If you haven’t heard, actor Heath Ledger is dead at the age of 28; he was found in his apartment last night, face-down and naked with a bottle of sleeping pills nearby. Police are are speculating drug overdose, among other causes; final cause of death is pending investigation. Ledger is known to the gay community as one of the leads in the award-winning film Brokeback Mountain, although for some reason this makes me think of Jonathan Brandis, child star of Seaquest DSV and The Neverending Story. It seems as if there’s at least one in every generation - an actor found mysteriously dead, although with Brandis they were quite sure it was suicide. With Ledger, no doubt we’ll know soon enough.
I can’t help but think, though, that these sort of stories are always tied to celebrities - who are always caught in the news fronted by sordid headlines about drinking, drugs, partying, wild sex, and domestic abuse. Celebrities are always in the public eye, always scrutinized, and often held up as examples of how we should look, dress, think, and feel, even while demonstrating exactly why their habits make them less than ideal role models. The funny part?
All of the celebrities that people so love to hate lead the exact lifestyle that the entire gay community is accused of living.
While Ledger wasn’t exactly known for a wild lifestyle, the fact that he was a celebrity immediately makes his death a tragedy to be mourned by the general public; no one suspects anything despite the fact that there were drugs involved and he could have been abusing them, although regardless of the reason any death is still a great loss. But had he been a gay pop culture icon, sordid rumors would already be flying and too many people would say that he likely brought it on himself for his profligate ways.
Then again, that’s just speculation. I’m not going to say any more, as I’m not going to use the death of a man to wave a torch. I’ve said all I wanted, and I’m done.
(Washington) A GOP former member of Congress who attempted to pass anti-gay legislation is accused of working for an alleged terrorist fundraising ring that sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida supporter who has threatened U.S.
Mark Deli Siljander was charged Wednesday with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about being hired to lobby senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.
Siljander was a Michigan Republican when he was in the House from 1981-1987. In 1987 he was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year.
As a member of Congress Siljander attempted to get legislation passed that would ban gay-themed books removed from public libraries. He also attempted to block a half-million dollar federal grant to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence claiming the group was run by “pro-abortion, pro-lesbian, anti-Reagan radical feminists.”
The 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying - money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Let’s see: kissing a member of the same sex, wanting to be able to legally marry, demanding equal rights and discrimination protection in the workplace, asking to be acknowledged as worthwhile members of society, as normal as the Cleavers…that’s all wrong, and according to some (right here in Texas, too) should be punishable by hanging.
But lying, theft, money-laundering, funding people who have a fun little hobby of blowing things up in this grand ol’ nation of ours…hey, that’s okay, right? Right? Guys? Crickets?
No, there’s no imbalance there at all.
The largest issue here is that of the charity, and Siljander is only incidentally involved - but I can’t help a touch of smugness that someone so staunchly against the rights of others is now being called up to defend himself against these charges. It’s called karma, biotch.
What? I can’t always be literate in my insults.
The traditional meaning of “crying wolf” involves raising a false alarm just for the sake of attention. In politics, however, crying wolf often involves raising a false alarm for the sake of diverting attention - and he who cries loudest often has the most to hide. This incident could likely raise questions about the secrets and loyalties of every anti-gay Republican who preaches his or her message from on high, decrying the GBLTQ community with such hatred that you would think together we comprised the avatar of the AntiChrist. It’s almost easier to believe that they aren’t all so close-minded and hateful and ignorant; they’re more clever than they seem, and while they might be as homophobic as your next Jihad-lovin’ Mr. Death to America, they’re only publicly shouting it to cover their grander, more sweeping and catastrophic activities.
It’s almost easier for me to believe, sure. But then I stop and realize that Republican political terrorist conspiracy theories make me sound like Dennis Kucinich waiting to be beamed up, sometimes the simplest answer is the right one, and yes, they really are just that backwards and idiotic.
Welcome to the sad state of America, folks, where people like this can gain a seat in Congress through the power of the popular vote.
One thing they’re right about: the terrorists are on our own shores.
They’re not foreigners. They’re our own people.
They’re not only people who want to expose America to jihadists. They’re people who want to regiment our lives on a daily basis, destroy our freedoms, take away our basic civil rights, and spread fear for the sake of making us pliant and submissive to increasingly invasive privacy laws that would make every personal detail and everything we owned property of the United States government.
We live in a world in which our government, by refusing to trust its people, proves itself unworthy of our trust.
Are we not meant to be the backbone of said government?
I’m out. Don’t forget that this Sunday, January 20th, is the second DR Live Webcast. I’ll be on the air and in the embedded chat room from 5:00-5:30p CST; if you miss it, an MP3 recording of the broadcast will be posted as soon as I can churn it out, as well as as much of the chat transcript as I can catch. If you have any questions you want me to answer on-air or any issues you want me to discuss on the broadcast, e-mail me at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net or use the contact form. There’ll be another prize giveaway during the show, so make sure you have your AIM open and ready if you’re listening. I’ll be available on IM during the broadcast, but I do want to reiterate one thing that I already said on the first broadcast:
Unless I am on air and live at the time that you’re listening, do not IM me. I’ve said it before and yet I still can’t log that screen name on for even five minutes without getting bombarded with IMs from various people and having to sign off or go invisible to finish a conversation with the person I logged on to contact in the first place. It’s not that I don’t like you guys; I do. You’re all my special little snowflakes. It’s mainly that I’m horribly busy and don’t have time to keep up with the volume of IMs that I get, and I’m not much of a conversationalist (read that as horribly awkward with people). So please, if you could keep any conversations to posts here on DR or e-mail, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.
If you can’t make it Sunday, have a good weekend and I’ll see you Monday with a new No Style. Ciao.
Yesterday, April Gilford at Life as a Christian Woman sent me a link to an article on Christian Newswire, by a member of Concerned Women for America. The article discusses fears of a bacterial epidemic as cases of deadly MRSA, more commonly known as Staph, begin to rise. Staph infections are rising everywhere, but the article highlights the growing percentage among gay men. At first I saw a cause for concern, but didn’t quite see the cause for anger…until I read further.
I don’t normally copy the full text of articles; just the relevant points. But this…this must be seen.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 /Christian Newswire/ — Reuters has reported that, “A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said on Monday.
“They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.”
“‘Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable,’ said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study.”
According to the study, at this point, homosexual men are 13 times more likely to contract the potentially deadly, drug-resistant strain of staph infection, but the fear is that, because the infection is spread via skin-to-skin contact, homosexual men may soon spread it to the general population.
Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), said, “The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among males, creates a breeding ground for often deadly disease. In recent years we have seen a profound resurgence in cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, rectal gonorrhea and many other STDs among those who call themselves ‘gay.’
“The human body is quite callous in how it handles mistreatment and the perversion of its natural functions. When two men mimic the act of heterosexual intercourse with one another, they create an environment, a biological counterfeit, wherein disease can thrive. Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.
“In recent years our culture has adopted a laissez faire attitude toward sexual deviancy. Television shows like Will and Grace glorify the homosexual lifestyle while our children are taught in schools that homosexuality is a perfectly healthy, alternative sexual ‘orientation.’ ‘Stay out of our bedrooms!’ we’re often commanded by militant ‘gay’ activists.
“Well, now the dangerous and possibly deadly consequence of what occurs in those bedrooms is spilling over into the general population. It’s not only frightening, it’s infuriating.
“Citizens, especially parents, need to stand up and say, ‘No More! We will no longer sit idly by while politically correct cultural elites endanger our children and larger communities through propagandist promotion of this demonstrably deadly lifestyle.’
“Why does it take a potentially deadly staph epidemic for people to acknowledge reality? Will that even do it? Enough is enough!” concluded Barber.
Is that what we are, then? Plague rats to be exterminated? Typhoid Mary crossbred with Venus as a Boy, black plague in the flesh, just another reason to hate us, brand us, lay the troubles of the world at our feet. Counterfeit they call our love. Unnatural they call our lives. Deviant they call our flesh, and perverse they call us for pleading to be seen and heard, asking for nothing more than acceptance and understanding. They seek any cause they can to vilify us, twist the truth until we are naught but devils in the eyes of a world forced to “acknowledge reality”: a false reality in which zealots will do anything to eliminate those who don’t follow their ways, more militant than those they seek to condemn.
Perhaps we should do no more than give that which we receive.
The article is right. Enough is enough. You want citizens to stand up and say “no more”? Then I will stand. I, a red-blooded American citizen, will stand and say “No more.” No more of your blame; no more of your bigotry, no more of your finger-pointing, no more of your hatred. No more of your lies, no more of your propaganda, and no more will I let you try to dictate how I live my life and who I dare to love.
I speak now to you, and you, and every living thing who would stand before us and refuse to acknowledge our worth, our equality, our validity, and the very core of our human nature. I stand before you, and I say no more will we be your scapegoats; no more will we be your demons, no more will we carry your martyrdom upon our bowed and straining shoulders.
No more will we lie down and let you trod your rough and filthy feet upon the very idea of our existence. No more will we fear your retribution, fear your violence and rejection, all while you cry that we are the ones endangering you. We have offered the olive branch, we have offered compromise, we have offered understanding and education - only to have them thrown back in our faces like so much offal. Are we so unclean? Are we so reviled? Are we, in our desire to love, so much more besmirched than those who would smear themselves with the war paint of hatred and shout from the mountaintops for the blood of our demise?
No. No, we are not. And so I say no more will I sit quietly, no more will I bite my tongue politely, no more will I leash the weapons of my words and thoughts in the hopes that some day, some how, diplomacy will gain some higher ground.
No more will I let you make me feel regret for what I am.
I will stand. I will stand, until the strength bleeds from the very limbs of those who would hurl their slurs and stones to cripple me. I will stand until the blood runs from my veins and the last breath leaves my lips, until my flesh falters and fails and yet still the fire prevails. I will stand until you cannot help but see me - me and not your dogma, see a human, a man no more or less vile than your father, brother, lover, son. I will stand until you can no longer look me in the eye and my pride becomes your shame.
No matter what you say, no matter what you do, I will stand - and dare you to knock me down.
One of the things that piques me most strongly about the disparity in perceptions between the heterosexual and homosexual communities is the assumption that heterosexuals are clean, wholesome people who never sleep around, never do drugs, always practice safe sex, and would never engage in intercourse with someone they weren’t wholly committed to - while homosexuals are considered promiscuous, reckless, and profligate, ridden with disease and addled by drug habits marked upon the community as clearly as heroin tracks down a junkie’s arms.
Stereotypes ignore the high rates of teenage birth among the heterosexual population, the divorce rates (often due to infidelity), the unemployment rates, the education statistics, the drug use statistics…while at the same time ignoring the high percentage of the homosexual population who believe in commitment, who practice safe sex, who are self-sufficient, drug free and responsible citizens who seek to educate themselves and contribute to society.
Neither stereotype is correct; neither positive or negative view can wholly represent either demographic, but instead only highlight extremes used as ammunition against the opposition when attempting to claim equality or even superiority. We are all greater than the sum of our parts; so, too, are the many demographics that we all represent greater than the sum of their parts. The creature that we create known as the “community” is larger than we, a giant and representative beast, faceless and almost autonomous from its many minuscule and independent cells - and like healthy skin stretched smooth over cancer cells, like tarnished scars over a strong and beating heart, that monolith of the community often lies about the very parts that comprise it.
Is the face of your community lie, or truth? Do you exemplify it or defy it? Among your demographic, where do you fit?
2.) What is your sexuality? (If you’re transgender, choose the sexuality you define yourself as with your chosen gender.)
(a) Heterosexual.
(b) Homosexual.
(c) Bisexual.
(d) Asexual.
(e) Confused as hell.
(f) Cannot define because genderqueer/intersexed.
3.) Are you currently in a relationship?
(a) Yes, and I’m happy with it.
(b) Yes, but I’m looking to end it.
(c) No, and I’m not looking for one.
(d) No, but I’d like to be in one.
(e) I’m dating, but not really committed.
(f) I’m in multiple relationships/open relationships.
(g) I’m not sure.
4.) Are you now or have you ever been sexually active?
(a) I have been in the past and I am now.
(b) I have been in the past, but I’m not right now.
(c) I’ve never been sexually active/I’m a virgin.
5.) How many sexual partners have you had in the past?
(a) None.
(b) None, but I have fooled around a lot beyond first base.
(c) One to five.
(d) Six to ten.
(e) Eleven to twenty-five.
(f) Twenty-six or more.
(g) So many that I’ve lost count.
(h) I’m not sure/I’ve never counted.
(i) That’s private/I don’t want to discuss it publicly.
6.) Do you practice safe sex/exchange of bodily fluids?
(a) Yes; always.
(b) Some of the time, when I remember to.
(c) I mean to, but I rarely remember.
(d) It depends on my partner and if I trust them or know they’ve
been tested.
(e) No; never. I don’t even think about it.
(f) I’m a virgin/I don’t fool around.
7.) Were you ever educated about the dangers of unprotected sex?
(a) No. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
(b) I was never educated, but I learned on my own.
(c) Yes; I was given educational material/instruction about
unprotected sex.
8.) Do you or have you ever used drugs?
(a) Yes, and I still do.
(b) Yes, but I don’t anymore.
(c) Yes, but I’m trying to quit.
(d) Yes, but only lighter things; nothing hard/heavy.
(e) No, and I never have.
(f) No, but I would be open to trying it.
9.) How do you feel about drug use in others?
(a) It’s their life; I don’t care.
(b) I’m strictly against it; no one should do drugs.
(c) I’m strictly against it, but won’t stop them as long as they don’t
associate with me.
(d) I’m all for it.
(e) I’m all right with it as long as it’s regulated and done in
moderation.
10.) Are you currently employed?
(a) Yes, but I’m looking for other work.
(b) Yes, but I’m not looking for other work.
(c) No, but I’m looking for work.
(d) No, but I’m not looking for work.
(e) No; I’m too young to work/still in school/live with my parents.
11.) What is your highest level of education?
(a) Some high school.
(b) High school.
(c) Some college.
(d) Associate’s degree.
(e) Bachelor’s degree.
(f) Master’s or higher.
12.) If you have not completed your field of study, are you still studying or did you drop out?
(a) I’ve completed my field of study.
(b) I’m still studying.
(c) I dropped out, but I plan to go back.
(d) I dropped out, but I have no plans to go back.
Remember, you can answer all of these anonymously if you don’t want to vouchsafe these details with your name. I can’t even tell who you are if you choose to do so; you can just type in “Anonymous” for the name and put in a fake e-mail such as none@none.com. Everything passes through a proxy IP on a squid server, so you all look like the same IP address to me when you post anonymously - so there’s no fear that I’ll discuss your answers as associated to you.
My answers:
1.) a. 2.) b. 3.) g. 4.) b. 5.) i. 6.) a. 7.) c. 8.) e. 9.) c. 10.) a. 11.) d with a bit of e, as I have an associate’s but I’ve studied towards a bachelor’s. 12.) kind of b, kind of c, since I’ve completed one degree but want to return to finish another.
A church in Michigan that supports gay equality in terms of marriage and clergy ordination has been turned away by an insurance provider worried that the church’s social policies might make it a target for vandals.
The national governing board of West Adrian United Church of Christ upholds equality for gays, and that worried Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co., reported the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 8.
Brotherhood had previously turned down churches that speak out against other denominations, demonstrate at the funerals of U.S. servicepeople, or preach violence against others.
Brotherhood also canceled the policies of some black churches during a rash of arson cases in the 1990s.
But turning away a church because of its progressive policies is something new.
I may be a bit biased here considering my less-than-eggshell hue, but the first thing that stood out to me in that article was the canceled policies of black churches. That may fly in Michigan, but down here in the South that’d get someone slapped with a lawsuit faster than Don Imus getting pimp-slapped for calling someone a nappy-headed ho. Unfortunately, denying a church for supporting gays would likely gain a raucous round of applause.
While I recognize the rights of a private business to deny service as they see fit and to act in their own best interests, and recognize that they have a point that churches that support unpopular views would be targets for vandalism, neither the logic nor the right inherent make the denial right. There’s a slippery slope between self-preservation and prejudice, and Brotherhood Mutual is teetering at the height of that slope and on the verge of careening down it at breakneck speed.
I admit that I can’t look at this fairly, though, because I have little faith in insurance companies. Their initial purpose was to protect people in extreme cases, providing them with a contingency plan and backup funds built slowly over time through regular contributions, meant for use in emergency/extreme circumstances. What they’ve become is a moneymaking machine that only wants clients whose money it can take with the least risk of having to pay out - meaning that the people who might most need insurance due to undesirable circumstances are the least likely to be granted that protection. It’s despicable that supporting gay rights suddenly makes one part of a high-risk group, suddenly undesirable to the money men of America. That sinks well below practical business survivability. There are a few trustworthy insurance companies out there, those who are genuinely interested in the well-being of their customers, but they’re rare.
I’m done. I can’t say anything else without going on a tirade. I want to get up on my soapbox and throw a fit condemning Brotherhood Mutual, but I can’t when underneath my simmering annoyance I condone their policies of denying coverage to churches who speak out against other denominations or advocate violence. On one hand, it demonstrates fairly that they’re denying people evenly based on risk rather than personal beliefs. On the other hand, it makes me feel like a biased snot for saying “oh, it’s okay to deny those people because I don’t like the way they think”. So I’m just going to walk away from that and just acknowledge that Brotherhood Mutual likely isn’t particularly homophobic; they’re just another typically sleazy insurance company trying to make as much money as possible.
So to divert to a lighter topic, don’t forget that the weekend-long 100 comments party starts at precisely midnight CST; there’ll be a post up detailing the (overly wordy) rules and the prizes, and you’ll comment to that post. The goal is to get 100 comments on a single post before Monday’s comic. Here’s hoping it won’t be a huge flop.
A number of organ donation groups said Monday that they are unaware of new Health Canada regulations that mean sexually active gay men, injection drug users and other groups considered high risk will no longer be accepted as organ donors.
The new rules, which came into effect in December, are similar to the regulations for determining who can donate blood. Those rules exclude groups that are at high risk of transmitting infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C and B.
Dr. Gary Levy, who heads Canada’s largest organ transplant program at Toronto’s University Health Network, said he was unaware of the new policy on organ donations.
Officials at several transplant programs in the country said because they were unaware of the new regulations, they would continue to consider all potential donor organs.
“We have not been informed, first of all, that Health Canada is considering this,” said Dr. Gary Levy, who heads Canada’s largest organ transplant program at Toronto’s University Health Network. “Obviously if Health Canada wishes to discuss that, we would hope they would engage all stakeholders.”
Dr. Peter Nickerson, director of Transplant Manitoba, which procures organs in that province, said transplant programs must now by law interview family members of the donor as part of the screening process.
“We’ll be asking about things like travel, history of infectious disease, whether they’ve [donors] been in jail — that puts you at increased risk,” Nickerson said. “Have they been an IV drug abuser in the past? Have they had tattoos? There’s a whole list of questions we go through.”
This was sent to me by one of my LiveJournal friends, who said that people have been pretty outraged over the ban on gay donors. Before you get up in arms, though, let’s break this down a little and try to look at it clearly.
Positives:
Statistically, STD rates are higher in the GBLTQ community, so by eliminating that statistic they’re also eliminating the risk of spreading STDs to unsuspecting recipients. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also reality.
Even if it’s only semantics, the ban is limited only to the sexually active - people who’ve engaged in intercourse with the same sex in the past five years.
It also includes drug users, a group that should be eliminated anyway because of the damage to their organs from the choices they made to take harmful substances into their bodies and the possibility of spreading disease through shared needles. There are other risk groups banned as well.
While shortsighted, this is a preemptive measure by the Canadian healthcare system to try to safeguard the lives of its patients, not a deliberate attempt at malice or prejudice.
An arbitrary ban is more cost-effective and efficient than initiating new testing measures to ensure that gay and other high-risk donors aren’t carrying anything infectious.
Negatives:
If we’re going to be realistic, one must face the fact that there are also plenty of straight people with STDs - and banning sexually active gay men from being organ donors may reduce the percentage of possibly infected donor organs, but it won’t change the fact that the healthcare system needs to develop more stringent and effective testing methods for harvested organs.
It’s difficult enough to get healthy donor organs even without excluding a portion of the population, and by refusing to accept organs from sexually active but healthy gay men, they’re denying the possibility of an organ transplant to patients who may be in dire need.
There’s a touch of pointlessness when it’s easy to just lie and say one isn’t gay. There is the process of interviewing family, but that can still be circumvented. Even in my fractious and contentious family, I could get them all to lie for me for a week if it meant that I could toss a kidney in a cooler to help save someone’s life.
To be completely fair rather than targeting a specific demographic as high-risk, all donors should be tested rigorously when their organs are harvested; straight donors’ organs are (or had better be) already tested, so it should be no different for gay donors. It would create more work for the healthcare system, but it would increase the donor pool and provide a fair criteria for rejection rather than an arbitrary and preventative one.
…there is a bit of an implied insult by lumping homosexuals in with drug users. Specifically, lumping gay men in with drug users, as you’ll notice that the ban doesn’t include lesbians.
It’s hard to judge when the U.S. has had a ban on gay blood donors since 1985, for similar reasons. In both situations, while it may be a cheaper and simpler way to reduce the numbers in risk percentages…I don’t think it’s the right way.
To start off the morning, Kaine won the 1,500 comments contest and is now the proud owner of a horribly pink 1GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player with FM tuner and voice recording capabilities. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but Kaine, I’ll be e-mailing you (I owe you one anyway, and got a little sidetracked) regarding where you want the MP3 player sent. Poor Lessa; missed it by just one.
This weekend, we’ll be having a comment party. Yes, a comment party, as weird as that bloody well sounds. The basic idea is this: at midnight CST on Friday, I’ll put up a post solely for the sake of commenting, explaining the full rules of the party…ish…thing. The purpose is to hit 100 comments to that post alone (comments to other posts won’t count) over the course of the weekend. You can’t just spam the hell out of the post, but like I said, the post itself will explain the rules. Whoever gets the 100th post will get a t-shirt in the Cafepress style of their choice with either the pink/blue or red/blue design posted in yesterday’s comic. There may be a runner-up prize for #101. I’d say if we really wanted to, we could hit 100 posts in one day; hell, if Hikaru and I start bickering, we can manage 50 of those ourselves in just a few hours.
Moving on to the usual mini-discussions of news that occur when Adri just isn’t in the mood for a high-blood-pressure sermon:
Arthritic, sporty, gay? Your finger ratio may tell you: Although it’s pretty common knowledge that apparently the lengths of your fingers in relation to each other can determine whether or not you’re good at math, researchers have also found a correlation between various other traits and the lengths of particular fingers. Long ring fingers indicate a likelihood for osteoarthritis; “male” finger ratios hint at lesbianism. I keep surveying my hands looking for “female” finger ratios to see if that’s supposed to be an indicator of my status as a fabulous king (one queen comment and I skin you) of gay snark. Funny how this one finger in the middle keeps popping up a bit higher than the others…
Gay bar’s straight bouncer wins discrimination suit: A straight woman who worked as a bouncer in a UK gay bar often dealt with harassing comments about her sexuality - a reversal of the usual harassment of homosexuals. She also claims she was fired for it and that her employer often called her a “breeder”; while the court determined that her firing had nothing to do with her sexuality, she was still awarded a settlement for facing discrimination in the workplace - and right well she should be. I still don’t know where we get this idea that because some heterosexuals are nasty to us, that gives us the right to behave in an equally bigoted, discriminatory fashion towards them. Two wrongs don’t make a right, more cliched BS, blah blah, the point is that no one’s sexuality gives anyone the right to behave like a complete douche towards them. It’s not all right to place the shoe on the other foot and “show them how it feels”. It just makes you as bad as the people that you mock and loathe.
Wasn’t asked, told anyway: In a refreshing change, a gay servicemember (who, if you follow the link, is not only brave but quite attractive) came out on public television and wasn’t in any way rebuked or confronted about it by his unit or his commanding officers - and he’s discovered that he’s not alone. Hundreds of gay servicemembers serve active duty with their sexuality fully known by their units. Their fellow servicemembers just don’t care. Out in the field, one’s sexuality doesn’t matter. What matters is capability, and whether or not the people in your unit can put their skills to use saving your life and the lives of the soldiers and civilians around you. Too many highly skilled individuals with knowledge and experience that could be valuable in avoiding bloodshed have been barred from service for the most idiotic reasons - the top reason being that the Pentagon somehow thinks that open homosexuality in the military will foster dissent in the ranks.
For decades, the Iowa caucus has been a significant indicator of which potential candidates would be nominated to run on each party platform in the U.S. presidential race. While the caucus doesn’t forecast the outcome 100% of the time, the results have been consistent enough for the event to draw a great deal of media attention as well as interest from concerned voters.
Since today is the first day of the new year, you’d think I’d have resolved not to sleep past noon. Ah, well. One less resolution to break. Since I’m not even technically supposed to be working today (day off and all, natch) and I’m not feeling particularly talkative, you won’t be getting a rant/dissertation/sudden and prolonged case of diarrhea of the mouth today. Here’s a few points of interest in the news, instead:
This isn’t quite that bad, but it does raise the question: if Huckabee indeed believes that we’re born gay, does that mean that in his eyes we’re born into sin and there’s no hope for salvation? Or are we born into sin but can be saved as long as we don’t engage in any homosexual activity, thus denying who we are and accepting a hateful belief that to love others according to our nature is wrong?
See that? That crap is one of the many reasons I’m an atheist. We ask the easy questions.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, that wipes out 99% of the ‘Life Guidelines’ questionnaire. Let’s just cover the key basics, then. Are you a viable, self-supporting member of society who contributes to the economy?”
“Yep.”
“Do you hate anyone just because an invisible man in the sky tells you to?”
“Uh…no.”
“Are your actions in any way causing harm to yourself or others?”
“Nope.”
“Are you engaging in mass destruction of property or any other criminal activity possibly involving napalm?”
“Not the last time I checked.”
“Okay, you’re good to go, then.”
“Nifty.”
See? Problem solved. (Of course, you could also argue that atheists are lazy and take the easy way out, while people of faith follow a more difficult path, which brings up the subject of why despite my sarcasm I actually respect many people of faith for choosing the more difficult road, but…that’s not a topic for this column. Moving on…)
New Year, New Unions for Gay Couples: When the ball dropped at the start of the new year today, it didn’t just signify the beginning of a new year; it signified the beginning of new rights for gay partners who wish to engage in legalized unions. New Hampshire’s legislature on gay partnerships went into effect at midnight, and dozens of couples lined up to tie the knot. While the cynic in me says half of them were just doing it for the novelty and will be divorced by 2009 (hell, I was tempted to grab R and drag him up there just to make a statement, but I think within a month I’d have been on my knees begging him to sign the divorce papers)…the rest of me hopes that those couples find the happiness they deserve.
Remind me to never visit Spain: The Pope is at it again, this time with a Dec. 31st broadcast that apparently went over quite swimmingly in Madrid. In it he said the family was “based on the unbreakable union of man and woman and represents the privileged environment where human life is welcomed and protected from the beginning to its natural end.”
Privileged environment.
Jay-sus, I feel like it’s the segregation days all over again. Or at least my college years in Alabama. Elitist b*****d.
The sad thing is, repeating something over and over again doesn’t show faith in one’s convictions. It demonstrates an inability to adapt, an inability to discuss one’s stance from a logical standpoint with valid reasoning to back it, and an inability to accept that the world might not actually operate according to one’s hidebound beliefs. It’s another example of not wanting to own up to the fact that one’s prejudices are wholly one’s own responsibility, rather than hiding behind dogma as a shield.
That’s it from me. Just that little bit and I’m burnt, spent, and done - longer than I intended, but still not quite one of my usual sermons on a single topic. I need some verbal Viagra or something, as long as it doesn’t make me go deaf.
Screw it, I’m goin’ back to bed. See you tomorrow, hopefully before noon.
Today is a day to discuss world news, and the death of a woman who accomplished many things in her life and will now influence even more in her death.
If you’ve kept even one ear open to the news, you know that yesterday former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, killed by a bullet to the neck before a suicide bomber detonated near her vehicle, killing at least twenty other people at the election rally she’d attended. Bhutto was the first democratically elected female PM of Pakistan, and a voice of opposition against other Pakistani political leaders.
Her death has sparked worldwide concern over the fate of elections, Pakistani democracy, and even the overall stability of a nuclear-armed country - and has thrown Pakistan into chaos. Over a dozen have died in protests and riots; buildings and vehicles have been bombed, burned, and ransacked. Police have been called out in force to suppress violence. Supporters are already pointing fingers and handing out political propaganda accusing her rivals, including Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The grief and anger of a nation are felt on every street, in every home. Across the globe, people hold their breaths and wait for the tide of chaos to ebb, to see what will remain washed up on shore.
Bhutto’s life was one of turmoil and unrest as she sailed through unstable and even dangerous political seas. She represented change and progress - but even more, she represented choice. In her absence and with her strongest rival boycotting the elections after her death, there will be little choice for the Pakistani people and the upcoming elections will border on a farce.
Here in the United States we watch, we listen to the statements of our president, and many of us find it difficult to comprehend that the death of one woman could possibly change the political tenor of an entire country. We thank whatever deity we believe in that such things rarely happen here. We cross ourselves and pray that Pakistan’s unrest will not spread to touch our shores, and whisper over nuclear capability in what-if situations that change little but that make us feel as if we’re “on top of things” by discussing them. Little in our world has changed. Little in our world would change, if we found ourselves in the same situation.
If Hillary Clinton was assassinated before the 2008 presidential election and the nation suspected rival Mike Huckabee, we wouldn’t riot in the streets. We wouldn’t protest. Very few of us would take action at all. We would press our fat, soft fingers to our mouths and make distressed noises. We would stand on our soapboxes and preach angrily, and yet rally to do nothing. We would talk about it over business lunches and coffee breaks. We would point fingers from the comfort of our sofas and wait for the television to tell us who did it, to give us our neatly-packaged daily dose of current events. We would obey any edict that our governing bodies laid out, and accept their promises that they would handle everything even if we didn’t quite believe it. In a nation of millions only a small few would gather to raise their voices, to speak their hearts and minds - and they would quickly be silenced and sent to their homes by police officers, riot armor at the ready.
Why? Because we are complacent, compliant, and even a little afraid. We are afraid to lose the comforts of our lives, and know that the death of but one politician cannot strip the nation of said comforts - but the acts of one in response to that death can strip that individual of his or her possessions, freedom, possibly even their life. We weep in the name of patriotism, but these are no longer the days of JFK. We feel little for our leaders. They are neither beloved nor trusted. Most people don’t even know exactly what it is they do, or care. This is not the nation of our fathers.
And this is not Pakistan, where the silencing of a single voice can change the political face of an entire country - where the death of one woman can shape the lives of a nation.
You can view this in whatever light you want, positive or negative. You can say that we’ve grown apathetic, or you can say that we are stable. You can say we’re blind followers, or you can say that we have faith in the process, and that our nation is so large and so secure that not even the death of a major political figure could shake it beyond dominating news headlines and initiating changes in federal security policy that the people would have little say in. We are safe from riots, and from mass violence. We are safe from everything, because we are everything and while headlines are interesting, we’re more worried about making it to work on what little gas is left in the tank. We play the short game, the nine to five, the game of life and all its minutiae. We are the trees, and we rarely take notice of our existence as part of a greater arboreal entity that is comprised by us and yet at the same time encompasses us.
We are people of small lives and small concerns - but our nation is a large and slow-moving beast, ponderous and difficult to sway in its path, often little caring for what other creatures it tramples underfoot.
And I think that, even if we could see clearly that our path wound its way towards a long and unforgiving cliff, very few of us would try to change the beast’s direction.
You know what? I’m not in the mood for serious discussion this morning. It’s Friday, it’s been a horribly long and busy week, and I have one more day of work to get through (and about six articles to finish) before I can go anywhere near my Don Rodolfo Malbec and a few chunks of nice, aged asiago. So you’ll have to pardon me if today, I randomly blurt out pretty much anything that comes to mind, tongue firmly in cheek and heavy on the snark. It will likely be silly and pointless, but most of life is anyway.
First, I really can’t imagine why anyone would care if Lindsay Lohan is potentially swinging from the fence. Who gives a rat’s? Celebrities play on ambiguous sexuality all the time, especially those noted for bouncing in and out of rehab like yo-yos on Prozac (or LSD, or heroin, or whatever the trendy drug of the week is…). They’re not gay/bi, they’re just vapid and indiscriminate in their partners, and think a girl/girl kiss makes them as edgy as Madonna. This is news pretty much only to Slashdotters and other such socially inept dwellers in the parental basement, who’ve just found new fodder for their Lindsay Lohan girl-on-girl fantasies. Make sure to lotion up, boys. Your palms will start to chap pretty quickly.
Despite aggressive spam filters, I routinely get hundreds of spam e-mails a day. The majority of them are overly concerned with the size of my endowments, with a fixation oddly reminiscent of my cat’s unhealthy obsession with watching me undress. (Or unsure of what they want to say about my pen, as they start out so often with “Your Pen Is…” My pen is what? It’s right there, on the desk. What about it?) The concern is admirable, really. Too many men aren’t concerned enough about their sexual health, so all these lovely solicitous e-mails are a heart-warming reminder to schedule my annual doctor checkup.
I’m horribly distressed to see, though, that my spam e-mails just aren’t politically correct enough. They always assume that I have a girlfriend or a wife, or am desperately seeking one, or just “want to know her how she is from the inside”. For shame, spammers, for shame. Have you ever thought that I, your target customer, may not be interested in the young woman whose image you’ve kindly provided to illustrate your point, however lovely she may be? What if I want to know him how he is from the inside? I’m shocked and hurt by your lack of consideration, really. Especially since your constant comments that Concetta has a conspicuous f***stick are really quite insensitive to MtF transgenders.
Or is it a veiled compliment? Are you somehow implying that not a single gay man on the face of the earth needs your enhancement products, and that our online profiles tell the truth and we are, in fact, all gifted like John Holmes?
A weighty point to ponder, indeed.
Any transgendered individuals who read Darkside Rainbow will no doubt be relieved to know that, according to American Daily, your gender dysphoria is just an affliction indicating a disconnection from reality that should be treated and ultimately cured with therapy and prayer. Liberalism is also a mental disorder, transgender rights are ridiculous, and gender identity is pure nonsense. Prayer should be able to fix that, too. The FtM gay male he’s talking about in the article? Just a confused straight girl in plaid shirts and dockers who’s an absolute fool for trying to do anything that would allow her to live more comfortably with the lot she’s been given. There. Don’t you feel better now that Matt Barber’s cleared that up for you? Run along now, pray for a few hours, and maybe his God will be kind enough to “cure” your gender dysphoria and make you so happy with your birth gender that you’ll happily fall into your appropriate 1950s-esque gender role. Remember to start your prayers with “Dear Lord.” He likes being called “Lord.”
To close things off on a more serious note: I’m not a praying man despite my seeming familiarity with the Captain’s Almighty’s titular preferences, but if any of you out there are (well, or praying women, considering the demographics of my reader base) , keep Mehdi in your thoughts; the young gay Iranian is awaiting the decision of a Dutch court over whether to return him to the UK, where he will likely be summarily packed up and sent right back to Iran - and we all know that gays don’t exist in Iran.
I’m done, and out. See you Monday. Yes, I’m posting a comic on Christmas Eve. Just call me Scrooge, baby, and get your plebeian butt back to work.
When I was in university, I had to walk to classes - twenty miles, barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways. We weren’t allowed to have clothing; my school’s uniform was the meal sack, with a few holes cut out for the arms and head. If you didn’t follow tradition you were flogged and made to walk across a bed of broken glass to the school monument, which was forty miles uphill both ways. And they only fed us on alternating Tuesdays.
…
All right, maybe not. But at the risk of being called an old geezer, in my generation kids were raised to know better than to pull the kind of stunts this Princeton University student almost got away with:
(Mount Laurel, New Jersey) A Princeton University student who argued that his conservative views were not accepted on the campus confessed to fabricating an assault and sending threatening e-mail messages to himself and some friends who shared his views, authorities say.
Princeton Township police said that Francisco Nava was not immediately charged with any crime, but that the investigation was continuing.
Nava claimed to have been assaulted Friday by two men off campus, police said. But he later confessed that scrapes and scratches on his face were self-inflicted, and that the threats were his work, too, said Detective Sgt. Ernie Silagyi.
[...]Nava, a 23-year-old junior politics major from Bedford, Texas, found himself at the center of one campus controversy recently when he wrote a column for the student newspaper criticizing the school for giving out free condoms, which he said encouraged a dangerous “hook-up culture.”
A short time later, Nava made his first report to the university public safety office that he was receiving threatening messages in his campus mailbox. A friend says Nava told him one message read, in capital letters: “ONE MORE ARTICLE AND YOU WON’T LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.”
Other members of the Anscombe Society, a conservative student organization, who have spoken out against premarital sex and same-sex marriage, said they received similar threats. So did Robert George, a professor in the politics department.
Robinson-Brown would not say exactly how the university responded to the threats. But she said that, in general, when students are threatened they are given access to counselors, assured that the campus security force will take their calls right away and can be moved to new dorm rooms.
Another student wrote in the campus newspaper Friday that the threats Nava received did not get the same forceful response as anti-gay graffiti that appeared this semester outside the dorm rooms of some gay students.
Brandon McGinley called it a double standard, which made it seem OK to “use intimidation tactics to silence the voices of morally conservative students.”
If I’d ever pulled anything like that and been caught - and you can bet I would have been; my parents always knew when I’d done something, even if they didn’t know what just yet - my mother would have torn me a new one and my father would have taken a belt to my behind (yes, even at 18+, for something like that). Once they were done, my grandmother would have taken me out in the back yard, made me pick my own wooden switch, and then given me a good lashing with it. College kids from any generation are known for stupid antics, but there’s a line you just don’t cross, not if your parents raised you to know what’s good for you. Francisco Nava crossed that line.
In a way I can see what he was trying to accomplish, by proving that there’s a double standard regarding discrimination and protections for those who face threats for their beliefs or simply for their state of being. There was a strong reaction to anti-gay graffiti; people were roused in support of gay rights. There was a lesser reaction when he faced supposed threats for his articles, as if his rights weren’t as important.
But he botched it in more ways than one, coming at it from the wrong angle - and I don’t just mean by getting caught. One, while the article isn’t wholly clear on this, he didn’t seem to make it apparent that the faked threats were because of Nava’s anti-gay stance and participation in an anti-gay group on campus, which removes the double standard right there. It’s only a double standard if gays are threatened for being gay and receive better responses than anti-gays who are threatened for being anti-gay, rather than just being threatened on general reasons of being “morally conservative”. As far as I can tell, the article written before he started his hoax wasn’t even about homosexuality; it was just about promiscuity in general, encouraged by the dissemination of condoms on campus.
Two, it’s hard to make a solid case for directly parallel discrimination when gays are discriminated against for what we are, while anti-gays are discriminated against for what they believe. I think Nava and many of his ilk may have problems grasping that because they believe being gay is a choice and a lifestyle. While causality doesn’t make discrimination against any group any less heinous and certainly doesn’t justify threatening anyone (if there were real threats involved, anyway), people tend to be roused more by those victimized for traits they can’t help than those victimized for something they chose and that, in turn, discriminate against others for who or what they are.
The third problem is that doing something like this weakens the case for believability where a double standard is concerned in the first place. There is a double standard, even with the point above regarding the difference between a state of being and a choice; we, as gays, are widely seen as the victims, and anti-gay groups as the aggressors - but in terms of rights, as we struggle to find equal footing we all become victims of attempts to completely remove our rights in order to grant them to the opposition. Because gays have fewer rights, though, we’re given more benefit of the doubt, more support, and more sympathy.
Few people see our struggle for equality as an attempt to take rights of expression and belief away from anti-gay groups. They may see things differently. Does that mean that I think our struggle for equality is wrong or that their attempts to suppress said equality are right? Not just no, but hell no. Something’s got to give, and I’m sick of it always being us. They have the right to their beliefs, but we have the right not to have them enforced on us. So yes, there’s a double standard. It’s an unfortunate necessity and it can’t be avoided in any situation of opposing groups struggling to win out against one another; that’s just life, and fairness really has no place in it. But in between that double standard, there is a balance to be found somewhere, if we can try to find a happy medium that recognizes equal rights for all without discriminating against anyone - meaning each side’s got to give a little and take a little.
But valid points regarding that double standard, which may actually open ground for talks between opposing groups as each side recognizes the viewpoints and concerns of others, are completely eroded when one has to fabricate acts of persecution in order to prove it.
During Sunday’s live webcast, I addressed a reader question asking what I think of the Iraq war; I pointed out that Americans don’t understand enough about Iraqi culture to even try to govern it. After reading the news this morning…I can’t help but conclude that we don’t even understand enough about Iraqi culture to comprehend the slightest effect that we have on their society. Unfortunately, I think most of us don’t really care, either. Many Americans are of the opinion that Iraq will be fine once it’s become a homogenized little mini-America, just another annexed territory with a bit of a transAtlantic leap between.
Hopefully for the Iraqi people…that will never happen.
BAGHDAD — In a city and country where outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion and attracting attention can imperil one’s life, Mohammed could never blend in, even if he wanted to.
Mohammed, 37, has been openly gay for much of his adult life. For him, this has meant growing his hair long and taking estrogen. In the past, he said, that held little danger. As is true throughout the Middle East, men have always been publicly affectionate here.
But, at least until recently, Mohammed and many of his gay friends went one step further, slipping into lovers’ houses late at night. And, until the American invasion, they said, Iraqi society had quietly accepted them.
But being openly gay is not an option in the new Iraq, where the rise of religious extremism has left Mohammed and his gay friends feeling especially vilified.
In January, a United Nations report described the increased persecution, torture and extrajudicial killing of Iraqi lesbians and gay men. In 2005, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”
He lifted it a year later, but neither that nor the recent ebb in violence has made Mohammed or his friends feel safe. They yearn to leave Iraq, but do not have the money or visas. They agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their last names not be used.
They described an underground existence, eked out behind drawn curtains in a dingy safe house in southwestern Baghdad. Five people share the apartment — four gay men and one woman, who says she is bisexual. They have moved six times in the last three years, just ahead, they say, of neighborhood raids by Shiite and Sunni death squads. Even seemingly benign neighborhood gossip can scare them enough to move.
“We seem suspicious because we look like a cell of terrorists,” said Mohammed, nervously fingering the lapel of his shirt. “But we can’t tell people what we really are. A cell, yes, but of gays.”
His hand drifted to his newly shorn hair. He had lopped it off days earlier. There had been reports of extremists stopping long-haired men, shearing their hair and forcing them to eat it.
It is impossible to say how many gay men and women face persecution in Iraq. According to an Iraqi gay rights group, run by a former disc jockey in Baghdad named Ali Hili who now lives in London, 400 people have been killed in Iraq since 2003 for being gay.
Set against the many thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war, the number is small. But for Mr. Hili, and Mohammed and his friends, it is a painful barometer of just how far Iraq has shifted from its secular past. [Read more for a description of gay life in Iraq before the occupation.]
Truth told I, like anyone, often don’t fully appreciate the impact of something until it touches on something deeply personal to me. This, more than anything, more even than the body counts and the horrific news reports of bombings and siege, has made me realize the profound and lasting effect that the American invasion has had on Iraqi culture. It’s sobering, it’s painful, and it’s probably entirely selfish that it took that for me to view the occupation through such personal eyes and really take a moment to feel something for the Iraqi people beyond logical assessments of why Americans shouldn’t be occupying Iraq. I can’t help that. That’s human. Willful blindness, self-absorbed preoccupation.
That’s the way many of us are, to some extent. Iraq is “over there”; it’s a political issue, not a matter of real people with real lives that have been forever altered by something beyond their control. We feel strongly about the politics, about the people who agree and disagree with us, but we don’t extend our compassion and our understanding of the Iraqis as people unless we’ve been there or unless we find something that strikes a chord in us and makes it so very deeply personal.
Mohammed’s story and the stories of other gays in Iraq have made this personal for me. I’ve felt for a long time that America should pull out of Iraq, but that feeling has only intensified as this forces me to look beyond not just the issues of how the American occupation has changed gay life there, but how it’s changed other aspects as well. Their entire society has changed; we’ve destroyed parts of their culture that can never be retrieved, affected political balances, increased religious, social, and political intolerance, and in some cases created the very atmosphere of fear and terror that we claim to be fighting a protracted and useless war against. Life is naturally made up of disastrous changes, and one either adapts and survives, or fails - but the changes we’ve wrought in Iraq aren’t natural. They aren’t beneficial. And the Iraqi people won’t recover from them for a very, very long time.
It’s like engaging in battle over fertile fields. Your battle, won or lost, may be all that matters to you at the time…but in the process the fruits of those fields are destroyed, trampled carelessly underfoot while you’re too busy looking on to your opponent. Eventually the battle will end; the land will clear, and the bodies will be removed, enshrouded, and buried. But the great trenches of war will remain; the land ravaged and stomped by a thousand feet, razed by fire, poisoned by the substances of war. It’s only when the fight has moved on that the land may start to recover, and the people of that land can move in to nurture it slowly back to health - even though its shape and character have changed entirely, and it may never be what it once was, may never grow as it once did.
The Iraqi people are both that field, its fruit, and its tenders.
Sorry I’m a little late in updating today. I stayed up too late last night, indulging in one of my secret guilty pleasures with one of my best friends: curling up on the couch and watching chick flicks until we cried and laughed all at once. Sometimes you just need a night of Smirnoff Ice, cigarettes (hush, Sihaya, I only had one; you know I don’t smoke anymore), and laughing over the fact that you can both still remember the lyrics to Brandy’s “Sittin’ Up in My Room” perfectly and you can’t help getting up to dance when you hear “so I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low”.
The funny part about that is that while I can get away with that without shame, just by being the type of guy who just does what he does without caring whether it’s considered masculine or feminine…he’s this big, butch bruiser who always has to be the manly-man. He’d be utterly humiliated if I mentioned him by name here, or if anyone knew that he actually watched a chick flick…and enjoyed it. Ha. He was crying thirty minutes into Waiting to Exhale; it took me at least an hour to start the waterworks. (I think the line that got me was “Someone felt that way about me, once…but he stopped.”) Still…as a result of our escapades, I went to bed rather late and overslept today. And here I am now, looking for something to talk about for today’s post before I head off to the post office to finally mail off a certain insufferable a**hole’s package.
Well, for starters, don’t forget that this Sunday, December 16th, at 5p Central Standard Time (if you don’t know when that is in your time zone, check here) marks the first (experimental) Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, in which I will try my damnedest to keep from tripping over my tongue for an hour of live interactive talk radio…even if I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to say and my stage fright is mounting more and more the closer we get to the date. I’ve worked out how to get the bloody thing to work in IE (sort of), so there shouldn’t be too many people barred from listening. If you miss it or if the live broadcast player doesn’t work from your OS or browser, I’ll be posting the chat transcript and an MP3 of the audio later, using the Flash player currently in use for the streaming radio.
Next, we’re already close to the halfway point on the 1,500 Comments Contest. We’d jumped off again at 1,000, with 500 comments to hit the goal. We’re currently at 1,205, in a surprisingly short period of time. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, check out the second half of this post with the rules and the prize (a 1GB MP3 player).
Moving on to more serious news: I’m a few days late on this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a valid point for discussion. Every time I start to think that we as a society have begun to make forward-thinking cultural progress, someone proves me wrong. It’s only a little more disturbing when that “someone” is a prominent political figure and presidential hopeful.
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee refused to retract a statement he made in 1992 calling for the isolation of AIDS patients.
Surging in the polls, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee campaigns Saturday in Asheville, North Carolina.
Responding to an Associated Press questionnaire, Huckabee said steps should be taken to “isolate the carriers of this plague” during his failed run for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas 15 years ago.
He said he probably would not make the same statement today because of what is known about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted.
“I had simply made the point — and I still believe this today — that in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when we didn’t know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols that we would have acted,” Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 1985 that AIDS was not transmitted by casual contact. But Huckabee said at the time, “there were other concerns being voiced by public health officials.”
He disputed the characterization that he was calling for individuals infected with HIV to be quarantined.
“Now, would I say things a little differently in 2007? Probably so,” Huckabee told Fox News. “But I’m not going to recant or retract from the statement that I did make because, again, the point was not saying we ought to lock people up who have HIV/AIDS.”
Huckabee did not explain how individuals with HIV would have been isolated.
During his Senate run, Huckabee also told the AP in the questionnaire that he found homosexuality to be “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle.”
As always, I’ve got to play the Devil’s advocate first. It makes me feel better about turning around and calling someone an absolute arse.
To be fair, Huckabee refused to retract his words not because he’s still just as uneducated about HIV/AIDS, but because he’s trying to point out that at the time he made that statement, he was speaking with the more limited knowledge that he had available and making a statement based on what he thought was his best judgment and in the interests of public safety. (Although really, Huckabee was still pretty far behind, considering he made that statement in 1992 when the transmission methods for AIDS were known by 1985, but I’m trying to be a little lenient here.) I’m not saying that I think his judgment was right, but I do think the media are putting a more sensationalist spin on his intentions by making it sound as if he’s still actively advocating sequestering HIV/AIDS sufferers. He admits that with the information available about HIV/AIDS today, his judgment would likely follow a different slant. That should be enough; a retraction really isn’t necessary, though a more clearly stated, honest admission of his ignorance would be nice.
But the media are using his statement about HIV/AIDS to cast an even uglier light on his already-reprehensible stance towards gays, because there’s an instinctive association between the two subjects. If he was talking today about isolating people with some new, viciously fatal disease whose methods of transmission were unknown but that wasn’t in any way related to a divisive political and personal issue, people would say that he was acting in the interests of public health and safety by making sure that the disease couldn’t become an epidemic while we endeavored to understand more about how it’s communicated.
Ech. That almost makes me sound like I support the arse’s foot-in-mouth syndrome; really, I just can’t stand media sensationalism even when it’s turned on those I oppose. But without further ado and fairness aside…
I refuse to listen to rhetoric about sin from a man who had a role in pardoning a convicted rapist. Follow your own damned dogma; aren’t those who scream about the sin of homosexuality also the ones who advocate “let he who hath no sin cast the first stone”? I’m really getting sick of religious ideals being used to sway people’s political choices; how many times have I ranted about separation of church and state? How many times have I snarled about people trying to force their personal ideals on others through manipulation of the law? How many times have I said that one’s sexuality should be one’s own business and not a matter that concerns either church or state?
You know, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some kind of fear underlying people’s religious endorsement of their viciously antipathetic reactions to homosexuality. No, I don’t mean the cliched argument of “you’re afraid of homosexuality because you’re denying your own homosexuality”, although at times that has been the case.
I mean fear of admitting one’s own subjectivity, and owning one’s own biases and flaws without looking for excuses to make them acceptable. I’ve yet to find anyone who could explain a logical reason for their vituperative condemnation beyond that it’s “sinful”, “unnatural”, and “against God”. I just want one person to say “God’s got nothing to do with it; homosexuality just personally grosses me out”. I’d think it was a bit immature, but it would be refreshingly honest, and founded in someone’s personal feelings (kind of like me saying bananas gross me out, frigging fruit of the devil) rather than using a smokescreen of faith to make themselves feel justified in acting on a base dislike with no rhyme or reason.
Hiding behind faith ensures that people aren’t exposed for enacting such gross hatreds towards other human beings based on irrational gut feelings alone, and possibly judged by others for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were truly afraid of admitting such, when really it would do everyone a lot of good if homophobes could approach it from the simple perspective of likes vs. dislikes rather than looking for a torch to wave as an excuse to force their opinions and their dislike on others. It would sure as hell make a lot more sense.
After all, I don’t try to make everyone stop eating bananas, do I?
Every day, the GBLTQ community faces prejudice; we’re accused of corrupting principles of home and family, destroying traditional marriage, promoting sin, seducing children, even bringing down the wrath of one god or another in the form of natural disasters ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the Indian Ocean tsunami. If there’s a problem with the price of rice in China, it’s our fault. We’re the scapegoats for practically every homophobic cause in existence - and now, according to Pope Benedict XVI, we’re also a threat to world peace.
The annual message from the head of the Roman Catholic Church to the world has been unveiled. [...] It is entitled The Human Family, A Community of Peace, and in it he calls for the dismantling of nuclear weapons and environmental co-operation and describes gay marriage as “an obstacle on the road to peace.” The 80-year-old German-born pontiff theorises that peace and the family are inherently linked and any threat to the “traditional family” will be opposed by Catholics.
[...]“Many legislative initiatives work against peace by weakening the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, by directly or indirectly forcing families not to be open to accepting a morally responsible life, or by not recognising the family as having primary responsibility in the education of children,” he said.
[...]“The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman, constitutes “the primary place of ‘humanisation’ for the person and society,” he wrote.
“The family is therefore rightly defined as the first natural society, a divine institution that stands at the foundation of life of the human person as the prototype of every social order.
“Whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace.
“This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.”
It really disturbs me that millions of people worldwide look upon this man’s words as the word and law of their god. Any remotely agreeable fellows out there want to take a New Year’s road trip to New Hampshire with me to get semi-hitched out of sheer spite alone? No? Thought not. Let’s move on to the discu
heath ledger, death, ambien overdose
