Mitt Gets Worse: One Negative Ad Campaign We Hope Goes Viral

‘MITT GETS WORSE’ PROJECT WARNS OF ROMNEY’S ANTI-LGBT RECORD | Modeled as satire on the anti-bullying “It Gets Better” project, American Bridge 21st Century and Courage Campaign Super PAC have launched the “Mitt Gets Worse” campaign. In testimonials, various activists explain how harmful Mitt Romney’s anti-LGBT positions are and how much worse he would make the U.S. for LGBT people if he were president.

Mitt Romney has already gone on record as an enemy of the poor and disenfranchised. He has bumbled his way through African American voters to the point that being considered a "friend" is now out of the question. Now a group of LGBT activists want you to know that Romney's reign would be one of setbacks, if not one of terror. And they've started what could be one of the most creative series of anti-Romney ads to date.

If you take a look at the wikipedia entry for Mitt Romney's stance on LGBT issues, it paints a portrait of a man whose entire career as governor and Presidential candidate is obsessed with flip-flopping as the political wind blows:

In July 2011, Romney refused to sign a pledge opposing gay marriage, a pledge that was being circulated by "The Family Leader", a conservative Christian group in Iowa.[232] On August 4, 2011, a month later, Romney publicly denounced same-sex marriage by signing the 2012 Presidential Pledge sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage.[233]

And as governor of Massachusetts, Romney also attempted to eliminate much needed services for LGBT youth - some of them homeless youth.


Flip-Flop, The Cave In

The portrait of a man who cares only about winning and mouthing the right words to the right group (albeit unsuccessfully at times) formed years ago, so it is no surprise that vultures are circling a dying "moderate". The pressure put upon Romney to curry favor with the Christian Right due to his Mormonism is almost tactile: you can feel the forces of Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer*, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and their ilk at work, devouring any semblance of tolerance. And they will not be satisfied until Romney states (as he did with Obama's Affordable Care Act in an address to the NAACP), that he will push through a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, ban gays from the military and repeal every single advance in gay rights for the past thirty years. And for all his posturing as a moderate "friend" of gays and lesbians, ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) will become a distant memory if the Christian Right manipulates him. He may have supported gay adoption in the past, but the Christian Right will certainly have none of that.

5 Percent Is 5 Percent

Demographics and studies have shown that over 5% of the U.S. population is gay.** To Romney and his campaign, however, we have seen that even higher percentages (e.g. the number of people living below the poverty line) mean little: the bottom line is in the number of votes and if it takes disenfranchising 5% of the population to placate 16 million Southern Baptists, then so be it.

You know he will: Romney gives off the aroma of one ready to placate at all costs.

Whither Matt Rhoades?

As with the Bain Capital brouhaha, Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, has had his hands full in delivering spin, weak responses and veiled threats resulting from Romney's checkered past and flip-flops. How Rhoades will handle any response to Mitt Gets Worse is anybody's guess: ignoring it would be a big mistake, trying to present Romney as a "friend" would anger social conservatives, and going totally to the Right would only add to the long list of people he is willing to disenfranchise and sacrifice.

From The Huffington Post editorial by Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign (750,000 members):

Unfortunately for millions of LGBT people in this country, we know the Mitt we'll get. He's the Mitt that is moving in the wrong direction (as our Facebook Timeline shows) away from history, not towards it. For millions like us, Mitt Gets Worse. And if elected, the country will get worse.

Below is one of the first Mitt Gets Worse spots - a very, very powerful indictment of a man to whom winning is everything and consideration goes to the highest bidder. The testimonials are most disturbing and certainly provocative. Think about joining the Mitt Gets Worse campaign. It may be the one negative ad campaign in this mess of an election that needs to go viral.




*Fischer infamously delivered a bitch slap to Romney: demanding that he get rid of Richard Grenell, crowing that Romney took his advice (although Renell resigned), then saying that Romney was too weak to be President if he caved in to the demands of someone like Fischer.

** Despite what the Right contends: 1.5 to 2%

There Are Times When You Wanna Take A Poll...

...about statements like this. How many times have you heard of someone gay writing death threats? Threatening people's families? Worse than Islamic terrorists? 


I don't think so.

The "Compassion" of Paul Ryan and The Right: "The Poor You Will Always Have With You - We'll See To It"

NOTE: Although I've posted this article under stressful circumstances  (see postscript below) the perspective presented is definitely appropriate and shared by many people in this country. I may not be writing for a week or two, so I hope that this article is passionate enough to suffice for a while. 

"But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.'"
— Luke 10:30–36, World English Bible


On Tax Day, April 15th, Rep. Paul Ryan had this to say about "his" budget:

Our budget offers a compassionate and optimistic contrast to a future of health-care rationing and unbearably high taxes. We lift the crushing burden of debt, repair the safety net, make America’s tax system fair and competitive, and ensure that our health and retirement programs have a strong and lasting future.[1]

There are people who would beg to differ with Ryan's statement, notably the people fighting his expansive social welfare cuts on Capitol Hill and in the White House. The fight has extended to the matter of the national debt and the next several weeks will be grueling ... and revealing. If you look at the fight in a simplified perspective, it becomes a battle for the existence of compassion: should it be sustained now (in a diminished form), or in the future? Republicans are already naming their form of "compassion" by calling it INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE. 


But whatever the outcome of the fight, we must not lose sight of the fact that the economic and financial  crises we now face are about people: some people will benefit, while others will not. Cost cuts to social welfare agencies are already showing results: the poor are not only getting catastrophically poorer because they have less money, but also because they have less access to housing and necessary subsidies. It is the same with healthcare reform: while decrying imagined atrocities of "Obamacare", not one conservative member of Congress has put forth any real solution for the uninsured. Republican actions in the House have, in fact, ensured us that none will ever be forthcoming. 


The conservative image has never taken such a beating as in this Congress. 


In the past, the conservative rich have always trotted out the defensive statistic that conservatives actually give more/do more for the disenfranchised than liberals because the liberals want the government to do their giving for them. They chafed when George Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was met with the label of "oxymoron." What liberals have always realized, however, is that most conservatives tend to give only to their own causes and many times those causes not only leave out whole groups of Americans, but actually sustain the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Conservatives must control where their money goes. Liberals do it too, but conservatives do it more often and on a larger scale.


TRUE COMPASSION


Giving to those in need comes down to true compassion. But what is "true compassion"? Who is more compassionate - a church elder making a cake for a church bazaar held for the homeless or the man who off-handedly gives a man on the street a dollar because he asked for it? Both are compassionate, but the church elder KNOWS to whom she is giving her time, money and effort to, while the anonymous man cares not who the needy person is (or even if the person is, indeed, needy at all). Conservatives would not call the latter's gesture compassion, but the mere foolhardiness of a "bleeding heart liberal."


In biblical terms, one could associate the Good Samaritan with true compassion: when the priest and the Levite saw the man they both passed by. Why? Perhaps because when they saw them they judged him immediately as not worth their efforts. Now, notice that Christ's story did not say that the Samaritan knew he was helping a Jew.[2] In other words, the Samaritan did not judge, nor did he know who he was helping. The Samaritan just did what he felt was the right thing- the human thing -to do.

In another belief system (not really a religion), there's the story of  bodhisattva  Quan Yin (correction: stories - hundreds of legends, but all of their central themes involve her compassion). The most popular is the one that after she was made an Immortal, Quan Yin started her ascent to Enlightenment (heaven), but heard the cries of people still in need, forsook heaven and descended to help them. There are many parallels given to Quan Yin's Christian counterpart, Mary, the mother of Jesus. (Aside: it is interesting to note that much of the non-denominational and Protestant denominational Christian Right consider prayers to St. Mary to constitute "Mariolatry" or idolization of the Virgin Mary. They are loathe to think of any intercessor to Christ for mercy.)


COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM -
 ACCORDING TO RYAN & CO.


Just as true compassion does not need judgment, it does not need a reason except for helping someone to survive in the best way possible. Compassion need not come in the form of the Christian thing to do, nor even the right thing to do, but simply as the human thing to do. People in need do not have the luxury of determining from whence compassion comes.


The above statement of Paul Ryan is, to say the least, dripping with the disingenuous patronizing to the poor that many conservatives today deal out: the belief that capitalism in all its glory will ultimately benefit everyone.  The conservative mindset also believes that individual investment, individual charity, individual compassion will also prove supreme. 


They will not. Individual charity is subjective and can be manipulated. It can be focused on a number too few to benefit as many as possible. Philanthropy and charity have given the public many blessings, to be sure, but no matter how generous, they have always benefited only a portion of the truly needy. In most cases, the giving has been focused. In addition, many faith-based organizations are unfortunately too focused and their charitable agendas can be skewed: catastrophes, for example, have been used by what might be called "God's Ambulance Chasers" more intent on conversion to religious beliefs than relief.[3]


Of course, individual charity can be the most valuable adjunct to a society's governmental social services: it lets us know that - coupled with government - our society is doing everything it can to aid in our people's survival. Budget-slashing by the likes of Rep. Paul Ryan, however, puts a burden on individual charity that it cannot possibly sustain ... without neglecting hordes of our country's citizenry. Perhaps the truly sad part about the likes of  Mr. Ryan is that he knows it, and doesn't seem to care - hence the disingenuous statement above. Of course, he may not be entirely to blame, since his party is, after all, controlled by a very powerful group: the coalition of religious entities known as the Christian Right. 


AT A CROSSROADS


From what we've seen these last twenty years, can anyone truly say without a doubt that social conservatives (the Christian Right)possess true compassion? Their own "agenda" of condemnation exposes how they pre-judge people and groups, vehemently prejudicing against segments of society: for example, we have seen the great Southern Baptist Convention try to harm businesses that have supported the LGBT community and treated it with respect. And while some within the Christian Right community describe their compassion as "tough love" (Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association comes to mind) others beg to differ on that point: can "love" of any kind be borne of bigotry? [4]


So now our country's compassion is at a crossroads because of a budget crisis: should it be government (liberal) or individual (conservative) compassion? According to people like Ryan, America cannot have both. We could, but that might mean raising taxes while giving more to charity. A blogger at Hubpages.com put it well::

There are two kinds of compassion in this country. The compassion of the left and the compassion of the right. The compassion of the Democrat and the compassion of the Republican. The compassion of the government and the compassion of the individual.

Whichever one you choose, put your money where your mouth is.

With "slash and burn" Republicans goaded by Dominionists and corporations, the compassion of the Democrat may be gone entirely. And the other kind of compassion will be meted out to a select few. 


God help us.




1.The new terminology for Ryan's futuristic "compassion" is INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE. (!?)


2. Remember, the Jew was stripped and therefore not recognizable by any particular clothing. Also, Samaritanism and Judaism were very similar Abrahamic religions and shared the tenet of circumcision. 


 - The story of the Good Samaritan poses a conundrum for many in the Christian Right because it is sited as the epitome of compassion by many evangelicals and therefore is something they strive for; however, the Samaritan does not evangelize or proselytize in any way, leaving the audience of the story to wonder why evangelizing is necessary in order to do good.
  
3. In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, a faith-based organization spent $100,000 erecting electronic Bibles (60 loudspeaker systems from which Biblical verses were broadcast) among people who were still not receiving adequate medical treatment. Another example: after the horrendous Asian Tsunami, Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church sent food and clothing, along with 600,000 Christian scripture tracts (the cost of which totaled more than the emergency goods sent). Since the victims were mostly Buddhist and Hindu, the tracts were considered insultingly superfluous and respectfully sent back.


4. The concept of "love the sinner, hate the sin" is especially egregious: no other moral precept has ever been so misused as some ridiculous band aid for guilt. The phrase is always used while knowing that it goes against human nature: just as Jesus Christ new that the concept of "love thine enemy" was a hard sell, so to does the Christian Right know that LSHS falls on deaf ears, but it needs the phrase to sound more benign.


POSTSCRIPT





Parts of this article have been written while my former partner and best friend of fourteen years lies dying of liver cancer.  I have been his caregiver for six of those years, aided by his current partner and soul mate.  We live in San Francisco, (that bastion of liberalism and perversion!) certainly the most compassionate city in America. It was here that he was nurtured as an artist (award-winning theater director) and came to nurture other artists as well. It is in San Francisco that he is now comforted and cared for by an incredible extended family of friends, hospice workers, physicians, and therapists - many made possible by San Francisco and the caring state of California. I firmly believe that he could not have gotten greater "comfort care" anywhere else. He is passing in dignity as well. 


While there are conservatives who can be regarded as compassionate, I sincerely doubt that those in Congress (guided by today's Christian Right) would be as wonderfully human as the people I see around us. Ironic, isn't it - that such love and humanity should exist in the city they castigate most. 


We are put on earth to thrive from the knowledge that we have helped everyone else survive as best as possible. It is unfortunate that others do not see this purpose, because by being confined within boundaries of their own kind of compassion, they are depriving many people of the thing they need most: 


Humanity.  

Still Valentine's Day In Our Hearts

Today is the day after Valentine's Day, but I wanted to relate the wonderful words of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo in his letter to Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. If you read our last post, you'll know that Bishop Senyonjo is now considered a "marked man" in Uganda for being a staunch ally and friend to Uganda's gay community. His letter of compassion and concern is probably the best Valentine I've read in years.

LETTER FROM BISHOP CHRISTOPHER SENYONJO TO ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS

The following is the full text of the letter from Bishop Senyonjo to Archbishop Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion.

Dear Archbishop Rowan Williams, Primates and fellow bishops, clergy and people of our diverse Anglican Communion.

Peace from God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I give thanks on behalf of the family and friends of David Kato for your love and prayers at this difficult time. All over the world, human beings are longing for liberation, love, respect and the dignity to have meaningful lives. This week alone, we witnessed it in Egypt .We also see this longing in the struggle for human rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people (LGBT) through the sacrificial life and death of David Kato. As human beings, we must respect our differences and be united in our call for listening and sharing with each other. To understand God, we are all called to understand the mystery of each other, including our sexualities. God has given us this gift and to defame, condemn, imprison and kill human beings because of their God-given nature, is a great human error. The church has a tragic history of condemning Jews, Moslems, scientists and LGBT people. Our teaching and theology has a causal effect and if we do not learn from our own historical mistakes, we will repeat the same sinful destruction of lives, families and communities.

When European churches failed to protect minority communities during World War II, people were sent to the gas chambers and concentration camps. Many religious people in Europe emerged from that experience to help create the Declaration of Human Rights. We now have sixty years of building an internationally recognised framework for the protection of human rights in every country. If Anglicans in one country dehumanize, persecute and imprison minorities, we must be true to the Gospel and challenge such assaults on basic human rights. They key to our ministry must be to educate our people and encourage LGBT people to tell their stories and the impact of homophobia in their lives. Listening to the stories of LGBT people was the beginning of my own transformation. This work of understanding the phenomenon of human sexuality should be taken seriously in our theological seminaries and schools. The clergy should be well equipped to serve and not to ignorantly repel the people of God. A required course in Human Sexuality should be required of all seminarians and clergy.

Many African countries imprison LGBT people because of who they are. As a bishop in the midst of those countries, I am now a shepherd caring for the lost sheep that are persecuted by the Church and threatened by a pending anti-homosexual draconian bill in Uganda. I preach the new covenant of Jesus Christ sealed in love as we read in John 15:12. This is the heart of the Gospel-the Good News. This sacrifice of Love is mocked when sister churches tolerate or promote the violation of basic human rights. Life and liberty are at risk and we must hold each other accountable. A loving Anglican Communion should not keep quiet when the Rolling Stone tabloid in Uganda openly supports the “hanging of the homos,” including a fellow bishop who pleads for their inclusion and non-discrimination! Silence has the power to kill. We have witnessed its destruction this past week in the tragic and cruel murder of David Kato.

We African Anglicans have a rich and powerful history of speaking out on human rights in the most difficult of situations. Bishop Colenso worked with Zulus to establish an indigenous church while being fought by his fellow English bishops. Bishops Trevor Huddleston, John Taylor and Desmond Tutu resisted Apartheid. We must not demean our great tradition by oppressing LGBT minorities under any circumstances, even to maintain Anglican unanimity. The criminalization of homosexuality remains the greatest state and church sanctioned violence perpetrated against LGBT people and their allies in many countries. We must agree to demolish all forms of institutional homophobia beginning with the removal of all laws that punish human beings for being gay or living in loving relationships. This will be the first step in providing basic human rights to a largely invisible international community who live in daily fear of their lives.

So in thanksgiving for the unity and commitment we have together, let us continue to listen to one another, to protect the vulnerable and marginalized within our own societies and to bring our collective wisdom to the work of repairing the world and correcting the great injustices in our local communities.

+Christopher

Rt. Rev. Christopher Senyonjo

High On Uganda's Hit List, Bishop Christopher Senyonjo Will NOT Go Into Hiding.

Even though he is an elderly Anglican cleric, a family man with children, Bishop Christopher Senyonjo has gotten many homophobic death threats - because he has been a champion for gay rights as well as the LGBT community's most loving friend and supporter. He risked his life by attending the funeral of human rights activist David Kato:

“I know that some [gays and lesbians] are discouraged and even not going to church because they are being abused. Even today they are being abused. But please don’t be discouraged. God created you and God is on your side,”

"Hang Them"

Bishop Senyonjo's picture was published on the now-infamous cover of Uganda's Rolling Stone tabloid along with human rights activist, David Kato and the yellow slash "Hang Them!" It should be noted that Bishop Senyonjo is a family man with two sons and several grandchildren. His sons have also received death threats. Of course, it should be noted that in a country trained to be virulently homophobic, Senyonjo is not immune to murder even if he holds the title of "Bishop." Rolling Stone certainly showed no respect in regards to Senyonjo's status when it published the article. Indeed, the latest news is that the tabloid has not the slightest regret in publishing the article and may take pride in its advocacy.

Giles Muhame, managing editor of the weekly Rolling Stone, said in a statement that he condemned the murder and felt "sorry for the family of Kato". But he also repeated various unproved allegations against the activist, and suggested he lived in an area where murder is common. "This looks like any other crime," he told the Guardian in a telephone interview. "I have no regrets about the story. We were just exposing people who were doing wrong." 

Muhame and other recent graduates of Makerere University in Kampala launched Rolling Stone late last year. With a circulation of fewer than 3,000 copies it would have remained obscure were it not for the anti-gay campaign (Guardian, UK)

The outcome of "exposing people who were doing wrong": many of the listed people were evicted from their homes and fired from their jobs. One woman was actually stoned by her neighbors. 

Several days ago, Bishop Senyonjo wrote an open letter to Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowen Williams. Please read the entire text here. You will be inspired, elevated, ... and relieved that such men still exist today. 

As human beings, we must respect our differences and be united in our call for listening and sharing with each other. To understand God, we are all called to understand the mystery of each other, including our sexualities.

He is incredibly courageous in this letter because he dares to do something which our own Christian Right would never do: point out past the mistakes of Christianity. That he even admits them is remarkable. Think of it: would ANYONE involved in today's Christian Right lower themselves to say such things? Remember, Bishop Senyonjo is telling the great CR that their religion has made errors, causing harm to an enormous amount of people! How can he insult people like David Barton, Tony Perkins and, above all, Bryan Fischer, who has recently, in print and on the radio, told our country that it was God's will that Native Americans lose their land and lives! 

BLINDED BY RIGHTEOUSNESS

There are some who will say that Senyonjo is not worth listening to, and that he's foolish for venturing out in such a hostile climate. Some may even say that he'll deserve what he gets. Scorn and venom will pour forth from the very places that should have love and concern. Those people are blinded by their own righteousness to have any compassion or concern for the bishop. They have whipped up emotions to create a mob mentality   that may be uncontrollable and may simply walk away from the situation in Uganda. Or they may look on in silence: Rick Warren, Scott Lively, Lou Engle and all their followers will watch.

And wait. 

You're Right, Mr. Obama, It Gets Better - But Not If The Christian Right Has Anything To Say About It!!

You'll look back on the struggles you've faced 

with compassion and wisdom.

There's nothing wrong with your monitor. It's green because so many Christionists are puking up bile onto their screens and blogs and websites and desks and carpets and dogs. 

Stock tip: Buy stock in Resolve and Magikist Rug Cleaners (They're out of business? Damn!).

The President delivered an "It Gets Better Speech" last night. He got some kudos, but not enough from the LGBT community to make a dent in their disappointment. His DOJ put DADT back into play. It doesn't balance out. but there will be hell to pay nevertheless. And both the LGBT community and the President will suffer.

So now, what? 

As a diversion, it's time for the Tony Perkins "Homosexual Agenda Show!" What awful pun will he use for his first headline? The suspense kills. Then there will be the Bryan Fischer radio rant chanting "perverted president" "Christians are always right, "gays are nazis!" ("pssst: kill them!"). Concerned Women for America will release a statement like : "Of course, we want ALL children to be safe, but must we push the homosexual agenda on infants?" Southern Baptist ministers across the land will be nixing their Sunday sermons and feverishly drafting new ones to tell people that their Halloween Hell Houses will contain an "Abominable Obama" rainbow-colored monster. And FOX News ... will live for the next YEAR on this one. 

Yes, I feel sorry for the President. He was pressured to do the right thing, of course, but it still took a certain amount of courage to do it. He could have abstained by lauding Hillary Clinton's speech as sufficient. Still, some people in his own party may be distancing themselves from him even more than they have recently. The Democrats are so scattered right now, you 'll hear groans amongst the faint cheers. To some, Obama may have shown the wrong time to deliver compassion.

Compassion. Seriously, that's a word that the Christian Right has now taken to demonizing as a soft, wimpy word, not commensurate with the bold measures needed to "Take Back America" from the godless secularists. Ironically, however, compassion will be the word the Right will need to adopt before looking totally hard-hearted. It will need to convolute the definition to mean something, well, less compassionate and more boot-strapsier.

"We've got to dispel the myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage-that it's some inevitable part of growing up. It's not."

This is when the Right will turn and say "yes it is!" Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle are shouting "man it up!" The red states will say "he's teaching our kids to be sissies." 


Compassion will be banned from the conversation. If there is a conversation. But instead it will be a one-sided bray from the Right, backed up by righteous indignation. 


Yes, I also feel sorry for the LGBT community. The bullies may win the day: after all, they still have Hell Houses to give the bullies justifiable support. After Oct. 31st, we may wake up to a spate of gay bashing the likes of which we've never seen since the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic.


Just a thought.

Obama: It Gets Better ....... Hell House Ideology: IT GETS WORSE!

"You'll look back on the struggles you've faced with compassion and wisdom."

Tonight, President Barack Obama delivered a message to the LGBT community - one that it has been waiting for. 

You are not alone. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything to deserve being bullied. And there is a whole world waiting for you, filled with possibilities. There are people out there who love you and care about you just the way you are.

I can just see Tony Perkins FURIOUSLY typing away right now.

"Let's see ... 
a 'homosexual agenda' , yeah gotta get that in somewhere. 
'Caving in' yeah, that's good. 
'who's the bully now?' ...doesn't make sense, but anyway...
ah... 'giving way to socialist ideologies
'... 'slap in the face to people of faith'
...'re-affirmed his commitment to perversity' 
Damn! I'm good!...


OK, let's settle down to very serious business: this latest spurs me forward in condemning Hell Houses and prompting protests.


Remember: in the hearts of compassionate Americans, IT GET'S BETTER, but in the church halls of Hell House theologians: 

IT GETS WORSE!!!