Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Hoft's new Jennings claim is a dud - Another day, another smear against Kevin Jennings. For the sake of a good argument, I've heard the tape and it's totally ridiculous. We don't know who this teacher is or even if she is a teacher. For all we know, it could have been a member of Mass Resistance or a person dragged off of the street and paid. It's the same as taping an anonymous person accusing someone of murder. No court in the world would think that such evidence is admissible and the same goes for this nonsense.
Andy Warhol once said that in the future, everyone would be famous for at least 15 minutes. And youtube makes it possible because any Tom, Dick, and in this case, dumbass can post a clip and get attention.
Sometimes these clips should be ignored.
Then there clips like this one. It's from a man who calls himself mrpleasantpreacher. Now according to mrpleasantpreacher, the United States could learn a lot from Uganda's anti-gay bill or it's commonly known, "Kill the gays" bill:
This man's sentiment isn't something that should be kicked aside by putting on a "Lada GaGa" record, twittering your friends, laughing at him, or whatever else our community does to blind us to the reality that some folks not only just don't like us but are willing to impede our social progress every chance they get.
As ugly as this man's words are, they gives our community a true picture of how some folks view us. No subtlety, no beating around the bush. None of that "it's not that I hate gay people, but I just hate when they (fill in the blanks)" phoniness which we witnessed last week (and probably will this week) with the attacks on Kevin Jennings.
When you eliminate all of the phony nuances (whether they be about "protecting the children" or "protecting traditional values") and the disguise of "Biblical truth," we are talking about pure unadulterated hatred here.
And none of us, whether we be lgbts, allies, or even those who the right who don't support lgbt rights, should ever forget that.
UPDATE - Apparently expressing the idea of shipping all lgbts (or as our friends puts it - sodomites) to Calfornia and putting a huge electrified fence around the state gets your video knocked off of youtube. Who knew?
What a wild week it was punctuated by the above clip of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow just totally eviscerating 'ex-gay' author Richard Cohen for his link to that Ugandan anti-gay bill.
And then there are the two big issues which took up a lot of attention this week: the "Jennings County War" and Uganda.
Kevin Jennings - it was an ugly week as the right didn't just try to slime Obama appointee Kevin Jennings. They tried to coat him with smelly motor oil from the inside and out.
It wasn't just the frequency of their attacks, but the grotesque lunancy of some of their charges which made reasonable folks (i.e. those in the media excepting Sean Hannity - but we all know about his "allegiance" to accuracy) totally ignore them:
Uganda - then there was that awful anti-gay bill in Uganda finally receiving national attention from Time, CNN, the Associated Press, and various other sources:
In a close run-off race of historic proportions, Houston voters chose City Controller Annise Parker as Houston's next mayor. Parker defeated attorney Gene Locke Saturday with about 53 percent of the vote (with 99.86 percent of the precincts in). When sworn in in early January, she will become the first lesbian to hold the office of mayor of a major American city and only the second woman. Kathy Whitmire held the office from 1982-1991.
She is also the first openly lesbian mayor of Houston, TX and the first openly lesbian mayor of a major American city.
Of course Parker didn't run as "the lesbian candidate," but her victory is a milestone which should be celebrated by all.
And it's definitely something to remember whenever the fight for marriage equality doesn't go our way.
Editor's Note - I am taking a very short break from the "Jennings County Wars." However the following links are for those looking for recent information about the newest smears against Kevin Jennings:
Though some may disagree with my assessment, the Ricki Lake Show did a lot of good for lgbt visibility.
When the talk show, hosted by actress Ricki Lake, first appeared in 1993, it was a bit different from the powerhouse shows like Oprah and Donahue in the fact that it was very youth-oriented, particularly when it came to focusing on the lgbt community.
When lgbt issues were generally discussed in a talk show setting, the narrative seemed to always be making gays and lesbians look like pitiful creatures begging for society's "tolerance."
The Ricki Lake Show did deal with topics about how ignorance of gays and lesbians can affect families, such as the following:
The show also had topics that dealt with the lgbt community as we are and not some sad prototypes needing to appeal to an idea of normalcy or caged creatures looking for "tolerance."
The Ricki Lake Show presented the lgbt life as it was, with warts and all but with an appreciation of our culture:
Gateway Pundit continues to tell its Mass Resistance fueled lies on Obama appointee Kevin Jennings.
This time the site is claiming that Jennings and the organization he founded to help lgbt children, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), passed out a guide encouraging children to have sex with strangers in public parks.
It's the latest in the plethora of lies pushed against Jennings.
Let's look at the list of lies before hitting on the new one:
Gateway Pundit falsely claimed that Jennings and GLSEN were encouraging students to read explicit books. This was a serious misrepresentation of the facts.
The site brought up the Fistgate lie irregardless of the fact that this story had been refuted
It propagated a lie that Jennings had led the way to the passing out of "fisting kits" to children. The kits had nothing to do with "fisting" and they were created by Planned Parenthood.
Gateway Pundit made the false claim that Jennings and GLSEN passed out an explicit sex guide "Little Black Book" to students at a conference in 2005. This was another falsehood. Fenway Community Health officials said they accidentally left about 10 copies of the ''Little Black Book" on an informational table they rented at the conference. Furthermore, no students actually got copies of the book.
That last lie is important to remember because the new lie Gateway Pundit is pushing is linked to it.
You see, the guide that Gateway Pundit is claiming that Jennings and GLSEN distributed to children encouraging them to have public sex with strangers is "Little Black Book:"
