Utter Wonder does a hilarous Blackwell critique on the fashion choices of the homophobic hate group Westboro Baptist Church. These are the fine folks who travel around the country, holding up signs saying “Gay people deserve death” and “Matthew Shepard’s in Hell” and other uplifting messages.
Brian Bosma, Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives and one of Indiana’s leading opponent of GLBT rights, is holding his annual “Junetoberfest” campaign fundraiser on Monday, June 13th at the Rathskellar Biergarten, right in the heart of Massachusetts Avenue, in an area whose revitalization was driven by the GLBT community.
Bosma is apparently willing to promote gay-friendly Mass Ave as a flourishing tourist and business district while simultaneously advocating the curtailing of human rights for Mass Ave’s inhabitants and their families.
To address this gross act of hypocrisy and injustice to our families, Indiana Action Network is leading a protest beginning at 5:00 PM outside the Rathskellar, where Bosma’s drunken bash is to take place. We will bring our families with us and stand together to show Brian Bosma and his ilk that our families are just as deserving of basic social rights as the “traditional” families his exclusionary agenda professes to defend.
Durham, North Carolina had three cross burnings last night, that are apparently anti-gay related. The seem to be in response to a production of the Laramie Project, and also targeting a gay-friendly church, although none of the news outlets are willing to make that connection, except the pastor of the church, who mentioned it as his best guess for the cause.
Don’t get any ideas, Indianapolis bigots. Eric Miller better keep his KKK pals in line.
Aw, man. I suspected when we were reading Ender’s Game for my book club that mormon Orson Scott Card was a conservative nutjob. Turns out he is indeed: he actually writes an article attempting to rehabilitate the Sith and the dark side, claiming that the Jedis are the force of evil, not Darth Vader. That sucks majorly.
Check out more on the rehabilitation of Darth Sidious and other Right-winger’s attempts to trash the Jedi.
D’oh! After reading on, I gather that Card has written several homophobic articles and essays — googling found me some of them. Fuck. Crap, I wish I hadn’t actually purchased his stupid paperback now. That’s seven bucks I inadvertently gave to a bigotted moron.
Now I don’t feel so bad for making fun of the fucking Mormons and their sideshow religion. If you read “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith” by Jon Krakauer, you’ll discover a history of Mormonism and of the fundamentalist aspects of the religion — and you discover how easily “mainstream” Mormons slip over into radicalism because of the nature of the religion.
Part of what you learn of their history is that the “founder” of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was basically a P. T. Barnum character; a shyster con man of a sort that was common in the 1800’s. Like many other snake oil salesmen and salvation show types traveling around, (think of the HBO series Carnivale and you get an idea of the type) he made up his own religion that was part entertainment carnival and part self-serving graft. Smith was actually convicted of running con jobs at one point. He concocted a story about an Angel (named MORONI, no less!) burying golden tablets under a rock, wrote his own side-show version of the bible, and took his story on the road, collecting heaps of cash along the way.
Unlike other con men, though, he accidentally became successful. Unfortunately before he could get out with the cash, he started believing his own hype. In a brazen move, he decided that a young girl he was lusting after should be his second wife, and re-wrote his own religion to allow him to have multiple spouses. Needless to say that was popular with the guys, and he ended up with a bunch of people following him around; people who kept getting into trouble with people over land and territory. Nothing to do but move them out west. And thus from one guy’s wayward penis, an entire nutjob religion was born. And you thought Clinton’s inability to keep it zipped was a problem.
All this makes Card’s criticism of the “Jedi religion” extremely funny:
It’s one thing to put your faith in a religion founded by a real person who claimed divine revelation, but it’s something else entirely to have, as the scripture of your religion, a storyline that you know was made up by a very nonprophetic human being.
I had no idea something like this existed — Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute is a school for conservatives that teaches them how to rig elections and engage in dirty politics. Among it’s graduates: Karl Rove, the man who runs the White House, and his boyfriend, gay prostitute/fake journalist Jeff Gannon.
No wonder the religious right is so organized and has so much money to use against us. Yikes.
Hip, Hip… Hypocrisy! Edition
I’ve been pointing out Republican hypocrisy for quite a while now — Democratic Underground covers the recent blatant examples of it. The upshot is that pretty much any conservative who lectures on “family” values is either gay, a wife beater, a child molester or a white collar criminal. Because for them it doesn’t matter what you actually DO, it only matters what lip service you pay.
This week, the White House blames Newsweek for reporting that U. S. soldiers were desecrating the Koran — never mind that they WERE, and that there’s proof, Newsweek shouldn’t say those things out loud because it causes Muslims to hate us. Because of course they don’t hate us for illegally invading their country, or anything.
And of course the guy who threatened to kill Michael Moore — gosh, he didn’t lose his job or anything. But that’s not surprising considering that Republican senators like Cornyn say that it’s okay for people to kill judges, and nothing happens to them.
Apparently some fine folks in Arizona are traveling around the state in a nice “Please Hate Homos” semi-trailer truck called the “Marriage Mobile.” Beautiful. Why not just stick a nice burning cross on the top of that thing, and make it complete?
If you take a good look at the statistics about gay marriage in Massachusetts, where it has been legal for over a year now, we don’t seem to be contributing to the hetero divorce rate in that state, so I think the argument that we’re threatening marriage has been thoroughly debunked.
INDIANAPOLIS — Rock Indiana Campaign for Equality announced today their statewide $2 bill campaign. The campaign, which began two weeks ago with a saturation period, will last through the summer.
“Because of the vast discrimination that is being wielded against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Hoosiers, we feel it is important to send a message to businesses that GLBT citizens are not only consumers, but tax paying consumers at that and we contribute to Indiana’s economy,” said Pepper Partin, a Rock Indiana organizer. “We can easily take these powerful dollars to another state where special interest groups such as Eric Miller’s Advance America do not have a stronghold on the state, city and county governments.”
Every Hoosier who believes in equal rights for all is encouraged to participate. The bills should be obtained from banks and/or credit unions and should be spent wherever citizens spend their common denomination currency. For more information on the campaign and to download a flyer visit 2 Dollar Bill Campaign Web site
According to an AP story, A priest in St. Paul, Minnesota denied communion to more than 100 parisioners on Sunday because they wore rainbow color sashes in support of gay and lesbian Catholics.
A Roman Catholic priest denied communion to more than 100 people Sunday, saying they could not receive the sacrament because they wore rainbow-colored sashes to church to show support for gay Catholics.
Before offering communion, the Rev. Michael Sklucazek told the congregation at the Cathedral of St. Paul (search) that anyone wearing a sash could come forward for a blessing but would not receive wine and bread.
A group called the Rainbow Sash Alliance has encouraged supporters to wear the multicolored fabric bands since 2001 on each Pentecost Sunday, the day Catholics believe the Holy Spirit came to give power to Christians soon after Jesus ascended to heaven. But Sunday’s service was the first time they had been denied communion at the altar.
Archbishop Harry Flynn told the group earlier this month that they would not receive communion because the sashes had become a protest against church teaching.
Very, very gay, according to Frank Rich in the New York Times, who gives us a nice overview of several anti-gay religious zealots have been outed as leading secret gay lives. We’ve been saying it for years, and it’s finally showing in the papers — people who protest too much have something to hide.