There have been two episodes of gay-bashing in California in the last week. In the first, three men stood outside a gay club yelling epithets at entering patrons, then smashed a window, then got into a physical fight with patrons who confronted them. Then yesterday, a graver attack was mounted on three gay men leaving San Diego Pride festivities. They were taunted, struck with a baseball bat, and one may have been stabbed. (All three received serious, but not life-threatening, injuries.)
Recently, a lesbian couple in Maine had their home left in ruins after an attack which included anti-gay messages scrawled on the walls, smashed and stolen property, and urination and defecation throughout.
These closely follow a similar pattern seen around the country last summer, during which in July alone, a gay club in Brownsville, Texas was torched, and the week before that, the only gay club in Fayetteville, Arkansas was torched, and earlier in July, a gay-friendly UCC church was tagged with anti-gay graffiti and then torched.
Three big stories in one month, two years in a row—and only stories of attacks so vicious they made the news, and only the local and alternative national news, at that.
Consider for a moment the stories you see on the nightly news. Try to recall the scare stories that are built up around two children nationwide getting injured by a faulty toy, or three people nationwide having died from side effects of a medication, or ten people in your city having been attacked by pit bulls over the last twenty years. “A rash of incidents.” “An epidemic.” “What can we do?” “What you need to know to protect yourself.”
Consider that after two women died after taking RU-486 (after it has been dispensed over half a million times), two anti-choice Senators jumped to propose legislation that would suspend the use of the drug.
Consider that as the Senate passed legislation to federally criminalize the evasion of parental notification laws, the Republican Senator who wrote the legislation justified it by saying, “If it is happening 20 times a year, it is still worth doing to protect those parental rights and to protect those children from being in these kinds of situations.”
Consider that the flag-burning amendment was deemed a necessity, though only something like five flags have burned in decades.
Consider that the Pledge Protection Act was deemed a necessity, on the possibility that someone might bring a legal challenge based on the phrase “Under God.”
Consider that one of the primary rationales among opponents of marriage equality is that it must be prevented lest preposterous hypotheticals about men wanting to marry dogs come to fruition.
How little it takes to whip up the media into an exploitative frenzy, all in the name of “protecting” us. How little it takes to move our Congress to pay attention to an issue and pass legislation to “protect” us. (Which is, of course, ever an excuse to limit our rights, but they nonetheless claim it’s about “protection.”) One or two incidents, or, sometimes, just an imaginary scenario of what might happen. That’s all it takes.
But in the course of two months, there have been at least six vicious attacks on the LGBT community, and the media is silent. And Congress, well, they were pushing for an amendment to deny equal rights to same-sex couples. Their focus was “protecting the sanctity of marriage.” They’re more concerned with protecting an institution, an abstract concept, than protecting people.
When churches throughout the South were being burned, it was national news. When a hate crime at Seattle’s Jewish Federation claimed the life of someone the other day, it was national news. And it should have been, in both cases. But an epidemic of hatred against the LGBT community in this country is not garnering the same attention—even as Congress pursues discriminatory legislation and courts are ruling against challengers to marriage inequality.
Think there’s a correlation?
The anti-gay hysteria that’s leading to an epidemic of hate crimes against the LGBT community is constantly being inflamed by the GOP’s use of gay rights as a wedge issue, their use of anti-gay rhetoric, their exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. And even with people being attacked and their homes being burned, the Dems can’t be arsed to take a bloody principled stand. And the media doesn’t care. They’ve finally got a real epidemic on their hands and it’s utter silence.
So I guess it’s up to us.
Write your Congress members and your local media and tell them to pay attention to this Epidemic of Hatred against the LGBT community. Donate to LGBT advocacy groups. Straight people, register your support with Atticus Circle and PFLAG. And keep talking about this. Blog this issue. Tell anyone who will listen and get them involved.
Hatred flourishes in silence. Let’s make some noise.
An Epidemic of Hatred
Yeah, but- wonkish?
Another writer explains the exceedingly obvious- Why We Need Al Gore.
Hey, the more they say it, the more likely it is to come true, right? No reason to go over it again- that’s more the job of Shakes than me, since I get all my information from her anyway (which is why I know that, like the Holy Trinity, Morrissey and Gore are most likely aspects of the same individual)- but it’s always comforting whenever common sense principles take a step towards mainstream acceptance.
Still, this is worth mentioning (emphasis mine):
As reported by the American Prospect in April, Gore feels strongly that today's media is failing in its duty to inform the public. Former FCC chairman and longtime Gore friend Reed Hundt summed it up like this: "Gore's own view is that he sighed noisily in the debate and used the wrong telephone line to ask for money and the media said these are momentous events. Meanwhile, they ignore global warming and the failure to catch Osama and the destruction of the safety net."Sigh. Man, sometimes they get so close, you almost want to give them the cookie anyway. Still, the fact that a simple close rereading of her own article might have clued the author in on the problem makes it easier to keep the cookie for myself (ooo, butterscotch...). She mentions the media’s tendency to fixate on unimportant flubs over actual issues, but fails to recognize that these flub obsessions are bizarrely focused on non-Republican candidates. Why else would we even be talking about “gaffes” as destructive when we have a two-term president whose inability to speak above a fifth grade level is so widely accepted it’s barely even remarked on anymore?
So true. Dean's candidacy imploded due to "the scream"; John Kerry's 20-year record of public service in the Senate was boiled down to, "I actually did vote for the $87-billion before I voted against it." The media treat the presidential race as if it were a contest for student body president, where one's gaffes and quirks are more important than the issues. No wonder Gore is reluctant to try again.
The fact is, the so called "liberal" press covers elections by stereotyping candidates as quickly as possible. Which is why people still think of Al Gore as "boring," Howard Dean as "crazy," and, of course, George W. as "a regular guy". If a Gore or Dean makes a mistake- or even does something that can be misinterpreted as a mistake- that makes it all the easier to categorize them. When you have public figures represented by simple memes, you no longer have to deal with the ardous (and possibly boring) task of presenting the audience with actual information. And once a meme gets spread to the masses, it's nearly impossible to argue away, especially in the short period of time each candidate has to get their image across before elections. Which is why people keep on making tired "Gore invented the Internet" jokes.
So, Ms. Blumner got it half right. By pretending as though the media's treatment of politicians is wrong for all parties, she perpetuates the myth that the Democrats, while victims of poor treatment, were at least partly at fault, because hell, the Republicans haven't lost two presidential elections in a row, and if their boo-boos are getting just as much scrutiny, and they're still able to "connect" with the people, then man, those Democrats sure do suck, eh? Eh?
Quote of the Day
“[If I were running against conservatives,] I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences, because the man is looking — I mean, it’s not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged.” — Fareed Zakaria (via State of the Day)
Mel Apologizes
Singles out deputies who had to withstand his abuse, but can’t manage a few words to the Jews he accused of being “responsible for all the wars in the world.”
Pam’s got the Freeper round-up.
The Separation of Church and Hate
The NY Times profiles a conservative evangelical preacher, the Reverend Gregory A. Boyd, who’s getting fed up with the unholy alliance between conservative Christianity and conservative politics. He’s written a book called The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church, which is based on a series of six sermons entitled “The Cross and the Sword.” The sermons, which he gave before the last presidential election, “said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a ‘Christian nation’ and stop glorifying American military campaigns.”
His megachurch congregation was not totally pleased.
By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.But there were also congregants who thanked him—those who feel relief from the burden of expectation that being a Christian necessarily means being a Bush supporter, and those who are increasingly concerned that the conflation of religion and politics is doing a disservice to both.
“More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people. Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’”
Spot-on. Jesus has been hijacked as a political operative by people who have forgotten that the separation of church and state was designed to protect the church as much as the state. Christianity’s central figure cannot be redesigned as a gun-toting, gay-bashing, flag-draped ideological icon without fundamentally and inexorably altering the religion itself—particularly how it is regarded by those outwith its margins. Christians who don’t want to be associated with the reimagined Jesus have a right—and an obligation—to denounce his being co-opted into the spokesman for Überpatriot Dominionism. Christian Supremacists are rebranding Christ, and hence Christianity. This is nothing if not a marketing war.Understandably, it’s a game that Christians who don’t regard Jesus as a mascot don’t want to play, but the Christian Supremacy movement in America is a business. Millions and millions of dollars are raised every year by people professing to preach The Word in exchange for a few dollars (and a few more, and a few more) in the collection baskets, but all they’re really doing is selling a product—a way to cope with a changing world that robs bigots of their undeserved dominion, that tells them they really, at long last, must share equality with non-Christians, the LGBT community, strong women, minorities, and immigrants in the public sphere. They are losing control they were never meant to have, and Christianity 2.0 sells them the righteous anger and victimhood they need.
In these desperate people, the hate peddlers have found a ripe market for their wares. The hungry buyers come to the churches and the political rallies with money burning holes in the pockets of their sensible trousers, and they leave satiated, their bellies full of (self-)righteous indignation, with a determination to spread the word about the radical homosexual and feminist agendas, and a keen eye for the slightest proof that their suspicions about the dastardly fags and feminazis and liberals and brown people who threaten their way of life are all true. This is a booming business, and Falwell, Dobson, and Robertson have learned to roll out their product as efficiently as Ford and his Model-Ts.
And when a minister like Boyd fails to deliver, 20% of his congregation goes elsewhere in search of their fix.
Hate, like anything else in the American capitalist utopia, can be a splendid business, as long as there are enough interested buyers with cash in hand—and hate flogged under the auspices of religion has the added bonus of being a tax-free enterprise. It’s no surprise that Christ-cloaked bigotry is a booming industry. To Christian Supremacists, Jesus is just a logo; he doesn’t define their message any more than the Swoosh writes Nike’s mission statement. But, like any recognizable symbol to clamoring consumers, he confers upon the brand a status with which generic models just can’t compete. Your athletic skills are infinitely better with a famous insignia on your shoes, and your intolerance is remade as virtue with a savior lending his name for the dropping.
Christians who refuse to let Christ be claimed for such purposes are, whether willfully or not, the competition. (Something men like Boyd, who’s turned his views into a book for purchase, surely are beginning to recognize.) And all the rest of us, who have a vested interest in protecting our country against the ascendancy of Christian Supremacists, are consumer advocates, tasked with pointing out the flaws in their product—and questioning the existence of truth in their advertising.
(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)
NY Times Endorses Lamont
And the Joementum goes screeeeeeeeeech.
There is no use having a senator famous for getting along with Republicans if he never challenges them on issues of profound importance.The op-ed gets it mostly right. Although they ignore, in reducing Holy Joe’s position on women’s issues to “strongly support[ive of] a woman’s right to choose,” his problematic stance on a woman’s right to get emergency birth control at any hospital. And they don’t plainly state—as Atrios did in his op-ed for the LA Times—the quote that was, I imagine, a turning point for many progressives: “we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” Lieberman hasn’t merely “suggested” that there’s no principled space for opposition; he has promulgated that most atrocious Republican talking point which seeks to turn dissenters into traitors.
If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.
A healthy democracy is dependent on allowing for legitimate and principled dissent on national policy. Anyone, of either party, who asserts otherwise—who tries to silence dissent by force or threat or shame—doesn’t belong in Congress.
(The WaPo goes the other way today. Avedon responds.)
Girls, we need to talk.
Fellow straight girls, can we please agree that any man who has this in his bathroom will not get laid? I’m not talking about a guy who looks at that picture and thinks it’s ironically funny. I’m talking about a guy who looks at that picture and thinks it’s cool, then makes the effort to buy it, install it, stock it, and use it. If you find this in a date’s home, leave immediately and don’t look back. It’s for your own good. In fact, it’s for the good of society.
Oh My
After his arrest for drunk driving, Mel Gibson reportedly went on an anti-Semitic rant, threatened the arresting officers, and yelled at a female sergeant, “What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?”
TMZ has what it says are four pages of the original police report.
(Hat tip Holly.)
The Virtual Bar Is Open
Drink up, Johnny!
UPDATE: Mr. Shakes actually consented to letting me tape "A Message from Jiz-E Pimpskweez." I couldn't tape his face, though, so you get his feet instead. Enjoy!
Caption This Photo
President Bush speaks to the National Association of Manufacturers about the economy and his business policies, Thursday, July 27, 2006 at a hotel in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Quote of the Day
“We're not going to defeat this ideology until we … go out with sufficient confidence in our own position and say, this is wrong. It's not just wrong in its methods, it's wrong in its ideas, it's wrong in its ideology, it's wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it. And it will be a long struggle, I'm afraid.'' — Tony Blair, talking about fighting terrorism.
Wise words, methinks, about fighting any wretched reactionary ideology, if you know what I mean.
I admit it.
I am responsible, along with all my blogging brothers and sisters, for the continuation of the Iraq War.
And while I’m at it, I may as well fess up about a few other things. Katrina? Me. Stagflation? Me, again.
Oh, and I’m real sorry about all the potholes. I just can’t help myself.
Oh, Mel
Mel Gibson has been arrested and charged with a DUI.
Gibson, 50, was pulled over early Friday while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. Officers on patrol reported Gibson was driving at an "excessively fast speed," he said.
He was charged with a misdemeanor and posted $5,000 bond, Whitmore said.
Gibson was not immediately available for comment.
I’m going to hell. I know.
Voting Rights and Fair Elections
This is why I keep harping on the Voting Rights Act, and the importance of fair elections. If we cannot have a fair election, nothing will ever change. Nothing. It is the one true power we hold as Americans. Sure, Dubya had a photo-friendly signing of the Voting Rights Act yesterday, but true to form, the Republicans aren't taking this lying down. (The link requires a login; bugmenot didn't have any working ones, so I'm including the entire text in the blockquote.)
Senate Democrats Suggest Republicans Tried to Undercut Voting Rights ActCivil rights groups and Senate Democrats complained Thursday that even as President Bush signed a 25-year extension of expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act into law, some Senate Judiciary Republicans might be trying to undermine it after the fact.
Yeah, those tight re-election campaigns will make you think twice, huh?
Nine of the 10 Republicans on the panel — including Chairman Arlen Specter —signed a report filed July 26 that accompanied the extension. Democrats and other advocates of the extension charge that the report could provide ammunition for future legal challenges against the 1965 law (PL 89-110).
Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who helped speed the measure to final passage and on to the president’s desk, is an unlikely suspect for the charge of undermining the law.
He has long made clear that he wanted as thorough a legislative history as possible to ensure that the version passed by Congress withstands any potential court challenges.
“The chairman filed a committee report in order to have a comprehensive congressional record,” a Senate Judiciary aide said.
In a statement, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, complained that Democrats did not see the final version of the report before it was filed and had not received a copy of it since. The committee approved the bill (S 2703) on July 19 and the Senate cleared it July 20.
Committee reports are not required under Senate rules, but in practice they are prepared for most bills. When laws are challenged in court, federal judges look at committee reports, along with hearing and floor debate transcripts and conference reports, to help determine legislative intent.
Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma prefaced their “additional views” filed with the report by saying, “We regret that these views will be filed post enactment. The expedited process prohibited normal order.”
Brian Walsh, a spokesman for Cornyn, said committee reports, including “additional views,” were “a natural part of the legislative process.”
The Democrats’ complaints came after a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House Thursday at which Bush signed the extension into law before an audience that included civil rights leaders and members of Congress from both parties.
The Senate cleared the extension the same day President Bush pledged his support during his first appearance before the NAACP’s annual convention. Republican senators such as Cornyn and Coburn voted in favor of the measure despite their previously stated concerns about the bill’s requirements that covered jurisdictions obtain advanced permission before changing their election procedures.
After-the-Fact Help
Democrats and advocacy group lawyers say Republicans might be trying to provide after-the-fact help to legal challenges against those provisions by including in the legislative history language that supports their position.
But a Democratic aide cited passages that are not on their face critical of the law. One reads “most of the record adduced in the House and Senate Judiciary committees is devoted to first-person accounts of alleged discrimination,” which Democrats say implies there is insufficient evidence to justify the remedies required in the bill.
“It’s outrageous that several members of that committee who signed this report who purport to support the [Voting Rights Act] show up at the signing ceremony at the same time they file this report which seeks to lay out a road map to challenge the constitutionality of the law,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington office.
Leahy said the courts should look to the legislative findings included in the body of the legislation itself.
“Those findings, based on the record, were adopted by the House and unanimously by the Senate last week,” he said.
Mike DeWine of Ohio, who is in the middle of a tight re-election campaign, was the sole Republican who did not sign the report.
“He did not think the committee report was indicated in this case,” a spokesman for DeWine said.
Of course, we're still hearing "The VRA is no longer needed because so little voting discrimination occurs and that it unfairly targets the South."
Show me that minorities aren't still being disenfranchised, and maybe I'll agree with you.
(Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Cross-post Squarepants...)
