Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Media Matters has done a lot this year to fight right-wing nonsense.
They were very helpful in fighting the lies against Kevin Jennings (helpful? Hell, a lot of my information came from them) as well as other lies pushed by some those on the right who seek to exploit ignorance and fear.
So with that in mind, I want to throw out props to the group and encourage you all to support them. Lgbt issues are just one of the things they deal with:
Now secondly, some of you may have noticed that I have been hinting about a second book.
Well to give you more information, I have been working on a second book. But this one won't be as detailed as Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, my first book.
I want to break down religious right distortions in a manner that conveys their nastiness as well as shining a light on the entities who spout them. My goal is to bring more attention to the historical hypocrisy of these so-called pro-family groups.
Heterosexual Menace: Father forces sex on son - This mention is not meant to bash heterosexuals. Lord knows if lgbts were the offending party, this incident would be in a religious right email as well as a "news item" on One News Now. This mention is just to show the depths of ignorance people can stoop to about us.
Every now and then, a situation takes that place that's so strange, it diverts my attention away from focusing on the religious right.
During the mad battle over health care reform, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) recently gave a speech on the Senate floor hoping that a senator would not make the vote. He encouraged prayer on the matter:
What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.
Now some people thought the Senator he was implying about was 92-year-old ailing Robert Byrd (D- West Virginia). Coburn's comment got much criticism, including from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois):
I have been trying to reach Sen. Coburn. … This statement troubles me, and I’m trying to reach him come back to the floor and explain exactly what he meant about a senator being unable to make the vote tonight. … I’m reaching out to Sen. Coburn. I’ll be on the floor for the next 45 minutes, and I hope that he will join me there.
As far as it is known, Coburn did not clarify what he meant by his statement.
In an interesting case of irony, when a vote did come up, a senator missed it - Republican James Inhofe.
And all of that led to this mindboggling, bizarre call to CSPAN from a teabagger who not only thought Sen. Inhofe was dead but that his prayer caused it.
Personally I prefer on-camera breakdowns to be done by either Joan Crawford or Maggie Smith.
Don't worry, by the way. Senator Inhofe is not dead - he just didn't make the vote.
But I don't know what's so weirder about this video - the fact that it reveals yet again the abject cluelessness of these teabaggers or the fact that both the CSPAN host and Senator John Barasso (R-Wyoming) kept a straight face throughout the entire thing:
Transcript:
CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night.
How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough
HOST: Senator Barasso, he was referring to Senator Inhofe, who was not part of the round of voting this morning.
BARASSO: The votes today, they needed 60 votes in favor of the bill. Senator Inhofe is opposed to the bill, and whether he was there or not didn’t make any difference. There was no way that Jim Inhofe was going to vote for the bill, the senator from Oklahoma. So that’s why he wasn’t there this morning.
HOST: Do you know where he was, senator, why he wasn’t able to make the vote this morning?
Despite the fact that some of us consider Peter LaBarbera to be a laughing stock and a useful @^!* in this so-called culture war, there are some people who support him.
Such as the creator this site.(click at the risk of getting righteously indignant).
Please note that the site owner took LaBarbera's Grinch of the Year post (in which he did not nominate me . . . the bitch!) almost word for word and added his/her own interesting headline:
Who are the faggot and dyke Grinches this year?
And so that you don't miss it, check out the lovely side graphics about African-Americans. Or if you don't want to get on that nasty site again, I incorporated one for you:
I won't even talk about the comments regarding President Obama.
Some may disagree with me giving this blog attention. However, I just want to remind people that a lot of times, homophobia and racism are indistinguishable.
If you hate one group, it's easy to transcribe that hate to another.
And if LaBarbera thinks he is aiming for Heaven when he attacks the lgbt community, then he really should take another look.
If he is on the side of the angels, then why is he attracting this devil?
Hat tip to my online buddy who did not express that I reveal his name in this post. If he does, then I will reveal it.
Grasping At Straws - How dare Peter LaBarbera not nominate Joe Jervis or Pam Spaulding for one of his grinch awards. Come to think of it, neither Pam nor any other woman got a nomination. Hmmmm. I ought to pull a Kanye on him.
Now that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is running for president (unofficially that is), he is backtracking from pro-gay legislation he signed:
To borrow a phrase, have your views evolved over time? In 1993 I voted for a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodation, housing, and employment. That was 16 years ago.
Yes, gay-rights activists regarded you as a pretty cool guy at the time. We overbaked that statute, for a couple of reasons. If I had to do it over again I would have changed some things.
Overbaked? That statute is not worded the way it should be. I said I regretted the vote later because it included things like cross-dressing, and a variety of other people involved in behaviors that weren't based on sexual orientation, just a preference for the way they dressed and behaved. So it was overly broad. So if you are a third-grade teacher and you are a man and you show up on Monday as Mr. Johnson and you show up on Tuesday as Mrs. Johnson, that is a little confusing to the kids. So I don't like that.
Has the law been changed? No. It should be, though.
So you want to protect kids against cross-dressing elementary-school teachers. Do you have any in Minnesota? Probably. We've had a few instances, not exactly like that, but similar.
For the record, there have been cases of teachers who have returned to class after gender reassignment surgery, although I am not sure that any of them occurred in Minnesota. After initial fears and some trepidation, the schools, students, and parents adapted to the situation. And there have been cases of transgendered students who are as young as six.
So certainly the issue is complicated but the way Pawlenty tries to trivialize it as a way to flip flop on his earlier pro-lgbt stance is rude. It reveals not only a misrepresentation of non-discrimination laws but also a cynical willfulness to exploit ignorance of the transgendered community.
Just a precursor to my own 2009 Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters Misinformer of the Year awards. Can last year's champion Matt Barber hold on to his title or will he be outdone by a group effort not unlike the one that gave the Saturday Night Fever album the Grammy award in 1978? Stay tuned for more details.
Media Matters (who will probably be sending me a bill) has just announced their 2009 Misinformer of the Year award and to the surprise of no one, it's Glenn Beck:
Now while Beck gets the major award, Media Matters also gave a host of minor awards for outrageous statements.
And again to the surprise of no one, many of those statements had to do with comments made against the lgbt community:
In addition to a sustained assault on Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, right-wingers made outrageous attacks based on sexual orientation:
Of course I'm disappointed that the Media Matters list omitted the dust-up between Matt Barber, Peter LaBarbera, and Exodus International which recently came up.
However, it just occurred to me that our biggest strength in this so-called cultural war is the mouths of our opposition. Give them enough time and they verbally hang themselves.
And in this case, a public hanging is just what we need. After all, why keep the craziness of the religious right to ourselves. In the spirit of holiday generosity, everyone needs to see just how crazy these folks are.
