'Jesus is going to kill all of these sodomites'

In my nine and a half years as blogmaster of Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, I have covered many elements of visceral homophobia whether it dealt with policy, lies, or statements.

But I don't think I will ever see or hear anything so nauseating. I'm only posting it because we need to be aware of it. I am not too familiar with this young man, Theodore Shoebat, because he is almost too comical to be real.

And I guess it would be easy to laugh at him and predict how long will it be before he gets "caught" in a homosexual orgy.  But there comes a time when you can't laugh because it's just too scary. And it's important to remember that behind almost every so-called respectable face of homophobia is the raging madness this young man spews.

From Right Wing Watch:

Last week, extremist anti-gay activist Theodore Shoebat posted a video in which he gloated that when Jesus Christ returns, he'll slaughter every single gay person in the world.

 . . ."In a biblical society," Shoebat stated, "every fag would be rounded up and killed. But that's not going to happen, but believe me, when Jesus comes back, Jesus is going to kill all these sodomites. You're going to be praying to be living under a Catholic society from the Middle Ages because when Jesus comes back, it's going to be a lot more brutal." "He's going to find all you bastards and he's going to slaughter every single one of you," said Shoebat with a smile on his face. "I can't wait for that day to come. It's going to be a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful world."  

Take a look at the men, women, & children the GOP platform unfairly targets

If the GOP wants to gain some degree of power and credibility beyond its base and the Fox News crazies, the party needs to divest from members of the religious right.

Today we have seen how much pull people like the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins has in the Grand Old Party by what members of its platform committee adopted as official party policy. And almost all of it has a nasty homophobic vent.

An amendment offered by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins offered support for the controversial practice of “conversion therapy” for children who identify as LGBT.

 . . . The subcommittee strengthened the platform’s language in opposition to same-sex marriage. The initial draft circulated late Sunday to committee members stated: “Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere In this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the States.”

And of course:

  Republican delegates adopted tough language opposing the Obama administration’s policy on transgender schoolkids in a platform subcommittee hearing Monday morning.

 . . . Tony Perkins, a delegate from Louisiana and the president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, said the party should include the position to support the 11 states that are suing the Obama administration over the policy. West Virginia delegate Melody Potter said, “I believe it’s time for Republicans to take a stand on it. It’s a safety issue.”

Safety for who? The "predator in the women's restroom" talking point/urban legend has been continuously refuted.  If those working on the GOP platform really cared about safety, they would get to know the transgender community before using their power to demonize them. Such as the folks in the video at the top of this post.

Video courtesy of The National Center for Transgender Equality

News brief special: GOP convention promises to be surreal with mixture of extreme homophobia, Trump, & Caitlyn Jenner

The GOP has gone anti-lgbt buck wild in their party platform. LGBTs, in our own little way, will strike back by the airing of the above commercial during their convention next week. See the article in the news briefs 

RNC quietly passes anti-LGBT resolution - So the Republican Party is creating its platform for the 2016 election. Did you really think that they would welcome us with open arms? 

Is Trump Letting Religious Right Leaders Have Their Way With GOP Platform - A "religious liberty" amendment, an anti-marriage equality amendment, and an anti-transgender amendment. What do you think the answer to that question may be?  

Transgender Rights Ad To Air During Republican Convention On Fox News - Ah yes, the nice surprise in the middle of the "Trump coronation." See the video above  

Tony Perkins Wants The GOP To Endorse Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy - Interesting. The only anti-lgbt amendment the GOP didn't want

Caitlyn Jenner will attend LGBT Republican event at GOP convention - And things are going to get surreal. I wanna say something so bad but I will just leave the post here with no comment.

Repost - Why I get a nagging feeling about the phrase 'religious liberty'

Editor's note - in lieu of the recent situation in which a baker has refused to make a birthday cake for a married lesbian couple due to her "religious beliefs," I am reposting this 2011 piece I wrote on "religious liberty."

I think we are in the stage I predicted. The anti-lgbt industry slowly but steadily made "religious liberty" a repeated talking point. Now they are prepared to take argument as far as it can go:

Those who are my friends know that I am a serious fan of the 1970s detective drama Columbo. The thing I really loved about this show was the fact of how the character of police detective Columbo never considered a murder case completely simple. He never bought into the idea of an "open-and-shut" case if he had a nagging feeling, no matter how insignificant it was.

That nagging feeling is what I get when I hear about  marriage clerks, hotel owners, Catholic adoption agencies, and recently - cake bakers who refuse to serve gay couples. No doubt you have heard about them and will probably hear a lot more as religious right groups trying to hinder marriage equality will canonize these folks as "saints and martyrs" besieged by so-called radical gay activists supposedly trying to force them choose between their livelihood and religious freedom.

In fact they have a term for this sort of thing. They call it "religious liberty."

There is a certain simplicity to these cases which garners them a degree of support. Some of these folks (excluding Catholic charities who have no right to taxpayer money to discriminate and marriage clerks who should put the needs of constituents over their own desires) seems to have a right to serve whomever they wish. And one could even make the case that they are in fact forced to choose between their livelihoods and their "religious liberty."

But then there goes that nagging feeling again. These cases aren't as simple as they are made out. What about the rights of couples refused service? No matter how you attempt to soften the blow, the idea that someone will  not serve you because of how they inaccurately view you still hurts. It's dehumanizing, it's cruel, and it's embarrassing.

In a recent situation in Iowa, a cake baker scheduled an appointment with a lesbian couple who desired her services only to use that time to not only tell them no, but also to criticize their sexual orientation.

Then that same cake baker made several news appearances to decry about how she was victim, backed by several religious right groups spinning the same talking points.

'Anti-lgbt industry pushing 'new' & phony study on same-sex parenting ' & other Fri. midday news briefs

In the midst of chaos and madness, the necessity of good and accurate information becomes even more vital.

Another Regnerus-Like “Research” Paper On Gay Parents Making the Rounds - At this stage of the game, those in the lgbt community who refute such things need not approach every anti-lgbt study as a new thing. It's always the old lies and distortions presented in deceptively new ways. In this case, thank you Jim Burroway from the GLAAD Media Award-nominated blog Box Turtle Bulletin for taking this down. 

 Same-Sex Parents Win Key Court Victory - Wonderful but also sad when one sees what happens when a same-sex couple breaks up. We need not exploit the policies of those who want to keep us underfoot. 

 Fighting The LGBT Community’s Invisibility - This combats the most common but not generally thought about invisibility when it comes to our community. I'm all for it. 

 Mississippi Governor To Appeal Order Halting Anti-LGBT Law - Unfortunate and surprising no one.

Anti-transgender bill in Washington State fails to make the Nov ballot

Washington state just proved that transphobia has its limits.

From The Stranger:

Just Want Privacy, the anti-trans group that wanted to make the state vote on trans people's civil rights, did not get enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. David Ammons, communications director for the Secretary of State, confirmed that Just Want Privacy has canceled their scheduled 9 a.m. signature delivery appointment tomorrow. Trans rights activists won in Washington State. They did it. Fear and hatred won't win, not this time.

And from MyNorthwest.com

 According to the secretary of state’s office, Campaign Chief Joseph Backholm informed the office that the campaign did not gather enough signatures.There is a 246,000 minimum for signatures — the state recommends getting 325,000 to account for duplicate and invalid signatures. I-1515 failed to get the minimum. At around noon Thursday, the Just Want Privacy Campaign posted a call for help to gather more signatures, and did not yet mention its failure to gather enough.

In March, ThinkProgress labeled the initiative "The Most Radical Anti-Trans Ballot Initiative Ever Submitted In Washington State."  It would have:

• Declared “null and void and of no effect” the Human Rights Commission’s rules guaranteeing bathroom access for transgender people.
• Banned the Human Rights Commission from ever adopting rules related to gender identity in sex-segregated facilities.
• Clarified that the state’s nondiscrimination laws still allow restrooms and locker rooms to be designated “for the exclusive use by biological male persons only or biological female persons only” and that no others (i.e. transgender people) are guaranteed such access.
• Preempted municipalities from passing their own bathroom protections for transgender people.
• Prohibited transgender students from accessing sex-segregated bathrooms in schools, only allowing them to access to “single-stall bathrooms, uni-sex bathrooms, or controlled use of faculty bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms.”.
• Allowed students to sue schools for $2,500 “for each instance in which they encountered a person of the opposite sex while accessing a public school student restroom, locker room, or shower room designated for use by the aggrieved students’ sex,” as well as monetary damages “from the offending public school for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered.”

Just Want Privacy was allegedly helped by national anti-lgbt groups  such as the Family Research Council and yet still failed to get enough signatures.

How sweet it is!!

'Homophobes patronize black people to demonize lgbts' & other Thur. midday news briefs

Peter LaBarbera: Gay Rights Movement Is 'A Liberal Cult' And 'Anti-God' - Noted and nauseating homophobes Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera get together to talk about lgbts and the African-American community and it is probably the single most ill-conceived and patronizing incident this year. Example as follows:

“The blacks are a noble people, certainly, and there are many … Bible-believing Christians who are offended and disgusted by these illegitimate comparisons between mutable, changeable, deviant behaviors, homosexual behavior, and immutable, neutral characteristics such as skin color,” Barber said. He claimed that “black leaders have completely sold out to the radical LGBT lobby and are complicit in making these illegitimate comparisons.” 

Gee, Matt. That's "mighty white" of you.

Texas, 12 Other States Push To Block Feds From Enforcing Trans Bathroom Guidance - By all means please waste that taxpayer money.

 This 16-Year-Old Came Out To Her Family At Disneyland And It’s The Best - Other than a Broadway musical, isn't Disneyland THE place to come out . . . shut up.  

Trump now apparently backs North Carolina anti-LGBT law - Dear Caitlyn and the rest of you Log Cabin folks . . . 

Gay Collective: “The Virus Divides. It Doesn’t Have To.” - Wonderful post by my friend Mark S. King