Gay Rights
stcynic | October 23, 2006According to this report:
LGBT faculty and the parents of gay students were excited this week when they discovered on the Oklahoma Public Schools Web site that a new student handbook would include language forbidding bullying on the grounds of sexuality.
But as word spread the section on LGBT bullying mysteriously disappeared.
School district officials say the policy had not been approved by the school board and should not have been posted.
What a terrible message to send to the many, many school kids who get bullied and harrassed for even being suspected of being gay, much less actually…
stcynic | October 22, 2006The ADF has put out a white paper (PDF file) on gay marriage amendments around the country, which shows their fanatical obsession with gay sex in big, bright colors. The white paper would make a terrific test case for a class in political rhetoric, examining how language is used to poison the well in a political debate. I'll give some examples. They begin by citing completely irrelevant studies. For instance, they cite a statement from the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law. That statement concludes:
Research clearly indicates that family structure matters…
stcynic | October 21, 2006THeath has a great post at House Blend responding to John McCain's statement the other day that he's fine with non-binding ceremonies, but not gay marriage. It includes a list of real life examples of people denied the most basic protections for their dignity and commitment in the most trying times.
stcynic | October 19, 2006Yet another anti-gay crime in San Diego, where 6 men were brutally attacked after a gay pride event earlier this year by 4 bat-wielding bigots. This time it happened on a trolley:
Police say that the Trolley was traveling ;through the Encanto neighborhood when a man in his mid 30's began making homophobic remarks to the teen. The man then punched the young man in the face.
When the older passenger attempted to intervene and prevent the teenager from further attack the assailant pulled a knife and slashed the 50 year old.
The attacker escaped when the Trolley made its next stop.
But remember…
stcynic | October 19, 2006The ADF blog is rapidly joining STACLU and the Worldnutdaily as a goldmine for source material. Like most religious right groups, they seem to have a very difficult time applying logic in a consistent manner, especially when the results would make the story they're selling seem less plausible. The other day, they were telling us that it's paranoid and absurd to think that anti-gay marriage amendments would be used to deny partnership benefits (while they and their allies are actually using the laws for that purpose, for crying out loud), yet today they're trying to sell the notion that gay…
stcynic | October 19, 2006A Kentucky lawmaker is introducing a bill to prohibit public universities in the state from offering any sort of domestic partnership benefits. And he's got that standard issue vacuous reasoning:
Rep. Stan Lee (R-Lexington) filed notice this week that he will introduce the override bill as soon as the legislature returns. Lee said the benefits would undermine marriage.
"I submit that we are teaching children a very bad lesson about the value of marriage by doing this," he told The Courier-Journal.
Well, obviously so. If our children see a gay person getting medical care, that will make them…
stcynic | October 18, 2006Notice I said anti-gay, not just anti-gay marriage, which is how its backers are trying to push it. But as David Boaz points out at the Cato blog, gay marriage is already against the law in Virginia and this amendment goes far beyond just banning gay marriage. The amendment says:
This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union…
stcynic | October 17, 2006Or so says an anti-gay nut in Lincoln, Nebraska. As this blog reports, there was a proposal to give a small $1500 grant to a group to help prevent suicide by gay teenagers, a grant to PFLAG. Religious righters on the city council didn't like that the money was going to a group that supports gays (who else would you go to if you want to prevent gay teens from committing suicide, to an anti-gay group that gay teens wouldn't talk to?) so they modified it to give the money instead to a health center. But even that wasn't enough to satisfy a couple of them. The Lincoln newspaper reports:
[For]…
stcynic | October 17, 2006Dale Carpenter has an excellent essay on the response to the Foley scandal from the anti-gay right. I think he correctly highlights what this episode tells us about the response of the religious right. I'll post a long excerpt below the fold.
William Eskridge, a Yale law professor, has written that anti-gay prejudice has been marked historically by three characteristics. These are: (1) "hysterical demonization of gay people as dirty sexualized subhumans"; (2) "obsessional fears of gay people as conspiratorial and sexually predatory"; and (3) "narcissistic desires to reinforce stable…
stcynic | October 17, 2006Here's a ridiculous little non-story for you. The religious right is now up in arms because Condoleeza Rice swore in an openly gay man as the administration's global AIDS coordinator. Because obviously no gay man could actually be qualified for a job or anything. They're also upset that during the swearing in Rice referred to his partner's mother as the man's mother in law:
The ceremony involved Secretary of State Rice and the swearing in of Mark Dybul, an open homosexual, as the nation's new global AIDS coordinator -- a position that carries the rank of ambassador. An Associated Press photo…
stcynic | October 15, 2006This one in New York. Guy goes into a gay chat room, gets to know a guy, arranges for a meeting. They meet, he drives the guy to a beach where 3 others are waiting for them. They beat the man viciously and chase him on to a highway, where he gets hit by a car and dies. Thankfully, they've been caught and should do some serious hard time.
stcynic | October 14, 2006Max Blumenthal has a post at Talk2Action about the possibility that Republicans in Congress will begin to purge their staffs of all gays and lesbians because religious right leaders are now viewing them as a "homosexual clique" put in place to undermine the party:
Immediately after the scandal broke about former Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, some anti-Republican gay rights activists composed a memo containing the names of closeted gay Republican congressional staffers and sent it to leading Christian right advocacy groups. The founder and CEO of one of those groups, the…
stcynic | October 13, 2006Man, the ADF is really on a roll lately with false claims. In this blog post, the admin of their blog claims that the various state amendments banning gay marriage do not interfere with governments or private companies offering benefits to domestic partners:
Preying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex "marriage" argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people...
Same-sex "marriage" advocates argue that eliminating…
stcynic | October 13, 2006The Washington Post reports:
Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.
Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words -- including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test -- just 1 percent of the FBI's 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.
Gee, maybe they should hire some of the more than 50 Arab linguists who…
stcynic | October 7, 2006Sen. Sam Brownback, locked in a continual battle with James Inhofe of Oklahoma for the title of the Senate's loopiest anti-gay member, is now holding up one of Bush's judicial nominees because of a story that she presided over a lesbian commitment ceremony 4 years ago. Judge Janet Neff has received approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee and is waiting for a confirmation vote from the full Senate, but Brownback has placed a hold on her nomination. And you'll love the reason:
Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, an opponent of gay marriage who has presidential aspirations, said Friday he wants…
stcynic | September 29, 2006Think Progress has video of Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, chief sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act, speaking at last weekend's Values Voters Summit. It includes gems like this:
Musgrave declared that gay marriage "is the most important issue that we face today." She told the audience that "when you're in a cultural war like this, you have to respond with equal and hopefully greater force if you want to win," and warned that the "future is grim" if gay marriage is not banned.
How's that for having your priorities straight? We've got a government flouting the constitution at every turn, we've got…
stcynic | September 28, 2006Jay at STACLU is upset that the ACLU filed suit in Kentucky over a state law restricting the right to protest at military funerals, a bill aimed solely at Fred Phelps and his gang of the insane and idiotic. A Federal judge just overturned that law. But look at the way Jay frames the issue:
How would you feel if your child gave their life in military service to protect our freedoms and as you attended their funeral to mourn and remember their sacrifice and life lunatic cultists were in your face with signs reading "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God For Body Bags?" Wouldn't you want a little space…
stcynic | September 28, 2006The more reports come in about last weekend's Values Voter Summit, the worse it gets (which is not a surprise, of course). Here's Bishop Wellington Boone:
But I want to tell you something is, they don't know, we're driven by God to deal with this stuff, and I want to say to you that, in this regard, I'm not playing with you. That when it comes to the matter of this gay stuff, I know that a family is not a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It's a man and a woman. That's the creative order, and I'm not backing down. I'm standing flat-footed on that right there. [Applause]
Everywhere I get…
stcynic | September 27, 2006From SignOnSanDiego:
Three men who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a series of brutal beatings after a gay pride festival were sentenced Monday to prison terms.
James Carroll, 24; Lyonn Tatum, 18; and Kenneth Lincoln, 24, pleaded guilty on Friday in San Diego Superior Court on the second day of their preliminary hearing during which they heard testimony from three victims.
Prosecutors said Carroll, Tatum and a boy assaulted six men with a baseball bat and a knife as the men were leaving the annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Festival in Balboa Park on July 29.
Judge…
stcynic | September 26, 2006This weekend's "Values Voter Summit" was chock full of the sort of irrational nonsense you would expect from a conference that included the likes of Ann Coulter and Gary Bauer. Agape Press reports on speeches by Presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney about gay marriage. How about the breathtaking historical ignorance of this statement from Huckabee:
The governor also admitted he is "not real fond" when people try to tell him that he is just against same-sex marriage. "I tell people I'm actually just for keeping marriage in the only manner for which it's ever been known in any…