Yes, This Ad About Equality Says It All

Skeptical at first, when I saw so many people who lauded this as a wonderful, sightful ad on marriage equality, but it really DOES say it all, because it brings in all of life's emotions and doesn't sugar-coat same-sex relationships. The young man is stunning, but not in a drop-dead gorgeous way. He's funny and sensitive and, most of all ... 


LOVING.

Life Begins After Thanksgiving

Yes, it does. 


Life does not, as many think, come to a grinding halt after eating too much turkey. In fact, whether you eat turkey at all has nothing to do with your life's continuance: it's a fact that life continues. Especially after you eat something.


It continues...and continues. 


And so has mine. 


That's why I'm continuing to write.


Continuing to have faith in humanity.
Continuing to help people out of the morass of a Christian Right-dominated country.
Continuing to look for a job. Writing.  Because I want one. Because I need one. 


Really.


Actually, life begins each time we think it might likely end. It surprises us by continuing and in continuing from a moribund state, it begins anew. It's rather insidious that way, life is. 


But I'm not complaining: I love life as long as it gives me purpose, which is, right now, kicking the Christian Right's ass every second it breathes and makes precious life so miserable for everyone with its righteous arrogance. 


Ah, there's an apt phrase: righteous arrogance. It connotes total sin, or rather the cause of so much sin. It has been the cause of wars, genocide and suicide. It founded the Ku Klux Klan. It furrowed the Trail of Tears. It decimated Meso America. It caused a young man to leap from a bridge after his sexual encounter with another man was posted on YouTube.


It started Hell Houses. 


So I've begun, after Thanksgiving, to restore my crusade (ok, wrong word) against righteous arrogance and its perpetual perpetrator the Christian Right. Oh, I may get strident enough to call it the Christofascist Right, such is my abhorrence of the group, but I vow not to become so strident that I lose sight of my second goal: humor. For we are at war, the Christian Right and I, and I have chosen one of the best weapons of modern man: laughter. For as Mark Twain put it:

"Against the assault of laughter, 

nothing can stand."

Dumb and Dumber...and Dumbest: FOX News Creates America's Only Journalistic Black Hole

WE ALWAYS KNEW...

"Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."

A scathing report by Fairleigh Dickinson University - a PublicMind Poll - discloses the fact that not only have FOX viewers been LESS informed about national and international events than other news viewers, but  they have also have been MADE less informed than others who do not even follow the news via broadcast "journalism." It seems that in its driving force to keep people misinformed - "fairly unbalanced" - FOX has actually made its viewers dumber.

A BENEFICIAL BLACK HOLE

Of course, for most of the politicians who frequent FOX, this may not be a bad thing: "analysts" like Mike Huckabee feel safer in their niches than they would be at, say MSNBC: at FOX, they're never really questioned nor are their "analyses" really scrutinized. 

FOX's jumble of misinformation and no information has actually been beneficial to some people: while the general public suffers from current affairs blindness, pundits, politicians and religious leaders of the Right have benefited. Overly supportive attitudes and softball interviews have been the boon to the likes of Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Ann Coulter. 

To be fair, it would be unwise for these same people to court, say, Anderson Cooper or Lawrence O'Donnell. Honest analysis with hardball questions are too tough for them unless, like Ann Coulter, one has an overabundance of self-esteem and thinks that there is no such thing as bad publicity. FOX always avoids the most detrimental subjects or frames them in the manner of an attack from the other side ("why do you think you were so viciously attacked about ____by____?"). 

Jon Stewart Was Right

So, let me tell you what's going on. So, two Sundays ago, I do an interview on Chris Wallace’s show, and along with some really salient, dynamic points that I made, I mentioned Fox News viewers were the most consistently misinformed viewers in every poll. PolitiFact took issue with that, and said I really shouldn't have said every poll. Just most. So, I accepted it, I then I brought up a 21 lie salute of PolitiFact Fox fact-checking. So I assume that Chris Wallace now begins the work of apologizing for Fox's many false and misleading statements. They’ll probably do a few per show and carry us into the 2014 midterms with a clear conscience.

UPDATE:

As is usual with FOX, there has been no response as to the FD report. 

Truly The Sign Of Senility: Pat Robertson and Mac N' Cheese

"It's A Black Thing"


Poor, deprived Pat Robertson: his mother never served him macaroni and cheese - ever. Then again, since it's a "black thing" the son of quintessential Dixiecrat father Senator Absolom Willis Robertson would have been shielded from such fare. 


The problem with chalking up his ignorance to senility is that he's been senile for the last 40 years. 


Go figure.

Using Prayer As Pepper Spray: How Cindy Jacobs and The Christian Right Hope To Wipe Out The Evil OWS Movement

Inflicting On People: Imprecatory Prayer, Lunatic Prophecy and a God-Awful Fashion Sense.

In light of recent developments in New York City as it relates to the Occupy Wall Street Movement—particularly the November 17 ‘Day of Action,’ which drew upwards of 30,000 protesters into the streets—we are calling believers nationwide to help raise up a wall of intercession for peace and safety in the streets of New York City.

I guess it's time we stopped laughing at Cindy "Japan-is-shaped-like-a-dragon" Jacobs, because this woman epitomizes the Christian Right's demonizing of the OWS movement. In a very real sense, Jacobs brings about the schism that has happened in America's Christianity concerning social justice: morally, you're either with the 99%, or the 1%; with the people who have sided with social justice or the people who abhor it. 

And there are Christians who are struggling in their support of OWS. Why? Probably because the movement is suspicious of most overt Christians these days. The face of American Christianity has too long been dominated by the likes of Focus On The Family, the Family Research Council and their political minions like Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann that Americans forget about progressive Christians and their advocacy of social justice. What America has seen from its religious community is a group purporting that "personhood" comes in the form of a corporation as well as a zygote. Pundit (and part-time historian/rodeo clown) Glenn Beck spearheaded the crusade of the Christian Right when he made "social justice"* pejorative in the minds of conservatives and Tea-Partiers everywhere. 

The ever-righteous Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association went so far as to sick his Rambo Jesus on the OWS protestors by having Him come down from heaven and whip everyone at Zuccotti Park. And one erstwhile pundit posited that the OWS had an "unbiblical fetish for equality." 

Yet there are socially responsible Christians out there who are not afraid of voicing support of OWS:

When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand with the hungry, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand for those without a job or a home, they stand with Jesus.

- Jim Wallis of Sojourners (Huffington Post)

Last week, Christian churches in New York offered shelter for OWC protesters and demanded that Bloomberg re-establish their camp in Zuccotti Park. And "protest chaplains" have been established across the country. (facebook link HERE). But more than sanctuary and chaplains, the fact that Christian communities have joined with other faiths in support of the movement is probably the most galling of all the latest events to the Christian Right: Christians have been joined by Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and (shudder!) Muslims (see video below). Even the Vatican came out with a statement supporting the ideology of OWS while not exactly siding with the protestors.


Desperate Prayers

Intercessors throughout New York City have teamed up to provide round the clock prayer and fasting coverage for New York City as we see a surge of the Occupy Wall Street Movement....These intercessors report that they have made some ground in uprooting the spirit of anarchy that has been birthed through this movement, but they need more intercessory prayer support to complete the mission.

Throughout all of the imprecatory prayers of the Christian Right against the OWS movement, there is a sense of desperation flying against an image it cannot sustain: that of the church that needs to maintain its power base - and that power base has money. Tony Perkins' FRC and Bryan Fischer's AFA must appease their donors. Cindy Jacobs must reach out in solidarity to corporations. Robert Jeffress must adhere to the tenets of his Dallas congregants.** 


So now there is a second Great Schism within Christianity: one of morals versus money, one of "social justice" versus maintenance of wealth. . There is the image of a revolutionary Jesus of the poor and a Rambo Jesus of the establishment.  There is the protester and the prayer monger. There is the Jim Wallis side and the Cindy Jacobs side. 


And for all the silly machinations of people like Cindy Jacobs, the prophecies of anarchy, the prayers against the "witchcraft" of the OWS, (and even the awful outfits), the Christian Right will keep the schism, the pepper-spraying and imprecatory prayers alive because they have a lot to lose.  


*American Thinker calls "social justice" evil.
** There may be an irony in this schism: it (slightly) parallels the break between the Baptist Church and Southern Baptists. One fought for social justice through abolition of slavery, while the other fought to keep slavery - and its donors. 

Getting Back To Life: When Every "Goodbye" Is "Hello"

Yeah, I'm back. 


Hopefully. 


The last three months have been comprised of a series of battles, some won, some lost, some still being fought. The  horrendous housing situation has quieted, leaving me free to write again, but forcing me to schedule my life accordingly. Time schedules and body schedules are tough to maintain when you're an older blogger like me. 


My last endeavor was putting a video together as a tribute to my ex-partner Mike Ward. I was his caregiver for a number of years and although he passed away from liver cancer last July, we hadn't been able to create a memorial until last Wednesday. 


And it was awesome!


Mostly Mike's friends from the SF cabaret scene. People who knew him for a relatively brief period of his life. So the video was a revelation in many ways. The main theme was Mike's legacy: that - like a song from The Little Princess - Every Goodbye Is Hello.

Hope you all enjoy it.

An American Werewolf In The New Uganda: Discredited, Anti-gay "Researcher" Paul Cameron Preys Upon Gays In Moldova

It's Uganda all over again - same tired (but dangerous) play, with different sets and a few different cast members. This time, the ambassador of hate is one Paul Cameron, the setting:  Moldova.


Yes, Moldova.


Remember, the kill queers policy of the Christian Right has to pick on the poorest, most backward, most superstitious countries and it can't get a poorer, more backward, more superstitious country than Moldavia: it's a short hop to the Carpathian mountains, land of the Romanis (gypsies), Transylvania, Dracula,  Elizabeth Bathory (Countess Dracula) and...the Werewolf.


So they're sending discredited "researcher" Paul Cameron to state their case that homosexuals are intrinsically evil and that any law passed for anti-discrimination is an abomination.


Of course, Cameron doesn't usually address his audiences festooned in garlic, but his charisma is nonetheless odoriferous: he is passionate about imprisonment and execution of gays. His claims are so horrific, that no one in America has taken them seriously (Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer excepted, of course): they regularly eat feces, they are natural pedophiles, they live shorter lives, they stuff gerbils up their rears, they recruit because they can't procreate. And to a backward, superstitious populace, these claims are horrifying music to their ears.



Box Turtle Bulletin

An anti-discrimination bill that prohibits unequal treatment on grounds including sexual orientation is before its Parliament, due for debate at month’s end.


In the days before the debate starts, Paul Cameron is coming to town. An e-mail from the Alianţa pentru Salvarea Familiilor din Moldova (Alliance to Save the Family in Moldova) announces that the “U.S. sociologist, founder and president of Family Research Institute” will stay from October 24-29, and “will share the U.S. experience in implementing anti-discrimination legislation.”

Of course, it makes no difference to the Moldovans that Cameron has been denounced by more reputable researchers and unceremoniously kicked out of most major professional organizations:


Individuals: 

Epidemiologists Morten Frisch and Henrik Brønnum-Hansen were vehemently against Cameron's crude and minimal attempts at research concerning the life-expectancy of gay men (he used obituary columns from gay newspapers during and after the AIDS crisis).
Psychologist Gregory M. Herek charged Cameron with deliberately misrepresenting his work researching child molesters.

Organizations:

The American Psychological Association: "We are concerned about Dr. Cameron because we do believe that his methodology is weak."
The Nebraska Psychological Association
The Canadian Psychological Association
...and the American Sociological Association:

It does not take great analytical abilities to suspect from even a cursory review of Cameron's writings that his claims have almost nothing to do with social science and that social science is used only to cover over another agenda. Very little of his work could find support from even a bad misreading of genuine social science investigation on the subject and some sociologists, such as Alan Bell, have been 'appalled' at the abuse of their work."

 MOLDOVA IS DOOMED

Unfortunately, this will not be Cameron's first visit to Moldova (he had previously visited the country in 2008). And his visits have been supported by appearances of premier anti-gay hate monger Scott Lively who was definitely instrumental in Uganda's Kill-The-Gays Bill. Through Lively and Cameron, the Christian Right has been delivering a series of one-two punches to Moldavia's humanity: an attempted gay pride parade in 2008 met with bashings of gays from skinheads while the police looked on approvingly. The situation for the passage of an anti-discrimination bill (at least one including sexual orientation) looks grim.

And if Cameron gets his way, Moldova will institute laws very close to that of Uganda's.

Poor, backward countries have little chance of surviving the onslaught of bigotry that both Lively and Cameron can produce and this latest foray into an Eastern European government might result in a death (or deaths) like gay activist David Kato's.

Poor Moldova. It's welcoming a werewolf in sheep's clothing.

Unfortunately, this will not be Cameron's first visit to Moldova (he had previously visited the country in 2008). And his visits have been supported by appearances of premier anti-gay hate monger Scott Lively who was definitely instrumental in Uganda's Kill-The-Gays Bill. Through Lively and Cameron, the Christian Right has been delivering a series of one-two punches to Moldavia's humanity: an attempted gay pride parade in 2008 met with bashings of gays from skinheads while the police looked on approvingly. The situation for the passage of an anti-discrimination bill (at least one including sexual orientation) looks grim.

And if Cameron gets his way, Moldova will institute laws very close to that of Uganda's.

Poor, backward countries have little chance of surviving the onslaught of bigotry that both Lively and Cameron can produce and this latest foray into an Eastern European government might result in a death (or deaths) like gay activist David Kato's.

Poor Moldova. It's welcoming a werewolf in sheep's clothing.