Alveda King's attempted claiming of the MLK legacy is sad

Many black leaders oppose the comparisons between the African-American civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. But few are as vehemently opposed to the comparison as Martin Luther King Jr's niece, Alveda King.

However, as her recent behavior demonstrates, it could be that Alveda King doesn't like the so-called appropriation of the black civil rights movement because it hones in on her action.

Witness her comments in defense of her joining Glenn Beck's 8-28 rally which will be held 47 years to the date of the 1963 March on Washington which featured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech:

"It is absolutely ludicrous that abortion supporters would accuse a blood relative of Dr. King of hijacking the King legacy. Uncle Martin and my father, Rev. A. D. King were blood brothers. How can I hijack something that belongs to me? I am an heir to the King Family legacy."

Alveda King's statements in this press release (which is titled Pro-Abortion Blacks Attack Heir to King Legacy) isn't the first time she claimed that "blood" entitles her to be an "heir to the King legacy."

Last month, during an anti-gay marriage rally, she said pretty much the same thing during a verbal attack on her late aunt, Coretta Scott King. Her exact words then were:

She (Coretta) was married to him (Martin Luther King, Jr.). I've got his DNA. She doesn't.

Alveda King's constant yammering that the "King blood flows through her veins" reminds me of Saturday Night Live comedian Tracy Morgan's hilarious send-up of Star Jones on The View in which he would constantly pepper the conversations in various skits with assurances that his character was a lawyer in an effort to lampoon questions of Jones's relevancy.

King would be equally funny except for the fact she has made a career out of being MLK's niece. What she has to say is not important. No one cares. It's the symbol of MLK that's more important. This is something she knows and is not ashamed of.

Why care when there is so much spotlight to be grabbed?

And in this particular case, i.e. Beck's rally, Alveda King is soiling the King name and legacy by aligning it with someone who, if he had been around during King's time, would be one of the first to denigrate him with as much ease as he is now denigrating what King stood for.

I don't think the King legacy has anything to do with blackboards, conspiracy theories, and charlatans who can cry crocodile tears at the drop of a hat.

And Alveda's chirpings about her sharing the "King blood" is like me using an alleged familial relationship to a rock star to demand a recording contract even though I can't carry a tune.

MLK's legacy should never be used like a commodity  nor should it be determined by blood relationships. MLK's legacy is about truth, integrity, and most of all, love.

So while the King blood does flow through Alveda's veins, she seems to be sorely lacking on the other points. Especially integrity.

Hat tip to People for the American Way.

Ken Mehlman and Glenn Beck for your Thursday midday news briefs

Self-proclaimed civil rights leader Glenn Beck's history of racially charged rhetoric - The so-called inheritor of Dr. King's "Dream" is a circus clown with a large retinue of sheep. Where are these black leaders who bristle at the comparison of the gay rights movement of the black civil rights movement?

Ken Mehlman - the story of the former Republican National Committee chairman who came out (surprising no one) which has played extensively for these past two days on numerous blogs. It's not that I've been ignoring it more than I don't think I can add anything new to the conversation at this time. So with that in mind, I am attaching links to folks who have been deep in this story:

From FMA supporters to FMA scapegoats: Ken schmoozes with a new kind of Advocate

Ken Mehlman Is Still Funding Anti-Gay Politicians

NOM's Brian Brown: 'Mehlman abdicating core Republican beliefs' - and more on the self-outing

Welcome Out, Ken Mehlman

Mehlman '05: Activist judges 'remov[ed] a pivotal decision from the hands of voters'

On Mehlman, I'm more interested in equality than revenge

Peter LaBarbera's symbol of Biblical love and truth is all wet

 Editor's note - I actually have two posts for you this morning. Check out the post on gay adoption following this one.


Our friend Peter LaBarbera posted a video on his Americans for Truth site with the following lead in:

Authentic Christianity in action cannot hide the truth…

Molotov Mitchell of Illuminati Pictures (and WND.com) created this “For the Record” video about loving a homosexual friend enough to tell him the truth from the Bible (1 Corinthians 6). PFOX’s Greg Quinlan, a former homosexual himself, shared this video at the recent AFTAH Truth Academy.

The video is supposedly of Mitchell talking about how he "ministered" to his gay friend. You'll forgive me for not posting it. And I didn't do it to be mean.

I've looked at the video and it's nice and smarmy but I can't shake the image out of my head of ANOTHER video Mitchell made in which he defended that awful Ugandan "kill the gays bill." Now THAT video is something which should be remembered:



Mitchell goes into detail as to why he thinks Uganda is correct for pushing this bill, which goes as far as punishing gays and lesbians with the death penalty.

Amongst Mitchell's points:

The Bible is totally on Uganda's side,

Uganda is merely reacting because an "evil homosexual king, Mwanga" raped young boys and murdered a group of them who would not have sex with him (never mind that this incident took place between the years of 1885-1886),

Uganda "doesn't want to kill homosexuals, they just want them to stop practicing homosexual acts,"

If gay Ugandans don't like the law, they can leave,

and the Founding Fathers would have agreed with Ugandans. I believe his words were (at 2:51): "Ugandans are making decisions that our very Founding Fathers made so long ago but we are terrified to touch today."

But the most offensive item from this video comes at 3:00 when Mitchell actually evokes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to justify not only this bill but his labored defense of it: "Like the great Dr. King told us, 'the moral arm of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.' Ugandans, stay on the right side of history."

Mitchell's diatribe is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever seen and the fact that he actually evokes the words of Dr. King, a man who died for the causes of justice and nonviolence, to support a bill which would create genocide is beyond foul.

And THIS GUY is LaBarbera's symbol of Biblical love and truth?


Truth Wins Out breaks down Mitchell's "love video" with the usual attention to skill.

Gay adoption in Britain gives religious right another chance to make fools of themselves

In Britain, there has been a recent incident involving gay adoption and the Catholic Church:

A Roman Catholic adoption agency has lost its fight for the right to continue its policy of refusing to place children with same-sex couples based on religious principles.

The agency, Catholic Care, saw its battle to limit its adoption services to heterosexual-only parents collapse in a ruling Thursday (August 19) by the powerful Charity Commission, an independent watchdog in England, although funded by the British government.

After a lengthy legal wrangle, the Charity Commission decreed that Charity Care's stance amounted to discrimination based on sexual orientation because it "departs from the principle of treating people equally."

Of course those opposing ruling (religious right groups and spokespeople) will trot out the same hackneyed talking points, i.e. " a child "has a right to a home with a mother and a father." But like so many things they delve into, the religious right deals in idealistic situations and not reality. The mother and father dynamic may be good in some cases, but not all cases. The fact of the matter is that there aren't enough mother and father homes for children and also, not every home with a mother and a father is a good home.

I wish these folks would say something like "a child has a right to a good home which gives him or her love and support."

But instead of that, we get distorted studies and statements like the following from the Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber.

"The goal here of the homo-fascist, anti-Christian left is both chilling and transparent -- and that goal, of course, is to push the practice of, and ultimately any reference to Christ or Christianity, off the cliff's edge," explains Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel.

Does Matt Barber think he serves any purpose other than providing the lgbt community with adequate proof of just how nasty and homophobic those on his side of the argument are?

He takes a complicated issue (adoption) and tries to simplify it into a global conspiracy on the part of the lgbt community propagated to destroy Christianity.

Does he really think that he is doing anything other than being a sort of ecclesiastical Abbott to Pete LaBarbera's Costello.

He's so over the top, I've long since stopped getting angry at whatever he says. In fact, I look forward to his stupid comments because with "enemies" like him, just who needs allies.

Editor's note - By the way, Matt. I know that you google your name and at times come by my site to read what I wrote. On the behalf of the lgbt community, I would like to say !@$* with a cherry on top.

Ugandan community speak about anti-gay bill

Breaking the Chains from Alyssa Eisenstein on Vimeo.

This video is the very essence of bravery. It is required viewing for everyone, especially those who make awful claims about the lgbt community and specifically for anyone claiming to be an lgbt activist. From Breaking The Chains:

A year ago, three American Evangelicals traveled to Uganda for a conference on “the gay agenda” to speak about curing homosexuality. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was proposed just a few months later and introduced some of the harshest punishments in the world for homosexuals. It calls for lifetime imprisonment for all LGBT people, death to homosexuals who are HIV positive and prison for any Ugandan who fails to report LGBT Ugandans within 24 hours of the Bill passing.

Despite the security risks, Ugandan activists are raising the alarm about this human rights abuse. Recent Northwestern University graduate Alyssa Eisenstein traveled to Uganda this spring to hear from these inspiring men and women. With interviews from LGBT activists, legal and political authorities, university students, village leaders and even a traditional healer, "Breaking the Chains" profiles these activists as they tell this story in their own words. 

Hat tip to Box Turtle Bulletin.

Did Rekers 'rentboy's scandal cost Bill McCollum the election? and other Wednesday midday news briefs

Rekers Failed To Lift McCollum’s Luggage - The story of how a rentboy cost the Florida Attorney General the chance to be the state's governor.

The Ex-Gay Industry Hits The Skids - We can only hope so.

No judge left behind: Even deeply GOP Bush appointees earn 'activist' ire -Perhaps instead of railing against the alleged "homosexual agenda," the religious right should watch out for Republican appointed judges.

WaPo Endorses MD Delegate Candidate Dr. Dana Beyer - An intelligent woman whom voters would be stupid NOT to elect to office.

Jennifer Keeton Appeals Right To Be Anti-Gay Ruling - Guess who's not going away anytime soon. Ugh.

Two ways One News Now picks homophobia over accuracy

The American Family Association led phony news service One News Now seems to be on a tear about the lgbt community right now.

There are two articles in today's edition about us and both of them are slightly twisted.

The first one is about Jennifer Keeton, the Augusta State University graduate student who unsuccessfully sued the university claiming that she was forced to compromise her beliefs about homosexuality in order to receive her degree.

What it boiled down to was the fact that Keeton didn't want to read material on counseling gays nor did she want to counsel gays at all.

Of course One News Now makes her sound like a martyr:

Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America sees judicial activism in action.

"The really horrendous part is that one single judge is able to make a decision that influences so many different aspects of our culture. And we're seeing it over and over again where that judge is imposing his own personal views -- which is such a contradiction and is so ironic when this young woman's rights are being taken away from her."

The judge has placed a gag order on the case. But in an interview last month, Keeton's attorney -- David French with the Alliance Defense Fund -- said one of the elements in the remediation plan called for Keaton to attend a "gay-pride parade" and write about her feelings. He called it "ridiculous."

"She should be free from thought reform," the attorney argued. "She should be free from sensitivity training merely because she holds Christian beliefs. Just respect her First Amendment rights."

Of course the article omits the fact that during deliberations, Keeton neither testified on her own behalf nor offered up any witnesses to prove her case.

The second article involves Bradley Manning, the solider in the middle of the Wikileaks scandal.Wikileaks is a site which has displayed classified documents of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Manning, a 22-year-old soldier suspected of leaking documents to Wikileaks. He is currently awaiting court martial.

In the midst of this scandal, there is a claim, propagated by anti-gay activist Cliff Kincaid, and pushed by One News Now, that Manning is an angry gay activist who leaked information because he was angry at the military's policy on gays in the military. This was from the One News Now article from a couple of days ago:

The British newspaper Daily Telegraph first reported that Private 1st Class Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, was not only openly homosexual but also considering a sex change. Manning could face more than 50 years in prison for passing secret documents to WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange has an anti-American and anti-military bent.

But the Daily Telegraph never reported that Manning was seeking a sex change operation.

The claim about the sex change, as well as the entire narrative of Manning being "an angry gay soldier who leaked documents because he is mad at military's policy on gays and lesbians" is a concoction of Kincaid.

Today has been a slight change to One News Now's pushing of the article:

Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival and editor of Accuracy in Media is concerned about reports that Manning had been blatantly open about his homosexuality for more than a year and apparently held a grudge against the U.S. military because of its ban on homosexual military service. He thinks the military should have recognized that Manning was a security risk.

There is no mention of a "sex change" operation and no claim that the "Bradley Manning is an angry gay activist" narrative is being pushed by the Daily Telegraph. Nice change, but the inaccurate narrative of Manning being an angry gay soldier, i.e. a security risk, is still present.

It's a shame that One News Now feels that truth and accuracy are allowable casualties when it comes to defending the so-called opinions of God.

What the heck does Glenn Stanton know about gays and lesbians anyway?

I must be on a tear when it comes to responding to anti-gay ignorance today.

This morning it was Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America and her sad attempt to demonize lgbt households by using data having nothing to do with them.

This afternoon, it's Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family.

The point of annoyance for me is an article in today's USA Today talking about how Hollywood is  showing more lgbt characters and families.

Stanton, along with the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer, is quoted as the voices who disagree with this increased visibility.

Now Fischer has a history of making asinine anti-gay comments (which unfortunately the article did not talk about) so there is a paper trail which destroys his credibility as a rational voice on the matter.

But Stanton is a bit more problematic. He tries to make himself sound reasonable but comes across as insulting:

"When actual gay and lesbian weddings are shown on TV (as in news coverage), we win. When they're shown through the lens and creativity and artifice of Hollywood, we don't. Hollywood is succeeding, but they're doing so by not representing reality."

First of all, Stanton's statement is gibberish. Secondly, as far as I know, Stanton is not gay so the question has to be just who is he to decide what is reality when it comes to the lgbt community.

Furthermore, I really don't understand the USA Today can push him as an expert when he has clearly gone on record saying the following:

I don't know of anyone who has referred to me as an "expert" on homosexuality. I have never referred to myself on this, simply because I am not. But I would describe myself as an expert on the issue of same-sex marriage. I have published a book and had many of my articles on the subject republished in numerous mainstream volumes.

I don't mind being critiqued, but at least get it right.

Apparently part of Stanton's "expertise" on same sex marriage is to push inaccurate data on the lgbt community like he did in his piece Why Homosexuality Falls Short of the Ideal.

This piece,  Stanton not only cites the work of the discredited Paul Cameron (via secondhand through Thomas Schmidt) but he also says the following:

In addition, because of the extremely high rate of incidence among homosexuals, a group of rare intestinal diseases have been grouped together under the title "gay bowel syndrome."

There is no such thing as "gay bowel sydrome." In the late 70s, there was a belief that there a series of intestinal disorders which was supposedly related to male sexual activity. However as time went on, it was discovered that the problems that made up "gay bowel syndrome" were not specific to homosexuals, not confined to just the bowels, nor did the term itself meet the medical definition of a syndrome.

There are a myriad of cases where this term has been expunged from usage in various places from the New York Times to the National Institutes of Health.

However, people like Stanton, i.e. phony religious right experts, continue to push the term to the ignorant and unassuming.

But that is the crux of the religious right's war on lgbt America. It's not enough for them to have a negative view of the lgbt community. They seek to force that view on society, even if it means beating back the voices of the lgbt community.

It's pretty much the equivalent of allowing a Klansman to dictate the public images of the African-American community.

Hat tip to People for the American Way.

Ex-gay organization facing financial troubles and other Tuesday midday news briefs

Exodus International Lays off Staff, Cuts Benefits - I hate the fact that people are losing their jobs, but what they are selling is a hideous lie.

Calif Senate approves ending effort to 'cure' gays - What took them so long?

What Rush Limbaugh and Peter LaBarbera Have In Common - Don't you dare. Just read the piece.

True To Misogynistic Roots, NOM Blames Ted Olson’s Liberal Wife for His Support for Gays - And we should be surprised because?

Black males aren't graduating like they should? Blame the gays

A column I read this morning in the American Spectator by Concerned Women for America "senior analyst" Janice Crouse had me reeling due to its audacity to deceive.

The goal of Crouse's piece was probably to demonstrate just how the recent Proposition 8 decision and gay marriage in general is hurting the black community.

However, what she accomplished was showing yet again how some on the right, especially the religious right, dishonestly manipulate facts and figures.

In her piece, Why Young Black Males Are Not Graduating High School, Crouse seems to be trying make a correlation between a recent report by the Schott Foundation (in which the overall 2007-08 graduation rate for Black males in the U.S. was only 47 percent) and the recent Prop 8 ruling:

Nancy Pearcey, in an article on American Thinker, identified certain "facts that Judge Walker claims are now established by the 'evidence' presented in his courtroom." Those "facts" presumably will be deemed as "truth" far beyond the courtroom. Among those "facts," the following three are especially relevant for young black boys' futures:

• "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage."

• "The gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment."

• "Having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted."

Those three general false principles that Judge Walker supposedly established in his arguments in favor of so-called "same-sex marriage" are equally faulty when applied to the more than 40 percent of today's children who are born to single mothers. They are doubly relevant when the majority of those children are black.

What Crouse is doing is a tactic done by many on the right after the Prop 8 ruling went down - cherry picking parts of Judge Walker's statements to imply that he said "fathers don't matter" and then using data having absolutely nothing to do with his decision or same sex marriage in general to make an unfair correlation.

It's a diversionary tactic designed to take attention away from the fact that the Prop 8 folks lost because their case was poor.

To a bigger extent, Crouse sad piece is a part of a grander tactic by the religious right to unfairly brand same-sex parents as selfish or to imply that lgbts who seek to parent children are causing these children to be "denied" something vital and important despite the fact that studies have shown just the opposite.

Crouse lists a number of problems facing black youth including poverty, bad schools, and family breakdown. Same-sex marriage and equality didn't make the list, but it doesn't stop Crouse from trying to push it in as best as she can.

The irony is that Crouse actually does provide an excellent solution:

Common sense tells us that there is no surer recipe for the child to lag behind in learning than having to contend with the strain and disruption of a broken, dysfunctional family, where the parent or parents are so focused on themselves and their needs that they have little emotional energy to spare for the child's needs. Before we can address the problems of public education, we have to address the problems of marriage and family. Only then can we begin the massive overhaul of cultural values that will be necessary to close the educational gaps in America.

Too that good point got obscured by a bunch of anti-gay garbage.

Is Jennifer Keeton being left out in the cold by her anti-gay allies?

It may be too early for such speculation, but I find it interesting that it's been a couple of days since Jennifer Keeton lost her lawsuit against Augusta State University and not one religious right talking head has commented on it.

Keeton, a graduate student, sued the university because, as she put it, it would have forced her to compromise her "Christian beliefs" on homosexuality.

It really came down to the fact that Keeton didn't want to read material on counseling gays nor did she want to counsel gays period.

The courts ruled against her on Friday.

Seeing that it's Monday, I would have thought to hear at least the usual slate of anti-gay lies from our friend Peter LaBarbera, but he seems to be on an Elizabeth Hasselbeck/Ann Coulter kick.

One News Now has been silent about the Keeton case. And there isn't even a statement from her lawyers at the right-wing Alliance Defense Fund.

Before the case went to court, we were bombarded with lies about how Keeton was unfairly targeted, how she was forced to choose between her Christian beliefs and her degree.

Now that the courts ruled against her, all we are hearing are the crickets.

Maybe the folks are in shock over the loss. Or could it be that they have deserted Keeton because they recognize just how ridiculous her case was (and they wouldn't be alone in this regard because Keeton neither offered witnesses nor testified.)

Only time will tell. 

Ugandan official proud of his persecution of gays and other Monday midday news briefs

Ugandan MP: Homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death - Sad, sad, sad.

Gay Muslims exist, and they need solidarity too - Amen.

Hong Kong Residents: Beware Of Fraudulent Information By Discredited Ex-Gay Therapy Group - Junk science is global my friends.

Coulter on fundie Take Back America confab: 'They're a bunch of fake Christians' - Well duuuuh.

Tensions Rise in Guadalajara - With the Catholic church unfortunately leading the way.

Breaking the taboo over the mental health crisis among Britain's gay men - And when the religious right manipulates this information, they always conveniently omit how homophobia causes these things.

One News Now and Cliff Kincaid demonstrate homophobia, ability to lie

The sad thing about homophobic lies (or any lie in general) is the ease which people repeat them even after they have been refuted.

Take the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier in the middle of the Wikileaks scandal. Wikileaks is a site which has displayed classified documents of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Manning, a 22-year-old soldier suspected of leaking documents to Wikileaks. He is currently awaiting court martial. The fact that Manning is allegedly gay has brought the wolves out, so to speak. This is from this morning's edition of One News Now:

An conservative activist and author says members of the Senate need to made aware that the U.S. soldier accused of leaking classified information to the WikiLeaks website is an open homosexual who apparently held a grudge against the U.S. military for its law excluding homosexual military service.

The British newspaper Daily Telegraph first reported that Private 1st Class Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, was not only openly homosexual but also considering a sex change. Manning could face more than 50 years in prison for passing secret documents to WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange has an anti-American and anti-military bent.

Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival and editor of Accuracy in Media, says that information is finally getting some notice.

But the Daily Telegraph never reported that Manning was seeking a sex change operation.

The claim about the sex change, as well as the entire narrative of Manning being "an angry gay soldier who leaked documents because he is mad at military's policy on gays and lesbians" is a concoction of Kincaid.

And basically, anything Kincaid says about the lgbt community should be taken with a grain of salt.

He leads the right-wing group Accuracy in Media, the same group which had to retract a blog post falsely accusing a gay Obama appointee, Kevin Jennings, of being a pedophile. Kincaid has also made the vile claim that disease-tainted gay blood threatens our troops.

In addition, Kincaid has unashamedly defended Uganda's infamous "Kill The Gays" bill.

As we have seen last week with the situation involving Peter LaBarbera, Glenn Beck and Chai Feldblum, little things like accuracy usually get pushed out of the way when there is an anti-gay meme to be repeated.

And it's up to the lgbt community to beat down these memes before they can become the "official story."

Insanity defined: Man is accosted for 'looking like a Muslim'

This anti-Muslim sentiment in this country is heading to a level of insanity and the above video proves it.

At the anti-Islamic Center rally held today in New York, a man walking through the crowd of protesters gets mistaken for a Muslim and madness ensues.

Luckily no one gets hurt but it's still sad.

It reminds me of the Shakespearean play Julius Caesar where a mob of citizens is looking for a certain group of men to murder. They come upon an innocent poet and butcher him because he has the same name as one of the men they are looking for.

If this country doesn't pull back from hysteria and those chosen by whatever "powers-that-be" to be leaders and spokespeople don't stop feeding into this hysteria (i.e. Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.), then someone is really going to get hurt.

Enough already.

Hat tip to the Political Carnival and my online pal Evan Hurst.

Second 'I don't want to counsel gays' lawsuit struck down by the courts

How did I miss this one:

Augusta State University's requirement that a graduate student read material about counseling gays and increase her exposure to that community after she objected to counseling homosexual clients was "academically legitimate," a federal court judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Randal Hall's decision enables university officials to expel Jennifer Keeton if she does not follow the remediation plan, which professors designed to "address issues of multicultural competence and develop understanding and empathy."

Hall said the case is not about "pitting Christianity against homosexuality," but rather the constitutionality of the school's requirement.

This denunciation comes at the heels another case in which a student claimed that she was "forced" to choose between her religious beliefs and her vocation. Last month, the courts ruled against Julea Ward, a student at Eastern Michigan University who claimed that she was removed from the school's counseling program because of her strong religious views against homosexuality.

Ward has refused to counsel lgbt clients because of her beliefs. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh said:

" . . .the university had a rational basis for requiring its students to counsel clients without imposing their personal values.

In the case of Ms. Ward, the university determined that she would never change her behavior and would consistently refuse to counsel clients on matters with which she was personally opposed due to her religious beliefs -- including homosexual relationships."

Keeton and Ward were both made as cause celebres by the religious right as victims of a so-called "gay agenda" which would punish Christians for expressing their beliefs.

However many others, myself included, disagree.

My feeling is that if you can't do the job completely and for everyone then we have a serious problem, especially if you are seeking to be a healthcare worker.

And those who seek to make Keeton and Ward into martyrs would be advised to remember that this sort of thing has a habit of coming back in a nasty way.

If people are allowed exemptions in the counseling of the lgbt community today, who's to say that tomorrow exemptions won't be given in the counseling of the African-American or Latino communities?

Or even the Christian community?

UDPATE:  The article also going on to say something which should be remembered should Keeton's name come up in religious right talking points (and it will) - the university presented three professors as witnesses but Keeton presented no witnesses. And she didn't even testify.

Hat tip to Daily Kos.

Related post:

Court knocks down latest religious right cause celebre

Know Your LGBT History - Stewardess School

Stewardess School (1986)was one of those tired 1980s ensemble comedy movies where a group of outsiders band together to show the world that they can make something of themselves.

It's a formula that was repeated with Stripes, Hot Dog: The Movie, Hamburger: The Movie, Revenge of the Nerds (which may be an upcoming feature of this blog), etc. etc.

Stewardess School was one of the worst ones. In this particular case, we have a female wrestler (despondent because her meek boyfriend can't handle her occupation), a nearsighted cute guy and his annoying friend (played by Happy Days's Donny Most), a clumsy woman, a ditzy blonde, and overweight oddball (the late Wendy Joe Sperber seemed to specialize in this type of characterization), a sexy, SEXY prostitute trying to reform (how strange is it that va va voom actress Audrey Landers puts in the funniest performance in this movie), and for the purpose of this site, the gay guy:




Emmy award winning actor Rob Paulsen (Pinky and the Brain) takes flamboyantly gay to an annoying level. By the way, I do apologize for such a brief clip. There is another, long, EXTREMELY offensive clip of Paulsen's performance. However, the person who posted it doesn't want it embedded. I can't say I blame him/her.

However, if you want to see it (and please have your barf bag in hand), go here.

Past Know Your LGBT History posts:

Know Your LGBT History - Up the Academy

Know Your LGBT History - Don't be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

Know Your LGBT History - A Different Story

Know Your LGBT History - Victim

Know Your LGBT History - The Color Purple

Know Your LGBT History - Making Love

Know Your LGBT History - A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

Know Your LGBT History - Noah's Arc

Know Your LGBT History - Ode to Billy Joe

Know Your LGBT History - Adorable Adrian Adonis

Know Your LGBT History - The Night Strangler

Know Your LGBT History - All in the Family

Know Your LGBT History - Tongues Untied

Know Your LGBT History - The Celluloid Closet

Know Your LGBT History - Querelle

Know Your LGBT History - Theatre of Blood

Know Your LGBT History - Strange Fruit

Know Your LGBT History - Designing Women

Know Your LGBT History - The Children's Hour

Know Your LGBT History - Sylvester

Know Your LGBT History - Once Bitten

Know Your LGBT History - The Boys in the Band

Know Your LGBT History - Christopher Morley, the crossdressing assassin

Know Your LGBT History - Midnight Cowboy

Know Your LGBT History - Dracula's Daughter

Know Your LGBT History - Blacula

Know Your LGBT History - 3 Strikes

Know Your LGBT History - Paris Is Burning

Know Your LGBT History - The Women

Know your LGBT History - Soul Plane

Know Your LGBT History - The Player's Club

Special Know Your LGBT History - Fame

Know Your LGBT History - Welcome Home, Bobby

Know Your LGBT History - Barney Miller

Know your lgbt history - The Jerry Springer Show

Know your lgbt history - Martin Lawrence and that 'gay guy' on his show

Know your lgbt history - The Ricki Lake Show

Know your lgbt history - Which Way Is Up

Know your lgbt history - Gays in Primetime Soaps

Know your lgbt history - Boys Beware

Know your lgbt history - The Boondocks

Know your lgbt history - Mannequin

Know your lgbt history - The Warriors

Know Your LGBT History - New York Undercover

Know Your LGBT History - Low Down Dirty Shame

Know Your LGBT History - Fortune and Men's Eyes

Know your lgbt history - California Suite

Know your lgbt history - Taxi (Elaine's Strange Triangle)

Know your lgbt history - Come Back Charleston Blue

Know your lgbt history - James Bond goes gay

Know your lgbt history - Windows

Know your lgbt history - To Wong Foo and Priscilla

Know your lgbt history - Blazing Saddles

Know your lgbt history - Sanford and Son

Know your lgbt history - In Living Color

Know your lgbt history - Cleopatra Jones and her lesbian drug lords

Know your lgbt history - Norman, Is That You?

Know your lgbt history - The 'Exotic' Adrian Street

Know your lgbt history - The Choirboys

Know your lgbt history - Eddie Murphy

Know your lgbt history - The Killing of Sister George

Know your lgbt history - Hanna-Barbera cartoons pushes the 'gay agenda

'Know your lgbt history - Cruising

Know your lgbt history - Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones

Know your lgbt history - I Got Da Hook Up

Know your lgbt history - Fright Night

Know your lgbt history - Flowers of Evil

The Jeffersons and the transgender community 
 

Fight for lgbt equality has gone global and other Friday midday news briefs

Man this is a slow and dull Friday. But as a self-described "radical gay activist," I shall soldier on:

Shifting attitudes take gay rights fight across globe, experts say - You better believe it!

Fischer: Ann Coulter Is The "Ashley Dupre of the Conservative Movement" - Did he just call Ann Coulter a "ho?"

Obama Appoints Gay Man to HHS - Okay religious right, what's wrong with THIS appointee?

Video: Paper, personal objections, and fear = non-binding anti-equality - Because "standing against gay marriage" is more important than job creation, crime prevention, etc.

Dr. Laura Knows Black Person, Gay Person - Well I guess that makes her no longer a homophobe who freely uses the "n-word."

Lgbts and Muslims are in the same boat, whether we like it or not

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece comparing how the cultural center in New York is being used as a hot button issue by those on the right in the same manner they used gay marriage in 2004.

Some folks didn't agree with me by claiming that the lgbt community shouldn't care what happens to the Muslim community because of its "homophobia."

The lgbt community would be making a huge mistake in doing this. And no one demonstrates this better than right-wing phony news service, the American Family Association's One News Now:

A ministry leader says a high school in Michigan is conforming to President Obama's political correctness and Islamic sentiments by altering its schedule to accommodate its Muslim students.

Fordson High School in Dearborn is holding its football practices in the middle of the night in order to give special accommodation to Muslims on the predominantly Islamic squad. The team feels the nocturnal regimen is a way for players to eat and drink while observing the month of daytime fasting known as Ramadan. The August heat has also played a factor in Coach Fouad Zaban's proposal to reverse the clock for a week of two-a-day practices.

Cutting practice was not an option at football-crazy Fordson, which is coming off a one-loss season, but nobody wanted to lessen the significance of Ramadan in the Detroit suburb that is dominated by Muslims.

Now the only person quoted in the article, Jan Markell, founder and director of Olive Tree Ministries, claims to know why this is taking place:

She believes Muslims have clearly become a specially privileged group in the U.S. and beyond. "There are clearly favors that are done to certain special-interest groups, particularly homosexuals and Muslims," the Messianic Jewish leader observes. "Christians and Jews, we just don't have that kind of privilege."

She doubts a practice would be moved if a group of Christian players objected to training that would interfere with a Christian holiday.

Yeah, I'm sure the players will be practicing on "Christmas."

Seriously, other than a ridiculous linking to President Obama (shades of the "our president is an evil Muslim meme), this article proves the point that there are some entities who see the lgbt and Muslim community as "the other," i.e. communities who seek to change or basically overthrow the so-called "American Way" of life.

Whether the lgbt or the Muslim community likes it or not, we are now all in the same boat. Any sniping should be reserved to those who are trying to place us in the boat and not each other.

And by the way,  more credible article about the practices in Fordson High School had this to say:

The response from players has been positive. And we’re told even the non-Muslim players are ok with the overnight sessions.

David Blankenhorn didn't mess up Prop 8 defense because it was already messed up

It's so interesting to watch members of the religious right try to recreate the Prop 8 trial so as to make themselves look like the victims of the verdict.

The latest attempt is byJennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute in regards to a witness called by the Prop 8 side, David Blankenhorn:

. . . After beginning to read Judge Walker’s opinion this morning, I am even less willing to second guess the Protect Marriage team. In particular, I have a renewed respect for David Blankenhorn, the one witness the Proponents of Prop 8 called to testify on the social purpose of marriage.

To answer one preliminary question that I have been asked many times: yes, the Prop 8 legal team did consider using me as an expert. I talked at some length with one of them, and several of the attorneys for the ADF are friends of mine. They certainly know about me, and respect me. The team decided not to use me when they realized that I had been a spokeswoman for the Prop 8 campaign. They concluded (correctly) that the court would not take my opinion seriously no matter what I had to say, or how credibly I said it. Events proved them to be correct.

Reading the judge’s opinion makes it clear that he defines “expertise” so narrowly that no one but the plaintiffs’ witnesses could meet the definition of expert. The Proponents of Prop 8 called in a political scientist, for instance, to argue that CA gays and lesbians are not politically powerless. Living in CA since 1996, I find it hard to believe that anyone doubts the power of the Gay Lobby. But, the plaintiffs attacked him because he had not studied gay politics in particular, just political parties and initiatives in general. The Judge completely bought the Plaintiffs’ assessment and found the “Miller’s opinions on gay and lesbian political power are entitle to little weight.” (pg 54 of the opinion)

But the Plaintiffs’ abuse of David Blankenhorn, and the Judge’s acquiescence in that abuse, was really something awful. David has mastered an expansive amount of data from a variety of disciplines on the impact of fatherlessness on children, on the significance of family structure, and on the importance of marriage to society. More than any single individual, David brought the issue of fatherless families to the attention of the public. Given academic specialization, no one person could have produced all that material, which is the standard that the Judge seems to require.

I can very easily read between the lines of Walker’s opinion, and see him trying to trap David into admitting things which sound damaging. For the most part, these “damaging” admissions are remarks taken out of context, often a context in which David was trying to be generous to his opponents, and trying not to overstate the applicability of the data before him. The Proponents’ attorneys extracted comparable admissions from the Plaintiffs’ witnesses, but somehow none of those admissions damaged their credibility in Judge Walker’s eyes. He finds that the “opinions of Blankenhorn to be unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight.”

So according to Morse, Walker had the "fix" in and was determined to smear any pro- Prop 8 witnesses and Blankenhorn turned out to be the "sacrifcial lamb."

Poppycock. Of course Morse doesn't go into details as just how Blankenhorn was "trapped" and it doesn't surprise me. Folks on her side of the argument never deal with the concrete, only the idealistic.

As we all know, the case put forth defending Prop 8 was weak. Darla Lithwick from The Slate said the following:

It's hard to read Judge Walker's opinion without sensing that what really won out today was science, methodology, and hard work. Had the proponents of Prop 8 made even a minimal effort to put on a case, to track down real experts, to do more than try to assert their way to legal victory, this would have been a closer case. But faced with one team that mounted a serious effort and another team that did little more than fire up their big, gay boogeyman screensaver for two straight weeks, it wasn't much of a fight. Judge Walker scolds them at the outset for promising in their trial brief to prove that same-sex marriage would "effect some twenty-three harmful consequences" and then putting on almost no case.

Walker notes that the plaintiffs presented eight lay witnesses and nine expert witnesses, including historians, economists, psychologists, and a political scientist. Walker lays out their testimony in detail. Then he turns to the proponents' tactical decision to withdraw several of their witnesses, claiming "extreme concern about their personal safety" and unwillingness to testify if there were to be "recording of any sort." Even when it was determined that there would be no recording, counsel declined to call them. They were left with two trial witnesses, one of whom, David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, the judge found "lacks the qualifications to offer opinion testimony and, in any event, failed to provide cogent testimony in support of proponent's factual assertions." Blankenhorn's credentials, methodology, lack of peer-reviewed studies, and general shiftiness on cross examination didn't impress Walker.

Sorry Morse. You can't recreate the truth with a tissue of lies.  Blankenhorn was on a sinking ship from the very beginning and all he did was bore more holes into the hull.

Will Homocon feud show us 'the real Ann Coulter?' and other Thursday midday news briefs

Ann Coulter Smacks Back: WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah Is “Swine” and “Publicity Whore” (UPDATED) - The feud with Ann Coulter and the speech at "Homocon" vs. World Net Daily has been fun to watch. And it reminds me of the following from The Boondocks. One wonders is it the "real Ann Coulter:"



And in other news:

NOM borrows two cents from Ohio waitress' tip - Okay it's stuff like this which caused the pro-Prop 8 side to lose.

UK: Adoption charity can't ban gay couples - If a good home can be provided for a child then why prevent it? It's not about an abstract idea of "family" but the reality that we must support all good families.

Anti-Gay Group Sues To Kill Wisconsin Domestic Partnership Registry - This is just meanspirited.

After GOP Rebuke, Jeremy Walters Apologizes For Anti-Gay Comments - Just more proof that there are too many self-appointed secretaries of God running around.