Things Haven't Changed All That Much

This is for a beautiful Oxnard, CA eighth-grader, Lawrence King. He was gay and he's dead now.

If it can happen not far from Malibu, CA, it can happen anywhere.

Violent language is violence, and it’s also an enabler. We’re hearing more and more of it lately. A lynch-mob might be appropriate for Michelle Obama, suggests O’Reilly. That new anti-Hillary group founded by prominent Republican strategist Roger Stone, called CUNT. Really. The daily sludge spewed by Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh. The anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The more we hear it, the less it bothers us. The less it bothers us, the more we enable it. The more we enable it, the more violent the airways, and soon, the more violent the culture itself.

There’s been a 30-year escalation of violent speech against liberals, gays and lesbians, women, and people of color. Not surprisingly, there’ve been corresponding spectacularly vicious attacks on all the above.

Some we hear about—especially when the victims are pretty, blonde girls, we hear about them for days and days and days. Not a coincidence. Short, sanitized snuff flicks pitched to the worst instincts and the schadenfreude in all of us. In time, the result is that we grow bored. Read “acclimated.”

But most we don’t hear about. Most are publicized only in “gay” media or “black” or “Hispanic” media—not “important” enough to make the mainstream press. If you can’t think of examples that would support my contention, don’t be surprised. You’re not supposed to know about them. You’re not supposed to remember them.

The really bizarre part of this—the REALLY bizarre part—is that the chief purveyors of vicious language have been prominent Christian conservatives, both in and out of the pulpit. When violence is preached from the pulpit—literally or in its name-- violence is endorsed by authority. It’s that simple.

Things haven’t changed all that much since I came out 35 years ago, to accusations of “abomination.” In fact, things have gotten a lot scarier, especially for GLBT kids.

That’s our doing. Yours and mine. Because we haven’t stopped it, have we? I mean, what kind of people tolerates conditions that enable mass slayings in public schools, and looks the other way when kids call kids “faggot,” “nigger,” “dyke”?

Our kind of people, apparently.

Karma Elephant

This from Andrew Sullivan's site today. Couldn't have put it better myself:

'So far today I have gotten the usual daily spam e-mail from various fringe and self-acclaimed conservative groups and personages — variously alleging that McCain was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks).'

There is karma here, isn't there? These were the same kind of tactics used against John Kerry in 2004 - except then they were accepted by the conservative establishment. What's triking to me is how the fanaticism of the far-right, aided and abetted by Republican elites, may now be coming back to bite them. McCain is the victim. But perhaps the poison the right has peddled in these past few years has to work its way through the GOP bloodstream before being overcome.

Since the days of Terry Dolan, the GOP has been a bile-spewing, filth-propagating, divisive, and sharply polarizing force--and not just in the USA. But we're talking elections, and that's a home issue, and the GOP has studiously cultivated division, fear, suspicion, distrust, and outright rage in every election from Soddy Daisy's chief of public signage to the nation's President.

Given that heritage, it's ironic, and amusing, to watch three of its chief ghouls go after John McCain, one of their own, still yet again, but this time, apparently without regard for their party as a whole. I hope they keep it up, the Limbaughs, the Dobsons, the Coulters. If they fail--and I think they will; I think McCain will be the GOP candidate--they will have written "DOA" on the Far Right wing of the GOP, and that just can't be a bad thing, now can it?

These guys seem to have missed the memo that evangelicals woke up sometime around 2005 and realized that the environment, energy, the war, and poverty are (duh!) issues relevant to conservative Christians. Since then, there hasn't been a highly focused, united flying wedge of conservative Republicans.

Since then, that very constituency has seen, time and again, evidence that one of their own, W, is a liar, a thief, and a profligate with the national treasury, the national environment, and the nation's youth. From this undeniable evidence, they have rightly concluded that they cannot trust--guess who--Limbaugh, Dobson, Coulter, Savage, Reed, and all the rest.

They've decided to face the future armed with their own intelligence and the evidence of their own lives, with reference to the New Testament as contrasted with Leviticus.

Let's hope they continue to do so. They will vote for an Obama before they vote for a Huckabee or a Romney.

Mainstream Christians: Standing for Nothing

Hoping Christians will resemble Jesus is like pissing on a rock and expecting peonies.

You can see this because a movement of thousands of violent immigrant Russian evangelical Christians is threatening gays and lesbians in the Western states, and the mainstream Church has risen, as one, in loud, mass condemnation. Not. You can also see it in the rabid and white racist fundamentalization of the US military. Can you spell p-o-g-r-o-m?

In my last and final attempt to reconcile myself to Christianity, I joined a loudly self-styled “progressive Christian church.” When the rubber hit the road a year later, they said the reason they couldn’t take a position on a pernicious anti-gay state amendment was that it would cause division, which couldn’t happen because “our” tradition is to agree to disagree, and isn’t it wonderful?

There must be something wrong with me.

No, it isn’t “wonderful,” and thanks to friends like mainstream Christians, we’re getting more afraid every day. It isn't wonderful to be hung out to dry by your church, your "friends," your pastors. It isn't wonderful when anti-gay bias is treated as if it is a legitimate option, something about which reasonable people can agree to disagree. It isn't wonderful when one-half of the Christian community is organized, vocal, and highly influential on how to loathe gay and lesbian people, and the other half is off somewhere having a 40-year navel-gaze.

When you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing. That’s the meaning of the mainstream Christian church in the USA.

Latest in Republican Christians' Edify America Campaign. . .

First reported by Gun Guys--not what you think--clean talker, NRA board member, Bush hugger and ranch neighbor, Perry pal, youth camp operator, sexual moralist, and farm-raised "wildlife" hunter Ted Nugent--he who touts (his words) the "live and let live" philosophy of the US far Right--is caught on video flapping two machine guns and threatening to kill Obama and Hillary.

In a performance that surely will show all youth the respect he has for women and inspire us to walk the path that Jesus trod, "Rev. Ted" is shown saying:

Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary,' he continued. 'You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.' Nugent summed up his eloquent speech by screaming 'freedom!'

Hallelujah, honey! Break out the hymn books and fall on your knees. I'm sure by the time we're done singing, the US Secret Service will have arrested him and the RNC will have returned his contributions. Yeah right.

This from the same "Rev. Ted" who--invited performer--wore a Confederate T-shirt and hurled insults at immigrants and "hippies" at the Gov. Goodhair inauguration.

Gun Guys, a pro-gun control, anti-gun violence project of Freedom States Alliance (worth a visit), is calling on the NRA to remove Nugent from its board and apologize.

Be sure to set your RSS feeds for when that happens.