Vaughn Walker Redux? Unmarried Activist Circuit Court Judge Declares DOMA Unconstitutional!

A U.S. District Court judge lives in San Francisco. He is apparently single and he is 67 years old. And even though he was appointed by George Bush, his decisions have been to the left of center.


Especially the last one.

BREAKING: BUSH APPOINTEE FINDS DOMA UNCONSTITUTIONAL | Moments ago, Judge Jeffery White of the District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause in a case brought by Karen Golinski. Golinski, represented by Lambda Legal, “was denied spousal health benefits by her employer, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.” White was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush in 2002. The decision represents a serious setback for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), whose Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) defended DOMA after the Obama administration announced it would no longer defend the law.

So far, no source on the net has revealed any heterosexual tendencies: in all of his bios, there is no mention of a wife or family. Check out VoteSmart, wikipedia, judgepedia, and the website for the United States District Court  Northern California, Northern District California: no family whatsoever. There is no statement by White as to his sexual orientation either.


Of course, whether or not White is gay, speculation will run high and the Court of Christian Right Opinion will be delivering its verdict and accusations of conflict of interest will fly for sure. However, the old saw of  'activist judges" is bound to see a lot of action as well. Why? Because Hon. Jeffrey White was a Bush appointee! 


"Activist Judges!!"


One could argue that it was Dick Cheney who ushered in today's era of "activist judges" when he bemoaned the fate of Massachusetts in 2004:
"In Massachusetts we had the Massachusetts Supreme Court direct the state of -- the Legislature of Massachusetts to modify their constitution to allow gay marriage."
Since then,courts supportive of gay rights have been termed "activist" and the toll has became ubiquitous to such support. Iowa Supreme Court justices learned that the hard way when they unanimously voted to uphold a ruling of Polk County District Court granting gay couples the right to marry: three of the justices were voted out of office in 2010. 


Retired District Court Judge Vaughn Walker declared California's infamous Prop 8 to be unconstitutional. 


Brouhaha ensued even before it was learned that Walker was gay and in a long-term relationship. 


And, of course, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals became "activist" once they upheld Walker's ruling and declared that his sexual orientation had nothing to do with his ability to decide on the case. 


Watch Mark Fiore's warning against activist judges below. While it's satirical, the attitude it conveys is chilling.


The Election Year War On The Courts

Last December, presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich stated Courts “are forcing us into a constitutional crisis because of their arrogant overreach." He also created a firestorm when he stated that he thought some judges should be rounded up and arrested. And another aspirant to the presidency, Rick Santorum, said "They [the courts] have become in effect most powerful of the three (branches of government), and they should be the least."

Ron Paul: "For judges who see themselves as social activists, their vision of justice is more important than the letter of the law they are sworn to interpret and uphold."

Mitt Romney has come under fire for perhaps being the least vocal about "activist" judges: some people suspect him of liberal chicanery when it comes to appointments.
Judge Jeffrey S. White


The judge in question is no stranger to controversy about his decisions: e.g in revoking USDA approval Of Monsanto's Genetically Modified Sugar Beets, and in ordering a thorough review of the program's affects on other foods, White caused a stir among farmers and the likes of Monsanto Corporation. In other words, it was not exactly what George Bush would have done. And in 2005, White allowed four municipalities and various environmental groups to go ahead with a lawsuit against federal agencies, saying that government involvement in certain overseas projects contributed to global warming. Again, he didn't look like a Bush appointment, that's for sure. 


So is Jeffrey S. White a closeted gay liberal judicial activist? Should it matter? The Right may scream "YES!", while the rest of the country may not care. 


Ahh, the election year.

BREAKING!! U.S. Disctrict Court Declared DOMA Unconstitutional!

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone.  It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves.

Board of Trustees of University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 374-75 (2001) (Kennedy,J., concurring)

BREAKING: BUSH APPOINTEE FINDS DOMA UNCONSTITUTIONAL | Moments ago, Judge Jeffery White of the District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Constitution’s equal protections clause in a case brought by Karen Golinski. Golinski, represented by Lambda Legal, “was denied spousal health benefits by her employer, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.” White was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush in 2002. Read the full opinion here. (HT: GinnyLaRoe)

The entire decision is HERE. And it's worth reading!

It's Really Hit The Fan!: How Obama's "DOMA Dump" Brought Out The Self-Righteous, The Insane And The Just Plain Stupid

Did you know that homosexuality is the REAL cause of "dead beat dads"?? Mike Huckabee says so!!

Yesterday, I could smell the explosion of fire and brimstone here in San Francisco (where it was a cool and beautifully clear day, totally devoid of God's wrath). I could even sense the gnashing of teeth, ripping of garments and tearing of hair. And I'm evil enough to say that I enjoyed it all. The Christian Right, in full force, came out in its totally self-righteous mode, entertaining the whole country. 

So what the hell did people expect? My fingers were glued to the keyboard the moment I read the news about Obama, the Justice Department and DOMA. Then I thought, "Sit and wait, rev." The deluge of self-righteousness was overwhelming: so many people were "appalled" at the "outrageous" and "unthinkable" act "radical element" Obama has done, all-but-declaring DOMA to be null and void, "abandoning his role as President." Some diatribes were (relatively) short, others long-winded and others too flabbergasting to be coherent. The panoply and intensity of outrage was - to use their own words - "staggering":

I first went to Family Research Council's Tony Perkins since he has become, after all, the country's Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of the Royal Order of Righteous Rhetoric:

"This decision by President Obama and the Department of Justice is appalling. The President's failure to defend DOMA is also a failure to fulfill his oath to 'faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.' What will be the next law that he will choose not to enforce or uphold? "Marriage as a male-female union has been easily defended in court and overwhelmingly supported by the American people.

Ahem. That "overwhelmingly supported by the American people" has changed a bit since the Dark Ages (before Prop 8), but Perkins is well known for skewing numbers to the point that some researchers are thinking of suing him and the FRC.

Matt Staver, Liberty Counsel:

“This is outrageous and unthinkable ... Today President Obama has abandoned his role as President of the United States and transformed his office into the President of the Divided States. He has been the most divisive president in American history.

Staver's bluster is countered by the fact that Obama has always been a lawyer first, a President second and a constitutional scholar third when it comes to matters of law. He would not have made such a statement if he hadn't thought it out with all of the legal ramifications it might entail.  The "divisive" adjective may go along with Perkins' "overwhelming" statement, but people are beginning to think differently about same-sex marriage... and Staver knows it.

Maggie Ghallagher, NOM:

“We have not yet begun to fight for marriage. The Democrats are responding to their election loss with a series of extraordinary, extra-constitutional end runs around democracy, whether it’s fleeing the state in Wisconsin and Indiana to prevent a vote, or unilaterally declaring homosexuals a protected class under our Constitution, as President Obama just did. 

Maggie Ghallagher is no John Paul Jones, but she is definitely on a sinking ship: the "crowds" at her rallies can all fit into my bathroom.

As always, Bryan Fischer:

[This is] "a wake-up call to all conservatives that fundamental American values regarding the family are under all-out assault by this administration. It ought to represent a clarion call to man the barricades before we lose what is left of the Judeo-Christian system of values in our public life."

"Assault" and "man the barricades" reinforce more than Fischer's penchant for militaristic rhetoric: it's his evocation of the myth of the masculine privilege. Fischer is being the forceful "man" he thinks Jesus Christ was, all Rambofied and armed with tough love. This gives us the feeling that Mr. Fischer is compensating for something.

And Mike Huckabee:

"There is a quantified impact of broken families," Huckabee said. "[There is a] $300 billion dad deficit in America every year...that's the amount of money that we spend as taxpayers to pick up the pieces because dads are derelict in their duties."

This is genuinely a WTF? correlation. Is Rev. Huckabee losing it? Maybe no more than Pat Robertson who was last seen helping to conduct a faith healing that looked more like an episode of Jerry Springer.* What is a "dad deficit"? Do we now have a shortage of fathers because gay men are luring them away with their wiles? Some women should be so lucky! Point of fact: some women would rather have a gay husband. Totally apropos sentiment from one wistful woman: "I long for the old days, when the good ones were either married or gay. Now they're both!"

 

Rick Santorum:

"President Obama's refusal to defend a law that was overwhelmingly supported on both sides of the aisle and signed into law by a president of his own party is an affront to the will of the people." 

(h/t Joe.My.God)

Yes, the accompanying photo is a rather cheap shot, but I couldn't resist it. Santorum is still trying to get his name re-googled.

OK, I'll stop being giddy about the situation and stop to breathe a more serious note: the problem we now face is that of a circus trainer trying to put his tiger back in its cage. The Christian Right, with its power behind the Republican Party (and some Tea Partiers) will not only be ferocious in its onslaught against Obama, but against anyone they feel is not backing their agenda 110 percent. They've already begun to peel some moderate skin off the Republican Party with their claws.  

When pseudo-historian David Barton recently spoke to the Connect 2011 Pastors Conference, he said that Christians needed to take control of the culture and media so that "guys that have a secular viewpoint cannot survive" because Christians will "chop that kind of news off." I don't think Barton's talking about viewpoint. 


I'm serious.

Stranger Than Fiction: Tony Perkins' Christmas Card

Note: Please keep in mind that I am writing this as one who has studied sociology, comparative religions, theology and history (almost as much as Glenn Beck) and does not look kindly on people who try to press stupidity on the uneducated for the sake of socio-political ideals.

Christmas cards are not supposed to come with a hidden agenda. These missives are supposed to uplift humanity, not degrade it. But the Grand High Mystic Ruler of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, wants to stuff your holliday greeting with as much politicizing as possble, damn the outcome.

And what a cobbled-together crock it is! I expected Perkins to pull out all the stops when it came to his Christmas message, but this one barely makes sense: Perkins pastes together all the greeting-card images of the Matthew and Luke Gospels while taking vague jabs at Obama, Afghanistan, same-sex marriage and abortion. The buzz words that fly around are certainly more numerous than the Heavenly Hosts. And it all smacks of the dictum "keep 'em stupid." So here it is - in Tony Perkins own self-righteous words (with some commentary to keep things on solid ground).

God with Us

As we retreat into the peace of this Christmas season, it's a relief to feel the distractions of this world fall away.

Retreat: as in military retreat. Let's talk war from the get-go.

For a few quiet days, Christians everywhere can humbly reflect on the greatest miracle in the history of mankind. In no other religion does the Creator of the universe come down to earth and live among us, His own creatures. 

Huh? Perkins ignores a lot of religions here. Of course, he's never been one to quote scholars accurately. In ancient times there were over twenty dying-and-rising gods to which people prayed, several having virgin births! His revisionist historian, David Barton, must have been feverishly hard at work here.

Yet Jesus came -- not as a king or conqueror -- but as a babe. What greater way could God express His approachability than by coming to earth, His earth, in the form of the most vulnerable creature on the planet? 

Vulnerable? Here our beloved but deluded Tony is taking a swipe at the EPA, saying we're not responsible for things like global warming or the extinction of thousands of species of the more powerful creatures. An image comes to mind: back in the 1800s, people shot buffalo from trains for sport, letting the carcasses rot miles away from Native Americans to make use of. Vulnerable? Gimme a break!

He who would be the King of Kings was sent to us -- not in a royal palace or great Temple -- but in a lowly stable, surrounded by animals. 

He's going for the holostic approach to the Nativity scene here. A trip to Bethlehem will reveal the site: a cave. Not as picturesque as a stable, I grant you, but a big hole in a big rock. Of course, he has to stay with the traditional script in keeping 'em stupid or else he'd seem wierd to his readers, so it has to be magi, shepherds, sheep, stable crowded into one tiny card.

He may not have been a child of wealth or privilege, but Jesus possessed something much more important: a family.

Perkins goes for the main point early and then hammers away at it: every child needs a family which consistists of: a mother and a human stepfather. He'sobviously nervous about DOMA being repealed. And after the demise of DADT...

He grew up -- not in brokenness of this world, but in the loving care of his mother and her husband.

According to scripture, poor Joseph almost didn't go through with marriage to a pregnant woman: "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with the child of the Holy Ghost. Then Jospeph her husband, being just a man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily." (Matthew 1; 18-20) He certainly didn't want to parade Mary around (so obviously pregnant) too soon. In a way, Joseph was bucking the Christian Right of his day.

"Brokenness" sounds vaguely like a new word coined for the situation like Steven Colbert's "Truthiness." What's he's really saying here: "This crappy world we're living in can be changed if we just keep mandating one-man-one-woman marriages. And go back to the Fabulouse50s." He doesn't mention the very high rate of divorce among Fundamentalists (sssshhh! it's a secret!)

On that silent night -- His first in this new world -- the Messiah's arrival was heralded. But this special birth announcement wasn't shared with the country's elite, but with her excluded. 

Yes, the kings did come, but it was the shepherds who first made their way to that primitive throne. They were summoned to Bethlehem by choirs of angels from the hills, where they were tending their flocks by night. To the people of Palestine, these men and boys were the least important of the Roman Empire. 

The three wise men are portrayed as kings, perhaps to hide the fact that they were illegal aliens. And the shepherds were downgraded. Maybe they weren't much in the Roman Empire, but shepherds were important in Israel: shepherds were guardians of a very necessary and valuable property: sheep.  Why did Jesus preach that we should go after the one stray lamb? Simply because it was too f*ckin' expensive to lose!

But it was to these simple peasants that the heavens proclaimed peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Great Caesar Augustus in Rome was not bidden to come to the stable. Even he, who was worshiped as a god, wasn't given the privilege of seeing the holy infant. But three wise men were brought from afar. They followed a star in the sky until it led them to the place where the Christ child lay. 

Caesar Augustus, as with all Caesars after him, was made a god, but few people actually took it seriously and worhipped him as one: regicide was commonplace at the time and Roman senators and Centurions knew that gods couldn't be killed. Perkins is really referring to our own Barack Obama and the adulation he first received when he became President.

When King Herod, whom the Romans had chosen to rule over Judea, heard from the wise men that a child had been born, one who would rule over His people, Herod ordered his soldiers to find that child and take his life. To protect Herod's power, every baby boy less than two-years-old would be slain. In God's providence, even the slaughter of those innocents could not prevail over the Chosen One. Joseph and Mary were warned by the Angel of the Lord and they fled into Egypt, taking the baby with them. 

Why two years old? Did it take the wise men (down-graded from kings) two years to reach Herod? They didn't have a GPS? And after the birth, who's right, Matthew or Luke (who stated that they went instead to Nazareth)? Notice that Perkins in all his wisdom doesn't explain why God sacrificed all those infants. The narrator, of course, wanted to make a correlation to the Passover before The Exodus, but Perkins knows that metaphor would go way over the heads of his readers.

The Lord God might have sent a fiery chariot to spirit Jesus away. He might have provided a great bird or a giant fish. He might have drowned all of Herod's men or visited them with a plague. Instead, our Father in Heaven entrusted the infant to Mary and Joseph, a mother and a father. The baby Jesus was protected- and the Scriptures fulfilled: The Messiah would come out of Egypt . 

Perkins' imagination gets the better of him with giant birds and fishes. The bird I can understand, but a giant fish? Where was it supposed to take them? On a Disney Cruise? The flight to Egypt being an important part of the Nativity, Perkins makes it into a FAMILY outing, getting in a covert dig to gay adoption.

To us, the ancient story has a terribly modern ring. Powerful rulers determined to do anything to preserve their power -- even promoting and funding the shedding of innocent blood. Earthly kings worshiped as gods. Peace proclaimed on high while violence stalks the streets. 

This is Perkins' biggest pitch. "Look how rotten the country has become: Planned Parenthood, a socialist dictator, and liberal pot-smokers have ruined it!"

But out of all of this is the greatest message ever given to man: God is with us. The miracle is that He didn't just come down from His heavenly home thousands of years ago. He comes today -- to live with us, suffer with us, and- praise God -- to save us.

At the end of an overwhelming year, we can take comfort in the fact that this helpless baby, who came in relative obscurity, will soon return as a triumphant Savior that no one will miss! He won't just be a King among kings- He will be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! And unlike the men of this world, He will reign forever and ever! I pray that we all embrace the simplicity of the season and rejoice in the Love reborn each day. From everyone at FRC, we wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Perkins has now gone into a triumphal blast of the Allelujah Chorus for the finish: "King of Kings and Lord of Lords...He will reign forever and ever!" And after all that, we're supposed to believe in "simplicity"?  It's about as "simple" as the Gordian Knot!

It's all too silly, really, but buzz word after buzz word entertains and lulls Perkins' readers into thinking that he's written something profound. 

He hasn't. He's written a slightly covert polemic about the evils  of same-sex marriage and the Obama administration.

But he wants you to buy it, hook, line and manger.

Danger! Right Wingnuts! Danger! Home Depot And The Homosexual Agenda Approaching! Danger!

Danger!

Beware Of It! 

Whatever It Is!

Even If We Made It Up!

Danger!

Without a doubt, Tony Perkins of Family Research Council envisions himself as the intelligent robot (with a kind of human mind/soul) of TV campdom's Lost In Space. His latest alarm must be the 1000th time he has described the institution of marriage as being in danger. The repeal of DOMA is, of course, "catastrophic" and is yet another instance of proof of the evil "homosexual Left" and the "homosexual agenda."

Are you going to surrender to the homosexual agenda?

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is in danger. ...

The homosexual Left will be able to bring the weight of the federal government down on anyone who refuses to go along with counterfeit marriage and the rest of the homosexual "rights" campaign.

UPDATE: Perkins and Byran Fischer (American Family Association) have lambasted Home Depot for advancing the "agenda.":

Is it Home Depot or Homo Depot? After the month of sponsoring gay pride parades, no one's sure. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. People who shop at Home Depot ought to drill down on where their money's going. In June, a big chunk was spent promoting homosexuality to children. At gay pride events in five states, the hardware chain hosted special kids' workshops.

So now the AMA has called for a boycott of Home Depot.  Ho Hum. Then again...

It all seems so ridiculous, but ... when you get to the heart of the matter, the actual danger  rests in the relentless drive of Christofascists such as Perkins in demonizing people: Tony Perkins and his band of merry malcontents become more like "The Four Horsemen of The Homosexual Agenda."

Perkins & Company build most of the Christian Rights' illusions on the "homosexual agenda", but what is it exactly? None of my friends know. I tried looking up the term, and, oddly enough, only came up with Right Wingnut references to it, but not anything substantial on its actual definition or origins. Frustrated, I finally went to that bastion of unbiased truth, Conservapedia.com:

The Homosexual Agenda, or homosexual ideology, consists of a set of beliefs and objectives designed to promote and even mandate acceptance and approval of homosexuality, and the strategies used to implement such. This article notes that the goals and means of this movement include indoctrinating students in public school, restricting the free speech of opposition, obtaining special treatment for homosexuals, distorting Biblical teaching and science, and interfering with freedom of association.

Among all the liberal belief systems, the homosexual ideology is the most self-centered or selfish. Liberals generally give much less than conservatives to charity, but gay charity work in particular is virtually non-existent. 

That reaction you've just felt from reading the last sentence is treatable with a prescription drug called Granisetron, but please see your doctor before using it.

To be fair, the writer of the definition was probably on another plane of consciousness during the Age of AIDS; while Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were thanking God for the "gay plague" hundreds of thousands of gays were giving their money, their time, and their very lives to help the plague's victims. They even made quilts (see below). And ribbons. Yeah, the ones that got trendy and morphed into other colors for other diseases.

So now we know that (in the minds of Perkins et al) what drives the "homosexual agenda" is pure selfishness and that its basic tenets are to mandate acceptance, indoctrinate students in public school,s restrict free speech, obtain special treatment and "interfere with freedom of association" (whatever that means). The homosexual agenda means gays are out to recruit your children into a totally decadent lifestyle and if you say one word against it, you'll be thrown in jail. In other words, it means the end of the family unit. It means the end of the world. And the Four Horsemen of the Homosexual Agenda come as a warning of man's potential destruction.

But how was this "agenda" exposed? Well, don't strain the brain too much: it was documented in an oh-so-reliable-and-educated way, with a documentary produced by... The Family Research Council! But back then it was simply called "The Gay Agenda."

wikipedia:

In the US, the term "the gay agenda" was first used in public discourse in 1992 when the Family Research Council released a video series called The Gay Agenda as part of a pack of materials campaigning on homosexual issues and the "hidden gay agenda".

So the Family Research Council, armed with a video and a Bible, set out to destroy homosexuality - and homosexuals in the process. And the inspiration for violence might have come from the Book of Revelations. Hence the Four Horsemen.

The Four Horsemen of the Homosexual Agenda:  

Perkins (Fear), Cameron, (Deception), Nicolosi (Hypocrisy) and Lively (Malevolence).

So the homosexual agenda was fabricated  by the Family Research Council in 1992. The FRC also featured a rising star for their anti-gay agenda: Paul Cameron.

[Cameron] appeared in the video, wherein he asserted that 75 percent of gay men regularly ingest feces and that 70-78 percent have had a sexually transmitted disease.

He also taught that Alfred Kinsey's studies were skewed because he believed Kinsey to be gay. The gay agenda was stretched into a trilogy (of terror) and Paul Cameron made the rounds of Christian Right organizations and churches. It has survived because of the milking by people like Perkins and James Dobson (Focus on the Family). BTW: Cameron fully supports Uganda's "kill the gays bill" INCLUDING the part about capital punishment.

But Cameron is an honest psychological researcher, is he not? We-e-l-l-l-......no. He has been expelled or censured by: The American Psychological Association, The Canadian Psychological Association, The American Sociological Association and the Nebraska Psychological Association. (Of course, if you lived in Lincoln, NE, perhaps the most exciting thing going is getting kicked out of an association.) In addition, his group - the Family Research Institute - is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The next two men who made the term homosexual agenda equivalent to Satan, are Joseph Nicolosi and Scott Lively.

Nicolosi heads up the ex-gay movement with his National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality. He espouses something called reparative therapy. If you feel that he thinks of himself as a repair man, you're not far from the truth. Unfortunately, his form of therapy has been debunked by even more associations than Cameron has been ejected from (a race?): the National Association of Social Workers, The American Psychological Association, The American Psychiatric Association, The American Counseling Association, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Nicolosi's attitude towards homosexuality is positively toxic:

I remember Dr. Nicolosi telling me, in response to the question of whether one could easily contract HIV from semen, that if this were the case then gays would be “jerking off in hamburgers all over” to infect people.

For an interesting exchange of parental love meets the rude & the crude, click on  this segment of Dr. Phil. 

But of the four, Scott Lively is definitely the most extreme. He has been living almost exclusively on the fame of his first book, The Pink Swastika. Long out-of-print, it is now self-published and printed "on-demand." It's purchased by people who devour hate prose and who salivate at the thought of using it as a reference. Needless to say, historians have had nothing good to say about the book because it simply isn't true:

From SPLC:

In 1942, the death penalty was instituted for homosexuality. Offenders in the German military were routinely shot. "That wasn't a punishment," Himmler explained, "but simply the extinguishing of abnormal life. It had to be got rid of, just as we pull out weeds, throw them on a heap, and burn them."

Lively's organization, Abiding Truth Ministries, has a website describing Lively as "one of the most articulate opponents of the Homosexual Agenda in America."

No wonder Lively is among the people responsible for Uganda's "kill the gays bill". Here's part of the address at the (now) infamous conference in Kampala just before the proposed bill reared its ugly head:

You must be ready to stop this gay agenda. And don't think that fighting the gay movement is the solution-you will be fighting a losing battle because this movement has come to stop humanity. They have a clear vision, mission and strategies. The only way to defeat them is to compete with them. Their movement is 70 years old and that's why they don't care about you. They know you will die soon and they will replace you and take over the nation. They have decided to recruit the youth.

Besides Abiding Faith Ministries, Lively is also the founder of the virulent (and violent) Watchmen on the Walls, based in Riga, Latvia. Lately, Watchmen has captured attention due to a homophobic homicide of a man in Sacramento. 

BTW: Lively's cohort in homophobia is Reverend Ken Hutcherson:

“God hates effeminate men... If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”

All men of God should be so macho.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council plays the other three "horsemen" like a puppeteer, using their rhetoric and skewed logic to demonize everyone who is gay or who  might indicate a slight leaning towards support of gay rights:

"It was her [Elana Kagan's] rabid pro-homosexual views that led her to restrict military recruitment on Harvard Law School's campus, and, as Solicitor General, to sabotage the defense of our federal marriage law. In both instances, she favored her personal ideology and political calculations over the law.

"Rabid pro-homosexual." The Four Horsemen of the Homosexual Agenda are definitely leaning towards a Ugandan sensibility by making it a sin (crime) to be supportive of the LGBT community.

There are more people who can articulate what the Homosexual Agenda means to them, but the Four Horsemen are at the top of the list as self-appointed ministers of righteousness. 

Additional Note:

I know that it seems I  take things cavalierly sometimes. The headline of this article, for example, was written to introduce a subject with levity. That was in the way of attracting attention, then leading you to the real cause of my concern. Please remember: these people are real, their actions are real and their motives are real. And even though some people dismiss them as "wingnuts," they must be monitored. Their influence is not to be underestimated. You've heard it said that their rhetoric can kill. That's not a silly hyperbole - it's a fact. The sad part is that they know it and just chalk it up to God's will. In other words, God gave them each a conscience, but they sacrificed them to God on an altar of self-righteousness. 

The Frightened and the Insane: Looking at the Latest In Right-Wing Intolerance

If for reasons of indolence or cowardice this fight is not fought to a finish we may imagine what conditions will be like 500 years hence. Little of God’s image will be left in human nature, except to mock the Creator.

- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

These last several weeks have brought out the worst and most unreasonable attitudes in people. It must have been the eclipse. Or the full moon. Or Gay Pride parades. 

Let's see, there was: Lou Engle spewing as much hatred as possible behind closed doors; not one, but TWO strikes against DOMA that inflames Tony Perkins' sense of the melodramatic; a HuffPost columnist trying to link Darwin to Hitler; the Call 2 Fall movement on 4th of July causing a lot of bruised knees and egos; the Texas GOP going completely draconian; Sharron Angle hoisting herself by her own petard; and the Phelps clan going to the Supreme Court armed with self-righteous stupidity.

We've covered Lou Engle's attempts to eradicate homosexuality (by eradicating homosexuals) and, quite frankly, if people haven't gotten the message that this is a very, very dangerous man, then no amount of additional, honest but unrestrained rhetoric will seep in. 

"Your honor, we believe the protesters were within their rights because they were nuts."

Before arguing a case before the Supreme Court, it is wise to submit a brief stating your client's case. It is not wise, however, to state that your client (also being your own family) was "hysterical" while exercising their right of free speech. The brief for the defendant in the case of Snyder v. Westboro Baptist Church is a case in point:

Phelps also argued that the church was engaging in public speech on a matter of public concern; that the funeral was a public event; and that the church did not assert provable facts but instead expressed “hyperbolic, figurative, loose, hysterical opinion.”

This is a case that will receive national attention simply because it is so emotional: do dimwitted right wingnuts have any right to spew insanely vile hatred anywhere near something as emotionally charged as a funeral? Remember, these were the same people (stretch of the imagination here) about whom The Laramie Project was based and who have a website featuring Matthew Shepherd engulfed in the flames of hell. The basic rule of humanity - that you NEVER insult widows or orphans or anyone connected to someone who has just died - is breached by people screaming how glad they are that the deceased are dead and rotting in hell! 

If the Phelps clan wins, then every hate-filled group on the planet will be marching with misspelled signs (oops, the Teabaggers already do that). At the very least, their victory will encourage some people to be more uncouth and vile in their protests. But if they lose, the Christian Right will have a very real conundrum on their hands: someone they hate (Phelps is bad PR) will have gotten the heave-ho using their only real defence - free speech. Tony Perkins will have a hard time choosing puns for that article.

It may also be the first time "hate speech" has ever gone to trial on a national scale. Will the "man addicted to hate," the man banned from entering other countries, the man who bred a family of haters, the man who invented passages of the Bible for his own purposes of argument, will that man win?

I shudder at the thought.

Well, Ducky for DOMA!

Sorry, but whenever I see headlines by Tony Perkins, my prose starts to whack to the right. His bon mots, puns and witticisms are as toxic as the BP oil spill and I should be pitied for having to slog through them every day. When district court judge Joseph Tauro decided two cases against DOMA, Perkins had this to say:

Yesterday, a U.S. District Court did its best to preserve Massachusetts's reputation as the most liberal state in America on marriage. In Boston, a federal judge used his gavel to shatter the one law preventing a complete capitulation to same-sex "marriage" at the federal level: DOMA. 

"... gavel to shatter." There's drama (which I like) and then there's melodrama. The characters in Perkins' plays all seem to have a large appetite for scenery. 

In his decision, judge Tauro ...

...stated that he could not find “any identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective” for DOMA to treat same-sex couples differently.

Lisa Keen pointed out:

That finding was important because, in 1996 decision, in Romer v. Evans, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that animus cannot be used to justify a law.

Hmmm. Perhaps the same can be said for the Phelps v Snyder case. 

On The Origin of Species Was REALLY Mein Kampf!

 

Columnist David Klinghoffer wrote a piece last week titled The Dark Side Of Darwin. And readers of the Huffington Post commented accordingly: 

Humans have been killing each other for millenia, we didn't need Darwin to tell us to do it. To claim such is intellectual dishonesty to the extreme.

Lauri Lebo at Religion Dispatches:

In his piece, Klinghoffer recites the tired lie that Hitler was inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution to force the sterilization of 400,000 people he judged inferior in the quest for racial purity. Klinghoffer, by the way, is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, an organization which has been trying to insert religion into public school science classrooms under the guise of intelligent design and anti-evolution lesson plans.

There are, of course, intelligent people in the evolution debate, but an irony lies in the fact that they don't seem to be on the side of intelligent design.

"Spoiled" Nevada Unemployed Have Sharron Angle Coming To Their Rescue!

Nevada U.S. Senatorial GOP candidate, Sharron Angle, the one who promised Harry Reid physical violence via the Second Amendment, has a new attack ad featuring Nevada's high unemployment rate. It would be good strategy if Angle herself hadn't herself said that people receiving unemployment benefits were "spoiled" and that she would have voted against any extension of those benefits. Sort of like saying "you don't deserve jobs, but I'm going to get them for you anyway!" 

Prayers For Fear And Loathing

Sometimes it takes a foreign voice to give us a better perspective of how things really are: Matthew Harwood's article in Britain's Guardian, America's Paranoid Religious Right, gave a fairly good picture of Tony Perkins' Call 2 Fall nationwide 4th of July event. Harwood and his wife attended a Call 2 Fall service in a suburban DC church:

The experience was an insight into the cultural insecurities at work within the religious right and its Christian nationalism – the belief that the United States was, is, and for ever shall be a "Christian nation", utterly dependent on God for its success.

What Harwood experienced was what we, as Americans, have been experiencing on a constant basis: the "Christian nationalism" of which he writes has endeavored to put a strangle-hold on government and our daily lives. And in the process of strangulation, America has had to scream out the injustice:

What originally began as songs of love and sacrifice quickly rot into gay-bashing and the dangerous, yet indistinct talk of enemies everywhere. The room began to take on the darkness of Arthur Miller's Crucible more than the enlightenment of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.

This article also begs the question: Just how many degrees of separation are these people from Fred Phelps? Certainly not six. 

No People Evolving or Marrying Queers In Our State! 

And last but certainly not least, America was treated to the latest GOP aberration: the Texas GOP platform, proving that since they don't believe in evolution, Texas GOPers haven't bothered to evolve. 

From Huffington Post's David A. Love:

To round out an astonishing set of policy positions, the Texas Republicans are against any regulations on gun ownership. Oh yeah, and they declare that this is a Judeo-Christian nation. And there should be capital punishment for rape convictions (like the good old days). Deep water oil drilling should resume in the Gulf of Mexico, employers should be able to discriminate, and the minimum wage law should be repealed, they say. No more birthright citizenship -- citizenship by birth would be limited to those born to a U.S. citizen. Finally, the Texas GOP assert that the U.S. should get out of the United Nations.

                 

Of course, tthe Texas GOP may have simply stated which direction other extreme right-wingers in this country really want to move: not right, not left, certainly no forward, but - you guessed it - backwards.

An emotional vandalism case hits the big time. A Senate candidate runs a clueless attack ad. A repudiation of DOMA creates some serious melodrama. The 4th of July incites prayers of paranoia. An egregious link between Darwin and Hitler surfaces. yet again. A party platform takes its clues from the Dark Ages. Whatever brought all this on? 

I dunno. But as surely as you can say "rabid right" we'll have more of the same. 

Pass the hemlock.