Sharpton Weds Gay Cops

JENA, LA- Thousands of cheering supporters today attended a public ceremony presided over by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who this morning performed Louisiana's first mixed-race, homosexual marriage on the steps of the Jena, La. (pop. 225) Courthouse.

The grooms, Louisiana State Police officers Rufus Downs, 35 and Rupert Low, 32, then joined the crowd of well-wishers in a parade along the tiny township's Main Street. The throng, an evenly-mixed group of blacks and whites estimated by police to number over five thousand, sang a rousing medley of 'We Shall Overcome/Give Peace a Chance' while showering the departing newlyweds with handfuls of white rice and black beans.

Messrs. Downs-Low declined to announce their honeymoon plans, simply stating," We never thought we'd see this day. God Bless America!"



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Of course that didn't happen.

This is what really happened.

We have a long way to go.

One Down

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
-Jerry Falwell on 9/11

With Falwell gone, who will protect us from Tinky Winky's
Big Gay Illuminati and their insidious Man-Purse Agenda?

I can honestly say that I am glad the man is dead. He has been waging a campaign against human rights since 1973, when the Supreme Court of the United States had the temerity to give women sovereign rights over their own bodies in Roe v. Wade, outraging a young Falwell with their decision.

Calling feminism a "satanic" movement, in 1979 he founded the ultra-right wing fundamentalist lobbying cartel, the so-called 'Moral Majority', whose main goal was the destruction of the walls between Church and State, the ultimate target being an American Christian Church/State- the sort of New Rome that attracts apocalyptic nut jobs who think it's OK to attack abortion clinics and shoot doctors while simultaneously ranting about the Islamo-Terrorists
that we need to be protected from- at the price of our civil liberties.
Unless you were gay or female. Then you weren't supposed to have any civil liberties in the first place.
His vision was one of a Christian America that would assert itself in a global struggle with the 'rising tide of evil' in the growing Muslim world.

The sort of Nationalistic Christian America that would return to the days of the Holy Crusades, using it's military might to spread it's ideology outside it's own borders, while using the so-called 'word of God' to oppress and suppress any at home who might disagree, including politicians and the press.


"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

Twenty years later, most of it under the sway of the Religious Right, and the country is in the worst shape since the Depression. Falwell's ideology was a great fit with the Reagan-Era neo-cons who help anoint Bush 43 as our Emperor.
We got our Crusade.
It's called Iraq and it's going rather poorly, which any thoughtful person could have predicted.

The Generals and advisers who called the Iraq occupation a bad idea were fired, demoted or otherwise had their lives and careers torn apart- see war critic Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame for an example. Or they sold out, drank the Kool-Aid, repeated the party lies, were pilloried as scapegoats and retired in disgrace: see Colin Powell.

I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

I love the irony of Falwell invoking evolution so much that I'm re-pasting the quote.

The Religious Right can't evolve. It's fundamentally against evolution.

Much like a Great White shark, it doesn't have to evolve, merely adapt- it's already the perfect mindless and unreasoning devourer, with a nearly unstoppable and all-consuming appetite for more power and wealth, damn the costs in lives. Violence is inevitable in the face of such aspirations.
The same religious madness that drove generations of armor-clad European fodder to the meat grinder of Jerusalem during the Crusades is still in force today.

It's what makes people hate others simply because of the way the others love.

It's what makes people burn books that they've never read.

It's what makes people fly planes into buildings full of people they've never met.

It's insanity and it's advocated by both the Taliban and American Evangelists. Both groups spell god differently, but both strive for a militantly strict patriarchy of putatively heterosexual men; holding women as little more than breeding stock for more Jihadists/Crusaders.

Those are some of the 'old-fashioned values' our Evangelical Christians seek to return to. Imagine Cotton Mather leading a legion of Clayton Waagners with the world's most devastating weapons at their disposal. Their enemy: Anyone who stands in the way.

That's what Jerry wanted. He may still get it, but I imagine it's going to be hard for for him to enjoy it from his reserved suite in the darkest pit of Tartarus.

Anus in the Morning

Don Imus is a raging asshole?
Who knew?

I think I was the last person in the world to hear about his remarks about the Rutger's Women's Basketball team- I heard a lot of angry responses and from the tone of the rebuttals and condemnation I thought he must have said the 'N-word' since nobody was repeating his words on TV.
So I Googled it. He didn't use the N-word.

What he said was worse. It even offended me and I'm from the South...I'm accustomed to loudmouthed racist assholes, but sometimes someone just fucks up so badly that there can't be any further explanation or apology.

Once you have referred to a group of women- including a class valedictorian, a future lawyer and a musical prodigy who plays classical piano by ear- as "nappy-headed ho's" you really don't need to say anything else. You have made yourself very clear.

The words define the man with immutable clarity.
His explanations of "context and comedy" mean nothing.

Holy shit.
I just heard Imus try to explain that it was OK for him to disparage and insult Black women because Black men do the same thing all the time.
Wow. That's one of the worst "apologies" I've ever heard.
Who coached him- Mike Richards?
Anyone who doesn't understand how incredibly racist the attitude expressed by that particular "explanation" is needs to do some serious soul-searching.

I mean, you know you've fucked-up bigtime when you have to apologize to Al Sharpton.

But. And this is a big but...

We have a First Amendment. I don't respect Mr. Imus or his personal and political beliefs. I don't respect the man, period.
But I respect his right to say whatever he wants.

We get the entertainers we deserve because we keep paying attention to persons who are beneath contempt and unworthy of notice.
This incident is preventing me from giving proper attention to the breaking Anna Nicole news...you see what I mean? Why do we even care?

There is no law saying that I have to listen to him, so I don't, but there are enough people who do listen that he still has a career- maybe.

I don't think he should be fired. Not right away.

If what he said carries the weight that it should, then his audience will leave him and his sagging ratings will lead to his early retirement. That is what should happen, but it might not.

If there are enough people who are willing to listen to anything that this loathsome slug utters to keep him employed- and I'm guessing that there are- then he should keep his job.

And every time some sheltered white person tells me that we've moved past reactionary racism and sexism in this country, I will be able to point out that Don Imus called the some of the brightest young women in the country "nappy headed ho's" and he still has an audience.

Your Big Gay Baby

Have you ever fired a shotgun at a hobo? The traditional method involves removing the lead 'shot' from the ammunition and replacing it with chunks of rock salt.
This is slightly less fatal than buckshot but guaranteed to hurt like hell in any wounds it causes- but most hobos will jump from a moving boxcar at the sight of a shotgun, rock salt or not- a hobo trapped in the narrow confines of a railway freight car is an easy target.

But there are easier targets.

Fundamentalist Christian Homophobes, for example. Attacking them and their ludicrous 'beliefs' is easier than drowning slugs in a barrel of pickle brine.

These Christians, who hate Science when it teaches evolution or uses stem-cells to fight diseases, have opened up Pandora's Closet with this almost unthinkable uproar about Gay Babies- in theory, these Christians hope, science will allow them to determine their unborn child's sexual orientation , giving them the chance to 'cure' unborn queer babies of their homosexuality, which no serious modern scientist would call a disease anyway...

A Fundie Christian wrote this:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

My idea would be to guillotine the writer's penis in order to help him avoid the "inevitable effects of sin" - but why stop there? Let's remove his fingers before he pens more poison words - heck, lose the whole hand.
Dude.
Save yourself from the Sin of Onan.

This dogmatic freak is using religious insanity as an excuse for practical applications of eugenics theory.
Even the Nazis were not this crass- the Germans conducted their atrocities in the name of science and Nation and left God out of their vocabulary of horror- but this man implies that God would be OK with Man tinkering with the unborn if it kept them from being gay...hmm, what's next? Does Thalidomide prevent self-abuse? Does being born with a flipper instead of an arm keep you pure?

They could test for other 'degenerate' traits...what if you were a Christian Couple and the doctors told you that due to some miscegenation during the Third Crusade, there was a slight chance you might have a Muslim baby- or a Jewish baby...what if your child was destined to be an alcoholic or a vegetarian? A serial killer or the next Gandhi?

What if you made a drastic, irreversible decision about your baby based on a faulty screening test- what if your mistake turned your straight fetus into a gay one- or into a liberal- or made them creative- or atheist-or intellectually curious- or any other item off of the seemingly endless list of things that Fundie Christians cannot tolerate... I reject this idea of aesthetic fetal modification for ethical and practical reasons- if, for example, Oscar Wilde had been "de-faggotted" before birth, would he still have been an excellent author? What else gets destroyed, changed or lost when you start modifying the minds of the unborn? I trust science a lot more then Faith, but I'm not gonna let anyone- Labcoat or Frock- tell me I shouldn't love my child simply because they are gay.

I would have a gay child.
I would love them.
So what?

They'd be loved because they would be my child.

Even atheists love their children, although, in my case, not enough to force mutation on them in the womb.
I might reconsider if they were to be seriously deformed, but probably not.
What if some 'curative' treatment was applied to an unborn Stephen Hawking- perhaps he'd walk, but what would have become of his mind? Would he have been the same?
Aren't people like Mr. Hawking part of God's Plan? Some of us are strong, some are smart...together we are supposed to work it out and take care of each other.

Isn't that the idea? Not according to Fundie Freeks.

If Stephen Hawking was my kid, I'd be proud. Very, very proud.


Fundie Freak makes a great point here:

The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.

What he really means is that this will allow guilt-wracked Fundie parents to stop agonizing over why their kids turned out gay- it's not because of the painfully sado-masochistic homo-erotic imagery of the Crucifixion, it's not because their role-model Pastor likes giving head to the gay hotel hookers who supply his amphetamine habit; it's not because they were never shown the love and attention that they needed at home and wound up getting buggered by the priests- now they can blame it on the DNA. Simple and cleansing.

Fundie insists God created DNA and His "pernicious" handiwork can be seen in the DNA helix, Original Sin being just another genetic marker, but the Bible tends to contradict this Fundie statement:

Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment.

Ummm...riiiiighhhtt...

Personally, I think God a is pretty poor consultant when it comes to matters of conception, breeding , DNA and whatnot- at least one precedent comes to mind:

Once upon a time , this Old Guy named Zelophehad died , and he owned lots of land but he didn't have any sons, just daughters- and Jehovah was pretty sexist towards unmarried women and property (women were property, they did not typically own or inherit it), so there was some dispute as how to keep the father's wealth in the hands of his unmarried daughters - and, of course, in the tribe.

Moses was pretty much the spiritual go-to guy back then , so he was dispatched to go ask God about how to settle this dilemma.

This is what God told Moses:

"This is the word that Jehovah has commanded for the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, ‘To whom it is good in their eyes they may become wives. Only it is to the family of the tribe of their fathers that they should become wives."

What God was saying is : "Marry your father's brother's sons- marry your cousins and keep the money in the family."

This concept explains a lot about American Evangelicalism but it shows an alarming ignorance of genetics, especially from the Being who allegedly Created DNA.

Marry your cousin?

God should know better.

It amazes me that anyone could attribute 'Intelligent Design' to a God that is so intellectually dense that He doesn't even understand the basic chromosomal principles at work in His own creations.

Didn't God invent Mendel and those famous beans? Can't He read?

However, the agnostic idea that there may very well be a God, and that God is as thick as the proverbial brick, seems to gather steam every time I hear about these close-minded and dangerous lunatics; in fact , the idea of God being really powerful but a bit clumsy, a trifle stupid and dangerously incompetent seems quite logical.

After all, it's His image.