Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
The above photo is a scene from the National Organization for Marriage's "Summer for Marriage" Tour which you will probably be seeing a little more of.
This tour has been a failure because in many places, the protestors have outnumbered NOM supporters.
Protests have varied from silent but effective like in New York to a bit unruly but equally effective like in Rhode Island, where this picture was taken.
No doubt Brian Brown, head of NOM and the guy with the microphone, meant for the picture to show how supposedly intolerant lgbt activists are.
Before this talking point even takes root, Brown needs to address the situation regarding a participant of his tour, Louis J. Marinelli.
At one stop, Brown claimed that his group supports the "dignity of all persons."
. the homosexual agenda is really about the 3 Ps: prostitution, pedophilia, and polygamy.
And on that note, before taking pictures of people to cast negative images of them, maybe Brown should police the nasty rhetoric of other NOM allies instead of attempting to dance around them.
Seems to me that before Brown and NOM attacks the so-called intolerant angry lgbt activists, he would be better served to examine why they are angry.
This is an excellent exchange between the NAACP's Bejamin Jealous and African-American tea party leader David Webb.
I apologize for not having the transcript, but here are the main points:
Jealous makes a good point about the New National Black Panther Party at 2:46. It is an excellent comparison between the NNPPA and the NAACP as opposed to the racist elements in the tea party movement.
But a better point is made before than by Webb at 1:22. He says that Mark Williams (the author of "the Abraham Lincoln Letter") and his group Tea Party Express have been expelled from the National Tea Party Federation specifically because of "the Abraham Lincoln Letter."
But wouldn't that be an admittance of racist elements in the tea party movement?
And I thought Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, AND Fox News said that there were no racist elements in the tea party movement.
So much for truth in politics.
Editor's Note - I apologize to those who feel that I am deviating from lgbt issues to address this situation. But to me, it's all connected.
This isn't necessarily an lgbt issue per se, but as an African-American, I feel that I need to say something:
If the tea party movement isn't racist, then at the very least, it's not necessarily bright.
And nothing displays the movement's stupidity more than its ongoing dust up with the NAACP over the civil rights group's resolution asking that the organization condemn racism in its midst.
Now rather than admitting that there are racist elements in the tea party movement and agreeing that there is no place for that sort of thing - which tea partiers have done in the past - the movement got loud and defensive, hoping that screaming charges of "reverse racism" and pulling out assorted big names like Sarah Palin and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, and yanking the few assorted black tea party members to knock down the charges would make people forget the nasty anti-black and anti-Obama images and words they have seen and heard over the past year.
Guys, people are not stupid.
There are racist elements to the tea party movement and many of them are in leadership positions. So please stop with the phony whine about how "America is sick of phony racial accusations." Sarah Palin can't help you, Michael Steele can't help you.
Not even Fox News can help you.
But if you want to help yourself in proving that there are no racist elements in tea party movement, please justify the "Abraham Lincoln letter" written by the leader of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams. A letter which no one in your movement has denounced:
Dear Mr. Lincoln:
We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!
In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the 'tea party movement'.
The tea party position to "end the bailouts" for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn't that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.
And the ridiculous idea of "reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government." What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!
The racist tea parties also demand that the government "stop the out of control spending." Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.
Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government "stop raising our taxes." That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?
Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.
Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom's Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person
The following is Keith Olbermann laying it down on Williams:
Speaking of Mark Williams, here is something else he has said that you need to denounce. If you don't denounce it, I would suggest that you get your white sheets fitted. And yes, I do mean the African-American tea partiers too:
But here is the interesting thing - I doubt anyone in the tea party movement will denounce Williams. They can't because it would prove that the NAACP was right.
Catch 22s are always fun to watch when the right people are trapped in them.
The Color Purple (1985) is an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitizer Prize winning novel about a black woman in the early 1900s who learns to love herself.
One of the things in the novel was the relationship between the main character, Celie, and Shug Avery, a blues singer who teaches her about love.
While the motion picture briefly touched on it, I was pleased how the relationship between the two (played by Whoopi Goldberg and Margaret Avery) wasn't shied away from.
Believe it or not the following scene was the least controversial thing about the movie. There were complaints about how it supposedly bashed black men and then when it was nominated for and lost 11 Oscars, some of the same people who criticized it came to its defense.
Regardless, I still think of this movie as a classic:
NOM’s Sparse, Scenic Marriage Tour - The National Organization for Marriage's summer tour is failing big time Part 3 (okay maybe I'm getting greedy. . . just a little bit.)
The American Family Association's One News Now (and several other religious right and right-wing sources including Fox News) is exploiting a controversy over a Montana sex education program in order to further stigmatize the lgbt community.
From One News Now:
A proposed sex-education curriculum in Montana is drawing outrage because it would teach young children about subjects like same-sex intercourse.
Under the proposal for the Helena school district, kindergartners would learn the proper names of sexual body parts, first-graders would be taught that sexual relations could happen between two men or two women, and fifth-graders would learn the various ways people can have intercourse.
Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Foundation (MFF), contends that the proposal "tramples" on parental rights. "It places government squarely between parents and their children," he claims, "and the outrage that we're seeing in Helena, we understand well, because in Montana we understand what happens when you get between a mother grizzly and her cubs."
He relates that reaction to the "level of outrage that we're seeing from these parents that feel like their children are being indoctrinated rather than educated."
Of course Laszloffy is the only person quoted in the story, which is typical of One News Now's bias and intentional inability to get the full story.
From CNN, we discover that parents were involved in the development of the program:
Bruce Messinger, Helena's school superintendent, said the guide was drawn up by a committee that included parents, teachers and administrators. That committee used local practices and examined national guidelines, including those put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics, he said.
We also discover that parents have a right to opt their children out of the program and that some parents also support the program:
Cathy Areu, publisher of the Latina women's magazine Catalina and a former high school teacher, told HLN the standards sound defensible and age-appropriate.
"It sounds like they are teaching body parts and things that are facts of life," Areu said. "I feel more comfortable with my daughter learning about this in a classroom than from a boy in the hallway."
Lastly, the following is the full program, another detail which neither Fox News nor One News Now bothered to tell folks:
The proposed curriculum guide is part of a broad range of health courses that also teach nutriition, disease prevention, anatomy and environmental health. It would teach students as early as second grade that using anti-gay slurs is hurtful and teach children in older elementary grades about sexual harassment and abuse.
Students would be told as early as kindergarten to properly name body parts. The concept that people "can love people of the same gender and people of another gender" would be introduced in first grade, though homosexual relationships aren't discussed until fifth grade.
Fifth-graders also would learn that sexual intercourse "includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration." Teachers would start discussing pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and drugs and alcohol with middle-schoolers, while high school students would learn about sexual orientation and the "legal implications" of some decisions.
