The Gaytheist Agenda

You heard me right. Kmart is now selling Abstinence Pants. I don’t know if they’re trying to steal some of Wal-Mart’s RRRW customer base or what, but it’s pretty freaky. here’s a sample of their selection.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who choose to wait until marriage. But does anybody believe that a pair of sweatpants with True Love Waits written across the backside is going to inspire abstinence? (While the photo is of the front, the back has the same slogan.) Furthermore, why is it that, as always, these things are only made for women?

The US Military continues to uphold DADT and discharge soldiers under the policy. So to replace them while we’re still involved in an increasingly unpopular war that fewer people want to become involved in they’re digging to the bottom of the barrel. While GLBT individuals with impeccable work and criminal histories are considered too immoral, it seems previously convicted felons are more than acceptable–so long as they’re straight.

Newly released data show that the Army and the Marine Corp, under pressure to increase their numbers, have sharply raised the number of recruits who have felony convictions.

The information, released Monday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, shows that the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350.

The bulk of the crimes involved were burglaries, other thefts, and drug offenses, but nine involved sex crimes and six involved manslaughter or vehicular homicide convictions. Several dozen Army and Marine recruits had aggravated assault or robbery convictions, including incidents involving weapons.

The use of felons to the fill the ranks comes as 2 people every day are dropped from the military for being gay under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” the ban on gays serving openly in the armed services.

In the 10 years that DADT has been in force more than 10,000 personnel have been discharged as a result of thed policy, including 800 with skills deemed ‘mission critical,’ such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists.

The number of gay men and lesbians turned way by military recruiters is unknown.
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Pathetic and deplorable.

 

MoJo (Mother Jones Magazine) presents this entry into their Photo Blog. I will first present their text and a few of the photographs, then my comments.

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old “Ms. Ruth” sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, “Lilbit,” who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

The following is a photo essay about Ms. Ruth by New York photojournalist Anthony Karen, a former Marine who has spent several years photographing members of the Ku Klux Klan. The essay includes audio of interviews with Karen and Ms. Ruth.

Ms. Ruth obviously puts a great deal of effort into the garments she sews. That she is creating robes for KKK members to wear, and that she goes as far as to bless each one –which indicates she believes she is doing something good in the eyes of her god and religion–greatly disheartens me. I know very well that most people don’t believe and think as she does, but the fact that some (any) still do is very troubling indeed.

I have a grab-bag of articles that will have you reaching for the anti-emetics. The first comes from Truth Wins Out regarding Stephen Black’s support of Sally Kern at the recent Rally for Sally.

Humbled Infidel has the complete speech by ex-gay activist Stephen Black at a pro-bigotry rally held April 2 on behalf of Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern.

Black is the executive director of First Stone Ministries, an Oklahoma-based Exodus member “ministry.”

A point-by-point analysis of Black’s speech finds appeals to conformity, false and unsourced statistics, and sweeping dehumanization of sexual strugglers. Instead of healing strugglers and reuniting families, Black’s rhetoric divides families and alienates Americans whom he has falsely maligned.

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Black calls for conformity with what “we believe,” not reconciliation with what God might actually have uniquely intended for each individual, whose struggles differ in origin and nature from First Stone’s cookie-cutter model of sexuality.

I stand with Rep. Sally Kern today to say that I, who once lived as a gay man, agree with her assessment, that there is a political agenda and a cultural message about homosexuality [and] that it is destructive to our country.

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The entire article is a must-read and contains many more important links. Next up are fundie-wingnuts having fits over a school event that asks kids to dress as the opposite gender. Apparently they think it will give kids Teh Gay or make them transgender much like standing next to tall people makes them tall.

Students at Pineview Elementary had been dressing in costume all last week as part of an annual school tradition called Wacky Week. On Friday, students were encouraged to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite sex.

A local resident informed the Voice of Christian Youth America on Friday. The Milwaukee-based radio network responded by interrupting its morning programming for a special broadcast that aired on nine radio stations throughout Wisconsin. The broadcast criticized the dress-up day and accused the district of promoting alternative lifestyles.

“We believe it’s the wrong message to send to elementary students,” said Jim Schneider, the network’s program director. “Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students is a great error.”

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The theme for Friday’s dress-up day came from students, Hayes said. The Wacky Week schedule was created by Pineview’s Student Senate with the guidance of secretary Shari Miller.

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About 40 percent of the student body dressed up Friday, Hayes estimated, with half portraying senior citizens and half dressing as the opposite sex.

Kids mocking senior citizens is A-OK. Dressing up like the opposite sex is a crime against nature and “traditional family values”, which apparently means hating anybody who is different than you.

I now move on to the first news regarding my dear “friend” Peter LaBarbera. Queerty reports:

In even more war-ish news, the brutish Peter LaBarbera and his pals at Americans For “Truth” ain’t gay about Out’s list of the universe’s most powerful homos:

“We are intrigued by the fact that the same movement that once cried out for “privacy” and “to be left alone” feels free to publicly declare people’s homosexuality for them (Anderson Cooper, No. 2, and Jodie Foster, No. 43).

On the other hand, if OUT is right, it might explain Cooper’s bias in his reporting on the homosexual issue: in a recent interview that the CNN host did with pro and con advocates on a ”gay parenting” story, he blatantly favored the “gay” side in his questioning.

Regardless of whether Cooper practices homosexuality, as a professional he should be completely even-handed in his treatment of this controversial moral question.”

This from a man who uses his influence to spread blatantly biased spread gay panic and supports Sally Kern, the politician who called non-Christians “infidels” and equated gays with terrorists? Who’s even-handed?

Notice how homosexuals always “practice” homosexuality no matter how long they’ve been gay, yet heterosexuals never “practice” it even during their first experience? And since when has Peter LaBarbera ever given a moment’s care or thought to “even handed” portrayal of anything?

Next Petey spews his hatred and ignorance on Thomas Beatie. Frankly I’m surprised it took this long.

News out of Bend, Oregon is that male resident, Thomas Beatie, is 22 weeks pregnant. Articles have been written and an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show is scheduled. Looking closer, news of a Pregnant “Man” is just a myth.

Thomas Beatie, the Bend, Oregon man making news as a “Pregnant Man” was born Tracy LaGondino, a woman, 34 years ago. Tracy was a lesbian who fought for the right of gay couples to adopt children and against hate crimes in Hawaii, before moving to Bend 2 years ago.

Tracy fell in love with another woman, Nancy Roberts in Hawaii and they desired to be married, strictly against even Hawaii’s liberal laws.

Tracy decided she should obtain a sex change because Hawaii’s laws did not support same sex [”marriage.”] She underwent a double radical mastectomy and began hormone therapy to change her gender to that of a male, but keeping her female reproductive organs.

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I guess Peter has doesn’t understand that a gay person can also be transsexual, and vice-versa. Some minds are just too narrow for their (and our) own good.

Finally, Petey is wringing his hands because Oklahoman Editor Ed Kelley doesn’t love Sally Kern as much as he and her other rabid supporters do.

More arrogance from the liberal media below — in this case, on online voiced editorial by Daily Oklahoman Editor Ed Kelley. Of course, Kelley is free to leave journalism and become a political activist — which does not seem like much of a transition after reading this. Perhaps he could even run for office on the “real issues” he talks about below. That would take a lot of work, especially if he’s as out of touch with Oklahoma’s voters as it appears.

Nope, it’s much easier for Kelley to whine about the people whom his newspaper is supposed to serve and respect. On the day that the “Rally for Sally” drew 1,500 or more people to the capital — to defend a decent, Christian woman who was the target of a national homosexual campaign — Kelley’s paper ran a condescending (and inaccurate) editorial that ended, “Perhaps constituents ought to hold a rally of their own, urging this one-trick pony to put her tiresome personal agenda aside and work to do something constructive.”

Interesting Peter should comment about the people Kelley’s paper is supposed to serve and respect. Sally Kern certainly wasn’t thinking about the people she was supposed to serve and respect when she went on her vile, homophobic rant several months ago. She didn’t consider her LGBT constituents, their friends, their families or their allies, nor did she consider the LGBT children of her constituents. But then those citizens don’t seem to be of much import to the likes of Sally Kern or Peter LaBarbera except as political footballs and fundraising tools.

Well, that’s as much as I can handle for now without a hefty dose of Pepto-Bismol. I think I’ll go read something more cheerful like 1984 or Ethan Frome .

Addendum. A comment has arrived regarding Thomas Beatie. Ebon said.

Here’s a prediction: In about ten or twelve years, Mr. Beatie’s child will either be completely average in virtually every way and therefore be ignored by the RW or (probably a few years later) he will have been so poisoned against his parents that he will give speeches about how terrible they were and the RW will laud him.

I don’t know whether her (it seems the baby is to be a girl) parents plan to tell her that her father is transgender but even if they don’t I’m sure she’ll find out. I hope that the bigots don’t ruin things for her because I’m sure she’ll be loved and treated well at home. Who knows, maybe things will be very different for LGBT people and their families in another 10-15 years–but I’m not holding my breath.