This week alone, African-Americans voters were instrumental to passing North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. [Deja vu all over again...]

Acknowledging that gap, Jackson called on religious leaders nationwide to address the issue with their congregations.

Jackson said gays and lesbians are among the ranks of soldiers dying for their country, the teachers educating the nation’s children and even the pastors guiding parishioners through the Bible. It’s time to reward gays and lesbians with equal protection, he said.

He urged opponents to remember that same-sex marriage isn’t about taking rights away from anyone else, but rather extending those rights to all. He also recalled a painful time in America’s not-too-distant past when African American men in the South faced swift punishment or even death if they tried to date a white woman, even as white men boldly dated across racial lines.

With such history in the rear-view mirror, Jackson said, it’s time to stop dictating the actions of others.

“You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate,” he said. “The law protects you from being abused. It doesn’t threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle,” he later added. ["Exhibit" -- I hope that that's not just a euphemism for "flaunt"... And your sexual orientation, in the vast majority of cases, is not your "lifestyle." Your lifestyle, by definition, is your choice. Your sexual orientation, in the vast majority of cases, is not your choice.]

Other African-American leaders were also vocal this week in their support for gay marriage, joining Jackson in reframing the issue as one of civil rights.

“I salute President Obama’s statement today supporting same-sex marriage,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement that went on to add: “This is not about mine or anyone’s personal or religious views. It is about equal rights for all. We cannot be selective with civil rights. We must support civil rights for everybody or we don’t support them for anyone.”

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, seen as a rising [black] star in the Democratic Party, appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC Wednesday to lend an impassioned voice in support of gay marriage rights. [I saw that interview, and I like fellow Gen X'er Cory Booker, and he is, I think, an example of the fact that one's age largely determines his or her stance on same-sex marriage. Younger Americans, as a whole, are more accepting of same-sex marriage than are older Americans, such as Jesse Jackson, regardless of their race.]

And, earlier in the day, the social media savvy leader tweeted: “Historic day for justice and equality. Our United States President Obama endorses marriage equality. I rejoice in this announcement.”

I suspect that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et. al., wouldn’t be as on board with same-sex marriage as they are now if our “first gay president” weren’t black and if our “first gay president” hadn’t first made his (limited) support of same-sex marriage public, but I’ll take their (belated) support anyway.

Truth be told, their support of my equal human and civil rights makes it much easier for me to give them my support of theirs wholeheartedly.

Prick Insantorum: Global warming is ‘political science’

Reuters photo

No, it would take courage to stand up to the fossil fuels industry, not to kowtow to it for personal and political gain, and to fight for Americans would be to fight for what’s in our best interests, and the continued long-term degradation of the planet for the short-term profiteering of the filthy rich few is not in our best interests. It’s what you call treason.

Repugnican Tea Party presidential frontrunner Prick Santorum’s fuck-the-planet insanity rolls on, belching greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as it chugs.

In the swing state of Ohio today, he pronounced that as president the continued support for the coal industry and approval of the Keystone Pipeline would be part of his “responsible environmental stewardship,” reports The Los Angeles Times.

“Responsible environmental stewardship.”

Fuck. That’s just like calling the promotion of burgers, fries and milkshakes “responsible health promotion.”

President Barack Obama – who, recall, sat on his hands while British Petroleum filled the Gulf of Mexico with crude for weeks but claimed that it had everything under control – has “radical environmental policies,” Santorum declared today.

Radical, indeed. If Barack Obama (who shot down the Keystone Pipeline, at least for now [it is presidential election season, after all], but who does not oppose the obviously environmentally disastrous practice of fracking) is a “radical” Earth-server, what could we expect to see from President Santorum once a deep-sea oil well blows?

The L.A. Times reports that Santorum said to a crowd in a “once-booming steel town” in Ohio today: “Ladies and gentlemen, we need someone who understands, who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills, who understands what ordinary working people in American need to provide for themselves and their families.”

No one on the left opposes “ordinary working people in America” being able to “provide for themselves and their families” — the vast majority of us are “ordinary working people,” too – but continuing to burn coal and other fossil fuels – aside from the fact that the majority of the profits from burning fossil fuels go to the plutocrats who comprise the Repugnican Tea Party and with whom the members of the Repugnican Tea Party love to cuddle, not to “ordinary working people” — might be good for the relatively short-term employment of a minority of Americans, but it’s bad fucking news for the long-term survival of all Americans and all human beings.

Leadership is about responsibility, ab0ut encouraging your flock to do the right thing, not the easiest thing for right now. Wisdom and wise leadership are about viewing the long term, not the short term at the expense of the long term.

Prick Santorum’s policy of fucking over current and future generations for continued environmentally disastrous profiteering demonstrates that he not only isn’t fit to sit inside the Oval Office, but that he is no Christian. (You know, I just can’t see Jesus Christ fucking over others for his own selfish, personal, political and monetary gain.)

And willfully screwing over current and future generations for a profit (or for political or other personal gain) isn’t just bad policy. In my book, it’s treason — it’s putting one’s own selfish interests above the best interests of the masses.

It’s predictable that over the coming weeks Prick Santorum’s rhetoric is only going to become even more extreme. He’s a huge fucking hypocrite* as well as possibly the most stupid man who walks the planet. And he is, in my book — and I don’t throw this label around lightly — evil.

Santorum also proclaimed today, since he wants the votes of Ohioans, because his getting the presidency is far more important than is anything else, even the continued ability of the planet to sustain human life itself: “I refer to global warming as not climate science, but political science.”

Really? Prick Santorum is a scientist? He is qualified to speak on the topic of climatology?

No, Prick Santorum is not a scientist, but is a politician who gladly will sell out us Americans in order to satiate his lust for the most politically powerful position on the planet. If he were backed by the fast food industry instead of by the fossil fuels industry, he would declare that studies that show the harmful effects of junk food are just “junk science.” Just “political science.” Ha ha!

Because Prick Santorum cares only about Prick Santorum. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about you or your children or your children’s children.

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*For instance, in Prick Insantorum’s worldview, it’s “playing politics” for us progressives to fight for our Americans’ right to use birth control, but it’s not “playing politics” for him and his fellow “Christo”fascists to fight to replace the U.S. Constitution with the decrees of the Vatican, such as its Dark-Ages opposition to birth control. (Because the “Christo”fascists never engage in the ugly practice of politics!)

And it’s “playing politics” for us progressives to fight for environmental preservation, but it’s not “playing politics” to take money from the fossil fuels industry in exchange for making such pronouncements as that global warming is “political science.”

Is Prick Santorum the biggest dipshit on the planet?

AFP photo

“Christo”fascist Prick Santorum, trying to distance himself from his strong insinuation of yesterday that President Barack Obama isn’t a Christian and he is, today essentially stated that he believes that humankind should do as it pleases to planet Earth. (It’s in the Bible, after all!) Another great “save” there, prick!

Repugnican Tea Party presidential wannabe Prick Santorum, embattled because of his strong insinuation of yesterday that President Barack Obama isn’t a Christian, today “clarified” that he believes that Obama is a Christian, but that it’s Obama’s “worldview” that he takes issue with. The Associated Press reports that Santorum said of Obama today:

“I am talking about his worldview, and the way he approaches problems in this country. I think they’re different than how most people do in America.” …

The former Pennsylvania senator said Obama’s environmental policies promote ideas of “radical environmentalists,” who, Santorum argues, oppose greater use of the country’s natural resources because they believe “man is here to serve the Earth.” He said that was the reference he was making [yesterday] in his Ohio campaign appearance when he denounced a “phony theology.”

“I think that is a phony ideal. I don’t believe that is what we’re here to do,” Santorum said. “We’re not here to serve the Earth. The Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective.” …

Um, when did Barack Obama ever state that we are “here to serve the Earth”?

Um, when did even any “radical environmentalist” state that we are “here to serve the Earth”?

Is Prick Santorum talking about the “Christo”fascist idea of what Paganism is? Is he, in code, calling Obama an Earth-serving Pagan? Is he calling “radical environmentalists” and Obama supporters Pagans? (Not that there is anything wrong with being a Pagan — the majority of them are a lot more fun to be around than are those evil pricks like Santorum who call themselves “Christians.”)

I ask these questions because environmentalism isn’t about “serving” the Earth. It’s about saving it. Not “serving” it, but conserving, preserving it.

Environmentalism isn’t about whether we should put humankind or the planet above one or the other. That’s a false choice fabricated by the science- and planet-hating wingnuts. Environmentalism is about how humankind and the planet (and the rest of the planet’s lifeforms) are so intertwined.

But, if we have to put one above the other, let’s fucking face it: We humankind need the planet, but the planet sure the fuck doesn’t need us. It can do just fine without us, as it did for the billions of years before we human beings arrived on the scene, and if we carry out the insane irresponsibility of Prick Santorum and his ilk far enough, that’s exactly what will happen: The planet will be free of human beings once again, because we human beings will have wiped ourselves out.

The Bible that Santorum — who, while we’re on the topic of serving, clearly serves the Vatican – thumps indeed puts mankind above the Earth and its natural resources, including, of course, all other of its lifeforms. But that Bible was written centuries and centuries ago, and its ignorant authors knew nothing about science. They knew only superstition. Also at that time, the planet’s human population was small enough that indeed it seemed to the human beings of that time that the Earth could take all of the abuse that mankind could dish out.

But now we’re at more than 7 billion human beings, and the planet is showing obvious signs that it can’t take more abuse. The melting North Pole alone demonstrates that fact, and as I’ve found myself having to pop antihistamines significantly early this year because of all of the trees that already are blossoming in Sacramento even though the start of spring is more than a month away, global warming appears to be quite real to me.

Yes, I suppose that it is about “worldview.”

And Prick Santorum’s worldview — in which mankind is the master of the planet and therefore may do to the planet and its resources whatsoever he pleases – is defunct. Worse, it’s a recipe for the extinction of the human race (not to mention the other species that humankind is wiping out right now).

I suppose that Prick Santorum and his “Christo”fascist ilk want their “Armageddon,” and therefore they’ll do everything in their power to bring it about. (“Armageddon” is not pre-ordained, of course, and any such mass extinction of mankind most likely would be caused by mankind’s own stupid actions, not by some divine intervention.)

Those of us who are sane and who therefore are not bound to the scribblings made by ignorant men centuries and centuries ago, but who value facts and science and logic and reason over ignorance and fear and superstition, indeed have a different worldview than does the Neanderthal Prick Santorum (wait — that’s probably an uncalled-for slam against the Neanderthals).

And those of us who do not share Prick Santorum’s Bible-and-Vatican-based worldview do not wish to go down the dark path that he would drag us, kicking and screaming. As the planet gets hotter and hotter, it would be, indeed, an awful lot like hell on Earth.

Science: Conservatives are stupid

Synchronicity is fun.

As I compose this, the top three most-viewed Yahoo! News stories right now are:

“Low IQ and Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice”

“President Obama, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Share Tense Tarmac Moment”

“Arizona Gov. Brewer Gets Book Critique from Obama”

The first article begins thusly:

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. …

“This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact [with groups outside of one's own] reduces prejudice,” said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science….*

This is the image that Yahoo! News used with both pieces on Repugnican Tea Party Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s recent obviously orchestrated tiff with President Barack Obama on her home turf:

Associated Press photo

The caption for this news photo reads:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer points during an intense conversation with President Barack Obama after he arrived at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, in Mesa, Arizona. Asked moments later what the conversation was about, Brewer, a Republican, said: “He was a little disturbed about my book.” Brewer recently published a book, Scorpions for Breakfast, something of a memoir of her years growing up and defends her signing of Arizona’s controversial law cracking down on illegal immigrants, which Obama opposes. Obama was objecting to Brewer’s description of a meeting he and Brewer had at the White House, where she described Obama as lecturing her.

Indeed, who is this uppity Negro to be lecturing the white governor of Arizona?

Why Obama agrees to meet with Brewer at all escapes me, since she only uses any meeting with him as future campaign material — and now, to boost her book sales – by supposedly showing her fellow white supremacists in Arizona, the South Africa of the Southwest, how she so bravely stood up to the black president. (Except that he isn’t the legitimate president, right?)

To those Arizonans who believe that Jan Brewer — who appeared to be drunk or otherwise intoxicated or otherwise significantly neurologically impaired during her first and only gubernatorial debate in 2010 (after her incredibly horrible first debate performance she refused to participate in any more debates) – is a great stateswoman, perhaps she does look like some hot shit openly publicly disrespecting President Barack Obama.

To those of us who don’t suffer from intellectual deficiency — and who thus aren’t conservative — however, Jan Brewer looks like what she is: an old, racist, wingnutty hag, a stupid, braying jackass.

I’ve always disliked the term “conservative,” because the vast majority of conservatives are just abject fucking morons. “Conservativism” sounds like a legitimate political school of thought, when, in fact, more often than not it indicates severe intellectual deficiency.

I look forward to the developing science on this topic. (Of course, the wingnuts eschew science — science and facts have a well-known liberal bias, you know – so their feelings shouldn’t be hurt that much.)

–

*The LiveScience article is worth reading in full, and the money shot of the article, in my book, is the study’s psychologist’s essential assertion that to associate with groups that are different from one’s own is so mentally taxing that dipshits don’t even bother. This would, I suppose, explain the homogeneity of the red states and the red regions within the purplish and blue states: the dipshits huddle together in their ignorance and fear.

(Revised:) Mike Huckabee wins the White House!

Repugnican Tea Party douchebag Mike Huckabee announced last night that he isn’t running for president in 2012, but since he’s busy helping to rewrite U.S. history in order to indoctrinate the youngins, hell, he can just write right now that he won the 2012 presidential election and that he was the nation’s Best! President! Ever!

Many others have covered Huckabee’s participation in the selling of really bad cartoons on “American history” for home-schooled kids (such as here and here, and Rachel Maddow has covered it too). The cartoons are so fucking bad that they appear to be parodies by the creators of “South Park,” but oh, they’re not parodies…

The episode that predictably deifies Ronald Reagan (which notes, among other things, that “he worked against Communism in Hollywood” [not that he was a McCarthyite]) has this nice little image:

Yes, that appears to me to be a knife-wielding, menacing mulatto. In the video he apparently commands the good little white kids (who have access to a time machine, but of course as long as we’re still anti-science we’ll never get to that point): “Give me your money!” Subtle!

(If I had written the little video, I might have had the good little white kids retort: “First show us your birth certificate!”)

The Orwellian right-wing attempt to rewrite U.S. history is nothing new. Glenn Beck has the online “Beck University,” and its home page proclaims, “LEARN REAL AMERICAN HISTORY.” (Also on the home page is a link to a nice little video of Glenn titled “Presidents You Should Hate,” because Glenn’s a good little Mormon boy and God wants him to hate and to tell you whom to hate [you have to subscribe to the website to get Glenn's God-given insight, though...]).

One of “Beck U”’s “professors” — and all of his “professors” appear to be middle-aged to old white men, shockingly – is David Barton, a white wingnut who has thought himself qualified enough to write on rewrite black American history:

I’m thinking that maybe Anita Bryant should write a book on gay and lesbian American history. Perhaps Maggie Gallagher could take some time out of her crusade against marriage between any two consenting adults to be a co-author of the enlightening, setting-the-record-straight (wink wink) historical account.

The radical-right-wing attempt to rewrite U.S. history is chilling, but while I don’t want to underestimate the radical right’s harm to the nation and to the world, I can’t see a day when their “history” ever becomes mainstream. True, our mainstream U.S. history taught to public schoolchildren is whitewashed as it is, more or less teaches our children that the U.S. never can do any wrong (even the many, many episodes of the oppression of minorities are portrayed as just little potholes in the Road to Freedom, you see), but Huckabee’s and Beck’s brand of U.S. “history” is highly unlikely to make it very far outside of its apparent target audience of home-schooling parents.

One child who is home-schooled in wingnuttery is a tragic loss — not only will the successfully brainwashed child be unable to function in a world in which his or her backasswards beliefs are in the minority, but the world will have lost a fully functional human being — but the percentage of parents who would expose their children to stupid white male propaganda thankfully remains small. Most parents want their children to be well-adjusted, functional, productive adults.

Anyway, Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and a former Southern Baptist pastor, has indicated that God doesn’t want him to run for president, but I think that even Huckabee, as off of his rocker as he is, knows that his ilk is a dying breed and that he can’t win the White House. White people who hate non-whites, non-“Christians,” non-heterosexuals and non-Americans and who believe that women should be subservient to men are finding it increasingly difficult to succeed on a national political stage because their numbers are decreasing.

The Internet, too, while it contains a lot of garbage, also has made it increasingly difficult for stupid white men and their supporters to keep the masses ignorant by keeping information unavailable to them. The wingnuts no longer can stem the flow of information as easily as they have in the past.

The wingnuts can put all of the revisionist books and videos out there that they want. I wish them luck in “protecting” their offspring from being exposed to what the saner members of the much larger world believe. This is exactly what they want to do, of course, and thus, home-schooling.

This is, of course, the largest logical weakness of such oppressively closed systems: If the system is so accurate, so true, so right, then why must it shut out the rest of the world? Why must it be so encapsulated?

Anticipating this question from the home-schooled kiddies, apparently, one of Huckabee’s “history” cartoons has one of the kiddie characters declaring (at the triumphant end of a cartoon on World War II): “What we see in here [in their time-machine travels] isn’t always the same as what we read in books or see on TV. So what? We know the truth, and that’s good enough for us!”

Wow. That says so much more than I could continue to say right now.

But I will say good fucking riddance to Mike Huckabee, who never will be president of the United States of America* — except perhaps in his really bad propagandistic cartoons for the kiddies.

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*The Associated Press notes:

Ed Rollins, who chaired Huckabee’s 2008 [presidential] campaign and had been talking with fundraisers about a 2012 Huckabee bid, said it would be difficult [for Huckabee] to find another opportunity like this.

“It was all there for him,” Rollins said.

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This is all I’m going to say about 9/11

The unelected Bush regime beat the nation over the head with 9/11 for many years, so sue me if I long have been 9/11’d out.

As nightmarish as it was to have had to experience the reign of BushCheneyCorp after the stupid, fat and lazy American public just allowed the right-wing thieves (redundant…) to steal the White House in late 200o, the traitors who comprised the Bush regime were, in their own sick, twisted and treasonous way, brilliant. I mean, they took a spectacularly tragic event that they’d been warned about but did not prevent — and used it for political gain.   

It was only until the mid-term elections of 2006 that the Repugnicans no longer could wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 for political gain.

What have we Americans learned since Sept. 11, 2001?

Absofuckinglutely nothing.

We were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, because we wantonly had slaughtered Muslims, or allowed them to be slaughtered or allowed or caused them to die, in the Middle East. In fact, the main reasons given by 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden himself (and other members of al-Qaeda) for 9/11 were: the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, which resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of Iraqi civilians, including children; the presence of the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia after the first George Bush war on Iraq; and the U.S. government’s blind, slavish support of Israel.

So: What has changed since then?

Well, let’s see: The U.S. killed even more innocent Iraqi civilians in George W. Bush’s Vietraq War for Big Oil and for the war profiteering of the war profiteers, such as Dick Cheney’s Halliburton; the U.S. military moved its main base in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, which, to my understanding, still violates the fundamentalist Islamist belief that no infidel should be allowed to occupy Muslim land; and the U.S. government still licks the ass of Israel, which can do no wrong and which enjoys the blind, slavish support of both parties in the duopolistic dog and pony show that we call “democracy.”

While I’m not asserting that when Osama bin Laden shouts “Jump!” Americans should ask “How high?”, it seems clear to me that Americans are hated around the world because they just allow their government and their military (which are only in the service of the corporatocrats and the plutocrats) to shit and piss upon the poorer, weaker peoples all around the globe — yet these same Americans fully expect to be adored around the world just the same.

Why do they hate us?

They hate us because we’re stupid.

They hate us because we’re xenophobic — we don’t even bother to try to learn about other cultures, but we function from the stubborn but incorrect belief that other cultures have just failed at being us. We just assume that they want to be just like us (they don’t) but that they just can’t pull it off because they don’t have what it takes.

They hate us because we’re hypocrites. (To give just one of many examples, the U.S. government maintains that Israel may have nukes but that Iran may not. And for the only nation ever to have nuked another nation to be dictating who does and who does not get to have nukes — because you just can’t allow one nation to nuke another nation —  is pretty fucking insanely hypocritical.)

They hate us because we have no empathy whatsofuckingever. We use the occasion of the anniversary of 9/11 to wallow mawkishly in our own national pity party about the 3,000 or so Americans who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, while we don’t say a word about the tens of thousands of civilians whom we allowed our government to kill or cause to die in Iraq using 9/11 as a pretext. We talk only about American losses because we consider only Americans to be fully human. Yes, they hate us because we don’t consider them to be fully human.

They hate us because we’re greedy, fat and lazy — and that we use violence around the globe to support our ability to be fat and lazy.

They hate us because we’re destroying the very planet, such as with global warming.

They hate us because we are, in a word, Rome, which I surmise also was rather hated throughout the world.

We fat, lazy and stupid Americans should remember: Rome fell.

Happy International Burn a Koran Day.

Americans are fucking STUPID

A candidate for a Darwin Award is pictured above in Gainesville, Florida. (The dipshit already has been burned in effigy in Afghanistan, pictured below.) “Muslims consider the Koran to be the word of God and insist [that] it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Mohammed,” explains The Associated Press, adding, “Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to the Koran is deeply offensive.”

Associated Press photos

Chapter 9 of Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter is titled, “We Can’t Even Talk About How Stupid We Are.”

He notes that the powers that be, including the mainstream media and even so-called progressive politicians, very rarely come out and say it: A huge chunk of Americans are just plain fucking stupid. They should donate their organs now to those who could make better use of them. It would be doing the gene pool a favor.

I’ll say it. Gladly. Which is why, despite my journalism degree, I couldn’t make it in the corporately owned and controlled world of what passes for journalism here in the United States of Amnesia, where the corporately owned and controlled media only dish out to the mediated pigs what comforting slop the pigs want to consume at the mediated trough. (Fuck, I was even censored by the “progressive” AlterNet when I blogged there until my more controversial posts kept disappearing in what I was told were just “glitches.”)

We have the individual garden-variety American dipshits, like “Christo”fascist Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, the leader of a small Pentecostal church who intends to hold “International Burn a Koran Day” on Saturday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

How “international” this “event” actually is I am not sure. My guess is that maybe he found some other dipshit in some other country to burn a Koran, and thus it’s “international.” You know, like the “international” support for the Vietraq War, the “coalition of the willing,” which, if memory serves, consisted of the United States, Britain and some island somewhere.

I wholeheartedly support Terry Jones’ First Amendment right to burn the Koran.

Kind of.

I remember learning in media law that one’s First Amendment rights end where others’ safety begins. Gen. David Petraeus, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley and Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs are among the U.S. government officials who have voiced their opposition to (or at least their concern about) “International Burn a Koran Day,” citing possible if not likely endangerment to U.S. troops and American civilians by inflaming the Muslim world by burning copies of the Muslims’ sacred book.

While I’m not sure if what could happen is enough to limit someone’s free-speech rights, um, yeah, sponsoring a “Burn a Koran Day” surely opens up Americans to retaliation by the, um, more enthusiastic Islamists, methinks.

What I was kind of hoping is that Terry Jones, who sorely should be removed from the gene pool for having pissed and shit in it and who should then star in an edition of the Darwin Awards, would be the only victim of any jihadist retribution for Koran burning, but my understanding is that many if not most jihadists don’t really discriminate when it comes to retribution.

I seem to recall that Osama bin Laden himself said that al-Qaeda makes no such distiction, that when it comes to retribution for wrongs done unto the Muslim world by an American or Americans (or even by someone who is supported by the United States, such as an Israeli), any old killed American will do.

Aside from the consideration of how Jones’ wingnuttery and dipshittery probably is putting others at risk, I don’t know exactly what a Koran burning, “international” or otherwise, would accomplish. Jones already has gotten plenty of free advertising for his Podunk, backasswards church (which might have been his main objective in the first place). While burning the Koran might make Jones and his ilk feel better about their miserable selves, it’s not like the Muslim world is going to change anything because some “Christo”fascist mouth-breathers burned a bunch of Korans.

But you gotta love the name of Jones’ church: “Dove World Outreach Center.” Dove. The symbol for peace. Um, yeah….

Then there is mass dipshittery.

The political story of today is that polls show that Americans seem poised to put the Repugnicans back in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Here’s The Associated Press’ take on this and here’s Politico’s.)

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out: The voters of the United States of Amnesia are fucking stupid. To them, George W. Bush wasn’t still “president” less than two full years ago; to them, he belongs to ancient American history already.

There’s no way in hell, even if he had owned his power and had spent his political capital like he should have, that Barack Obama could have turned around the severe damage done to the nation by George W. Bush, who inherited a record federal budget surplus from Bill Clinton when he took office and who left office with a record federal budget deficit with his bogus Vietraq War and his tax cuts for the rich (Google it), in less than two full years.

But Americans are fucking stupid. And they’re impatient and they are, as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently wrote, “spoiled brats.”

Robinson echoes Shenkman when he writes in his column, “In the punditry business, it’s considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.”

But that’s as close to calling Americans stupid as Robinson gets in discussing the current schizophrenic state of the American electorate, proving Shenkman’s point that no one dares to call Americans stupid. (“Spoiled” is not the same as “stupid.”)

As Shenkman points out, those of the left and center-left usually go so far only as to assert that the voters are just duped by the lying Repugnicans, and while it’s true that the Repugnicans are fucking liars, it’s a major fucking problem that it’s as easy as it is for the Repugnicans to dupe so many fucking Americans.

Americans need to own up to their stupidity, it seems to me. Although the definition of stupidity might encompass the inability to even recognize one’s own stupidity, there’s nothing stopping those of us Americans who aren’t stupid from calling other Americans out on their stupidity — such as these stupid Americans’ perfect willingness to vote for politicians of the same party that just thoroughly trashed the nation less than two full fucking years ago.

These Americans who believe that the only way to reverse the damage caused by the unelected BushCheneyCorp is to do more of what the BushCheneyCorp did with even more vigor aren’t just duped spoiled brats. They’re abject fucktards. And those of us who are true patriots need to call them that, because if we accommodate their dipshittery even more than we already have, we will only hasten our nation’s demise.

So what if we are accused of believing that we are intellectually superior? The fact of the matter is that some people are intellectually superior to others, and it’s the intellectually superior Americans, not the dipshits, who should be running the show — especially because it’s too taboo to call a dipshit a dipshit.

(Americans aren’t just fucking stupid, I should add; they’re fucking lazy, too. While they’re still protesting in France over the right-wing president’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 [sixty-two], would-be Repugnican Speaker of the House John Boehner’s [shudder] plan to raise the Social Security eligibility age to 70 [seventy] isn’t nearly enough to get zombified Americans off of their comfy sofas.)

I hate Muslims, but I don’t know any

Wrapping themselves in the American flag and in the Shroud of Turin, day by day the members of the radical right, most of them members of the Repugnican Tea Party, drag us closer and closer to “Christo”fascism.

Americans — thanks mostly to the tireless propaganda of “Christo”fascists and members of the Israel-first lobby (a.k.a. Zionists) – don’t like Muslims.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe that Muslims are more likely to encourage violence against non-believers than members of other religions are.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe that American Muslims aren’t patriotic or they’re not sure whether or not they’re patriotic.

Fuck freedom of religion — more than 60 percent of Americans believe that American Muslims should not be allowed to establish a Muslim center near the former site of the World Trade Center.

And more than 60 percent of Americans say that they don’t even know any Muslims. But that sure the fuck doesn’t stop them from having a negative opinion of Muslims.

It has been a long-standing American principle that there should be no religious test to hold public office, yet the White House apparently felt enough political pressure to announce today that President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays every day.

It’s a sad, sad day when the president of the United States of America has to assure the lynch mob for Jesus that he’s one of them.

But hey, how do we know that Obama is a Christian?

Maybe we should put him in a big vat of water. Only if he sinks will we know that he’s a Christian and not, say, a Muslim witch!

It’s true that the balls-less Obama administration is always caving in to the radical right, but it’s also a sign of how far the United States of America has fallen that Obama’s handlers should have felt the political pressure to announce that he indeed is a Christian. Who prays every day.

As I just wrote, it doesn’t matter whether he’s a Christian or not.

Speaking of public pronouncements of one’s Christianity, Jesus Christ Himself said (Matthew 6:5-6:6):

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward already.

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

To me, there is no other way to interpret this instruction other than that Jesus Christ Himself asserted that spirituality is a private, individual thing — not something to be paraded publicly so that others will think that one is such an upright, pious person.

But Jesus’ actual teachings never stop those who claim to be His followers.

You know, I would love a Christian. I just don’t know any Christians, if we define a Christian as one who actually follows Jesus’ teachings.

Here we have the members of the Repugnican Tea Party and other assorted wingnuts claiming to be Christian when they in fact are anti-Christian, and they are beating up on Muslims for political gain (even though most of them don’t even know a single Muslim). Yeah, that’s exactly what Jesus stood for.

Even Disneyland is in on the Muslim-bashing, not allowing a Muslim employee to wear her hijab (head scarf) while in view of customers.

DisneyCorp told the woman she could wear only a hijab designed by Disney, but has yet to produce this special hijab. (Presumably, it’s not just a hijab with mouse ears attached to it…) 

Horrors should good little lily-white American “Christian” spawn learn tolerance of appreciation for other cultures! We can’t have that!

(I, for one, won’t set foot in the “magic kingdom” until and unless it embraces diversity. Fuck DisneyCorp.)

As it sank into fascism, Germany persecuted Jews.

As the United States of America sinks into fascism, it persecutes Muslims. And “anchor babies.” And non-heterosexuals. And…

God bless America.

It sure fucking needs it.

P.S. Interestingly, respondents to the nationwide poll taken this week by TIME magazine that I referenced above also were asked, “What if the following religious groups proposed building a community center and place of worship two blocks from your home — would you favor or oppose it?”

Seventy-eight percent said they’d be OK with a Catholic establishment, 73 percent said they’d be OK with a Jewish establishment, 65 percent said they’d be OK with a Mormon establishment, and only 55 percent said they’d be OK with a Muslim establishment.

You DON’T get to vote on my rights

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no [legitimate] interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

– Federal Judge Vaughn Walker in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

– The U.S. Declaration of Independence

Associated Press photos

San Franciscans Spencer Jones and Tyler Barrick, who were married when California honored same-sex marriage in 2008 and who are featured prominently in the worthwhile documentary “8: The Mormon Proposition,” celebrate a federal judge’s decision today that November 2008′s anti-same-sex-marriage Proposition 8 is invalid because it violates the protections afforded to Californians by the U.S. Constitution. I expect the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately uphold the ruling.

I should have been a fucking lawyer.

When I predicted several hours before he did so that federal Judge Vaughn Walker would rule that Proposition H8 is unconstitutional — which he did, of course — I noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, the case that found that no state has a legitimate reason to meddle in what consenting adults do sexually in private, that religious sexual prohibitions aren’t enough to make a sex act illegal if the state cannot demonstrate that the state has an interest (such as a public-safety interest) in making that act illegal. 

In his ruling invalidating Prop H8, Walker wisely and correctly notes, on page 8, that “The state does not have an interest in enforcing private moral or religious beliefs without an accompanying secular purpose. See Lawrence v Texas…”

Yup.

Again, I don’t wish to compare same-sex marriage and sodomy (the subject of Lawrence vs. Texas), but again: What Judge Walker said!

The pro-Prop H8 fascists have actually claimed that same-sex couples getting married actually violates their (the fascists’) religious freedom because they find same-sex marriage to be offensive to their religious beliefs and sensibilities.

This line of “argument” is down-the-rabbit-hole-level insanity.

To live in a free nation is to be offended sometimes. If you can’t fucking handle that, then you need to get the fuck out of the fucking nation. (I hear that the Taliban is recruiting, and they’re quite homophobic.)

But seriously, I find Mormon motherfuckers, “tea-party” dipshits and other “Christo”fascists to be incredibly offensive. I find them to represent quite the opposite of what Jesus Christ and the founding fathers stood for. Thus, in all seriousness, I find them to be anti-Christian and anti-American.

However, because their very existence offends me — and my sense of religious and civic propriety — does that mean that I have the right to violate their constitutional rights in the name of preserving or defending my own rights or my personal cognitive comfort or my peace of mind?

Fuck no.

Then there is the “argument” that whatever a majority of the voters decides never, ever should be overturned, that that majority vote is sacrosanct.

OK, what if we Californians took a vote, and a solid majority of us decided to drive every last Mormon motherfucker out of the state of California? Would that be constitutionally permissible?

Um, yeah.

Only you know what? Such a ballot measure wouldn’t even fucking make it to the ballot. It would be stricken down as blatantly unconstitutional before a single voter could weigh in on it.

Yet my equal human and civil rights were put up for a vote in November 2008, and that is some fucked-up shit. It’s why they call being non-heterosexual “the new black”: because even black people, who should know how wrong oppression is, shit and piss upon us non-heterosexuals.

Then there is perhaps the lamest argument against same-sex marriage that I’ve heard: that same-sex couples can’t produce children, and procreation is in the state’s interest.

Oh, puhfuckinglease. Procreation is in the Mormon cult’s best interests, because the Mormon cult wants to take over the entire fucking world, and the Catholicks are big on procreation, too, because they also want to take over the world, even though to prohibit birth control is incredibly irresponsible and cruel, especially in the Third-World nations where there is starvation and disease and overpopulation, but the United States of America is not underpopulated (indeed, in Arizona they’re trying to drive all of the brown-skinned people out) and Homo sapiens is, um, the last time that I checked, not on the endangered species list (the omnipresent risk of nuclear annihilation aside, of course…).

And let’s carry the procreation “argument” out: So what if two old people, say a widow and a widower in their 70s, want to marry? We don’t let them because the only valid purpose of marriage is procreation? What about heterosexual couples of reproductive age who aren’t able to have children for medical reasons? Must we give fertility tests before we allow heterosexual couples to marry, since procreation is the only valid reason for marriage?

What about fertile heterosexual couples that never have a child? Should we annul their marriages in, say, a year or two if the woman doesn’t get knocked up? What if she manages to get knocked up but just can’t carry a baby to term, but keeps miscarrying? How many chances should we give her?

Um, yeah, one by one, all of the “Christo”fascists’ and other assorted wingnuts’ “arguments” against same-sex marriage all come down to their own backasswards, bigoted religious or personal beliefs.

The pro-Prop H8 wingnuts lost their case before Walker because they have no fucking case.

The wingnuts no doubt will crow that because Walker himself is gay, he handed down a personally biased ruling.

However, when the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court will be required to look at U.S. Supreme Court precedent, and Lawrence vs. Texas is precedent – fairly recent precedent — that isn’t friendly to keeping same-sex couples from marrying.

I put the chances of the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing with Walker that to prohibit same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution at about two in three.

The battle for same-sex marriage is pretty much all over except for the wingnuts’ crying.

It’s too bad that the Mormon cult and its allies spent more than $40 million pushing Prop H8 down Californians’ throats. Probably the best anti-Prop H8 sign that I’ve seen reads: “Jesus said: ‘Feed the poor.’ They said: ‘Sorry, Jesus, we spent $40 million on hate and fear!’”

I suggest that the members of the Mormon cult and the other “Christo”fascists, instead of trying to make their miserable, hypocritical, self-righteous selves feel better and superior by shitting and pissing upon others, actually fucking read what Jesus Christ actually fucking taught. And then fucking follow it. And then tell the rest of us what great fucking Christians they are.

God bless America, land of the free.

Amen.

‘8: The Mormon Proposition’

DVD review

Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones, both raised in Mormon families, were married in San Francisco’s city hall during the window period in 2008 in which same-sex marriage was legal in California. Their marriage remains legally valid, but Proposition 8 put an end to further same-sex marriages. Barrick and Jones are featured in the documentary “8: The Mormon Proposition.”

I’m glad that they made a documentary — a pretty good one, too — about the Mormon cult’s behind-the-scenes push for Proposition 8, the ballot initiative in California that in November 2008 wrote discrimination into the state’s constitution, invalidating the state’s Supreme Court’s May 2008 ruling that to prohibit same-sex marriage violates the rights guaranteed to Californians by their state’s constitutution.

Let me state right off that I fucking hate the fucking Mormon cult.

I could, but I won’t, go into detail about the Mormons’ fucktarded, backasswards beliefs, such as that non-whites aren’t white because they were punished by God (yes, the Mormons are huge old fucking white supremacists); that their “prophet” (a stupid old evil white guy named Thomas Monson, who even has his own website) literally receives communiques from God (Monson “is the only person alive who can receive revelation for the entire [Mormon cult],” his website proclaims); that their polygamous founder, Joseph Smith Sr., in the late 1820s transcribed golden plates given to him by an angel fucktardedly but appropriately named Moroni (these golden plates, which contained the Book of Mormon, reportedly were taken back by the angel, conveniently); and that when good Mormons die they get to be gods of their own planets (which is even better, I’m guessing, than the bevy of virgins that good Muslim men are promised in the afterlife).

Frankly, the Mormon cult is lucky to be able to get away with what it gets away with, most notably and probably most destructively, its routine brainwashing of its youth, who have no fucking choice. Those born into Mormon families, if they reject the toxic, bullshit belief system that is crammed down their throats from birth, risk being ejected from their own families.

When belief is tied to life’s necessities, such as food and shelter, that’s not spirituality; that’s the pyschological enslavement of other human beings (a.k.a., too often, as “religion”). And that is evil, and that is nothing that Jesus Christ taught, and there is nothing to fucking debate about it.

And this evil perpetrated by the Mormon cult on a daily business is perfectly legal. In fact, even non-Mormons support the Mormons’ right to brainwash and thoroughly pyschospiritually destroy their offspring for life. This is called “religious freedom.”

Speaking of which, I remember when a co-worker of mine and I happened to be walking around the state Capitol here in Sacramento on our lunch break in late October 2008 and we quite unexpectedly happened upon a large group of wingnuts demonstrating in support of Prop H8 in front of the Capitol.

On their blue-and-yellow “Yes on 8″ signs were the Orwellian slogans “Restore Marriage,” “Protect Marriage,” “Prop 8 = Free Speech,” ”Prop 8 = Religious Freedom” and “Prop 8 = Less Government.”

As I noted of these slogans/“arguments” just after Prop H8 narrowly passed in November 2008:

“Restore[/protect] marriage”: How do same-sex couples harm heterosexual couples’ marriages? If heterosexual marriages are in trouble, don’t the heterosexual couples need to do something about it? The divorce rate was sky high long before gay men and lesbians ever got the legal right to marry in any state.

“Less government”: Wait a fucking minute. “Less government”? The government telling two consenting adults that they may not get married is less government? How?

“Free speech”: Yes, you have free speech. You may hold the most hateful beliefs that you want and you are pretty free to say whatever hateful things you want. But what right do you have to infringe on someone else’s rights?

[“Religious freedom”:] These motherfucking haters, if it is their religious belief that same-sex marriage is wrong, are perfectly free not to marry someone of the same sex. Their religious freedom is in no way infringed upon by two other consenting adults marrying each other.

If we actually are to buy this argument that to offend someone’s religious beliefs is to infringe upon his or her religious freedom, then we must make interracial marriage illegal too if it should — gasp! — offend someone’s religious beliefs. (What about the eating of certain foods? Should pork be banned by constitutional amendment because its consumption offends some people’s religious beliefs? Where would it end?)

The bottom line is that the homo-haters have no actual legal, moral or ethical arguments against same-sex marriage. They have only blind hatred, and they fabricate “arguments” to try to legitimize and sanitize their hatred.

The overarching “argument” by the homo-haters that their civil rights — religious freedom, freedom of speech, parental rights, etc. – are actually being violated by gay men and lesbians being granted equal civil rights is beyond insane.

“8: The Mormon Proposition” — narrated by Dustin Lance Black, the gay (ex-?)Mormon who, ironically, won an Oscar for his screenplay for the film “Milk” — makes it clear that the stupid evil white men who run the Mormon cult are not satisfied with having control only over the hearts, minds and genitalia of their Mormon mindslaves. They want control over the entire nation, if not also the entire planet.

And it is at that point, when the Mormon cult no longer is content to mind its own fucking business, but wants to convert all of us to Mormonism, that the Mormon cult deserves to be brought down. (And no, I don’t rule out violence if necessary. An unprovoked, direct strike at our equal human and civil rights deserves a strong response, and if violence ever is called for, then so be it.)

“8: The Mormon Proposition” masterfully exposes how the Mormon cult has tried to hide behind its anti-non-heterosexual crusade by creating front organizations (most notably, the National Organization for Marriage* [which, ironically, actually is for fewer marriages]) made to look as though it’s a grassroots effort rather than what it actually is: a crusade of the Mormon cult. “The Mormon Proposition” also details the history of the Mormon cult’s involvement in denying equal human and civil rights to non-heterosexuals, starting with the battle over same-sex marriage in Hawaii in the 1990s.

“The Mormon Proposition” showcases two young gay (ex-?)Mormon men who wed when same-sex marriage was legal in California and follows their story, which includes ostracization from their family members (although the mother of one of the two young men is very supportive of him and the cause of equal human and civil rights for all Americans; she rocks).

I’m not decided whether the two young men are given too much attention in the documentary or whether it’s a strength of the documentary that their case is a thread that runs throughout it. In either case, though, they are an adorable couple, and if you are sane you can’t help but feel happy for them and you can’t imagine that anyone could be so miserable and hateful as to try to take their happiness away from them.

Also featured in “The Mormon Proposition” is Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate (now known as a national group called Rights Equal Rights), whose advocacy for equal human and civil rights and whose counter-crusade against and exposition of the “Christo”fascist Mormon cult I admire greatly (but I’m not big on his bid to run for president in 2012 on the Repunignican ticket; there’s no way in hell I’d vote for a Repugnican, but especially not for a gay Repugnican).

Karger’s Californians Against Hate website sums up the Mormon cult’s support of Prop H8 rather succinctly in a post on July 8:

During the summer of 2008, we discovered the active involvement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) in Prop 8. The Mormon Church had taken over virtually every aspect of the Yes on 8 campaign.

Mormon families contributed approximately $30 million of the $40 million raised, the Church produced 27 slick commercials, put up an expensive website, bused in thousands of volunteers from Utah [and] had massive phone banks, yet only reported a mere $2,078 in non-monetary contributions three days before the election.

Two weeks later I filed a sworn complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) against the Mormon Church for not reporting its vast financial involvement in the campaign.

The commission prosecuted the case, and conducted an unprecedented 19-month investigation of the Salt Lake City-based church’s finances. Three weeks ago the FPPC found the Mormon Church guilty of 13 counts of late reporting and they were fined $5,539. That was the first time a religion was found guilty of election irregularities in the 36-year history of the FPPC.

How the Mormon cult retains its tax-exempt status regardless of its well-documented illegal involvement in politics eludes me. The Mormon cult should have been fined millions of dollars and lost its tax-exempt status. That it did not shows how scared the powers that be are of the “Christo”fascists of the Mormon cult.

One thing in “The Mormon Proposition” that I’m not thrilled about is to watch people cry over the passage of Prop H8 when the Mormon cult had to lie and cheat in order to “win.” When you have to lie and cheat to “win,” your “cause” is fucking weak. It’s actually good news that the Mormon “Christo”fascists had to resort to their anti-Christian deception and lies to “win.” It proves that unless they wear sheep’s clothing, the majority of the voters will recognize them as the wolves that they are. The Mormon “Christo”facists don’t have the power of the truth behind them.

And despite the tens of millions of dollars and the manpower that the Mormon cult pumped into Prop H8, it didn’t win by a huge margin. It won by only 4 fucking percent. That’s not what I’d call a fucking landslide.

The latest Field Poll on the issue, taken in late June and early July, indicates that if same-sex marriage were put on the Californian ballot today, Prop 8 would be reversed, with 51 percent supporting same-sex marriage, 42 percent opposed and 7 percent undecided. (It seems to me that most of the undecideds would end up in the pro-same-sex marriage camp, since the hardcore homo-haters already know who they are.)

My fellow non-heterosexuals need to stop crying and start fighting, which includes educating themselves and others on how and why Prop H8 passed in the first place. While I’m happy to see that the 52 percent support for Prop H8 in November 2008 appears to have dropped 10 points to 42 percent today, 51 percent of Californians in favor of same-sex marriage is still too close for comfort.

“8: The Mormon Proposition” is a great teaching tool, and I recommend it for everyone who gives a shit about equal human and civil rights for all Americans.

While I can’t support him for president, I wholeheartedly agree with Fred Karger’s proclamation that:

Younger people who begin to realize that they might be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer will soon be afforded all the same rights as their brothers, sisters, friends and neighbors.

That is what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We will settle for nothing less.

Amen.

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*Speaking of NOM, headed by the grotesque wingnut Maggie Gallagher, who really needs a dildo, a wingnut recently showed up at a NOM event holding this sign:

Yes, many if not most of the “Christo”fascists believe that non-heterosexuals should be executed — just like it is the case in theofascist nation of Iran. (Thus, I think of the “Christo”fascists as the “American Taliban.”) 

This is why I never rule out violence against the “Christo”fascists.