Politics

Rabbi: Bird Flu Caused by Gays

Yet another natural disaster being blamed on us for no conceivable reason whatsoever:

AN outbreak of deadly bird flu in Israel is God’s punishment for calls in election ads to legalise gay marriages, according to Rabbi David Basri, a prominent sage preaching Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.
“The Bible says that God punishes depravity first through plagues against animals and then in people,” Rabbi Basri said in a religious edict quoted by his son.
Rabbi Basri said he hoped the deaths of hundreds of thousands of turkeys and chickens would help atone for what he called the sins of left-wing Israeli political parties, the son, Rabbi Yitzhak Basri, said, a week before a national election.
The bird flu outbreak stemmed from far-left political parties “strengthening and encouraging homosexuality,” Rabbi Basri’s son quoted him as saying.

Geez, you’d think that the Jews would be wary about scapegoating and ostracizing people.

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The Soulforce Equality Riders Arrested at Falwell’s “Liberty” University

I mentioned the planned Equality Rides a few weeks ago — modeled after the student “Freedom Riders” of the 1960s who travelled around to centers of intolerance and bigotry, these students are traveling to Universities and military institutions that ban LGBT students. Yesterday, 20 equality ride students were arrested at Jerry Fallwell’s “Liberty” University.

LYNCHBURG, Va. – More than 20 gay rights activists were arrested on trespassing charges Friday as they tried to step onto the campus of Liberty University, the school founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Many of the activists were part of Soulforce, a group on its first stop of a nationwide “Equality Ride” tour to promote gay rights at the nation’s conservative Christian universities and military academies.

Invoking the memory of the civil rights movement, Soulforce member Jacob Reitan said: “We want to come to the school today to say, ‘learn from history.'”
“We have a right to be here, because this school teaches that being gay is being sick and sinful,” said Reitan, co-director of Equality Ride. “We have a right to question and to show how we are children of God.”

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e-mail – a tool for good, and for evil

Every once it a while, you get an e-mail that’s so shocking that it could either destroy your soul, or make you a completely better person.
Recently I got blind carbon-copied on an exchange a friend of mine had with “respected activist” Marla Randolph Stevens, a former resident of Indiana and former “political activist” here in the state. If you don’t know her and aren’t politically active on the gay community in Indiana, you won’t care about this at all, so don’t bother clicking through the continued link. But if you do know her, you’ll find the following e-mail enlightening, to say the least. My favorite part is the subject line “Unsolicited and probably unappreciated.” Oh, it’s appreciated more than you’ll ever know, my dear.

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Advance Indiana, Carson’s Challenger, and Ted Fleischaker

Julia Carson is facing a democratic challenger to her office — a gay man, Kris Kiser, with very little political experience. Much of the GLBT community supports Carson, who has been a friend of ours politically and gone to bat on gay issues with no hesitancy whatsoever. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) both support Carson over a challenger with little experience.

However, local sleazeball gay “newpaper” publisher Ted Fleischaker endorsed Kiser over Carson in an editorial in his “newspaper” (the only part of that term that is accurate is that the trash he publishes gets printed on paper), generating some controversy in the gay community and a great deal of discussion over the issue on the Advance Indiana website, which has done a decent reporting on the details.

I can’t say much about Kiser or whether he’d be a good candidate, although I think he can’t have very good judgement, since he’s trying to create a schism in the community by running against one of the best elected officials Democrats have, rather than running against a Republican incumbent. And if I were him, I wouldn’t count an endorsement from Fleischaker as a positive thing. I’d be running as far away from that as I possible could.

After a heated discussion of the issues on the Advance Indiana site, along with commentary on the validity of Ted’s paper, someone hacked the Advance Indiana site and deleted the related posts. Gee, that’s an awful striking coincidence. I remember back in the day when I was libeled on the gayindy mailing list by an “anonymous” source for expressing opinions Mr. Fleischaker disagreed with.

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Photos of the Black Civil Rights Movement

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The Birmingham News discovers in its archives dozens of old, previously unpublished photographs from the black civil rights movement. Very cool. Check out the pictures of the freedom riders, and also see the protests at Birmingham high schools when black students enrolled. This is the kind of stuff that people need to see to understand exactly how bad things really were.

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Troops don’t know why they’re in Iraq

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Zogby conducted a poll of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, on a number of different subjects. What jumped out at me is this paragraph, though…

The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Holy shit. These kids are dying for nothing, and they don’t even know it. They actually believe the bogus crap that’s been fed to them. The horror.

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AFA boycotting Desperate Housewives

The American Family Association is urging a boycott of Desperate Housewives. Of course my response to TV censorship is always “unplug the TV” — but this time the nutjobs are addressing my retort:

Some people have said to pro-family viewers who dislike indecent network TV programming simply to turn it off, Wildmon notes. In response, he asks, “Why should we have to do that? Why do our children need to be exposed to such trash? Why do the networks keep putting out trash?

Because some of us are paying good money for that trash, mister, and we want it on our damn TVs. You can take my favorite TV shows when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. Which will never happen, because if it comes down to me or you biting it, it’s gonna be you.

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Here, here! Well-spoken, Bruce!

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From a discussion being held by The Poor Man Institute with a wingnut:

The loyalty “owed” a President, or any government official, or any policy of the same, by a private citizen, is this much loyalty: zero. Let me say that again: the loyalty I, or you, or anyone “owes” to someone in the government, or to some course of action they favor, is none whatsoever. To think otherwise, Teddy Roosevelt might comment, is “unpatriotic and servile”. Now, this is not to say you can’t give your loyalty to the President or his policies – it’s a free country, and you can do any non-treasonous thing you want with your loyalty – but that’s your decision, and nobody has to live with it but you (and all the people who suffer from the consequences of your stupid choice of loyalties, of course.) Personally, I think the President is a horrible fucking stupid cunt and his policies are for shit. Your results may vary. But if someone tells me that I “owe” it to the President or his crap policy to act like I don’t think that, well, that person can get in the big long line with WPE and the rest of folks who really desperately need to go fuck themselves.
But Democracy gets even worse. The President and the President’s policies owe me loyalty. The President and his policies are supposed to be working for the good of the country and her people. That’s how the loyalty flows. The President is required to act for my (ok, “our”) benefit; if he does not, the betrayal is his, and the sorts of things which you’d like to call “disloyalty” become duty. Does Gore’s speaking out against torture “undermine” the country? That’s a tricky position to hold if you oppose torture. Does it “undermine” the policy? I wish. No, it does this: it reminds the world that however fucked up our government is, it isn’t us, it doesn’t speak for us, and it can never, ever make us quiet down. And I do say God Bless America.

Continue ReadingHere, here! Well-spoken, Bruce!