Is Mother Earth trying to rid Herself of Repugnicans?

Tropical Storm Isaac hasn’t even become a hurricane yet and has yet to reach Florida, but already Isaac’s ominous approach has induced the Repugnican Tea Party traitors to effectively cancel the first day of their scheduled four-day KKK-like convention in Tampa (Monday).

At this point, I don’t see how Isaac could not ruin the quadrennial KKK convention.

Even if Isaac doesn’t make a direct hit on Tampa, Isaac is expected first to visit the southern tip of Florida as a category-one hurricane late tomorrow night or early Monday morning, and then is expected to make landfall in the Gulf Coast as a category-two hurricane late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, according to AccuWeather.com:

AccuWeather.com image, August 25, 2012

Future Hurricane Isaac is expected to rake the coast of the western portion of Florida and perhaps also the coastal areas of neighboring Southern states Alabama, Mississippi and maybe even Louisiana, which needs another hurricane like Mittens Romney needs another million dollars.

Even if Isaac spares Tampa, I don’t see how the Repugnican Tea Party traitors can continue their convention while a category-two hurricane has just hit the Gulf Coast without looking like the major-league assholes that they are. For that matter, I don’t see how they can even begin their convention belatedly on Tuesday while a category-two hurricane is expected to make landfall in the Gulf Coast in less than 24 hours without looking like the major-league assholes that they are.

I hate it when the wingnuts ascribe catastrophic events (hurricanes, earthquakes, 9/11, etc.) to us homos or to supporters of women’s reproductive-choice rights or the like, but fuck if it doesn’t look like Mother Nature is trying to wipe the planet-killing Repugnican Tea Party traitors off of the face of the planet like a dog trying to rid itself of fleas. It’s like she knew that they were going to be concentrated in Tampa and so she sent Isaac their way.

Maybe Mother Nature finally was sent over the edge when the Mittens Romney/Pretty Boy Paul Ryan team essentially announced in Ohio today that while women may not control their own uteri, they may open their own businesses, because, you see, that’s the only actually important endeavor that there is in this man’s world: making money and perpetuating the evil that is capitalism. (“Women need our help,” Mittens proclaimed in the critically important swing state of Ohio today, but he wasn’t talking about help with women’s reproductive rights or with their equal rights or help caring for their families. He was talking solely about helping them in the business world.)

In all seriousness, the toxic masculine worldview that Team Mittens/Ryan represents has been destroying the planet for some time now, and if it takes some acts of the Goddess to clean the toxic mess up, I’m all for it.

P.S. I noticed this striking paragraph, this interesting tidbit, buried in this Associated Press story on Isaac:

Cuba has a highly organized civil defense system that goes door-to-door to enforce evacuations of at-risk areas, largely averting casualties from storms even when they cause major flooding and significant damage to crops.

Wow. I guess that this is one of the reasons that the wingnuts vociferously slam Fidel Castro’s administration of Cuba: Unlike the “leaders” here in the United States, land of the “free,” Castro actually saves the poor people of his nation from drowning and otherwise dying in hurricanes.

That evil, evil man!

Elton says that Jesus was a poof

Thank Goddess that Elton John has created a tempest in a teacup by proclaiming that Jesus Christ was gay.

Otherwise, I might have to write about the annual Conservative Action Political Conference, which began yesterday and concludes tomorrow.

What the fuck do the conservatives have to say that is new, since by fucking definition they represent the old, cold, dead hand of the past? They still have us stuck in the 1950s, accusing their opponents of being Commies when Communism pretty much died in the early 1990s, for fuck’s sake.

It’s much more interesting to write about Elton’s assertion that Jesus was a fag.

Reports AFP:

British pop superstar Elton John stirred controversy in a magazine interview [today] when he claimed that Jesus Christ was “gay.”

“I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems,” John said in an interview posted on the website of U.S. celebrity news magazine Parade.

“On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East — you’re as good as dead,” said John, who is gay.

The Catholic League, the largest U.S. Catholic rights group, condemned the comments.

“Jesus was certainly compassionate, but to say he was ‘super-intelligent’ is to compare the son of God to a successful game-show contestant,” league president Bill Donohue said in a statement.

“More seriously, to call Jesus a homosexual is to label him a sexual deviant. But what else would we expect from a man who previously said, ‘From my point of view, I would ban religion completely’?”

The self-anointed “Christians” really need to get over their hangups over sex. To hate sex is to hate the human race, since the human race is impossible without sex.

However, making the masses feel guilty about sexual urges — which are as innate to human beings as are such other biological impulses as hunger and thirst and sleepiness — sure the fuck is a great way to (try to) control the masses, which is all that the fucking Catholick church and the other “Christo”fascist institutions, such as the Mormon cult and the plethora of right-wing Protestant sects, want to do.

“To call Jesus a homosexual is to label him a sexual deviant,” the Catholick League’s president asserted.

Because the anti-sex Catholick and other “Christian” cults have portrayed Jesus Christ as having been entirely asexual — to the insane degree that they assert that he was not even the product of sex, but was “immaculately” conceived — of course the assertion that he was gay, or even might have been gay, is modern-day heresy.

But to those of us who live in the world of reality, we have to assume that the historical Jesus, if he did exist (I tend to believe that he did), was a human being, and that as a human being, he most likely was not asexual.

To the question as to whether or not Jesus was gay (or bisexual, if bisexuality in men truly exists), if we are sane, rational and honest, we can only answer: Who knows?

Jesus certainly might have been. He lived more than two millenia ago and we just don’t know anything about his actual sexual practices (or unlikely lack thereof). I find it highly unlikely that he never had at least one orgasm in his entire life.

What the “Christians” say about Jesus’ life certainly doesn’t point to heterosexuality: He never married and he surrounded himself with 12 other dudes… Let’s face it: the “Christian” account of Jesus’ life does not exactly paint him as a pussy hound. (Even the Buddha is said to have married and fathered a child before he went off and became enlightened.)

Jesus’ reputed verbal skills, compassion, sensitivity and wisdom (including his being a huge proponent of forgiveness and of cooperation over competition) — and his penchant toward teaching and healing — all point to the feminine, which, when strong in males, usually indicates homosexuality. Although people like Joe the Plumber have come to represent “Christians,” Jesus Christ is not portrayed as anything like Joe the Plumber, either in the New Testament or even in the twisted versions of the New Testament that the “Christians” love to propagate.

Indeed, it was ignorant, fearful people like Joe the Plumber who crucified Jesus, so yeah, it’s plausible that Jesus Christ indeed was queer.

While Jesus’ sexual orientation is debatable, what is not debatable is that he was a socialist, advocating that we take care of everyone and proclaiming that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. He was a pacifist, too. He said to pay your taxes, not to charge interest on loans (indeed, he even taught not to even expect your loan to be repaid!), and not to hoard worldly wealth, but to lay your treasures up in heaven (that is, to work on your spirituality instead of your materiality). And he certainly would have opposed the death penalty, having been a victim of it himself.

Yet today’s “Christians” worship the golden calf and are bitterly opposed to helping the poor (unless they “convert” them first, of course; their “help” almost never comes without strings attached), hate paying their fair share of taxes,* love war and bloodshed — especially in Jesus’ name — and cherish the death penalty. 

If Jesus ever does come back in his promised second coming, he’d better be careful, because his “followers” will crucify him.

*On the issue of taxes, let me say that the middle class — what is left of the middle class — is way overtaxed and that the plutocrats and the corporatocrats are way under-taxed. They benefit from what tax revenues give them, but they do everything in their power to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while the little guy, like Joe the Kamikaze, have to keep the nation fiscally afloat. (Well, not that we are fiscally afloat now, but you know what I mean…)  

Why the ‘Christians’ hate us

Salon.com has an interview with gay Catholic and Mexican-American writer Richard Rodriguez (shown at left) on Proposition 8 and religion that’s worth reading. In the interview Rodriguez attempts to explain the passage of Proposition 8 and he suggests how gay men and lesbians can fare better among the religious.

Rodriguez correctly identifies that discrimination against gay men is more along the lines of misogyny than racism, since what it is that really seems to make gay men feared and hated is that many if not most of them represent the feminine, which is feared and hated. (And gay men have always seemed to me to be more reviled than are lesbians.)

But what it all really boils down to, I think, is that gay men and lesbians are dangerous to the blind obedience that the Mormon cult, the Catholic church and other organized “Christian” religions expect of their members.

Gay men and lesbians throw a monkey wrench into the patriarchal order that the “Christo”fascists want to impose upon everyone.

Yes, everyone. A huge goal of both the Mormon cult and the Catholic church is to overrun not just the United States, but the entire world, with their members. Thus their emphasis on irresponsible over-reproduction, including opposition to birth control and to abortion rights.

We gay men and lesbians — well, most of us — don’t reproduce like good little breeders “should,” so the Mormon cult and the Catholic church attack us.

And gay men especially tend to display liveliness and love and creativity and spark that the “Christian” organizations feel the need to snuff out. We gay men are, or at least often are, anathema to the doom and gloom and guilt and self-hatred and walking deadness that the “Christian” institutions espouse. Therefore, we should be eliminated; if we can’t be physically eliminated (as AIDS was just allowed to decimate gay men), then our rights should be restricted as much as is possible. Minimally, we should be minimized at all costs.

And, of course, as Rodriguez points out, as organized “Christianity” continues to crumble in the United States — because organized “Christianity” refuses to change and grow with the times — the “Christians” have to blame someone. Racism is out of fashion, but good ol’-fashioned homo-hatred is still acceptable among at least half of Americans, I estimate. As they say: gay is the new black.

I do have some disagreement with Rodriguez. In his interview with Salon.com he states: “I think gay activists … should not present ourselves as enemies of religion. I am not prepared to leave the Roman Catholic Church over this issue. The Catholic Church is my church.”

Hmmm…

I am not fully decided as to whether gay men and lesbians should remain in their churches and try to reform them — or leave their churches and let their churches die the natural death that they need to die. (I lean toward the latter, however.)

After Prop 8 passed, a Latina friend of mine who opposed Prop 8 (and who went to two anti-Prop 8 protest rallies with me here in Sacramento) announced, to my shock and awe, that she was considering joining the Catholic church.

She and I then had a strained conversation about this.

Her position was that people like she should try to reform the Catholic church. I don’t know, I told her; when I think of one institution on the planet that is the most resistant to change, it’s the Catholic church. (The Mormon cult would be No. 2 on my list, mainly because it’s much younger than is the Catholic church.)

Among the many things the Catholic church and the Mormon cult have in common, besides gay-bashing and involving themselves in right-wing politics, is that both excommunicate dissenters who oppose a serious threat to the established order. What better way to resist change and to preserve the status quo than to expel anyone who represents real change?

I told my Latina friend that should she make any real headway in helping to significantly change the Catholic church, they’d boot her out.

I understand her desire for community and service, but the Catholic church?

Not all Catholics are bad, she said.

True, but, I asked her, how can you support an institution that creates harm without contributing to that harm yourself? I mean, even if someone was just a daycare worker for the Nazis, didn’t that person help the overall Nazi cause, even though she or he never harmed a single hair on the head of a single Jew? How can one so neatly separate himself or herself from the evils that others within his or her institution commit? How can you support the Catholic church, even peripherally, without helping the church to oppress gay men and lesbians, since a big chunk of the church’s agenda is to continue to oppress gay men and lesbians? 

Anyway, while I generally oppose violence, as does Rodriguez, I disagree with Rodriguez’ assertion that we gay men and lesbians must not offend the religious. Oh, fuck the religious. They routinely offend me with their ignorance, fear and hatred that they cloak with the name of Jesus Christ — I mean, what worse blasphemy than to commit evil in the name of Jesus Christ? — so fuck them if I offend them. They don’t worry about offending me, so I won’t worry about offening them. They need to be offended.

There is this belief that no matter what ignorance and hatred the “Christians” spew forth, we are still to “respect” their beliefs. You know what? I “respect” their homo-hating beliefs like I “respect” the Nazis’ anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs.

No, trying to change monolithic “Christian” institutions from within is too much like banging your forehead against a wall ad nauseam.

Better to create something new, different and wonderful outside of these institutional dinosaurs and let these institutional dinosaurs go extinct by starving them of our time, energy and money, which is better spent creating something new, different and wonderful.

Boy, did I digress.

But read Rodriguez’ interview.

But if you don’t, these are the excerpts that I found the most poignant:

• “…Latinos and blacks [took] part in this terribly tragedy [the passage of Prop 8]. We persecute each other. The very communities that get discriminated against discriminate against other Americans.”
• “I know a lot of black churches take offense when gay activists say that the gay movement is somehow analogous to the black civil rights movement. And while there is some relationship between the persecution of gays and the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, I think the true analogy is to the women’s movement. What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the traditional male-structured society”
• “Then there is the Roman Catholic Church, my own church, which has just come off this extraordinary season of sexual scandal and misbehavior in the rectory against children. The church is barely out of the court and it’s trying to assume the role of governor of sexual behavior, having just proved to America its inability to govern its own sexual behavior.”
• “…[I]t’s one thing for the churches to insist on their right to define the sacrament of marriage for their own members. But it’s quite another for them to insist that they have a right to define the relationships of people outside their communities. That’s really what’s most troubling about Proposition 8. It was a deliberate civic intrusion by the churches.”
• “To my knowledge, the churches have not accepted responsibility for the Bush catastrophe. Having claimed, in some cases, that Bush was divinely inspired and his election was the will of God, they have failed to explain why the last eight years have been so catastrophic for America.”
• “The divorce rate suggests that women are not happy with the relationship they have with men. And whatever that unhappiness is, I would like people to know that, as a gay man, I’m not responsible for what’s wrong with heterosexual marriage. On the other hand, whatever is wrong with the heterosexual marriage does have some implication for the world I live in. Women are redefining sexuality in a way that’s going to make it easier for me to be a gay man.”

Rodriguez’ next book, which I’ll probably buy, is on what he calls the “desert religions,” Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which, he asserts, need to be “feminized” — not taken over by women or the feminine, but balanced out by the feminine, I believe he means.

“If the male is allowed to hold onto the power of God, then I think we are in terrible shape,” he says.

Yup. And it’s the male power that wants to continue to hold on to its power that finds us gay men and lesbians, especially us gay men, so threatening.