Stinky Santorum wants to be President

Look who wants to be President:

Former senator Rick Santorum announced the launch of a presidential exploratory committee for the next election cycle on Wednesday night during an appearance on Fox News.

Earlier in the day, Santorum alerted his supporters that he would be addressing the next step of his decision-making process ahead of 2012 on the network.

"Over the past two years, I have traveled our great nation listening to people express their concern for the future of America," he wrote in an e-mail.

"Throughout this journey, my wife Karen and I have been incredibly humbled by the encouragement I have received to run for President in 2012."

While recent polls haven't shown Santorum running toward the front of the potential GOP presidential pack, the former senator came out on top of a straw poll taken at the Greenville County Republican convention in South Carolina last weekend.

The fact that this clown actually won any straw poll in South Carolina is an embarrassment to the Palmetto State period.

But I will say one thing for Santorum. When it comes to lgbt equality, he isn't a flip-flopper like another Republican candidate, Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty supported lgbt equality and now suddenly doesn't think it's a good idea.

No, Santorum never liked the idea that lgbts are equal from the beginning. Of course the most infamous time he expressed this is in 2003 when he compared our relationships to incest, polygamy, and bestiality. As we all know, that led Dan Savage to take the word "santorum" and use it to coin a phrase describing a byproduct of anal sex (which I am too much of a gentleman to repeat).

That, I am hoping, will be Santorum's enduring legacy to this country.

But the following clip in which Santorum just totally disrespects lgbt families is a moment I hope lgbt voters won't forget, particularly those lgbt voters who don't like President Obama:



Just imagine having someone like that in the White House. I'd rather have a snake I can work with rather than one who would put me in a titanium steel closet.

Analyzing the religious right's war on lgbt children

Editor's note - I apologize to those who were expecting my daily midday news briefs. But as you can see, religious right groups and figures are especially ornery today. It must be the beginning of a season.

The People for the American Way has come out with an excellent report on the ways religious right groups are attempting to undermine efforts to protect lgbt children in schools.

The report, Big Bullies: How the Religious Right is Trying to Make Schools Safe for Bullies and Dangerous for Gay Kids, should be mandatory reading for all of us who care about keeping our lgbt children safe.

Among the highlights is a detailed table of contents listing a host of religious right distortion techniques used to derail anti-bullying efforts:

• Introduction
• Facing the Problem
• The Indoctrination Myth
• The “Special Rights” Smear
• Playing the Victim
• Blaming the Victims
• Conclusion

The introduction says it all:

Students deserve an education that is free from bullying and harassment, and in many districts parents, teachers, principals, community members and students are working together to create a safe and welcoming environment for all children. Bullying can impede learning and ruin lives. As Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said, “bullying is doubly dangerous because if left unattended it can rapidly escalate into even more serious violence and abuse.” Close to nine in ten Americans believe that bullying is a “serious problem,” and many communities are directly challenging harassment and violence in schools.

However, many Religious Right activists want to derail efforts to combat bullying. An increasing number of conservative leaders and organizations have fiercely opposed anti-bullying programs developed by schools and education groups for the sole reason that such programs identify and attempt to combat the widespread bullying of LGBT youth.

Rather than recognize and address the problem of bullying against students who are gay or perceived to be gay, Religious Right groups want schools to embrace a policy of inaction. Many resort to repeating discredited lies about sexual orientation and vilifying the LGBT community and its allies to back up their opposition to anti-bullying programs that mention anti-gay bullying. Concerned students, families, teachers, education professionals, and public officials should not be fooled by the far-right’s attempt to smear anti-bullying programs, and should instead ensure that schools address bullying with a direct, honest and comprehensive approach.

So apparently that nonsense we saw this morning from Peter LaBarbera about GLSEN only scratches the surface of religious right chicanery and lies.

Again, read this report, save it, and send it out to as many people as possible.

Peter Sprigg accuses Perez Hilton of having 'a known interest in children'

Gossip columnist Perez Hilton

Those who read this blog know that I'm not necessarily that much a fan of gossip columnist Perez Hilton.

I will admit that at times I look at his site, but mostly he is a bit too juvenile for my tastes. And his unnecessarily crude comments towards beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean started a controversy which made Prejean a religious right cause celebre (that is before those pictures came out).

However it seems that in light of the situation involving lgbt teen bullying, Hilton is attempting to soften his image. And that includes writing a children's book entitled The Boy With Pink Hair.

The news of this has elicited many comments - some positive, others negative.

But for my money, none are more negative than that of Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council. Sprigg, who usually busies himself manufacturing inaccurate studies about lgbts, took the time to make a sly suggestion in The Washington Times regarding Perez and "an interest in children:"

Peter Sprigg, Family Research Council

“He does have a known interest in children,” says Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for Family Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, “having published a photo of teen star Miley Cyrus that could have been considered child pornography.

The picture Sprigg is speaking of is that of Cyrus which Hilton published in 2010 while she was getting out of a car while supposedly not wearing any underwear. Cyrus at the time was 17.

Hilton asserted that she was in fact wearing underwear and he published the picture "to teach her a lesson about getting out a car in a ladly-like fashion."

For all of the talk  about Hilton and "child pornography," the controversy died out. And that's because it was a stupid controversy pushed by a stupid need by Hilton to gain attention for his blog.

And I am by no means defending Hilton's actions. But for Sprigg to assert in any fashion that Hilton is a pedophile is nasty. Of course Sprigg never came out and said the word "pedophile," but we all know what he means by "interest in children."

Hilton is a gossip columnist and subsequently he publishes salacious items and pictures regarding celebrities. The credibility of him writing a children's book is definitely subject for discussion. But Sprigg's assertion of pedophilia seems to be more directed towards Hilton's sexual orientation rather than his vocation.

It only goes to prove that no matter what the situation may be regarding the lgbt community (like this morning's post about GLSEN), members of the religious right just have to work in a dig about lgbts wanting to "harm children."

It's like a sickness. They can't seem to help themselves.

GLSEN the victim of a homophobic smear days before annual event

This morning, Peter LaBarbera came out with what he called a "breaking story" on his Americans for Truth webpage:

A Facebook page affiliated with the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) — to support homosexual student clubs and GLSEN’s upcoming activist “Day of Silence” in schools nationwide (Friday, April 15) — was linked for several weeks to a pornographic “gay” hook-up website containing full-frontal nudity and personal ads expressing interest in dangerous homosexual practices including anal sodomy, “rimming” and various sadistic sex fetiishes popular in the homosexual male subculture.

The GLSEN ”Gay-Straight Alliances” Facebook page was also linked to a  “Gay Trip Thailand” Facebook page with shirtless Thai males — luring men to that notorious sex-tourism destination — as well as a movie about two male lovers that is sponsored by a leading “gay” pornographic video distributor. When the salacious links were exposed April 11 by Mission America, a pro-family group, they were quickly removed from the GLSEN Facebook page. 

Here is the clip he saved:

 

There are so many things wrong with LaBarbera's assertion. First and most importantly, GLSEN had nothing to do with this page. It has several banners advertising GLSEN events, such as the Day of Silence, but there is nothing on this page calling it an "affiiliate of GLSEN" or - as LaBarbera put it - The "GLSEN "Gay-Straight Alliance" page.  The page, Gay-Straight Alliances, seems to be a generic page supporting gay/straight clubs.

Furthermore if you will notice - the pictures which allegedly appeared were in the photo section of this page. Anyone can join this page and place photos there. Also, notice how those alleged photos are grouped together, as if someone put there all there at the same time.

What I am saying is that the most, this was an ugly practical joke by someone with a nasty sense of humor. And at the very least, this was a nasty set-up created to harm GLSEN days before its annual Day of Silence event.

According to LaBarbera, the group Mission America discovered the photos. Mission America is a vicious anti-gay group led by one Linda Harvey. Mission America was one of the sponsors of LaBarbera's latest so-called Truth Academy. Furthermore, Harvey has said lgbts or anyone supporting lgbt equality shouldn't be around children because they would cause children to be molested. Recently she said the so-called "gay agenda" was responsible for the spate of lgbt teen suicides.

I am not saying definitely that LaBarbera and Harvey conspired here. But there is something fishy about the fact that Harvey's group - which has affiliated with LaBarbera in the past - just happened to find semi-pornographic pictures on this page.

The sick irony of the entire thing is that it allowed LaBarbera to return to his "roots," so to speak. LaBarbera is known in lgbt circles as "Porno Pete" for his penchant of going to leather conventions and subcultural sex-events, taking pictures, and going into details about what supposedly the gays did there (while conveniently ignoring the heterosexuals in attendance).

This faux GLSEN controversy allowed LaBarbera to list all sorts of graphic details about gay sex - which I won't publish here - like he used to do in his olden days.

Furthermore, he also repeats several religious right lies about GLSEN, including:

the alleged Fistgate controversy, which the organization had nothing to do with,

and the false claim that GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings did not report an underage child having sex with an adult male. The young man - Brewster - was not underage at the time and in a later interview credited Jennings for being there for him at a time at which it was difficult for young lgbts to confide in anyone.

Here is the gist of this so-called controversy:

The alleged Facebook page is NOT affiliated with GLSEN other than giving support to some of its events.

Secondly, we don't know HOW those pictures got on that page (they have been scrapped off as of now, so my guess is that as soon as the page administrator saw them, he or she deleted them).

LaBarbera and Harvey have a lot of questions to answer. Just how did Mission America just happen find these pictures. And if these pictures were on the page for "several weeks" - like LaBarbera asserted - why are we just hearing about it now.

One thing is clear though - if this turns out to be a manufactured controversy (and I am not saying by whom), the parties behind it - and they who know they are - are pretty damned pathetic.

National Organization for Marriage twists professor's word, bars his correction from its blog

This took place last week, but more attention needs to be paid to it. It's not just the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, or the Traditional Values Coalition who likes to distort the words of credible experts. The National Organization for Marriage also stoops to this level of deception

From nomexposed.org:

 . . . Widener University Law Professor John Culhane wrote an article looking at the many societal benefits tied to and associated with marriage. NOM pounced on Culhane’s working, firing off a blog post titled “After SSM, What Next? Half Marriage and Ending the “Privileges” of Marriage”


Not surprisingly, NOM twisted Culhane’s actual points. When Culhane himself tried to correct NOM on this, they censored his comment from their blog. Check out his follow-up piece, with excerpts below:

…The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) took my article, and butchered – I mean edited – the piece down to focus only on an exaggerated version of (2), in furtherance of their project of saying that what “we” really want is the abolition of marriage. (You can find their blog piece here.) And so as to make it harder for anyone to compare the original to the NOM version, they didn’t link to the piece. (They did provide the url for the general 365 cite, not for the article; and it wasn’t hot-linked.)

I responded with a ritual act of futility: I commented on their actions, and provided a link to my piece in case any of their readers wanted to compare the original with the twisted NOM version. As usual, my comment was “moderated” into some cyber-purgatory, where it will exist in perpetuity

Of course, I’ve long known that NOM isn’t interested in exposing its readers to anything that might contradict the party line. But this unwillingness to post a comment from the very author you’re quoting seems to me a new low. The message it sends is: “We like it here in this bubble. And we’re not going to let any outside forces question our intellectual honesty.”

NOM claims to be interested in dialogue, but this act of obliteration through “moderation” conclusively shows that they’re only interested in bouncing their own voices around in an echo chamber.

Gays blamed for Catholic priests abusing children and other Tuesday midday news briefs

Chris Meloni was always cool:



In other news briefs:

Vineland schools lift ban on gay websites - Way to go, ACLU!


Dr. Ablow Launches Inaccurate, Transphobic Attack On J. Crew Advertisement - A stupid attack over pink toenails.

We’re CRUISING w/ Donnie McClurkin! - I wouldn't go on a boat with Donnie McClurkin on a bet.

Catholic Abuse? Blame Gays - Bill Donohue blames gays for Catholic priests abusing children. Yeah, we gave them secret codewords to do it. What a  #@!&;*!

Gays control Congress and other things I learned last weekend

This is slightly nauseating.

Last weekend, a bunch of social conservatives got together to combat the so-called gay agenda. And just about all of the "talking heads" were there from Robert Knight to Matt Barber to Greg Quinlan.

It was held at Liberty University and was called the Awakening. But if I had to attend, I would have cracked myself over the head so that I wouldn't have to be awake. Amongst the highlights, according to the American Independent:

The one self-described ex-gay on the panel, Greg Quinlan — who founded the Pro Family Network in 1996 and is now the president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) but spent his gay years lobbying for the LGBT-rights group Human Rights Campaign – explained that his foray into homosexuality was caused by abuse from his father and looking at Playboy magazine as a young boy.

 . . . Matt Barber, the panel’s moderator and a dean at Liberty University, said he served in the military for 12 years. Barber made a case that promoting gays in the military presents a national threat because most gay military men will be more focused on their attraction to other men than on their military duties, saying it comes down to the soldier who “has your back or the one who wants to rub it.” (Alvin's note - there he goes again).

But if you wanted to give a prize for the most obnoxious homophobic tripe uttered, you would have a tie between Ryan Sorba of the Young Conservatives of California and perennial homophobe Robert Knight.

From this clip, Sorba advocates that the "gay identity" does not exist so folks combatting the so-called gay agenda should stop using the word "gay:"



 According to the American Independent:

Sorba proposed alternatives to the word “gay,” which received approval by a unanimous show of hands by the 40-some audience members:

• “Same-sex attraction”
• “Same-sex intercourse”
• “Sodomy”
• “Unnatural vice”