Tag Archives: wingnut

Which part of ‘love thy neighbor’ confuses you?

society, , , , , ,

Billboard that went up in Jacksonville, Mississippi this week after the new anti-LGBT law was signed. “Guys, I said I hate figs and to love thy neighbor.”
Billboard that went up in Jacksonville, Mississippi this week after the new anti-LGBT law was signed. “Guys, I said I hate figs and to love thy neighbor.” (click to embiggen)
Lots of us have been predicting that there would be many, many more of these so-called “religious freedom” laws passed with an intent to discriminate against queer people, and that there would be more of the anti-trans bathroom bills passed in states since the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. Some people thought that the swift backlash from both regular citizens and the business community which prompted the repeal of the Illinois law and then a similar Arizona law’s governor’s veto last year would put a damper on the anti-gay legislation fervor. I was not one of the latter. I knew that the bigots would keep doing this for years to come. The war for equality isn’t over. We’ve made a few touchdowns, we’ve stymied a few of the other side’s scoring drives, but there is a lot of struggle still ahead.

Mississippi’s governor signed a bill this week that is pretty awful. It protects any individual, business, or organization (including hospitals) that want to refuse service to gay people due to a sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, that sexual relations should take place only inside such marriages, and that the terms male or female refer to individuals’ immutable biological sex. So it specifies which “religious beliefs” are protected. That is not religious freedom, that is religious imposition. That’s not protecting someone’s right to a belief, that is forcing a very specific set of so-called religious convictions upon everyone.

Yes, the law later has specific language that says that it shouldn’t be construed to imply that anyone can be refused emergency medical treatment, but it will be construed that way, and people will die. We’ve had situations like this before. A lesbian couple was vacationing in Florida some years ago, one member of the couple was in an accident, her partner had their medical power of attorney paperwork, but was refused admittance to the hospital room, was not allowed to give consent to her partner’s medical treatment, and the partner died while the hospital was trying to track down a blood relative. There was no legal basis for the hospital to refuse the power of attorney. Personnel at the hospital refused because they thought that Florida’s ban on same sex marriage invalidated the power of attorney (it did not). Florida courts subsequently ruled that the hospital had been wrong to do that under the law, however they also ruled that the hospital and employees weren’t liable for the death or any sanctions, fines, or lawsuit because they had thought they were acting in good faith.

And that is part of the reason that these “religious freedom” laws are so dangerous. People will decide that their bias is more important than the life of a “sinner”—and other people will be harmed and sometimes even die. Often the person who let them die will get off despite those caveats in the law because it will be decided that they were acting in good faith.

The idea that the law will protect you if you discriminate against certain types of people will encourage people to take it further. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in his famous dissent of the Supreme Court case that upheld sodomy laws, the mere existence of such laws, even when it was shown that they were largely unenforced, creates the notion that certain types of people are less than human. The existence of even a narrowly-focused law used to justify a plethora of other types of discrimination against people who the law is aimed at. A few years later, when the Supreme Court reversed that ruling and invalidation all sodomy laws, Justice Kennedy quoted Stevens’ earlier dissent in explaining the reason the court had changed course.

The most galling part of all of this is that these people are claiming to be following Jesus when the propose withholding medical care from queer people,  refusing to sell food to queer people, refusing the rent to queer people, et cetera. No matter how many times I read the gospels—especially the Sermon on the Mount—I can’t find anything that Jesus said that could be construed to condone such action, let alone command it! In fact, Jesus said that if someone sues you for the shirt off your back, give them your shirt and your coat, also. He doesn’t say change the law so you can shun and be cruel to some of your neighbors and be immune to being sued or legally punished for any of the consequences thereof!

This is why people are fleeing the churches, particularly young people. These folks have redefined Christianity, replacing Jesus’s teachings with condemnation of gay people. You can ignore any and all of Jesus’s actual commandments, but if you’re anti-gay enough you’ll be the hero of the Christian Right.

When laws like this are enacted, they don’t just hurt the people who get the services denied. They scare other people. They send a message that people who don’t conform to one group’s religious precepts are less than human, that they are not safe, that they cannot count on the police to help them if crimes are committed against them, that they aren’t welcome, that they won’t be treated fairly before the law. And that’s why businesses speak out against these laws. It isn’t because they are beholden to some mythic ally power queer lobbying force. It’s because employees—not just queer employees—don’t feel safe being sent to those states to work.

The truth is, no one should feel safe in places that have laws like this. Because the law gives judgmental people a license to punish anyone they think might be queer, or might be supportive of queer people. That makes these laws a form of terrorism—they are intended to scare queer people back into the closet, and with that stuff about biological sex and sex outside of marriage, all sorts of other people to lie and hide and pretend to be something they aren’t—and I can’t find any definition of love that condones that.

Confessions of a godless (-ish) homo devil

culture, , , ,

World Net Daily's graph of just how godless some cities are
World Net Daily’s graph of just how godless some cities are (click to embiggen).
World Net Daily has the headline (here’s the DoNotLink if you want to see it): “These are the most godless cities in America,” and I was a bit disappointed to find that my beloved home, Seattle was merely tied for second, falling behind Portland, Oregon. The World Net Daily and the American Family Association has made the determination of godlessness based primarily on the percentage of inhabitants who describe themselves as “religiously unaffiliated” in a recent survey. A whopping 42% of Portland residents say they are religiously unaffiliated, with Seattle and San Francisco tied for second at 33%, followed by Denver at 32% and Phoenix at 26%.

I have a few quibbles. At several points the original AFA press release and WND story conflate “religiously unaffiliated” with atheist. Even though other parts of the story make the distinction that only about 15% of of the nation’s population identifies as atheist. Conflating unaffiliated with atheist is simply wrong. I, for example, am not atheist—I’m taoist. But on a survey like this, depending on exactly how the question was phrased, I would almost certainly pick the religiously unaffiliated option because I don’t belong to any church or temple or similar organized religious institution.

I realize, since I’m:

  • a big homo,
  • have been a firm believer in the separation of church and state since at least the age of 10,
  • believe in science,
  • usually vote Democrat,
  • support pro-choice candidates and policies,

…et cetera—that the AFA would of course classify me as godless. But I suspect they would classify my queer friends who regularly attend Christian churches (decidedly liberal ones) as godless, as well.

My point, however, is that there are people who believe in god, and even believe in the same god the AFA claims to believe in, who would describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated because people like the AFA have done everything in their power to redefine Christianity to mean hating gays and people who support them to the point that they’re driving people from their congregations.

The original article also asserts as one of the harms of all this godlessness the following: “religious groups, spiritual environmentalists, and secularists… sometimes must cooperate with each other to address the region’s pressing economic, environmental and social issues.”

Horrors! People must cooperate with other people who may not agree with them on some other things to get things done? Say it ain’t so! Too bad we have all this cooperation going on! If we didn’t, we might have the insanely high infant mortality rates, childhood poverty, and teen pregnancy rates like the more godly cities in the Bible belt have. You just gotta love that strong religious culture, right?

I’ve known plenty of misogynist, racist, and/or homophobic atheists, just as I know a lot of Christians who are feminist, pro-queer, pro-equality, and otherwise in favor of most of the things of which scolds like the AFA disapprove. So we can’t use religious affiliation to unerringly predict someone’s stance on public policy issues. And as I observed a couple weeks ago (Confesses of a recovering evangelical), most of the religious right isn’t terribly devout. They’re far more motivated by their conservatism, which manifests as a reactionary opposition to change. And they don’t really pay that much attention to anything that the Jesus actually said, as evidenced by their breathless enthusiasm for military intervention, condemnation of any unarmed people of color who have the audacity to get wrongfully killed by police, and so on.

It’s why Bill O’Reilly was able to say with a straight face that Jesus promoted charity, but not to the point of self-destruction. Except, of course, since Jesus’ whole reason for coming to earth was to get killed on the cross for the sake of imperfect humans, he was indeed promoting charity not just to self destruction, but to literal self sacrifice.

The World Net Daily story is also interesting in that the comment sections is overflowing with homophobic comments, because of course no place can be godless without us homos there egging the nonbelievers on, apparently. Just like Pastor Manning who is insisting today that the foreclosure auction ordered on his church building because of more than one million dollars in unpaid utility bills has nothing to do with money. No, he claims, it’s an illegal plot of the sodomites to silence him. (By the way, the Ali Forney Center has raised more than 58% of their goal to attempt to participate in that foreclosure auction. If you can donate to this opportunity to turn hate into love, please do!)

Amazingly, New York City doesn’t make it onto the AFA’s list of cities with a higher unaffiliated percentage than the national average of 22%. I guess “New York Values” aren’t completely unholy, after all. Equally amazing, Las Vegas barely exceeds the national average of godlessness! Who knew?

Weekend Update 9/12/15: It’s about ethics…

news, , , , ,

Florida: So, twitter and other places lit up with the news that a notorious GamerGate person has been arrested by the FBI for terrorism. The Florida Man twitter account had the best take: Florida Man Plots Fake Terrorist Attack Because, I Don’t Know, Ethics in Games Journalism…Or Something? Other sites have a few details to add: GamerGate supporter arrested by FBI over terror threats. I understand, and even share a teeny bit of, all the schadenfreude that’s happening on the internet over this. But I’m having trouble actually applauding.

The thing is, people have been calling for investigations into the swatting and doxing and death threats that shut down events for a long time. There have been rumors that the feds were looking into those things at least since last year: #Gamergate Is Reportedly Being Investigated by the FBI.

But this isn’t about any of that. An FBI informant contacted this 20-year-old douche, claimed he wanted to set off a bomb at a 9/11 memorial, and convinced the douche to send him bomb-making instructions. In other words, like every other domestic terrorism arrest in the last decade and a half in America, it’s a case of entrapment. No actual terrorist plot existed. No actual people were in danger. That’s why I’m having trouble applauding. There are actual terrorists active in America right now. But they’re not plotting to bomb 9/11 memorials. They’re burning down Planned Parenthood clinics, burning down mosques and churches, shooting people in temples and churches, murdering doctors who have performed abortions, or threaten to burn down an entire town in upstate New York because muslims live there… and they are never investigated as terrorists. Their support groups and organizations are never investigated as terrorist groups because they all share two convenient traits: their membership is predominantly white, and they claim to be Christian.

So, while I am happy that at least one douche who has threatened and harassed people is getting some legal punishment, I wish it wasn’t on these sort of trumped-up/entrapped terrorist charges instead of things he and others like him are actually doing on their own.

Michigan: I posted in Friday links a few weeks ago about the virulently anti-gay and emphatically “Christian” legislator in Michigan who attempted to frame himself for having a drug problem and having hired male prostitutes as part of a really ill-thought-out plan to cover up the fact that he and another anti-gay legislator had been having an old-fashioned opposite-sex affair (while they were both traditionally holy matrimonied to other people). This week an ethics committee voted to recommend that the two of them should be removed from office. One resigned, and the other refused, so a 14-hour series of votes ensued before she was officially removed from office: 1 Michigan legislator expelled; 1 resigns. It took so long and so many votes, by the way, because liberal democratic legislators kept voting no on the principal that conservative hypocrisy and adultery shouldn’t be reasons to remove someone from office (the only democrats on the ethics committee abstained on the vote to recommend removal).

The two of them had co-sponsored several anti-gay bills, so again there is a bit of schadenfreude going around. I have absolutely no problem applauding this outcome, because they are being expelled for things that they actually did, and I disagree with the liberal lawmakers precisely because these are public officials who used their office to attempt to pry into, criminalize, marginalize, and deny the basic civil rights of their fellow citizens based on sexual orientation—in the name of their religion—while they themselves engaged in sexual conduct that is at least just as wrong according to said religion. When people in authority use their official power to condemn and attempt to police other people’s sexual activities, their own sexual activities become germane to any discussion. Also, there is more going on than just the affair. As this story notes: Disgraced lawmakers, out of office, now face criminal probe, investigation is also underway as to violations of campaign finance laws, official misconduct, and a misuse of public resources.

I didn’t save the link to the most infuriating article I read, and now I can’t find it. But Cindy Gamrat, the one who wouldn’t resign, was trying to paint herself as a victim. She told the interviewer how humiliating it was to have people in public talk about her private shame, passing judgment on her private conduct, and voting on her future because of it. Right. And her bill to make it legal only for “minister of the Gospel, cleric, or religious practitioner” to issue marriage licenses and to revoke all the privileges of marriage from people who hadn’t been married by such a clergyman wasn’t at all invasive of citizen’s private lives. And none of the rest of her actions opposing civil rights protections for queer people had anything to do with passing judgment on citizen’s private conduct.

tumblr_nugs6s2rbg1s5wv6vo1_540Kentucky: And you may have thought the Kim Davis issue was over, since she promised the judge she wouldn’t interfere in the issuing of marriage licenses to gay couples, but no: the Associate Press reports Kentucky clerk again asks for delay on gay-marriage licenses. Her attorneys argue that the only couples she denied licenses to before she was sent to jail all got licenses while she was in jail, and now she should be free to refuse any others who come along because those people got thiers. In other words, she’ll refuse licenses until the next couple sues and judges order her to give that couple the license.

Except she doesn’t think that will happen, not because she doesn’t think there aren’t any more queer people in her county, but because Oath Keepers offers Kentucky’s Kim Davis a ‘security detail’ and Oath Keepers Send Armed Guards To Protect Kim Davis From US Marshals – See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/oath-keepers-send-armed-guards-protect-kim-davis-us-marshals#sthash.p5Exjxbp.dpufThese gun-totin’ good ol’ boys have vowed to protect Davis from any federal marshals or judges who attempt to arrest her or otherwise punish her for denying queer people their legal rights.

It has been reported that Davis has declined the offer, and that the Oath Keepers leader has told his men to stand down… but apparently they aren’t leaving Rowan County. And given that Davis has clearly stated in her new filing to the appeals court that she has no intention of keeping the promise she made to the judge to get released from jail, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to contemplate that she may un-decline the offer from the Oath Keepers when things don’t go her way with the appeals court.

Bullied bullies, part 4

news, ,

cartoonThis is last week’s news, but still worth commenting on: Mark Driscoll resigns from Mars Hill Church. Mars Hill is a megachurch (consisting of 15 branch churches, several in the Seattle area, both others in other states) that preaches a slightly modernized/pseudo-hip version of the usual misogynist/homophobic fundamentalism. And the lead paster/senior pastor/whatever he called himself was a particularly douche-y man named Mark Driscoll. Continue reading Bullied bullies, part 4 →

Homo devils in space!

news, , , , , , , ,

A pair of bigots.
A pair of bigots.
In case you didn’t already know that neither Pastor Manning nor Pastor Driscoll are even slightly acquainted with logic, the last couple week’s revelations will make it crystal clear.

I’m not even sure where to begin. Pastor Manning’s most recently posted youtube video explains how NASA’s Voyager spacecraft proves that homos are perverts, with a long digressive rant about rectums. Pastor Driscoll’s supporters have been trying to distance themselves from recently unearthed postings on the church’s forums in which Driscoll explained that god created each woman as a special home for a particular penis.

You can’t make this crazy stuff up!

Continue reading Homo devils in space! →

Cursed be those who support homo devils

news, , , , ,

Pastor Manning's church is misconstruing scripture and broadcasting hate to the neighborhood. Again.
Pastor Manning’s church is misconstruing scripture and broadcasting hate to the neighborhood. Again.
So, I’ve written before about the church in Harlem with the church sign that has previously referred to white homo devils and called for the violent murder of gay people and has tried to portray themselves as victims of hate when people object to their signs (and sermons, and so forth), and have tried to disrupt fundraising events for homeless shelters for gay youth.

Among other things.

Their new sign says that individuals and churches that support “homos” will be cursed with cancer, HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), syphilis, stroke, madness, and itch, then references I Corinthians 6:9: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…” Interestingly they don’t reference the next verse, which is a continuation of the sentence, “nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

That’s important because Pastor Manning spent time in prison in both New York and Florida for burglary, robbery, larceny, criminal possession of a weapon, and other things. So verse 10 would seem to say that Pastor Manning may not be so welcome in the kingdom of God.

But less snarkily, look at another word there: “revilers.” A reviler is someone who insults or verbally abuses someone else, someone who criticizes abusively. Such as someone who calls people devils, or calls for whole classes of people to be stoned to death. That sort of thing.

I know that Pastor Manning is using one of the more hateful translations of the Bible. Since 1946 certain people have decided that the scriptures weren’t anti-gay enough, and they went through changing verses where it isn’t entirely clear what they are referring to to explicitly says “homosexual.” But the two words that used to be translated into english as “effeminate” and “abuses of themselves with mankind” are not so clearcut.

Scholars argue a lot about what the Apostle Paul meant there. Paul wrote in greek, which had a word for men who have sex with other men already, but Paul didn’t use that word. Greek also had a word for male temple prostitutes, and Paul didn’t use that word. Instead, he made up a word, arsenokoitai. That words has never appeared in any other Greek text at all. It appears to be a compound of the words “man” and “beds.” If Paul was condemning homosexual behavior, why would he make up a new word when words already existed for it? And also, it is important to note that he uses specifically male-gendered nouns, so if Paul was condemning homosexual behavior, it was only gay male homosexual behavior: so apparently lesbians are fine, as far as Paul is concerned.

My own guess, based on how much of a misogynist Paul appeared to be, and how much he despised sex of all kinds (the fundamentalists all ignore Paul’s other admonishments where he condemns marriage and having children as an anti-Christian waste of time that would better be spent preparing for Jesus’ return; yes, Paul was against people marrying and raising families), is that Paul was making a general condemnation of all kinds of sexual and romantic behavior, here. And he aimed it at men because Paul didn’t really believe that women mattered, or at the very least he didn’t believe that women made choices of their own, but rather simply did what men told them to do.

And there is nothing in 1 Corinthians at all about cancer, or the virus that causes AIDS, or itching.

But Manning sees lots of things that aren’t actually in the text. It’s very convenient for a man with as big an ego as his, and as long a history of abusing and using others as him.

Bullied bullies, part 3

news, , , , ,

NewYorksHKA.com
The “Jesus would stone homos” sign was vandalized.
The church sign which two weeks ago said that Homo white demons were stealing black men from good black women, and then followed up by proclaiming that Jesus would stone homos, has been vandalized. The vandals spray-painted “God is Gay” onto both sides of the sign. Security footage shows the guy initially trying to rearrange the letters on the sign, perhaps to spell out his message that way. It’s unclear.

Pastor Manning, who has used the sign to proclaim anti-gay messages many times over the years before the “homo white devils” proclamation that got him headlines, has said he isn’t surprised, since homosexuals are “outright bullies” and he has been expecting “some violence.” He also claimed this was a violation of his right to free speech.

I don’t approve of vandalism. If there is anything that will make me have a violent reaction, it’s seeing some crap you can barely read spray painted across someone else’s private property. Admittedly, one of the reasons I have such a violent reaction is because of having the word “Fag” spray painted on my car when I was 17 years old. So any time I see spray paint like the words on that church sign, I have an immediate flashback to that morning when I came out of the house to drive to school and saw what some cowardly person had done to my car.

So, the first time I saw a news story with that picture of the hateful sign vandalized with the spray paint, my first thought was, “damn it, why did someone have to do that?”

That said, I pretty much everything that Pastor Manning said in interviews about this crime have been wrong. Not just quibblingly not quite accurate, but unequivocally, factually incorrect.

First, this is vandalism is not bullying. Bullying has very specific definitions according to the experts. In order to qualify as bullying the behavior has to satisfy three criteria:

  1. It has to be verbal or physical aggression
  2. It has to be repeated over time.
  3. It must involve a power differential.

All the experts further agree that the final criteria is the most essential. If that imbalance of social and/or physical power doesn’t exist, the behavior doesn’t induce the some long-term stress related trauma that typifies bullying. Bullying is socially coercive. The intent of bullying is not just to terrorize the victim, but to remind the victim that they are not in charge, that they don’t have a say in what happens to them. Bullying leverages all of the ways that we, as humans, are hardwired to conform or try to get along with “our people.” It is not merely being mean.

Spray painted words certainly can constitute verbal assault, but it is a bit muddled when those words aren’t implicitly or explicitly a threat. “God is Gay” isn’t a threat. Further, it is in direct reaction to (and covers up) words that absolutely did constitute a threat. A single act of self-defense, even one like this one which I think steps over the line, does not constitute an act of bullying.

It’s a single action, not repeated. So, under the second criteria it fails. Not bullying.

One man with a paint can does not have more social or physical power than the guy who has a church full of people, the pulpit from which to preach, the church sign that spreads his message to the whole neighborhood, a weekly podcast that spreads his message to whoever wants to hear it, a youtube channel to spread it further, and the ear of the entire rightwing-o-sphere to rush to his aid because of those mean, mean gays!

I mean really, how dare a homo object to your public declaration that gays should be stoned to death? Clearly the solitary homo with a spray paint can who objects is being the bully there, not the man using the power of the pulpit, podcasts, youtube, conservative radio, in addition to the sign to call for the violent execution of all the gays. [End sarcasm mode]

So, this incident doesn’t meet any of the three criteria to qualify as bullying.

Now, to the accusation that gays are violent. As I pointed out in part 1 of this series, contrary to what many on the right have been claiming, there are ten times as many hate crimes against gay, lesbian, trans, or bisexual people than crimes motivated by hate toward Christians. When you take into account what a large proportion of the population Christians are, and what a small proportion gay people make up, that makes the likelihood that a trans/gay/lesbian/bi person is going to be the victim of a hate crime monumentally more likely than a Christian is going to be targeted for such a crime.

Finally, the free speech argument. Do I really need to explain that the right to freedom of speech is not the same as the right to speech with no consequences?

Obviously, the pastor doesn’t understand this. Legally, freedom of speech means that the government cannot preemptively censor your expression, nor is it allowed to legally punish you merely for the content of your speech (with certain narrowly defined exceptions, such as making a credible threat to commit harm to another person, or communication in aid of a conspiracy to commit a crime, or the famous ‘yelling fire in a crowded theatre’). It does not mean that the government has to punish people who react badly to your speech. It does not mean that other people aren’t allowed to say bad things about the things you said. It does not mean that other people aren’t allowed to think you’re a horrible person because you have said hateful things.

And even though Pastor Manning doesn’t believe what he said was hateful, he knew he was proclaiming a message that would anger some of his neighbors. As Justice Scalia, of all people, said a few years ago when some rightwing Christians from my state were trying to prevent the release of the names of the people who had signed the petition to put an anti-gay measure on the ballot here in my state, “Politics takes a certain amount of civic courage. The First Amendment does not protect you from civic discourse — or even from nasty phone calls.”

Spray painting the words “God is Gay” doesn’t even constitute a nonspecific threat, so you can’t even make the argument that the vandal is trying to intimidate Pastor Manning into silence.

His sign has been vandalized. I wish it hadn’t happened. I think we should be able to call out the Pastor’s hate speech for what it is without resorting to damaging property. Such as the woman who showed up and said she was there for her stoning.

But freedom of speech means that other people have the right to disagree with what you say, and to tell you they disagree, and even to be less than nice about it. It means we have the right to laugh at you, to call you a bigot, to tell other people the awful things you have said, and so on.

That isn’t bullying. That is simply consequences.