Political Notebook for 13 April 2019

The circus is now open! Actually, it never, ever closes.

To everything there is a treason…

The current occupant of the White House loves throwing around loaded phrases to attack his political opponents (or anyone he doesn’t like at the particular moment he hate-Tweets about them). This week, he favourite word was treason. Dana Millbank’s piece in the The Washington Post, “For Trump, the name of the season is treason”, explains the story of the current occupant’s misuse of the word. It’s an ugly tale, not the least because of how puerile and utterly ignorant it is: The guy has absolutely NO idea what the Constitution says about treason (or anything else, of course), or why it’s so tightly and specifically defined and restricted—or, does he? Is this part of his plan to end democracy?

Maybe so. As ThinkProgress put it: “Trump’s accusations of ‘treason’ are a hallmark of fascism”, because it absolutely is. Author Zack Ford lays out the case for what treason really is—including how the Left uses the word incorrectly, too—and then sums up why the current occupant’s use of the word is fascistic:

The contradiction speaks to the way Trump tries to frame his positions as the only positions that actually serve the interests of the country. As slogans like “Make America Great Again” and “America First!” indicate, he’s attempting to co-op patriotism, such that any opposition to Trump is by extension anti-American. Thus, asking for cooperation means exactly the same thing as asking for obedience, and being rebuffed is the same as betrayal.

Writing for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf details why “A President Falsely Charging ‘Treason’ Is What the Founders Feared”, because:

The Framers were guarding against the possibility that Americans would one day elect a man so morally weak and corrupt that he would falsely accuse political enemies of treason. In 2016, Americans narrowly elected a man who is that degraded.

So, is this part of a strategy to bend the US Constitution to his will? There are worrying trends—aside from the current occupant’s Twitter Tantrums and off-the-cuff idiocy.

A couple days ago, the current occupant’s sycophantic lackey Attorney General told Congress he thought the FBI had “spied” on the Republican candidates campaign—echoing the current occupant’s own conspiracy theory that his frothing fans, including Fox “News”, parrot every chance they get, despite it being totally untrue, of course. A couple days later, the current occupant doubled-down on his conspiracy theory, using Barr’s own testimony as support for his loony assertions.

What all of this could lead to is explained by Dana Millbank in his Post column:

Because Trump knows the seriousness of the charge, he therefore must be interpreting treason the way King Henry VIII did, in the lèse-majesté sense: Treason is anything that offends the dignity of the sovereign. Disagreement with Trump is an offense against the state, just as Henry executed unfaithful wives for treason.

This means the following people have committed capital crimes: All journalists and late-night hosts. Anyone who leaks. All Democratic members of Congress and people who worked in Democratic administrations. Anyone who ran against Trump. Anyone who criticizes Trump on social media. Anyone who voted against Trump.

This means 65,853,514 Hillary Clinton voters will have to be imprisoned or executed. The U.S. criminal-justice system can’t handle much more than the 2.3 million people it already holds. This unfortunately argues for mass execution — unless exile is a possibility? Imagine the size of that caravan heading south toward Mexico. [link in the original]

Is this what will happen? Of course not. Well, that’s what we’re supposed to say, right? But given the contempt this regime has for the US Constitution and the rule of law, can we be sure of anything anymore? The fact is, warning about where this loose and dangerous rhetoric can lead is the only thing that can prevent it from actually doing so.

We see bad people

The current occupant has a long history of hiring people who show staunch loyalty to him. They may not be very smart, they may be corrupt, they may be incompetent, or any combination of those things, but as long as they publicly display their loyalty, they’re in. We saw that when a spokeswoman for his “re-election” campaign declared that Congress had no right to see the current occupant’s tax returns: “Ironically, the only person whose tax returns they’ve asked for — the only president — is Trump. So it’s a sham reasoning.” She’s either lying to people who don’t know any better, or else she’s pitiably ignorant: Every modern US President except for the current occupant has released their tax returns. Every. Single. One. Mind you, she said that on Fox Republican Propaganda Channel, so it’s unlikely viewers or the performers would know she was lying or, at best, “deeply misinformed”.

Speaking of one of the current occupant’s contemptible appointees, it appears that, according to ABC News, “Herman Cain expected to withdraw from Fed Reserve Board of Governors consideration”. So, that’s a bit of good news among so much unrelenting bad news.

Mayor Pete’s wild ride

Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend Indiana, has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, so much so that “Pete Buttigieg has gone from totally unknown to polling third in Iowa and New Hampshire”. Still, he’s pretty far behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, and he’s not actually that far ahead of Elizabeth Warrant or Kamala Harris. But, it’s noteworthy when he still has little name recognition among Democrats.

The media has been talking about a “feud” because Mayor Pete said, “"Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: That if you have a problem with who I am, your quarrel is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.” In fact, Mayor Pete has been criticising Pence for a long time.

The fury of the rightwing response was predictable. Mrs. Mike Pence declared that people “shouldn’t be attacked for what your religious beliefs are,” though he never “attacked” her husband’s religious beliefs—he himself is religious.

Her husband responded a few days later, whining that “I hope that Pete will offer more to the American people than attacks on my Christian faith,” because That Must Not Be Beyond Criticism, so he sayeth. Mike added, “he'd do well to reflect on the importance of respecting the freedom of religion of every American," ignoring that Mayor Pete IS religious—except he didn’t. He dismissively said, "all of us have our own religious convictions. Pete has his convictions, I have mine."

That last quote is the very heart of this: Mike has a brutally anti-LGBT+ record and while he can cry his fake tears about his religious beliefs being “attacked”, and he can lie that he doesn’t condone discrimination, his record proves that’s a flat out, deliberate lie. When he was Governor of Indiana, he backed and signed into law what was at the time the most vicious and brutally anti-LGBT+ law in any US state—so disgusting that the state faced a massive national boycott movement leading the legislature to soften the bill a little bit. When he was in Congress, he backed diverting federal tax money to be spent on “curing” gay people with “reparative therapy” psychological torture. He is a truly awful person, and it’s his record, not his religion, that makes him one. The mainstream media is letting Mr. Pence and his wife get away with lying that this about “religious freedom” when, in fact it’s that Mike is a bigot.

Mayor Pete pointed out the way that Mike could end this: ““If he wanted to clear this up, he could come out today and say he’s changed his mind, that it shouldn’t be legal to discriminate against anybody in this country for who they are.” That will never, ever, happen, of course.

Still, it’s not just the Rightwing that’s going after Mayor Pete: The Left—what one acquaintance recently called those who are “Leftier than thou”—are attacking him, too, often on highly dubious grounds. Such as: “Is Pete Buttigieg Just Another White Male Candidate, or Does His Gayness Count as Diversity?”, on Slate last month—or, it was called that until wiser heads prevailed and the headline was toned down to, “In a Diverse Candidate Field, How Is Pete Buttigieg’s Sexuality Factoring Into His Appeal?” The piece rightly decries “oppression Olympics”, in which people from historically marginalised minorities are judged by how oppressed they have been. But then the author—who describes herself as “a queer woman”—fully embraces the “oppression Olympics” to declare that Mayor Pete “ can be more accurately lumped in with his white male peers than with anyone else.”

Queerty summed up the appropriately negative reaction: “Writer questions if Pete Buttigieg is ‘gay enough’ to be the first gay president. Cue the outrage.”. My favourite was that of Five Thirty-eight’s Nate Silver, who said in a Tweet:

Just want to get this out of the way so I only have to say it once:

It's a big deal that an openly gay man is a serious contender for a major party's presidential nomination, and if you're liberal who wants to equivocate about that too much, you can pretty much fuck right off.

Exactly, Nate, exactly. I have absolutely no idea who I’ll vote for when the Illinois Democratic Primary rolls around next year—it’s way too far away!—but cheap shots and bullshit attacks on Democratic candidates by other Democrats is utterly unacceptable. We will have policy disagreements, we will have different priorities, we will disagree on who can best deliver on those things, and all of that is part of a robust selection process. But arguing that a candidate is unacceptable because he’s “not the right kind of gay” or isn’t as oppressed as he should have been is as repulsive as declaring a candidate “isn’t female enough” or “isn’t black enough” or—you get the idea. My advice to Democrats of all stripes: Stick to policies or shut up. And that’s the last time I intend to dignify this sort of thing with a mention.

There are FAR more important things to talk about.

Not a whole other country

The story linked to above is an interesting one for a number of reasons. It’s also sad and pretty pathetic, in a “totally not surprised, but still…” kind of way. The story, though, isn’t just about the crap politics of one small town in Texas, it’s really about much of small town America and what could spread throughout the country.

The story paints a picture of a town run by a political cabal who appear to be interested only in their own power, and who will stop at nothing to protect it. In that sense, this story really isn’t about their undeniable homophobic bigotry, but about their ruthlessness in pursuing their political self-interest.

Even so, rank homophobic bigotry is absolutely at the core of the story. The politicians easily exploited that bigotry to get what they wanted, just as Lee Atwater famously exploited racism for Reagan and Bush the First. But it seems highly improbable that those smalltime Texas politicians will ever be bothered by their actions or repent for them as Atwater did as he was dying.

What that young city councillor did was nobody’s damn business. It was legal and between consenting adults, end of story. Can the Good Christians™ of that Texas town REALLY be sure that their elected representatives are pure and wholesome? What about their pastors? Their neighbours, friends, coworkers, their family members. They don’t know, and the harsh truth is that they don’t want to know. They have no interest in hating those people, only the young gay man.

In a sane and rational town, they would have swallowed hard and got on with it. They would have celebrated having a young person involved in a field dominated in most places by old(er) folks. But, no, their hatred and bigotry blinded them to the opportunity they’d been handed, and arming themselves with religious zeal and rank hypocrisy, they lunged for their victim.

I can guess what the result of their cynical campaign will be, as, in fact, everyone else probably can, too. Bigoted small town Texas is highly unlikely to act against its nature. But the thing is, they’re really not so different from any small town in the USA where a small clique runs everything, and religion is used as a shield to hide away what they don’t want voters to see, and as a weapon to smite their political enemies. Worse, those people exist in big big towns and cities, too, just waiting for allies to help them take control.

It’s that last part that we must note. Fascism is on the march throughout the world, including the USA, and it’s not hard to map out scenarios in which all of the USA could become like that small town in Texas and its cousins throughout the country. The base is already there, and all it needs are willing enablers and enforcers, something it has in abundance is the current regime and Republican-controlled Congress. Whether they advance or are pushed back will depend on what happens next week.

No matter what happens, stories of elected officials exploiting bigotry in pursuit of political greed, corruption, and ruthlessness will not go away. The question is, will they become dominant?

Keith is right about this

In this latest video, Keith Olbermann returns to his more strident (perhaps even incendiary) style after a series of videos that have been calmer and quieter in tone. I wouldn’t usually put things the way Keith does, and, as I’ve said before, his commentary is sometimes somewhat unhelpful, and that’s precisely because of the tone he takes. But that doesn’t mean what he says isn’t true, and this video is one of those times.

The one point I think is most important to stress is that the abject racism of Don’s regime, and the racial hatred Don has unleashed has an insatiable thirst for blood. What this means is that anyone who’s not white—or, more accurately, a white Christian cisgender heterosexual—is at risk. The conservative Black and Hispanic pastors who support Don, for example, will not be spared because of that support: If Don’s regime succeeds, they’ll be in the firing line, so to speak, just as much as everyone else Don has gone after so far.

There is no middle ground here—in fact, there never was. People can support Don and his regime, or they can support liberty, democracy, and the rule of the law, but they cannot support both. The racism of Don and his regime is only one of many reasons why Republicans have a duty to finally put country ahead of party and/or crass, petty, entirely personal lust for power and money. They must remove Don from office. It’s up to Republicans becuse they congrol Congress, and without their suport, Don can’t be impeached, let alone removed from office. Without Republicans, the 25th Amendment also can’t be used to remove Don from office. So, ultimately, it’s up to Republicans to save the country. I personally don’t think they’re capable of being that patriotic or selfless.

I’m probably just as pessimistic and cynical as Keith is, even if I don’t usually put things as bluntly or even agressively as he does. But that doesn’t mean what he says isn’t true, and this is one of those times.

Trailer: When We rise

The video above is the new trailer for When We Rise, a new seven-part mini-series for the USA’s ABC television network, to be broadcast in February. The series traces the evolution of the gay rights movement in the USA starting with Stonewall in 1969, and seen through the eyes through a diverse family of LGBT people who were part of it. It sounds like “Must-see TV”.

And yet, getting the embed code so I could share the trailer here also revealed how much work is left to be done.

The series was created and written by Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter for Milk, for which he received an Academy Award. He also directed the final two parts. Gus Van Sant, who, with Black and others, was an Executive Producer, also directed the two-hour first part.

The cast has many well-known stars, some in unexpected roles. It looks fairly accurate, as near as I can tell from a mere trailer, and the trailer looks to have addressed the controversy around the trailer for the 2015 film, Stonewall. (I blogged about that film, and included the trailer, at the time).

When I went to YouTube to get the embed code, I noticed that the dislikes outnumbered the likes by nearly two to one. When a video is about anything positive about LGBT people, that’s usually a sign that the rightwing has descended on it to spread spite. The comments proved that to be true.

The comments on YouTube videos are often among the worst on the Internet: People say mean and hateful things all the time, but for something like this trailer, the comments become darker and are more likely to be truly awful—even hate speech. In fact, I reported maybe a couple dozen to YouTube for containing hate speech or extreme violence.

There were several comments that called for LGBT people to be killed. Others used language intended to vilify LGBT people and incite hatred. And, a few were even anti-Semitic, even if only subtly (one person simply pointed out that one of the Executive Producers is Bruce Cohen, and the point wasn't his body of work…).

But it was the sheer stupidity of the rightwingers that was the most stunning: They simply did not know that the mini-series was about real events, or that it was a docudrama about history. Instead, many thought it was a totally fictitious story, that it was about current events (the anti-Trump protests), and even that it was anti-Trump. There were even sadder ones who said it was designed to tear down white people (white men in particular), because the anti-LGBT people were “all white people”. All those judgements based on a 2:15 trailer! And yet they couldn’t even read the text on-screen.

All of that is part of what’s wrong with YouTube—that it brings out the dregs of conservative America, people who are clearly bigots, usually quite stupid, and unrelentingly aggressive. As I scanned the comments, though, I wondered to myself how many of those people who wrote bigoted comments—especially the racist and anti-Semitic comments—would have done so before Don’s election victory. We can’t really know the answer to that, and YouTube is plagued with people leaving such comments, but I nevertheless got the feeling, perhaps unjustified, that some of the people commenting were somewhat newly emboldened. Or, maybe I just need to believe that, because that could mean they were merely sucked into Don’s bigoted rhetoric, and they can be reclaimed by humanity.

Reading all that bigotry and ignorance reminded me, as if I needed reminding, of how far we have to go. Worse, though, it reminded me how fragile all our progress really is.

Still, this mini-series will show the path the LGBT civil rights movement took, and the struggle it was. There will be some people who will watch it and see history they never learned in school, and that’s a good thing.

I’m looking forward to watching it.

Stopping the trend of hate

It’s no secret that there was a spike in bias- and hate-motivated incidents following the recent US elections. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has documented 701 incidents of hateful harassment so far, which, given what we know of bias crimes, is likely to be only a fraction of the total number. Even so, there IS good news.

The chart above is from SPLC shows the number of incidents by date. Apart from a spike on November 14, the trend has been going down. Any reduction in hateful incidents is very good news, perhaps indicating that the most bigoted of Don’s fanatics must have tired of their election celebrations. But this could just be a lull.

Don has already been seen to be pandering to racists, immigration bigots, and white supremacists with his actual or considered appointments for his regime. These people are likely to continue to fire up the most bigoted Americans, particularly if the rhetoric coming from Don’s regime promotes bigotry and xenophobia as much as his campaign did.

SPLC notes that:

"Incidents by type ranked by number of reports include: Anti-immigrant (206), anti-Black (151), anti-LGBT (80), swastika vandalism (60), anti-Muslim (51), and anti-woman (36). We are keeping track of anti-Trump incidents as well, which rose from our last report from 20 to 27."

Most worrying, they say:

“…anti-immigrant incidents remain the top type of harassment reported and that nearly 40 percent of all incidents occurred in educational (K-12 schools and university/college) settings.”

Kids! Kids are committing hateful harassment. We all ought to be ashamed about that.
The question, of course, is what we do about it. SPLC will become a valuable resource, particularly if Don gets his racist Attorney General who would be unlikely to care about such harassment. States, too, can play an important role.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently set up a hotline for New Yorkers to report incidents of bias and discrimination. Cuomo said on Sunday:

"The ugly political discourse of the election did not end on Election Day. In many ways it has gotten worse, into a social crisis that now challenges our identity as a state and as a nation and our people. It goes beyond politics: it questions our American character—who we are and what we believe."

So far, the hotline has received more than 400 calls since its launch on Friday.

The Obama Administration, meanwhile, is continuing to monitor the rise of bias crimes and to deal with them, as Attorney General Lynch talks about in the video below. However, they only have a couple months left, and with an emboldened Republican Congress determined to prevent them from doing anything, they have a battle, even in attempts to end bias crimes.

This is one of those times when vigilance is vital—to avoid becoming a victim, first and foremost, but also to stand up to bias and bigotry when we encounter it. The current wave of bias crimes may be subsiding, but this is not the time to relax. Instead, we must do all we can do to stop the trend of hate.



Update – November 23: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement condemning a gathering of white nationalists in Washington, DC, pointing out: "The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words."

My political notebook

This post is something new, based on something old: It’s a collection of political things I’ve seen on the Internet that are interesting and important, but that won’t make it into their own blog posts, for whatever reason, and might not even be referenced in a blog post. Yet I think they should be seen, so, here they are.

This is based, of course, on my Internet Wading posts, an idea I stole borrowed from Roger Green. But unlike those posts, this series isn’t just the weird and wonderful and interesting, it’s also (especially) important stuff I otherwise wouldn’t share or comment on, though I do share such things to the AmeriNZ Facebook Page, including some of the things in this edition of my Political Notebook.

Here we go:

The Good news

Every campaign has good news, and the end of last week brought two very good news stories: A Federal judge in Wisconsin struck down Republican’s voter suppression laws that limited in-person absentee voting to one location, limited early voting hours and eliminated weekend voting. The judge ruled that Republican’s voter suppression law was unconstitutional, and "intentionally discriminates on the basis of race," which was obviously the intent.

The same day, a three-judge panel in Federal court struck down North Carolina’s voter suppression law as unconstitutional because of “the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.” The judges felt that the law was specifically intended to keep black people from voting.

Why this matters: North Carolina is a swing state, and Wisconsin is a state poised to dump a Republican US Senator for a Democrat, a raise critical for returning the US Senate to Democratic control. Republican voter suppression laws, like those of Wisconsin and North Carolina, were designed to suppress the votes of minorities and others who typically vote for Democratic candidates. Removing those laws improves the chances of all Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton.

Bad news, part one: Despicable Donald

Over the coming weeks and months, there will be a LOT of stories about how truly awful Donald is. Just today I saw “Donald Trump says he's made 'a lot of sacrifices' in response to the father of a deceased Muslim US soldier” in which Jeremy Burke talks about how Donald thinks that “working hard”, so-called, is in some way exactly the same as Army Captain Humayun Khan giving his life in service to the USA, or that building what he thinks are “great structures” is some sort of sacrifice just like that suffer by Humayun’ father, Khizr Khan, losing a son in war. As if that weren’t awful enough, Donald went on to make racist and sexist remarks about Khizr Khan’s wife, Ghazala. This all prompted Vox’s Ezra Klein to say, “Donald Trump’s slander of Captain Humayun Khan’s family is horrifying, even for Trump”, leading Ezra to—rightly—say:

This is not a question that needs to be asked in most elections, but it needs to be asked in this one: what kind of person is Donald Trump? What kind of person says these things? And is that really the kind of person we want to be president?

Bad News, part two: Donald lies about the NFL

Donald is looking for an excuse to avoid the presidential debates because he knows he’d lose all three. So, he started lying about them. Of course.

Trump Tweeted (of course) on Friday (US time): “As usual, Hillary & the Dems are trying to rig the debates so 2 are up against major NFL games. Same as last time w/ Bernie. Unacceptable!” The next day, Donald told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “I got a letter from the NFL saying, ‘This is ridiculous.'” Problem is, Donald was lying. Of course.

CNN’s Brian Stelter asked the NFL about this: “Top @NFL spokesman tells me: ‘While we'd obviously wish the debate commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Trump.’" Worse, the Democrats would need a time machine to “rig” the debates: The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates set the schedule in September 2015, so without that time machine Donald’s bombast isn’t just wrong, it’s downright loony.

Why this matters: First and foremost, Donald’s obviously looking for an excuse to avoid the debates, just as he did in the primaries. Second, of the two debates on NFL game nights, the second, on Oct. 9, as The Washington Post pointed out (in the linked article above), “pits the Giants at the Green Bay Packers”. Hillary will carry the Giants’ home state of New Jersey, but Wisconsin is a battleground state this year that Donald MUST win. But, there may not much overlap in audiences, so the thing that matters most is Donald’s attempt to get out of showing up for the debates.

Pence’s senses

Mike Pence, the far-right Republican Governor of Indiana who agreed to be Donald’s vice presidential candidate, has been hitting the campaign trail. He’s been acting as what the Los Angeles Times called, “the anti-Trump”, but that doesn’t mean he’s nicer or better, just that he was “brought aboard the Republican ticket to employ his steady demeanor and conservative bona fides to reassure hard-right voters who remain wary of Trump.”

The paper reported he told a crowd that he’s “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order”. This is nothing new, with Mike having proven his religious extremism in Indiana, but he’s predicted that Roe v. Wade would be overturned if Donald is elected president, making all abortions illegal (it’s unclear whether Mike agrees with Donald that women who get abortions, for whatever reason, should be sent to prison).

Mike seemed to have lost his senses when he declared, "I don't think name calling has any place in public life, and I thought that was unfortunate that the president of the United States would use a term like [demagogue]." Two things, first the most obvious: If Mike was sincere, then he’d never have agreed to run on the same ticket as the man running to be Name-Caller in Chief. Second, President Obama did NOT directly call Donald a demagogue. Is Mike being thin-skinned on Donald’s behalf now, too?

Why this matters: Mike is attempting to get rightwing Christians on board to support the T.P. Ticket. Such religious voters don’t trust Donald, who they think is faking religious conviction. But if Donald were elected president and was later removed from office or quit when he got bored, then extreme religionist Mike Pence would become president (this is putting aside whether Donald really would make Mike the de facto president and himself a virtual king). However, while Mike is shoring up rightwing religious support, he’ll also scare moderate and non-religious voters, and that may help motivate more of them to vote Democratic. In the weeks ahead it’ll become clearer whether having a religious extremist on the T.P. Ticket helps or hurts them.

• • •

That’s it for this Notebook. I have no idea how often I’ll do these posts—more during election campaigns, obviously, but beyond that, well, let’s see how it goes. Actually, I don’t even know how often I’ll do them during election campaigns. But there certainly won’t be any shortage of things to share.

A toast to the haters

I’m sharing the commercial above mostly because the radical right hates it so much, which is reason enough. But their exploding heads and venting spleens aren’t just funny in themselves—though they are funny—but also because it shows, yet again, how stupid bigots really are. Personally, I think that’s even funnier, but there’s something funnier still about their meltdown.

The commercial for Bud Light features Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer in the “Bud Light Party” ad campaign “supporting everyone's right to marry whomever they want and then throw a huge party for all their friends.” There’s nothing offensive about the ad, nor is it particularly original, and it’s also not moving. It is what it is, an ad geared to younger people who overwhelmingly supported marriage equality long before their parents did (and who are probably still trying to convince their grandparents that marriage equality’s nothing to be frightened of, and they really should move on now).

In the alternate universe inhabited by the radical right and the bigots, anything that is any way supportive of LGBT people—even mildly so, like this commercial—is an attack on heterosexuals and will hasten the collapse of western civilisation and must be loudly condemned. LGBTQ Nation has posted typical reactions, and many of them are unintentionally hilarious, as such meltdowns always are.

What I find hilarious about all this is that the bigots think this is something new from Bud Light. In fact, Bud Light has been advertising in LGBT media for decades. For a time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I worked part-time at Chicago’s LGBT weekly newspaper. Bud Light was a constant advertiser in the paper and other LGBT publications in the city. They also increased their ad spend every year for LGBT Pride, and added sponsorships, too. That was over 20 years ago now.

So, Bud Light having a video ad that supports marriage equality is nothing even remotely new for them, and is entirely consistent with their advertising history. It’s also good businesses, obviously, since their target market supports marriage equality. In light of all that, loudmouthed anti-gay people becoming enraged because Bud Light dares to make ads that aren’t all about prejudiced heterosexuals says more about the privilege of bigoted people, and their obvious sense of entitlement, than it does about Bud Light or its advertising strategy.

But the funniest part of all is that this ad is probably a web ad, not broadcast. If so, by attacking Bud Light and the ad, the bigots’ meltdown helps spread awareness and encourages people to share the video, as I’m doing. It’s true, most of the time there really is “no such thing as bad publicity”, and the anti-gay crowd can be replied upon to prove that over and over and over again.

So, this is a toast to those privileged, entitled bigots, who once again have helped to spread awareness of how much LGBTQ people are still hated, and how some companies support LGBTQ people, thereby increasing sales for those companies. We all thank the bigots for their help.

A Frank discussion

We all know the common admonition: “If you can’t say something nice about a person, don’t say anything at all.” So, with that in mind, the rest of this post is absolutely everything nice and positive I can say about "evangelist" Franklin Graham:









Sorry, I couldn't think of a single thing.

The extreme Republicans' agenda

The radical religionists who control the USA’s Republican Party have made abundantly clear that if they get the chance, they intend to take away the civil and human rights of LGBT Americans. All they need to make good on their promise is to win the White House and maintain control of Congress. Both could happen, if mainstream people do nothing to prevent it.

Distant third place Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has pledged to overturn marriage equality (and outlaw all abortions) by appointing only Supreme Court justices who pledge to do so. Canadian-born Rafael "Ted" Cruz, who is usually in second place, has also promised to do the same thing. Both have long histories of making bigoted anti-LGBT remarks, so this isn’t really any surprise.

However, changing the Supreme Court to take away the civil and human rights of LGBT people will take time, so the Republican extremists have a faster final solution: The radicals have proposed a bill they dishonestly call the “First Amendment Defense Act” (FADA), and it would prohibit the federal government from “taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

In other words, if the extremist Republicans get their way, they would be completely free to force their “religious freedom” on LGBT Americans, and the federal government could do absolutely nothing about it. So, a business, person, or organisation could legally and gleefully discriminate against LGBT people.

There’s a crushing irony in this, of course, because those same religious extremists would be protected from discrimination against themselves, so, they could treat LGBT people as less than human, but LGBT people could not legally return the favour. Pretty sweet deal for the extremists!

So far, six Republican clowns candidates have pledged to enact the “First Amendment Defense [sic] Act within the first 100 days of their presidency. They are: Cruz, Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rick “Spreading” Santorum, and Rev. Gov. Mike “the Huckster” Huckabee. While only Cruz and Rubio are truly viable candidates, they’re also the second and third ranked in most polls, and Ben Carson is still usually highly ranked. Fiorina, Santorum and The Huckster all have absolutely no chance whatsoever, so their pledge is completely meaningless.

Not (yet) making that same pledge to the radicals, but still expressing support for the measure, are frontrunner Donald “The Hair” Trump, Jeb! (just don’t say) Bush, Lindsay “is he still in the race?” Graham, and Rand “what colour is the sky on your home planet” Paul.

The easiest way to stop the extremist Republicans’ dystopian future is to elect a Democrat as president: None of the three Democratic candidates would sign such an anti-American bill into law. This would also stop the radicals’ long-term plans by ensuring that far-right radicals aren’t appointed to the US Supreme Court.

However, the best way to stop the extremists altogether would be to vote only for Democrats—preferably progressive Democrats—for the US Congress and state legislatures. Republicans won’t give up their efforts to Make America 1850 Again™, and they’ll do nothing to end the power of the oligarchs and plutocrats—only Democrats can do that.

For so very many reasons, the 2016 election is shaping up to very consequential. I’ve already pledged to only vote for Democrats in 2016, and this stupid “FADA” is only one of many, many reasons why.

What's wrong with these people?

Republicans: Why do they insist on trying to persecute and discriminate against LGBT Americans? The party has a real problem with the 21st Century, obviously, and with their ongoing war against women, against Hispanics, against African Americans, and LGBT Americans, one has to wonder: Are there no adults left in the party?

Republican theocrats in Houston managed to overturn that city’s human rights law by lying about it and scaring people with constant propaganda about mythological “men in dresses” waiting to attack little girls in women’s public toilets. The fact that’s never actually happened anywhere, didn't stop them from using the lie, anyway. It also allowed them to ignore the fact that asking transpeople to use the toilets labelled for their so-called “biological gender” is pathetically—even pathologically—stupid (it's REALLY stupid).

Extremist rightwing religious professional anti-gay activists in Indiana have filed suit to overturn every LGBT protection in that state, including the bill the legislature passed—full of loopholes and exceptions for religion—to end the boycott the state was facing when it legalised discrimination against LGBT people. The professional activists are already repeating the lie about scary “men in dresses” preying on young girls in the toilets.

Now we get word that distant third place presidential candidate Marco Rubio said on national television that he has a plan to reverse marriage equality in the USA by nominating extremist justices to the US Supreme Court. Rubio has a long history of anti-gay bigotry, and he’s actually been talking about overturning marriage equality and anti-discrimination protection for trans people for awhile now. No one’s noticed because of the freak-out over Trump’s call to ban all Muslims from entering the USA.

Marco Rubio is a moron, as I so often point out, with absolutely no understanding of the US Constitution or what it means. He’s also a liar. In the TV interview, he claimed, “I will appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Constitution as originally constructed,” but that’s obviously a lie: He’s not going to have them interpret the Second Amendment as applying only to flintlock muskets, is he? No, he only wants to stop the things he hates, like equality for LGBT people. Rubio’s slogan is “A New American Century”. Now we know he's actually referring to the nineteenth.

Canadian-born Rafael "Ted" Cruz has also promised to nominate only far-right extremist Supreme Court Justices, and for the exact same reason: To overturn marriage equality, as well as Roe v. Wade. Of course, Cruz is also an anti-gay bigot, too.

While Cruz and Rubio are clearly anti-gay bigots, that hardly makes them unique: ALL of the Republican presidential candidates oppose marriage equality, and all but Pataki also at least to some extent oppose any laws that protect the civil and human rights of LGBT people. Many of the candidates are stridently anti-gay.

There is, however, the possibility that they’re all crass liars, merely pandering the most extreme parts of the Republican Party’s base, because those are the people who take part in the party’s presidential selection process. It’s certainly true that conservatives have spent a lot of time coming up with excuses justifying discrimination against LGBT people, so any Republican candidate is on solid ground embracing the rhetoric.

But, why? None of them can practice open and consistent anti-gay bigotry during the primary campaign and then pretend it never happened if they get the nomination! No voter is that stupid, and in the Internet Age, everything is forever. Apart from the fact that Americans overwhelmingly support marriage equality, thousands and thousands of same-gender couples have been married—do the Republicans really want to suggest that forcibly divorcing those couples is a good idea?!

The anti-gay extremism of Republican politicians is nothing new, of course, but the brazenness of it in the face of an America that is moving on is somewhat surprising.

So, I end where I began: What’s wrong with these people? Are there no adults left in the Republican Party?

Defending the word

In the recent Republican Circus Debate, Ol’ Ben Carson was all hurt that anyone would say he’s homophobic. Despite all the evidence in his own record, Carson continues to maintain that he’s not anti-gay. But, he is—and his attitudes ARE homophobic.

The objection of Carson and the other rightwingers to the word isn't just invalid, it’s actually motivated either by marketing needs or lack of self-awareness (or both). For Carson, it’s the latter, while for the radicals in the professional anti-gay industry, it’s clearly the first.

The word "homosexual" was a portmanteau, drawn from both Latin and Greek. The word "homophobia", on the other hand, was a neo-logism, using "homo", a slang term for gay people, and "phobia", which is Latin (via Greek), meaning "an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something". It isn't, and never was, a clinical term, but rather one that was coined to label irrational anti-gay attitudes in public policy and politics. Ironically, it was coined in the first place because it was "nicer" than saying someone was prejudiced or calling them a bigot.

Times change, and language is neither static nor immutable, of course, and the term started to be framed by the rightwing as not just "wrong", but as evil. The professional anti-gay industry realised that if they didn't attack the term "homophobia", ordinary people might conclude that adults spending millions of dollars and their entire careers fighting to prevent their fellow citizens from being treated fairly and equally under law, including having the exact same right to assume the responsibilities and commitment of marriage, well, the people so against all that might be seen as mentally ill. But that's about THEIR image problems, not the utility, or lack of, for the term "homophobia".

The term was coined as a descriptor of irrational anti-gay attitudes in the public arena, and that hasn't changed. The fact that some people may use it more broadly, and some may now use it to imply a clinical meaning, doesn't change the fact that its core meaning hasn't yet changed (though, of course, it might).

And if the term makes the far-right extremists in the professional anti-gay industry squirm and feel they must explain that they don't really have an irrational aversion to LGBT people, even as they spend every waking moment and hundreds of millions dollars trying to prevent us from being treated with the same dignity and rights under law that they have as human beings, well, I just can't get upset about their discomfort. Maybe if they engaged in a little self-reflection they might realise WHY they're called that, and how, in fact, it's the perfect term.

Related: Radical right professional anti-gay activists are upset with Ol’ Ben because he didn’t stridently oppose equal treatment of LGBT employees by the corporations on whose boards of directors he once was once part of. He’s taking that as evidence that he’s not “really” anti-gay—he just doesn’t want us treated as full and equal citizens when it comes to protecting our families. Right…

This post is revised and expanded from a comment I posted on the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

Yeah, whatever

On October 1 (our time), I published a post about the current pope meeting with that county clerk from Kentucky who continues to defy the law and court orders to serve gay citizens the same as heterosexual citizens. However, this post is not that post: I’ve completely revised it because I think the rightwing radicals may have played us all.

In the original version, I said:

“When I first heard the story, I was suspicious. It sounded very un-pope like to meet privately with someone like her—a fundamentalist protestant famous for refusing to do the job she’s paid by taxpayers to do (and also openly defying the law and court orders). But she’s more than that, of course, she’s a human doll used in the radical right’s anti-gay political war in the USA. So, when I found out that, in fact, he had met privately with her, I thought he must’ve lost his marbles.”

My suspicions may have been well placed.

Yesterday, Esquire published a piece by Charles Pierce in which the author speculated that the pope was “swindled into meeting Kim Davis”. He says that for two millennia the Vatican has been “a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratfcking on a very high scale”, and so, the idea of a rightwing conspiracy among Catholic hierarchy who hate the current pope is plausible. In Pierce’s view, the whole thing was a set-up by rightwingers in the Catholic hierarchy who are still loyal to ex-pope Ratzinger, and they realised the best way to derail the pope’s entire tour of the USA, and to overshadow what he said, was to engineer a “private meeting” between the pope and an American rightwing nutjob.

The Vatican finally made a statement saying that, in fact, the pope had NOT met with Kim Davis privately: She was merely one of “several dozen persons” the Vatican Embassy had invited to meet the pope just before he left Washington. In fact, the Vatican confirmed, when he was in Washington he had only ONE private meeting in DC, and that was with a former student and long-time friend, Yayo Grassi, an openly gay Argentinian man who brought his partner of 19 years on the trip. In fact, the pope personally requested the meeting.

Paints a rather different picture, doesn’t it? The pope met the Kentucky woman as one of dozens of people, probably had no idea who she was, and moved on. But he chose to meet privately with a gay couple.

Or, is that just some sort of apologetics and after-the fact spin?

The fact that it took days for the Vatican to say anything lends support to the spin explanation. After all, that excuse IS awfully convenient, and could be seen as damage control, trying to repair the pope’s tarnished image.

Moreover, the radical right “Christian” legal outfit representing that Kentucky woman still maintains it was a private meeting and the pope endorsed that woman:

“Despite a statement this morning by a Vatican official, the Pope’s own words about conscientious objection being a human right and his private meeting with Kim Davis indicate support for the universal right of conscientious objection, even for government officials. The meeting with [that Kentucky woman] was initiated by the Vatican, and the private meeting occurred at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C. … This meeting was a private meeting without any other members of the public present.”

Somebody is clearly lying: Either it was a private one-on-one meeting, or it wasn’t. Either that woman from Kentucky met privately with the pope, or she was just one of dozens who met him briefly. These are mutually exclusive things. So, who’s lying?

Based on the preponderance of evidence, I think that the US radicals are lying and the Vatican’s version is probably what really happened.

What’s going on here, I think, is that the rightwingers—both Catholic and protestant—played us like a violin.

As Pierce noted in his article, it was very odd that ABC (USA) News’ Terry Moran asked the pope a vague question about religious “conscientious objection” without putting it in the context of that woman from Kentucky. This allowed him to make a vague answer that seemed to support that Kentucky woman’s argument (or, it may not have). Then, when the pope has left the USA, someone leaked the story about the pope meeting “privately” with that Kentucky woman to a rightwing catholic website, and, given the answer to Moran, it all seemed consistent. Then, the outrage began—just as the pope’s adversaries had planned?

The Ratzinger faction in the Catholic hierarchy has personal reasons for wanting to damage this pope, as does the USA’s political rightwing who oppose his words on climate change action and helping the poor, among other things. The radical-right protestant religionists in the USA, however—who, let’s be honest, don’t exactly have a catholic-friendly history—need to make their extremist position seem rational, so they desperately needed some of the respectability that the pope’s image could give them.

So, rightwingers of every description had the means, the motive and the opportunity to trap the pope into something he may not have intended. Given the long history of medieval-style intrigue in the Vatican, the idea that he was betrayed from within isn’t farfetched at all.

On the other hand, the radical-right protestants could be telling the truth. After all, the Vatican is NOT LGBT-friendly, and is adamantly opposed to marriage equality. On LGBT rights and women’s rights, the Vatican actually has a lot in common with radical-right protestants, even if those are pretty much the only issues where they agree.

So, it’s entirely possible that the Vatican statement denying a private meeting is a diversion (it doesn’t say there wasn’t a separate meeting with that woman…), and the news that he met privately with an openly gay man could be a just an elaborate version of the “some of my best friends are gay” defence of prejudice and bigotry, perhaps arranged in advance to blunt the criticism they knew would be coming.

This whole thing is far too Game of Thrones for me. Somebody’s lying, someone was secretly conspiring, and we were all played by someone—we just can’t really be sure who did what. But, given the duplicitous nature of the religious far-right in the USA—protestant and catholic alike—I tend to err on the side of caution here, on the side of not aiding and abbetting religious extremists.

So, that’s why I’ve totally replaced and revised this post, and not merely deleted it. In the unlikely event that some radical somewhere has linked to this for propaganda purposes, what they’ll now see is that I’m calling them liars at best, conspirators at worst.

I’m still not a fan of this pope (or any pope, for that matter), and I still regard him as anti-LGBT. And, I even acknowledge that it could be the Vatican playing us. But I refuse to allow rightwing religionists to use me in their culture wars, and I won’t take the chance that that’s what’s really going on.

In future, if I say anything at all about this pope, it’ll probably be a week or so after the events everyone else is talking about.

I won’t be played again by either side.

The next fronts in the USA’s ‘culture wars’

People could be forgiven for thinking that the rightwing’s “culture war” against the USA is about to end. After all, the Supreme Court is widely expected to soon strike down all the remaining bans on marriage equality in US states. However, the next front in the rightwing’s war is already open.

The map above from the Human Rights Campaign shows the 85 anti-LGBT bills introduced in 26 state legislatures (the report is available as a PDF). The report documents the staggering number of anti-LGBT bills introduced, and while some will be defeated or already have been, others have been, or are likely to be, passed. There will be more of the same next year, and every year thereafter for years to come.

The radical right religionists’ have several goals, but their legislative goal is clear and simple: Overturn all laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination, and they have two distinct strategies to accomplish that. One strategy is to pass state laws that forbid localities from passing human rights laws that are more protective than that state’s law. The HRC notes that some 34 million Americans live in states in which localities are more protective than their state is (this was once true in my native Illinois, where for decades various local governments protected LGBT people, but the state didn’t). Interestingly, in embracing this tactic, the radical right religionists are actually finally admitting that in states that don’t protect their LGBT people, it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against us, and they don’t even need any kind of reason or excuse to do so. This is in stark contradiction of their previous adamant declaration that a special right to discriminate was needed.

The second, higher profile, legislative strategy is to enact so called “religious freedom” laws to legalise discrimination against LGBT people—that special right to discriminate they’ve demanded ever since the tide turned in the battle for marriage equality. The radical right has always lied that discrimination isn’t their intent when, of course, it absolutely is their sole intent.

The licence to discriminate bills, as the “religious freedom” laws are more accurately known, allows the radical right to be extra harsh against LGBT people in places where it’s already legal to discriminate, something they want for ideological reasons. But their cynical branding also puts a paper-thin veil of respectability on their attempts to take away the civil and human rights of LGBT people. That veil allows the radical right to hoodwink otherwise fair-minded people (and politicians) into thinking it actually DOES have something to do with “religious freedom” when the actual intent is to enshrine anti-LGBT animus into law.

In addition to proposing anti-LGBT laws, radical right religionists are also organising themselves to “defy” the Supreme Court in unspecified ways. For example, a group of “pastors” recently heard speakers tell them to be prepared for “martyrdom” in their culture wars fight, mostly against LGBT people. This message is being repeated throughout the radical right echo chamber.

A group of far-right “Christians” says it’s organising members of the US Congress who will pledge to go to jail in defiance of the expected Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, even though Congress has nothing whatsoever to do with issuing marriage licenses in any US state. The radicals ignore that pesky detail, probably because they think such a list would have good propaganda value in their culture war (of course, it would also be good propaganda value for the radicals' mainstream adversaries…).

The defiance threat (supposedly) from members of Congress stops well short of the five year old “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience” in which a veritable who’s who of far right anti-gay religious activists and hate group leaders pledged civil disobedience to actively defy laws and court orders they don’t like, including on marriage equality, which is why it was cited in a RICO lawsuit.

We’ll see all these tactics and many more in the coming years, especially the so-called “religious freedom” laws to legalise anti-LGBT discrimination, but also efforts to restrict and even repeal the civil and human rights of LGBT people, as well as attempts to enshrine bigotry against transgendered people, and even more bills attempting to advance “conversion therapy” torture.

Fortunately, in some places the radical right is meeting determined resistance. Some of their bills are being voted down, and some places are even outlawing “conversion therapy” torture of minors, all of which is good. But the radical right is persistent, extremely well-funded, and has legions of fanatical followers who will do whatever is asked of them. So, despite resistance from decent, fair-minded people, this war is far from over.

The first step in defeating the radical right’s “culture war” against the USA, and LGBT people in particular, is to shine the harsh light of day onto them, because they’re counting on us not realising what they’re up to until it’s too late. We mustn’t let them get away with that or to win—FAR too much is at stake.

Love has no labels

I saw this video, "Diversity & Inclusion – Love Has No Labels", on Facebook a couple days ago, but those videos aren’t embeddable. That’s too bad, because the video has such a great message. Now that the YouTube version is up, we can go forth and make it viral. As it it should be.

From the YouTube description:

While the vast majority of Americans consider themselves unprejudiced, many of us unintentionally make snap judgments about people based on what we see—whether it’s race, age, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability. This may be a significant reason many people in the U.S. report they feel discriminated against. Subconscious prejudice—called “implicit bias”—has profound implications for how we view and interact with others who are different from us. It can hinder a person’s ability to find a job, secure a loan, rent an apartment, or get a fair trial, perpetuating disparities in American society. The Love Has No Labels campaign challenges us to open our eyes to our bias and prejudice and work to stop it in ourselves, our friends, our families, and our colleagues. Rethink your bias at lovehasnolabels.com.

It would be nice if the people with animus toward other people would stop trying to change “implicit bias” into actual bias, but that won’t happen—“haters gotta hate”, you could say. And, while it’s extremely sad and undeniably pathetic that some people choose to live their lives wallowing in—and spreading—hatred of other people, whether we even pay attention to the hatemongers, let alone follow them into negativity, is a purely matter of choice.

Good people will choose love every time—because love has NO labels.

The Alabama problem

When Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore pulled a George Wallace and pledged to defy federal court orders in a doomed—and blatantly illegal—attempt to prevent the legal marriages of same-gender couples in the state, he apparently got upset that people dared to compare him Wallace. Obviously, the truth hurts.

Moore denied to NBC News that he’s just like George Wallace:

“I disagree with standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent blacks from getting equal education. We're talking about a constitutional amendment to preserve the recognition that marriage is one man and one woman, as it has been for centuries."

Not only is Moore’s Wallace-like stunt pointless (and his “facts” wrong), he’s also defending something that cannot be defended—just like Wallace did. It’s probably pretty obvious to most people that if Moore really doesn't want to be compared to George Wallace, then maybe he should stop acting so much like him.

However, there’s something else even more directly comparable than imitating Wallace: Alabama is directly repeating another shameful part of the state’s past.

Jeremy Hooper posted the scans below on his site, Good As You (click to enlarge):

The wording used by the Alabama officials determined to stop inter-racial marriage is exactly the same as the wording use by today’s Alabama officials determined to stop same-gender couples from marrying. Moore clearly has competition for evoking the state’s past—and repeating the sins of the 1960s and 70s in a new context.

Moore and the other Alabama officials have already lost. I guarantee that not one of them will defy the courts long enough to be sent to jail for doing so—they’re all grandstanding for political reasons and will cave before they have to pay any personal price for their stunts.

And that’s what makes Moore and his fellow Alabama politicians so especially disgusting: Regardless of what they claim to believe about marriage equality (and I presume that at least some of them are sincere about their anti-gay animus), their stunts are nevertheless only about playing political games with people’s lives, and that’s pathetic.

Still, Moore and his buddies have made their choices. They’ve decided to stand in the way of justice, and to remind people of their state’s deeply troubled past. Decades from now, when people no longer remember what all the fuss was about, Moore and his cronies will be mentioned in the history books, if at all, as being opportunistic far-right obstructionists. Just like George Wallace. They’ve chosen to perpetuate “the Alabama problem”, and that’s the saddest part of all.

They really need to grow up

The CNN video above is of Mike Huckabee, potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, making a dick of himself—as he tends to do rather a lot—by saying stupid things about gay people (yet again). It’s part of a larger pattern, and I feel a rant coming on.

In the video, the Huckster said his opposition to marriage equality isn’t “just a political issue”, its’ a “biblical” issue. He then said that asking him, as a fundamentalist “Christian”, to support marriage equality was “like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” Say, what?!

This particularly boneheaded comment led one person to ask the Huckster on ThinkProgress’ Facebook post, “…and when you ask the Jew to eat the bacon and he declines, does he insist that you not eat the bacon?” Fair point. NO ONE cares in the least whether the Huckster supports marriage equality or not—his approval is not needed and his support (or not) is irrelevant. But neither does he get to dictate to loving same-gender couples that they can’t get married just because his particular subset of Christianity doesn’t like it. And, by the way, there are plenty of Christians who DO support marriage equality, just as there are plenty of Jews who’d have no problem selling “bacon-wrapped shrimp”; the Huckster always assumes that all religious people are all far-right fundamentalists like him.

This pompous superciliousness among far-right “Christian” extremists is becoming quite common. In a recent “Stoplight” propaganda video from a rightwing “Christian” professional activist organisation called Focus on Your Own Damn Family (or something like that), the host declared that as a “conservative” he was opposed to marriage equality, “…especially now that we all can see that the goal has always been to use the force of government to silence Christian beliefs about morality.” Say, what?!

I hate to break it to him, but the goal in enacting marriage equality has never been about anything other than the freedom to marry for same-gender couples. As Jeremy Hooper put it on his site, Good As You:

Nearly Twelve years ago (and nearly six years ago, under law), I pledged a lifetime to one man for any number of reasons. I can assure you that pissing off Stuart Shepard and his Focus on the Family employers was not even kind of on my radar. In fact, neither Mr. Shepard nor Focus are ever on my radar, outside of my work challenging their constant onslaughts against my freedoms as an American taxpayer.

To complete today’s trifecta of crazy, there’s good ol’ reliable Tony Perkins, head bigot at the professional anti-gay hate group, “Family” Research [sic] Council [LOL]. Tony declared that LGBT people are persecuting “Christians” by posting photos of our lives on Facebook—yes, seriously!!

Tony was responding to a caller to his radio show who claimed that he’d seen a photo of “two naked guys sitting on each other”, but that’s a transparent lie because Facebook doesn't allow any nudity whatsoever (they don’t even permit photos of mothers breastfeeding their infants). Maybe he didn’t mean “naked” literally, but if that’s the case his bearing false witness kind of gives a lie to his claim of having complained “in a nice, respectful, Christian way.” Do these people not know they can “unfriend” someone on Facebook?!

Tony joined in the lying, however, by claiming that ALL LGBT people were “haters” who are “projecting”. But Tony himself did some high-grade projecting when he pretended that it was all LGBT people, not merely ONE mentally disturbed man, who took a gun into their corporate headquarters:

We’ve had them come into our building with guns, shooting, to try to kill us. We harbor no bitterness in our hearts toward them, which is something they can’t understand. They want to project and that’s why they like to call us haters and so on and so forth, but they’re projecting. [emphasis added]

The Huckster, Stu and Tone are all so up themselves that they that really, truly believe that the entire world revolves around them and their fellow travellers on the USA’s extreme right. The reality is that these people are arrogant and hubristic authoritarians who want to force their particular religious political ideology onto everyone else, but, much to their extreme dismay, normal people couldn’t possibly care less about them.

So, when we demand civil marriage equality, we absolutely don’t care whether far-right “Christians” approve or not, and there’s absolutely no way we ever think of them for even one millisecond when we’re getting a legal civil marriage. And, if those poor delicate flowers on the extreme right don’t like seeing perfectly ordinary Facebook photos of us living our lives—exactly the same sort of photos as they themselves post—well, too damn bad!

The fact is, disagreeing with them is not oppressing them, posting photos on Facebook is not persecuting them, and when we win the exact same freedom and liberty that they have—to marry, and to be free from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation—we are not diminishing their freedom and liberty, we're expanding it for us all.

They really need to grow up and learn that the world doesn’t revolve around them.

Radical ‘Christian’ coincidence?

This week I saw the same viciously anti-gay rhetoric coming from three far-right radical “Christian” crackpots, men who call themselves “pastor”. Their hate speech is clearly from the same source, and designed to stir up hatred against LGBT people. I think it’s even worse than that.

The first I saw were the hate-filled remarks from a self-appointed “pastor” in New Zealand, which I referred to a couple days ago. By the time I’d posted that, I’d already seen the video at left below, so I knew the two “pastors” were using the exact same rhetoric in promoting hatred of gay people.



Then, today, I saw yet another “pastor” using the same vile rhetoric to preach hatred, with the same declaration that gay people should be killed and the same vicious lie that we’re all “child molesters” (video at right, above). By this point I became convinced that there’s something more going on here than it would first appear.

The vile rhetoric of these so-called “pastors” is so similar because it’s based on Theonomy, a form of Christian Reconstructionism that calls for theocratic government that would impose what they think are laws of Moses onto everyone. Even among radical rightwing “Christians” it’s a pretty extremist and crackpot political ideology.

But these “pastors” are also merely an extreme version of what the professional anti-gay industry says all the time; the fact that these guys put things in much more extreme language doesn’t mean the professionals are any less bigoted. In fact, the professionals say the same things in different ways.

The “pastors” help the professional activists in the anti-gay industry in two ways. First, it makes the professionals seem so much more reasonable by comparison: “Hey, we’re not like THEM!” This helps the professionals get exposure for their agenda and helps them be treated as legitimate voices that must be heard in politics and the news media.

That leads to the second thing the “pastors” are doing to help the professional anti-gay industry: They’re not just making the professional activists seem moderate by comparison, they’re making their every bit as bigoted, but far less violent, agenda seem calm and kind of rational.

While the “pastors” call on governments to execute gay people, the professionals are “only” calling for government to criminalise homosexuality (though one prominent professional anti-gay activist did say that all gay people should be deported). They also want to ban the discussion of homosexuality in public (like in Russia). Oh, and make sure that our civil and human rights aren’t protected in any way by law. See? That’s so much kinder than calling for government to kill us!

The “pastors” talk about their god “hating” gay people, but the professionals say their god just hates our “behaviour”, and if we just stopped being so darn gay, everything would be fine. I’m trying to work how I can shop for groceries in a less gay way, or pay bills less gay, but stopping myself from driving the car gay, that’s hard! Both talk about us “recruiting” children, but the professionals usually put the exact same bullshit in the context of “legitimising homosexual behaviour” to young people (and their solution is banning talking about homosexuality in public).

So, the extreme rightwing “pastors” are just the uglier face of the same anti-gay bigotry promoted by the professional anti-gay industry. Their purpose—apart from getting donations, of course—is to make our powerful professional adversaries seem so much nicer than they really are.

I saw the exact same thing work well when I was an activist. We had ACT-UP and Queer Nation out in the streets being obnoxious and confrontational, which meant that we quieter suit-and-tie activists were invited to meet politicians precisely because we were quieter and seemed so calm and rational by comparison. And yet, at those meetings we made the exact same demands the radicals in the street were making, we just used different, less radical language. We won a lot of battles that way, and the reality is we never would have won as much if we didn’t have the more extreme voices pushing the boundaries and making us seem so much more rational—and acceptable—by comparison.

All of this happened without any discussion between us. In fact, radicals were known to denounce suit-and-tie activists, and vice versa. From my personal experience, that mutual contempt was pretty genuine. So, it’s possible for radicals to be useful to the “professional activists” without any coordination or collusion or even cordial relations. In fact, it usually works best without all that.

The danger in this, however, is that extremism can make the ever-more-extreme thinkable. It’s a very short hop from saying that government, not Christians, should kill gay people to saying simply that gay people should be killed, and Christians have a duty to do it. Ramping it up to that level changes everything because if it was questionable before, it’s certain that some radical far-right “Christians” would heed that call.

So, it’s important to denounce radicals like those “pastors”, and it’s appropriate to call them hate-filled bigots. However, it’s equally important to point out how they’re just a more extreme version of the bigots in the professional anti-gay industry. The rhetoric of the “pastors” may be vile and disgusting, but their agenda and goals are actually exactly the same as the professional anti-gay industry. We ignore that fact at our extreme peril as a civilised society.

The two faces of the same hatred is no coincidence at all.

A kiss is just a kiss

Most of us have at one time or another turned to someone we love at a moment of happiness or joy and given them a kiss or a hug. It’s a very human thing. But to hear the USA’s rightwing, one kiss threatens to destroy civilisation.

The one kiss the rightwing is bleating about is, of course, the one when Michael Sam, who’d just learned he’d been drafted by the St. Louis Rams NFL team, turned to his boyfriend, they kissed and held each other. It was a touching moment.

The professional anti-gay industry cannot let anyone think nicely about anyone who’s LGBT, of course, so they flew instantly into their typical spittle-flecked rage. Actually, that’s their normal state of existence, but I digress.

The usual parade of professional anti-gay bigots declared the kiss was “perversion”, one said she was “revulsed” (whatever that means…), several said that Sam should be “persuaded” to undergo “ex-gay” torture and one notorious bigot really did claim the kiss would lead to the end of civilisation.

Obviously, most of these radical nutjobs are playing to their base so they can continue to get ever more money from them. But there are still significant numbers of people who say they’re uncomfortable about gay people being people—fully formed, fully functioning human beings who hug and kiss and even—gasp!—have sex. The radical rightwing anti-gay industry’s leaders think that if they can demonise gay people (that whole shrill “Gaystapo” bullshit) and make us seem “icky”, then just maybe they can stop the march of progress toward equality for LGBT people.

So, it’s not merely about raising money, much as they covet that, it’s also a political tactic to smear and denigrate LGBT people, to portray us as inhuman monsters. The irony is that this is exactly the sort of thing that the real Nazis did to their victims.

I think it’s now impossible to tell what commenters on the Internet are real. As I wrote recently, “Lately, I’ve had the strangest sense that I can’t tell who is a troll and who is expressing sincerely held (and sincerely batshit crazy) opinions.” Boy oh boy, was that ever true for THIS story!

Professional anti-gay bigots aside—we expect them to be all bigotty and to say bigotty things—I saw a lot of comments complaining about being “forced” to watch the kiss. See, I didn't realise that Obama’s Secret Army was being used to force people to watch ESPN at gunpoint. The things you learn on the Internet! Anyway, a lot of the other comments were about how it was “gross”; some even claimed they’d be just as offended if it had been a man kissing his girlfriend (fortunately, such comments always had links for buying the Brooklyn Bridge, which apparently they were also all selling). And many asked why they had to be subjected to such a thing.

Because, dear clueless more-or-less heterosexual, we have the same right to human expression that YOU do. Let’s be clear: We’re talking about a kiss—it wasn’t a porno movie they were making, it was a damn kiss!! Every single day we see heterosexual kisses—and far, far more—on television shows. Gay characters are chaste by comparison, even to the point of being totally sexless near-eunuchs (like on Will and Grace, for example). So, dear clueless more-or-less heterosexual, if you have to see the occasional genuinely affectionate kiss between two men or two women, well, TOUGH!

Sometimes clueless more-or-less heterosexuals seem so freaking delicate, as if having to face the humanity of their fellow humans who happen to be LGBT will cause them to suddenly lose molecular cohesion and slosh down into a puddle of ooze. Here’s the real shocker: That’s never actually happened. The clueless more-or-less heterosexuals who claimed to be so shocked or “revulsed” by one kiss were still there the next moment, and the one after that. They may even have kissed a loved one at some point (after government gunmen were done pointing guns at them and forcing them watch the kiss…).

The negative—and often flat-out insane—reactions to this kiss are what leaves me “revulsed”. It’s not enough that the professional anti-gay industry is working night and day to prevent people like me from having the same civil and human rights that they do, and it’s clearly not enough for them that they’re trying to pass laws to make it legal to discriminate against LGBT people if it’s based on supposedly “sincerely held religious beliefs”. No, keeping LGBT people as less-than-citizens isn't enough: They also demand that we never—EVER—express any sort of public affection for the person who means the most to us. Never mind that they’d think nothing of doing that themselves, us gay people are never to have the same freedom because it makes them “revulsed”.

The fact is, in most of the USA, apart from LGBT enclaves in major cities, it’s not safe for LGBT couples to express any affection publicly. Doing so can lead to violent attacks and even murder, and we all know that. In most places, we won’t hold hands in public, or have a hug, let alone a kiss. THAT is our daily reality, and that’s what the bigots of the anti-gay industry want us to experience.

And that’s why CNN was so infuriating—yet again. They thought it would be a jolly good idea to—yet again—have an anti-gay bigot on their channel to preach about how awful it is for two gay men to be seen expressing affection. This is a disgusting habit the network has, and I’ll continue to condemn CNN for its promotion of anti-gay bigots. Here’s a deal: I’ll stop condemning CNN when they routinely have a KKK member on to talk about the rights of African Americans and a neo-Nazi on to talk about Jewish people—because there is NO difference. By including an anti-gay bigot in a “discussion” of the kiss, CNN, as Media Matters put it in the link above, “helped legitimize and mainstream the kind of homophobia that keeps gay people afraid to be themselves in the public.” Exactly.

So, yeah, we’ve made a lot of progress over the past 45 years or so, but we have so much farther to go. Actually, if one damn kiss can get our adversaries and enemies in full froth mode, it’s little wonder that we don’t yet have full equality.

It’s not enough to be able to marry or to be free from discrimination based on who we are or who we love. We also ought to be able to have a simple affectionate kiss with the person we love most in the world. And to all the bigots in the anti-gay industry who claim to be “revulsed” by such a thing, I say with utmost love and affection, FUCK YOU! Smooch!