Crimes against humanity

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Scott Lively gets his day in court

By Vince Warren

A man looks on December 11, 2012 at an advertising by campaign group Avaaz in the state-owned Ugandan newspaper The New Vision, protesting against an anti-homosexuality bill. Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but the new bill proposes to introduce the death sentence for anyone caught engaging in homosexual acts for a second time, as well as for gay sex where one partner is a minor or has HIV. It would also criminalize the public promotion of homosexuality -- including discussions by rights groups -- with a sentence of up to seven years in prison for anyone convicted. (MICHELE SIBILONI - AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Is there anything extremist right-wing preachers won’t blame on LGBT people? After the Newtown shooting, James Dobson listed tolerance of gay marriage as one of the reasons God’s punishment was directed at a bunch of first graders. And who can forget the classic Jerry Falwell moment, blaming 9/11 on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle….”

It’s easy to laugh at wingnuts, but they have millions of followers and their hate, in the name of some perverted concept of God, gives moral cover to the queer bashers and bullies everywhere.

On Monday, we’re going to be face to face with one of them, Scott Lively, in a courtroom in Springfield, MA. If that name isn’t familiar to you like Falwell’s or Dobson’s, that’s because Lively’s unique contribution to this anti-gay agenda is his persecution consulting in other countries, most notably Uganda, where he brags he is known as the “father” of the anti-gay movements.

Many Americans have heard of the infamous “Kill the Gays” bill inUganda, which has been introduced in several parliamentary sessions since it arose out of an anti-gay conference that Scott Lively headlined in 2009. But the day-to-day reality for LGBT Ugandans is already violence, death threats, severe discrimination and oppression. Meetings of LGBT activists are raided and shut down, and advocates have been arrested for exercising their rights to speech, assembly and association. LGBT Ugandans’ advocacy, indeed their existence, is already criminalized.

No one has done more to orchestrate this situation than Scott Lively. Since 2002, he has worked systematically to strip away human rights protections from LGBT people in Uganda and elsewhere around the world, to silence them and make it impossible for them to organize and defend their rights. While he peddles the usual, age-old lie that LGBT people are pedophiles in order to deliberately provoke the rage that feeds the growing repression and violence, he combines that myth with a new twist, that gays were also responsible for the Holocaust and that Hitler’s Germany is what can happen when a gay movement grows unchecked.

But this case isn’t simply about Lively’s “hate preach.” He long ago moved beyond “mere” hatemongering when he became a kind of persecution consultant, strategizing with influential leaders and cohorts in other countries about ways to further silence and remove LGBT people from basic protections of the law, in particular by criminalizing their advocacy. Persecution, defined as the “severe deprivation of fundamental rights” on the basis of identity, is a crime under international law; to be exact, it’s a “crime against humanity.” This deprivation of fundamental rights of LGBT communities is exactly what Lively aims to bring about. Under U.S. law, foreign citizens who are the victims of crimes against humanity can sue American perpetrators of such crimes. And so Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG) is suing Scott Lively for persecuting them. Staff from SMUG and other LGBT advocates who have suffered persecution --arrests, raids, and other severe deprivations of basic rights --will be there on Monday, when the Center for Constitutional Rights will have the honor of representing them in court.

If you happen to be in the Springfield area on Monday, join us in court that day and at a press conference outside afterwards. Wherever you are, though, you can follow the day’s events on Twitter - @theCCR will be live tweeting the event using the hashtag #StoptheHate. Every queer person in America can help expose what Scott Lively is doing by retweeting the news from court and by letting their friends know about this case.

The theology of hate, which blames LGBT people for disasters, natural and man-made, for the destruction of the family and everything in between, has to stop. And it won’t stop if LGBT advocates continue to be denied their fundamental rights to express themselves, to associate and assemble, to defend and assert their basic human rights. It won’t stop if plans like Lively’s are allowed to proceed. Religion has often been misused as a justification for maintaining inequality and denying the humanity and dignity of others. Persecution by political forces using the Christian religion is not a new tactic, from the Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials, but in the 21st Century we have laws against it and it’s time to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Vince Warren is the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

By Vince Warren  |  01:55 PM ET, 01/04/2013 

Gay marriage bans demolished

Object to gays? this won't be your cup of tea. Don't like Rachel Maddow? You won't want to watch this. It will just piss you off. It's 55 minutes long. Don't have the time or don't want to spend the time? Your loss. But if you give a shit about individual rights and are willing to open your mind, you should take the time. You may learn something new.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The day will come when humans accept that other humans are very likely different, and that being different isn't such a bad thing. In this 21'st century since the birth of some mythical "savior," we have had plenty of time to learn how not to hate, and how not to be afraid.

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Didn't win that vote

Mitt was once a different fellow and I didn't used to feel so much animosity for the fellow. Now it appears as if his goal all along has been to top his dear old dad and that he is willing to do or say anything... even toe the evangelical, dominionist, religious right's line to get 'er dun!!!

I'm proud of this Nam vet for standing his ground. He served his country as he was asked, and all he wants is the same respect granted to those who he fought alongside. This old soldier once again illustrates that military tradition and love of country has no bounds.

The religious bigots of this country show no such bravery... they are hateful cowards... and our current crop of pandering Republican politicains are the biggest cowards of them all.

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...of the good and the Godly

The Chick-Fil-A foofaraw that unfolded upon our Great American Landscape over the past week has illustrated an unfortunate fact. In spite of all these hundreds of years of human growth and learning, bigotry remains a part of our nature… we’re still afraid of all those people not like us. Worse yet, we are willing to deny our fellow humans the same rights we enjoy.

Dan Cathy, CFA’s head honcho, ever so eloquently pointed this out for us in that unfortunate interview published by the Baptist Press. Cathy’s bigoted babbling is actually not anything rare in our modern discourse, but for some reason it ignited no less than a social media wildfire and prompted some of the more loud mouthed liberal politicians to hint at and openly threaten what would have been illegal restraints. Wingnut talking heads on the right smelled blood in the water and pounced.

Since the interview further details have emerged showing that Cathy puts CFA’s money where his bigoted mouth is by donating large sums of those good Christian greenbacks to recognized, overtly anti-gay hate groups, Groups such as Focus on the Family, Alliance Defense Fund, American Family Association and the Family Research Council received a total of $1.1 million out of the total $5 million dollar budget for CFA’s charitable arm, the WinShape foundation.

CFA patriarch and founder Truett Cathy is also the founder of the WinShape foundation. Reading the papers that formed the basis for WinShape’s original goals reveals a good man intent on helping children. If modern Christianity had not shifted so wildly toward hatred, fear and bigotry, WinShape might still be meeting those noble, early goals. Today, however, fully 20% of the foundation’s support goes to groups who would deny equal rights, all the while justifying the spreading of hatred, fear and bigotry as being “the Lord’s work.”

At any rate, the liberal backlash to Cathy’s ill-advised public comments spawned an overwhelming reaction from the so called conservative talking heads. Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Beck had a field day, of course, but it was those well known good Christians Rich Santorum and Mike Huckabee who took action.

The Huck and Frothy travelling minstrel show organized Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, and the next thing we see is bigots on parade. Here in Fort Worth the circus really is in town, but this was a circus of entirely different character.

The number of good Christians willing to stand in line and spend money in this organized display anti-gay bigotry was large and far too reminiscent of the 1950’s and 60’s. Sorry folks, but it disgusts me that so many in our supposedly free republic would so willingly… even joyfully… support the promotion of hate and the denial of rights for their own countrymen.

The fools call it love and compassion. To them they are behaving in a good, Godly manner. That is what their preachers tell them all the time, but this is far too reminiscent of another chapter in the progress of this nation where denying equal rights was considered to be the good, Godly and the right thing to do.

We’ve finally pretty much gotten past those days, but hells bells! Those damn liberals seem to recognize the similarities to the good old days of yore when white, Christian men made the rules, owned all the blacks, the women and the children… and for some reason those damn liberals decided to object to the foolishness embodied by Cathy’s statement.

Immediately across the right wing hate-o-sphere was heard the cry of censorship… people incited into street marches loudly shouting that Cathy has a right to voice his opinion, those damn liberals were violating the constitution in some fashion by denying Cathy his guaranteed right to say something stupid. The proposed boycott of CFA prompted the buycott in an effort to prevent those damn liberals from robbing this innocent man of his right to spew ignorant babble.

Something we should remember here is that the same people objecting to a CFA boycott have over the past weeks, months and years advocated boycotts of J.C. Penny, Starbucks, Ford Motors, Lowes Home Improvement, Best Buy, Disney, Target, Sesame Street, Ellen Degeneres, a Purple Dinosaur, a purple Telletubby, and Oreo Cookies… but there is certainly nothing hypocritical here… nothing at all.

So what we have in the end (assuming it has ended) is bigots blinded by ignorance lining up to buy chicken sandwiches in opposition to an imaginary threat and in support of behavior that most certainly isn’t good or “godly.” In my time I've been fortunate enough to know some good people who call themselves Christian. They are people who, in my mind, would be good even if the concept of Christ had never existed. They are just good people. Pompous fools like Santorum and Huckabee likely do not impress the truly good folk.

In all those photos of the long lines of CFA faux Christian supporters, many, maybe most of these good, godly people were like me in one respect – overweight. Some were grossly fat but perhaps I should be more generous and simply call them "well nourished."

I have to wonder if any of these people have ever volunteered to help at the food bank so that hungry people here in America might have the benefit of a little nutrition too. If not volunteering, have they at least donated to the food bank?

Have they ever contributed to any charity that might do some actual good in the world, or is standing up for misguided, Christian bigotry the only thing important to them... and buying a chicken sandwich the only contribution to anything they have ever made?  

I hope the waffle fries were good, but meanwhile, in other parts of the world…

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Study used as basis for anti-gay bigotry recanted by author

The name of Dr. Robert L. Spitzer has for decades been associated with the advance of the study of psychiatry. It was synonymous with the very diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists everywhere as the tool for determining the cause of and therapy for mental disease. For more than 30 years, when it came to mental illness, Dr. Spitzer literally wrote the book.

He also authored a study that has proved very harmful to one segment of humanity; not so much for what it says, but for how it has been used. In 2001 Dr. Robert L. Spitzer presented the not-peer reviewed article entitled Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?  With this study, the myth of Reparative Therapy was codified in the minds of bigots everywhere.

Over the objection of his own colleagues, the study was later published. A group of 15 researchers at Dr. Spitzer’s own New York State Psychiatric Institute stood firmly against the study and very correctly predicted its effect. “We fear the repercussions of this study, including an increase in suffering, prejudice, and discrimination…”

Dr. Spitzer, although holding on to the results of his flawed study for 11 years, never ceased to have doubts. In each and every instance where the study was publically touted as proof of homosexuality’s sinfulness, Spitzer spoke out. It has done little good, and finally Spitzer has come forward to publically debunk his own flawed study.

From the New York Times, Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’

From Forbes, How One Flawed Study Spawned a Decade of Lies

From The Atlantic, 'Gay Cure' Researcher Robert Spitzer Is Trying to Do Right

I don’t expect the religious right or other homophobic bigots to give up on their campaigns of hatred, but this at least is a good start… and it is about time.

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Don't know what to say

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H/T

What Did Jesus Do?

Answering Religious Conservatives Who Oppose Bullying Prevention Legislation

Daniel B. Weddle and student Kathryn E. New, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
 New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement, Vol. 37, p. 325, 2011

Abstract:

Conservative Christian organizations assert that anti-bullying programs are a stealth effort by gay activists to introduce into American schools an aggressive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda. They contend that legislation and bullying prevention programs that mention gays are an attempt to indoctrinate children to embrace homosexual lifestyles; tolerate homosexual behavior; and celebrate homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity.

These voices are having an impact on state legislatures and the damage is immense. Educational research has made clear the devastating effects of bullying upon children, and LGBT students are among the most often targeted and least protected students. Given that schools are already failing to address bullying effectively, efforts to thwart protection of any group of students -- especially one that is routinely targeted -- is unconscionable.

Yet these devoted Christians zealously interfere with protection of LGBT students from abuse by their peers and believe wholeheartedly that they are doing children and Christ a great service.

We believe they fundamentally misunderstand three things: the dynamics of bullying, the law pertaining to student-on-student abuse, and the example and teachings of Christ. This Article addresses these misunderstandings. We propose a response to the distortions that are used to promote what is an anti-gay agenda that represents neither the teachings of the Bible nor the position of most Christians and evangelicals, whom these organizations purport to represent.

Our hope is that, once the distortions are debunked, thinking Christians will reject the misguided efforts of a relatively few but influential individuals and organizations. If new voices can confront the misleading claims of anti-gay zealots with informed educational, legal, and Biblical responses, perhaps the distortions will be seen for what they are by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Full article available at SSRN,

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Where Good Hair gets his money

This is a clip of Lou Engle of the International House of Prayer. Engle likens the American secular form of government to nazism. This is run of the mill stuff for Engle, who previously advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality and showed solidarity with Uganda while it was considering a bill that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. It should be noted that IHOP is one of the premier supporters of Good Hair's Prayer Fair.

From this particular soundbite, I find it difficult to understand the nazism comments. If that specter should at all be raised, Engle sounds rather more nazilike than a secular U.S. government.

"Can a homosexual have civil rights in America? They might. But it is not their right given by God. Their right is to repent and stand until Jesus delivers, and then the Church must go into war for them and get them free. Brothers and sisters, we made it two spheres: government has a sphere and God has a sphere. That’s what they did in Hitler’s day, they voted for money in economic crisis and they sacrificed the sanctity of life of the Jews. We do the same thing in America."

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George Bush is beginning to look like the smarter of the two

It is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican party that some have gone so far as to call Perry the winner of the recent New Hampshire debate... in spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that he wasn't even there.

The U.S. has no lock on whackjobs and homophobes

It was a little over a year ago, shortly after Haiti was ravaged by a massive earthquake, that Pat Robertson pronounced that god was responsible, and that the devastation was god's way of settling an old score.

Now the land of OZ is experiencing natural phenomena unlike any before. Last year the State of Victoria was all but decimated by a hell-storm of brushfires. Last month the floods in Queensland drowned an area larger than all of Texas. Before the Aussies had even the briefest of respite, they are hit with a category 5 cyclone. God must be very angry with Australia.

Weather events are, after all, simply "acts of god," are they not? Pat Robertson obviously thinks that way, so god must have had something to do with the terrible events in Australia, and he must have been angry about something... or at someone ... right?

I feel sure that Brother Robertson would be real proud of this religious kook from Down Under, who blames all of the above on Australia's gay, green, atheist PM, Julia Gillard.

"It is very sad that this dark chapter in Australia’s history is led by an atheist Prime Minister in Julia Gillard and an openly homosexual Greens leader... both who have no regard for God nor prayer."

We need to get this Dr. Nalliah together with Robertson, Fred Phelps and Terry Jones. That would be a group of which even Frank Schaeffer might be proud.

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HT Hemant

Stone age thinking

Ambulance Driver just posted an interesting link. One of AD's Facebook friends is a gay EMT who has been in a committed relationship for several years. This friend has a blog too, and had posted a message about a recent experience with a Baton Rouge company by the name of Southern Style Granite. From the sounds of things, the owners of of Southern Style Granite are still living in the stone age.

As the story goes, a gay couple entered Southern Style Granite seeking to purchase products for the home. This couple was rudely confronted by one of the owners and told to leave. Southern Style Granite is seems does not do business with "your kind." 

As AD points out, this can't be the best thing for business. Especially for a business selling stone countertops and such... products that might be ordered by interior decorators. One must wonder if this neanderthal realizes how many interior decorators happen to be gay. 

Of course the neanderthal and his (apparently) slightly less rude co-owner/brother have the right to think any way they wish and do business any way they desire. But the public has the right to not do business with neanderthals too.

So... please link to this posting, to AD's or go to the horse's mouth and and link to RJW's blog post. Lets raise this kind of bigotry to #1 status in the search engines. An informed consumer is a wise consumer. 

My intention is to update this post with links to any of yours of which I become aware, so give me a shout.

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Robert J. Wilson's original message

Ambulance Driver's link

Dan Savage at The Stranger has linked to the original story

I never doubted the Earth Bound Misfit would get into the act

TOTWTYTR has passed it along

Rogue Medic calls them unAmerican

Adventures of a Drama Filled Mom linked to the original post

Another Louisiana blogger, Tiger  Droppings, has a copy of the CCA email

Care2 linked to RJW's post

Jim at the Supersonic Reflectoscope is brief and to the point

Void Where Prohibited writes a good one

Trommashere has written a poignant letter to SSG

Now Old NFO has commented

Now comes The Wraith

Followed closely by Georgia's Rick O'Shea

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