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Matters of Political Importance

Mar 15, 12 3:33 PM

I just got into a tit-for-tat with a Twitter user who apparently thinks I’m ignorant for being a lesbian who isn’t interested in gay marriage rights. He isn’t the first to say something like that (although “ignorant” is probably the nicest thing I’ve been called by a liberal after hearing that I refuse to vote solely on the basis of which candidate is for gay marriage rights). He certainly won’t be the last. What’s more interesting is that the conversation started over a comment that Obama couldn’t be a Marxist because he’s a millionaire “moderate”. He made that comment to actor Adam Baldwin.

The user I was responding to said it was “sad” that I’m part of a political group that is against me. That’s exactly what he said. THEN he wanted me to “name one GOP member who is for gay marriage.”

That’s when I said it: I’m not for gay marriage. Not that I’m against it, I’m just not for it at the moment. That was when kingfish called me a bigot, Baldwin got sarcastic with him, and I ended the discussion – because we weren’t having a discussion. It was a bashing session, which is the only thing today’s liberals are capable of most of the time.

Here’s my problem: there are much more important things right now than gay marriage. I have blogged before that I would like to be able to marry my girlfriend one day, but now it just isn’t going to happen. This isn’t all that much like the civil rights fight of the 60′s; we’re not talking about something as obvious as skin color here. DADT has been repealed. That was the one sticking point with me, the one block to my rights as a gay American that I was angriest about. The government was already booted out of my bedroom. They don’t have any right to tell me that I can’t love who I love. Now they can’t tell me that I can’t serve my country, and that’s a huge deal for me.

Marriage, though? That’s a fight we’re not going to win overnight, and there are other issues that need to be faced before we can hope to address gay marriage.

Liberalism is a danger that it wasn’t before. There was a time when being liberal was important; liberal views helped free the slaves, end Jim Crow laws, end segregation…but then liberalism took an extreme twist. Somewhere in the 1970′s, liberalism morphed into a precursor to the extreme it is today. Bernard Goldberg, one of my favorite journalists, still considers himself a “classic liberal”. A classic liberal doesn’t believe in taxing the wealthy above everyone else or putting limits on free speech via the so-called “fairness doctrine”. A classic liberal doesn’t believe in social engineering by forcing gas prices into the stratosphere to bully people into “green alternatives” and other such nonsense. Your run-of-the-mill liberal, however, will call conservative women foul names, call those who disagree bigots and racists, then attack conservatives as liars and homophobes – all while their own people give us legislation like DADT and DOMA and they all scream for more civility.

Any more of this tolerance of theirs and my head might explode.

Every single time I get into a tangle with a liberal, be it on Twitter, a news article, or some other forum for political discussion, they always say the same things:

Liberal: how can you be FOR a group that is against you?

Mel: they’re not against me.

Lib: name one GOP candidate who is for gay marriage.

Mel: when did marriage enter the picture? The issue isn’t gay marriage…

Lib: it’s the ONLY issue! They won’t let you marry! They HATE you!

Mel: actually, the only person who hates me right now is you.

Lib: BIGOT!

Mel: You cannot be serious…

The funniest part is when they try to define the word “bigot” for me, as if I never studied English in college and have no idea what the word means. On this occasion, kingfish actually linked Wikipedia (insert Soledad O’Brien joke here) for the definition. Here’s the official Webster version:

Bigot (noun): a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

Short breakdown: I’m not against gays. I AM gay. Believing that the economy and several Constitutional issues are more important than gay marriage at the moment does not now and will never make me anti-gay. Disagreeing with the running liberal narrative that gay marriage should be the only thing I care about does not make me anti-gay or anti-marriage. The only thing I refuse to tolerate is intellectual laziness – and when you call me a bigot over the gay marriage issue, you are being intellectually lazy.

To answer your original statement, kingfish, yes, it is entirely possible for a rich man to be a Marxist (calling Obama a moderate is ludicrous on its face). Those who agitate “the people” in favor of Marxism are often those already holding the purse strings – the elites who want to tell us all how we should live. Isn’t that the very hypocrisy you accuse Christians of? Or do you really think that Christians are the only ones capable of being liars and thieves?

If my rights as an American citizen are taken from me – if America ceases to be the independent and free nation it was created to be – my right to marry my girlfriend will not matter in the least. That is why other issues are more important than gay marriage for me, because I see liberals calling our current extremist of a president a “moderate” and I see exactly where this is headed if we don’t do something about it.

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Contraceptives: The New Age Of Bra Burning

Mar 13, 12 6:18 PM

Liberals love to mislead people. They have made it into an art form. When Sandra Fluke went before Nancy Pelosi’s “mock committee” to “testify” about the need for insurance coverage for contraceptives, the deception was on full display, and not one member of the media has vetted this woman or her claims.

Why would they? She’s the perfect proof of their claim that conservatives hate women.

I would beg to differ. I’m a gold star lesbian – that means I have never slept with a man. I am actually kinda proud of that status. I am also politically conservative. I have not met a single conservative who seriously wanted to do harm to women. In fact, I know conservatives who have fought hard for the rights of women in Sharia nations – places in the world where women are required to remain covered from head to foot, not go anywhere without a male relative to escort them, and are barred from getting an education. Where were the liberals when this kind of thing was rampant in Afghanistan?

The entire debate revolves around contraceptives. The new federal law requires all employers to offer health insurance to employees and imposes a stiff tax penalty on individuals who do not carry health insurance. That same law requires ALL insurers to cover quite a bit. One of the requirements is that all insurance plans cover OB/GYN services and contraceptives for women.

There’s one problem with that: the Catholic church teaches that contraceptives of any kind, including condoms, are a sin according to scripture. I disagree with the Catholic church on this point, but that’s beside the point. According to the First Amendment the Catholic church has a right to their belief; since that belief does not cause deliberate physical harm to congregants nor victimize those who are not congregants, that belief cannot be abridged by any law. Here’s where it gets complicated…the Catholic church also runs hospitals and other non-profit organizations. They have more than a few employees. They don’t always require those employees to be in good standing with the church, but they don’t allow insurance that covers contraceptive medication, either.

Enter Sandra Fluke.

Denied entry to the actual committee hearings on the contraceptive mandate, she gave a planned speech riddled with errors and unverifiable claims. One of the first things that she says is that, during law school, contraceptives can cost around $3,000. That statement in itself is misleading; she failed to clarify (I believe she did it deliberately) what that means. There is no way it would cost that much per year. She likely meant throughout the course of law school, which typically runs for around three years. She also said it can cost that much – meaning it’s a possibility. In other words, she’s saying that if someone goes all-out they could spend $1,000 a year on contraceptives not covered by insurance.

Here’s where this gets a little fuzzy for me. According to Planned Parenthood, oral contraceptives can potentially cost anywhere from $15-$50 a month. Wal-Mart carries the generic brands for $4-$7 a month, but we’ll go with the low end of PP’s information. Let’s say it costs $15 a month for oral contraceptives. If you’re on these drugs throughout all of law school, that comes to a total of $540 for three years.

Let’s take a look at some of Fluke’s other claims. She talks about a lesbian friend who was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and obtained a prescription for oral contraceptives. The claim she makes here is that her friend was plunking down more than $100 a month for these drugs because the school refused to cover them. Let’s do the math on this one. If someone is paying $100 a month for drugs, full-time at the end of law school that comes out to right around $3600. So, by that math, sure – it could cost three grand. Where I get lost is why it cost that much and why birth control pills were the only treatment a doctor was able to come up with.

First of all, the most expensive name-brand oral birth control pill currently on the market costs $90 without insurance. Generics that are just as effective when they’re really only being used to treat medical conditions like PCOS are available for free at federal Title X clinics and on the cheap at big-box stores I’ve already listed. I’m wondering how this woman ended up paying over $100 a month for birth control pills. Fluke goes on to say that her friend ended up in the ER with a cyst the size of a tennis ball and had to have her ovary removed and later lamented that she’d never, even if she wanted to, give her mother grandchildren – wait, where was mom when she needed top-of-the-line birth control pills as opposed to generic medication? Doesn’t the Obama healthcare mandate also require insurance companies cover adult children up to age 26 as dependents now if the employee wants? Why couldn’t she go with mom’s insurance for that free birth control that she couldn’t be troubled to go to Title X for?

Then she tells a story that actually makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. She says that a friend was raped, but because she knew Georgetown didn’t cover contraceptives the woman supposedly assumed that was how they treated all of women’s health issues – so, supposedly, the woman never went to the doctor or got tested for STD’s.

When you are raped, whether you are male or female you should go nowhere until you have made contact with the police. Here’s how this works: you file a police report. Regardless of how much time has passed, the police will immediately take you to be examined by what’s known as a SANE nurse (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner). The nurse is highly trained and SANE’s are the only people qualified to collect forensic evidence after a sexual assault. After the exam, the nurse will discuss STD’s and give you prescriptions for three medications – one of which is for a morning-after pill that can be obtained for ten bucks and, in most states, will be reimbursed by victim assistance.

What’s even more galling is her final statement, after talking about how she was told she should have gone to school somewhere else: “And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.” She speaks as if going to a school more prestigious than a state university – say, the University of Texas (Hook ‘em) – is a right. Elitism at its finest.

The claim she is making is that Georgetown’s policies are so oppressive for women that it’s an untenable situation, and it’s a bald-faced lie. As a woman and a lesbian, I don’t want Sandra Fluke trying to speak for me. I would never want someone who so blatantly twists the truth to represent me for anything – certainly not my health.

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It’s Okay For Bill Maher

Mar 9, 12 1:26 AM

In the past week, a whirlwind of events have taken place. It mostly centers around Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student, going before a “mock” panel held by Nancy Pelosi after Darrel Issa determined that Fluke had no expertise on First Amendment (specifically the religion clause) issues and could not testify before the actual committee. The subject? Healthcare laws requiring ALL employers, including religious non-profit organizations, to provide healthcare coverage that covers all contraceptives for women.

I’ll get to the ins and outs of Fluke’s ridiculous claims later, but for now I want to focus on what everyone else has focused on since this charade first began. For three days after her testimony before Pelosi’s mock committee, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a slut. I wholeheartedly disagree with his words; he never should have said it regardless of how frustrated he may have been by how ridiculous the debate has become. Even when I found out several years ago that my girlfriend was using me to cheat on the woman I’d been told was her ex, I wouldn’t have called her a slut; it’s not a term that should be used to describe any woman. Other words fall into that category, too (this next part is not safe for work or the kiddies) – bitch, cunt, twat and whore are among them. I’ve been called all of the above by angry liberals who don’t believe I have the right to keep breathing because of my political beliefs.

So has Bill Maher.

Maher has slung every misogynistic slur you can imagine at Sarah Palin, yet not one liberal has stood up to tell him that he’s wrong. For years he has called her all of the names I just listed and insulted Sarah’s intelligence at every turn, but the only people who recognize his hateful hypocrisy for what it really is are the conservatives who were insulted by his comments in the first place. Liberals have proven with Bill Maher that they are completely unwilling to police their own and, in fact, will rejoice when someone in their ranks does stoop to such low levels.

Just to make sure Fluke’s feelings weren’t hurt, President Obama called her up after Rush’s comments were aired by the media to tell her what a good job she’d done. She’s now making the rounds on all the requisite liberal daytime talk shows and is referring everyone to Media Matters. Fox News can’t get her publicist to return calls, however, and she’s now being represented – yes, this woman who came out of nowhere now has PR backing – by a firm owned by the current administration’s own Anita Dunn. She’s being held up as the underdog heroine of the left wing.

Today, Jay Carney held a press conference where he was asked if Obama would return a $1M donation from liberal hatemonger Bill Maher. Carney said that no, the money would not be returned – then went on to say, “language that denigrates women is inappropriate,” but it is not the President’s place to be the “arbiter” of every controversial statement.

Then, to dismiss the controversy, Super PAC head Bill Burton (the very man who has refused to return the money donated by Maher) said this about the whole thing: “The notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said during the course of his career, and what the de facto leader of the Republican Party said to sexually degrade a woman who engaged in a political debate of our time is crazy.” He later referred to Maher’s comments as being made “in the past” and flatly said that Rush had lied about Fluke.

That Burton doesn’t realize just how misogynistic his buddy Maher really can be is an insult to my intelligence. What’s worse, there are women out there who will buy his ludicrous argument. Somehow, I have a very hard time believing that they would be as forgiving if, say, Ron White took the stage and said some of this stuff about liberal figures (not that Ron White is conservative, but you get my point):

My favorite there was “the Maverick and the MILF!” That was classy.

I have to ask, where was this wit when Obama mispronounced “corpsman” TWICE, in front of two different audiences?

Where was Maher’s apology after all of this? Come to think of it, where was Keith Olbermann’s apology when he called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it”? Oh, right…he just “apologized” today, three years after the fact, after ranting that he had every right to say what he said in the first place. Maher has never even attempted to hide his contempt for women and his belief that all conservatives are morons, and this is what we get from left-wing women:

UPDATE: I forgot to include the link to the news story where I found the quotes. Click here.

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I Am Andrew Breitbart

Mar 1, 12 3:47 PM

It is with heavy hearts that we here at gayconservative.org acknowledge the death of conservative leader Andrew Breitbart.

CNN called him merely a “conservative blogger.” MSNBC called him a firebrand. Comments from leftists the world over have been outrageously poor; judging from their words, you would have thought Adolf Hitler finally died after unfairly living a long life. Many called him controversial; I’ve even heard some call him a racist, sexist and a homophobe.

That last one actually gets under my skin in a huge way.

Last night, while I had drinks with one of my closest friends, Andrew was out for a walk in his Brentwood, CA neighborhood when he collapsed. Someone saw him fall and called 911. Paramedics were unable to revive him. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. He was 43 years old.

I get push notifications on my iPhone at all hours of the morning, noon and night. They don’t usually wake me up. This morning, one did, and I thought it was a hoax. Pulling up the news, I saw that it wasn’t, and I was stunned beyond words. Tammy Bruce was in fine form on her show as she spoke of the principles that Andrew stood for; my fellow TAMs were just as stunned as I was, some still in tears. We all knew Andrew to be the fearless type who never backed down from his beliefs.

Many don’t realize that Andrew was actually close friends at one point with Arianna Huffington and even helped her launch the Huffington Post. Surprisingly, with all of the vitriol being spewed, none of it is coming from HuffPo – the commenters have actually been very classy. It is on sites like CNN and MSNBC as well as Twitter where the hate has been most prevalent. The hate is there, however, and when he was with us Andrew took pride in leftist hate. I frequently saw him re-tweet hateful comments made by leftists that I wouldn’t even post here. He wore those hateful comments like medals. He saw it pretty simply: if the left hates you that much, you’re doing something right.

I had the opportunity to talk to Andrew about a year ago and he was very kind and graceful. In 2010, when a handful of hard-right fringe groups boycotted CPAC over GOProud’s inclusion and CPAC cracked and rescinded GOProud’s invitation to be a sponsor, Andrew stepped up and hosted us himself. I wish I could have been there. I remember seeing pictures of a brightly-smiling Andrew with GOProud leaders Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron and believing that a new day had begun for gay conservatives. One of the heaviest-hitting voices in the conservative movement had not only accepted and approved of us, but was standing with us – and the conservative establishment absolutely took notice. This was just one year after an anti-gay nutjob named Ryan Sorba was booed off the stage at CPAC for decrying GOProud’s presence. In standing with us, Andrew was telling the establishment what they refused to accept on their own – conservatism isn’t about your religion, it is about limited government, fiscal wisdom and personal responsibility

My favorite author, Brad Thor, kick-started something I think we should all follow. He Tweeted, “Who is @AndrewBreitbart? I am #AndrewBreitbart.” Almost immediately, one of Thor’s followers started the #IAmAndrewBreitbart hashtag. I followed suit. We should all pick up his torch and run with it. We should all dare to fight for what we believe in until nobody can forget just what it is we’re fighting for. We should all be so fearless in the way we live our lives and treat other people that we stick out in people’s minds as the type who will never back down. We should all take a stand for what we know is the right thing even with the withering hatred of the hard left aimed fully at our collective heart, and we should never give up no matter what anyone says. From here on, I will re-post the hate just as Andrew would have if only to prove just how depraved hard-left liberalism can be.

Our hearts go out to his wife, Suzannah, and his four children, not to mention his extended family (his father-in-law, Orson Bean, wrote for BigHollywood.com) and his network of close friends. I leave you with Andrew’s final speech at CPAC 2012.

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Paul Babeu: I’m Gay

Feb 20, 12 2:56 AM

I try not to write about an issue immediately when it’s an emotional one. I’ve done it before and said things that I still regret.

Just a day and a half ago, though, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu – an outspoken conservative and champion of immigration enforcement – came out as gay. He was forced to. This week, a “newspaper” known to Arizonans as a sensationalist rag called the Phoenix New Times printed a front-page story about a man known only as Jose who told a sordid tale of a scorned gay lover and the object of his affection, who apparently cheated. That lover was Paul Babeu. Pictures of the two together as well as text messages and screen shots of Babeu’s profile on a gay dating website – along with photos sent privately, not meant to ever be published – were added as proof that at least some of the allegations were true.

The problem is that one allegation reeks to high heaven – the most potentially damning of all, that Babeu personally threatened his ex with deportation if he ever said anything to the public about their relationship. It has been repeated so many times at this point that the media can’t even report it correctly.

The short version goes something like this: in 2006, Babeu and Jose met through online dating profiles. Jose wasn’t just a boyfriend – he also became an active volunteer for Babeu’s campaign, creating and maintaining the main website as well as accounts on Twitter and Facebook. At some point in 2010, Jose began to suspect that Babeu was cheating on him and set up a fake profile on a gay dating website to lure Babeu into telling the truth. Babeu sent photos of himself to a phantom named “Matt” – Jose incognito – photos of himself in his underwear and apparently of his erect genetalia. The photos were supposed to be private communication; they weren’t sent through major social media, they were sent through personal cell phones. Eventually Jose showed up at what was supposed to be the dinner liaison with Matt and Babeu realized he was caught.

Things only went downhill from there. Before all of that, Jose practically stalked Babeu. The very text messages meant to prove Jose’s story show that he showed up at Babeu’s house on multiple occasions and told Babeu he wouldn’t leave until he got home. Jose admitted to posting damaging comments on news stories about the Sheriff, even at one point saying point-blank that Babeu was gay and maintained a profile on a gay dating website. After the breakup, Jose was caught breaking into and posting on the Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as setting up another website – paulbabeu.co, now defunct – to humiliate him.

Here’s where the story gets a little fuzzy.

Jose says that Babeu’s lawyer, Chris DeRose, demanded that he sign a non-disclosure statement and immediately hand over control of Babeu’s profiles on social networking sites as well as shut down the fake site and never breathe a word about the relationship in public again. That is at least partially true as evidenced by Babeu’s own release of the document. What cannot be proven is the accusation that DeRose, not Babeu himself, tried to tell Jose that his visa was expired and further disclosure could result in deportation.

In the PNT story, the writer says that Jose’s lawyer “confirmed” the story as legitimate. What I can’t understand is how that lawyer can possibly confirm the account since she wasn’t present for the conversation where the accusations allegedly took place. Jose didn’t retain his attorney until after the supposed threat was made. The attorney cannot confirm anything as far as I can tell, and no documentation proving the allegation has been provided.

The original article is outrageously one-sided. Plenty of known anti-Babeu and anti-enforcement figures are quoted, but not a single Babeu supporter is represented. All the writer says is that Babeu refused to comment. The writer also says that Jose decided to approach PNT to get his story of fear and intimidation out to the public…why PNT? Why not state or federal authorities? If there’s proof, such a threat would sound the death knell of Babeu’s time in politics because it could be criminal. Babeu, for his part, says that he had every confidence that Jose was here legally and never questioned his status and he brings up a very valid point: a Sheriff has no authority to deport anybody.

There’s another twist to the story: Monica Alonzo, the writer, has a long history of supporting pro-immigrant and other very liberal issues. She’s not exactly an unbiased source.

I knew for a long time that Babeu was probably gay. My gaydar is famous among my friends; I knew, even though I never would have said so, that he was likely gay from the beginning. I am happy that he has come out but the method used to bring it about wasn’t mere coercion. It was brute force that dragged him out and I don’t think it was anyone’s business. Am I disappointed that he cheated on his boyfriend? Sure. I’ve also been disappointed to hear of friends and relatives who have done far worse (including one who slept with a married man and felt no remorse). Babeu isn’t married and trying to carry on a fallacy of a relationship to hide his orientation. He simply chose not to be open about it. As much as I would like the gay conservatives serving silently in politics and public safety would come out, I also believe it is their right to keep it quiet.

I don’t believe that Babeu threatened his ex with deportation. I’m definitely not willing to condemn the man over private photos sent over private lines of communication that never should have been released. I find it reprehensible that Jose would find a way to try to ruin Babeu. After reading everything I could find, I’m close to certain that this is character assassination carried out by a jilted ex-lover who couldn’t get over it. I’ve been hurt, too, and I cannot imagine doing that to another person out of spite.

UPDATE: it’s important that I let the readers know that I do not personally know Paul Babeu and did not solicit a comment from his office; this is purely an opinion piece. That said, while I applaud the Sheriff for telling the truth, I do not expect him to become an activist for gay conservatives. Whether or not he does is up to him, and all of us here at gayconservative.org will support whatever decision he makes. I only hope he will continue doing the exemplary job he has always done.

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Whose Morality?

Feb 17, 12 3:19 AM

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz came out swinging today in an interview on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox News (H/T to Doug Powers for the link). While talking about the Obamacare mandate that all health insurance for women cover birth control, DWS claimed that “there needs to be a balance” between religious employers who object to the use of contraceptives and the employees who don’t agree. Apparently the Democrats believe it is up to them what employers are willing to cover, religious affiliation be damned.

The First Amendment holds no sway any longer.

The argument has been over the healthcare mandate and the requirement that any insurance that covers women also cover contraceptives, regardless of whether that woman is a lesbian not planning to have children or a woman who has had a hysterectomy and is physically incapable of having children. It also does not take religious beliefs into account. Catholics have always considered contraceptives of any kind a sin. The Catholic Church also runs many hospitals and assisted-living facilities all over the country and have never offered health insurance that covers contraceptives. It has never been an issue until now – now that the Democrats have required every single health insurance policy covering women to cover contraceptives. Democrats are refusing to back down.

The most incredible quote from DWS of all, though, is this: “The flip side of this is that religious institutions shouldn’t be imposing their values, necessarily, on their employees who don’t necessarily subscribe to those values.”

Basically, in saying this for the DNC, she’s saying that it’s perfectly okay for them to impose their values on the entire country, but it’s completely unacceptable for anyone else to do that.

It seems we are locked in a never-ending battle between conservatives and liberals. Both sides believe they are correct in their worldview. Both sides have been angry and defensive at some point or another. Although I have experienced a great deal more vitriol from liberals, I’ve certainly heard of vitriol coming from the right (usually from those as closed-minded and uneducated as those on the far left; of course, I’ve never met a person who came to any extreme beliefs through being educated and keeping an open mind, nor have I met an extremist who admitted to being extreme).

The thing that makes me scratch my head is that both sides think they’re right for the same reasons – yet neither has stopped to ponder the reasons. Those reasons are morality and conscience.

One does not need to be religious to recognize some sort of morality; religion has no corner on the moral market. If you have ever said “that was wrong,” or “this is the right thing to do,” you are speaking from your own moral center, whatever that may be. When you claim that moral center, however, and you fail to live by it, you make yourself an absolute hypocrite – religion holds no monopoly on that, either.

I find it interesting when liberals attack me and my friends (interesting in that “I’d like to psychoanalyze you” kind of way). Liberals always, without fail, attack along the same lines: you’re supporting the people who hate us, you’re a traitor, they’re intolerant, they will never respect you, how can you do this to us, you must hate yourself, you’re a self-loathing closet case, you (insert string of profanities here)!

Gay liberals will point to so-called Christians who uniformly quote a handful of out-of-context scriptures and call homosexuality sick, twisted and sinful – then either call them hypocrites or, without knowing anything about Christian scriptures, try to point out what they see as absurdities in those scriptures. They love to point out that these folks are hypocrites by saying, “that’s not very Christ-like!”

At the same time, they demand the very tolerance that they refuse to give. They say that Christians who harp on homosexuality as the ultimate sin create an atmosphere of hostility toward gay people, then turn around and create an atmosphere of hostility toward any person who doesn’t follow their line of thinking. In so doing, they become the very same monster they have made Christians out to be – tragically, for the same reasons.

You see, gay liberals will explain their behavior away by saying, “I don’t have to tolerate people who are intolerant.” I have to ask, though, who decides who is truly intolerant? Since you’re saying that they are definitely wrong, that means you have some sort of moral center. How did you decide that they were wrong? Your own conscience? If so, what is your conscience measured by? Who or what provided your moral compass – was it faith, reason, or emotional convenience?

If it is faith, then I have to know which god would give us the right to commit the very same sin which we condemn in others. If reason, I must know which school of thought confuses a closed mind with an open one. The only thing that makes sense to me is emotional convenience – I’m right, everyone else is wrong, and my best argument is going to be a slew of personal attacks, but that is acceptable for me because I feel that I have the moral high ground.

How is that any different from people who interpret the Bible to say that gay people should be put to death? On a different level, how is saying that you pity me and my conservative values very far removed from Christians who say that they pity us because we’re sick and need to be delivered from homosexuality?

It all boils down to a single question: how do you know that your morality is more right than another person’s?

If your answer is anything other than, “it’s what I believe, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to see it my way,” you are the very animal you accuse them of being.

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Bourgeois Negroes

Feb 2, 12 3:52 PM

I hope the title of this post is as repulsive to you as it was to me when I heard it. Watch the video that it comes from. (LANGUAGE WARNING – not safe for work or kids!)

memphis-talk-radio-host-humiliates-black-gop-candidate

The host is Thaddeus Matthews, and he is outrageously disrespectful. It’s difficult to say how to answer this guy, but I’m gonna give it a stab.

Matthews is interviewing Charlotte Bergman, a black Republican. The very first thing he does is get confrontational about her “membership” with the Tea Party. He kicks things off by getting snippy over her answer – and she’s right, there is no membership in the Tea Party. There is no solid organization for the Tea Party nor any national leadership; it’s a genuine, grassroots organization that is tired of big government spending. Tea Partiers are tired of both Republicans AND Democrats and their spending.

Very quickly, you see that the video was posted by Matthews – who actually believes that Charlotte Bergman is “bought and paid for” by racist white people. Text shots literally say that he believes the Tea Party to be a racist organization and all of the black people involved with conservative politics (which he constantly refers to as the Tea Party, because he is too small-minded to separate the two) to be sellouts, token blacks, and puppets of Fox News.

One incredible illustration claims that conservative black people have betrayed the black community. The very next shot is a text scroll that actually claims that these people draw a salary for running for political office – and that salary is supposedly paid for by racist whites who hate Obama because he is black.

He never once asked an honest question. Not once. He asked her if she was a token of the white community, then when she refused to answer the question the way he wanted he yelled at her to shut up and “stop being stupid.” He demands to know what she’s done for the black community…and then, for the first time, calls her a “bourgeois negro.”

Who is the racist here?

What I fail to understand is, shortly after that, he asks her – a Republican candidate – if she supports Barack Obama. He continues to demand to know what she’s done for a specific black community in Memphis despite the fact that she’s running for office. She’s not in office yet, she can’t do anything until she’s in office! By halfway through his rant, he’s screaming at her about “throwing money” at the inner city issues.

That’s when he starts on his “people problem” rant. He tells her that she needs to change the minds of the people and goes off about Republicans who want to throw money at the issue (which he takes forever to get to – he’s talking about inner city crime rates). That’s when he says we need a program that deals with “the consciousness of people” who want to “rob and murder in the black community” and he again calls her a bourgeois negro.

Since that seems to be his whole point, I’ll bite. What kind of programs are you talking about, Matthews? Exactly how would you enact a program that deals with the consciousness of people? What would that look like, how would it sound? Are you talking about re-education camps, maybe? There is no law in a free society that is capable of re-programming people’s consciousness. You’re talking about changing the culture, and the law cannot do that.

So let’s talk about the culture you reference. Mr. Matthews, do you know the statistics on crime rates? By the way you talk about it, I’m guessing you have an idea. While blacks don’t even comprise one-quarter of the population of the United States, a black man is statistically speaking seven times more likely to commit a violent crime than a white man – and more than 85% of violent crimes committed by black men are committed AGAINST other black men. I’d ask why you think that is, but you go on to tell me later on when you slam the Constitution, basically saying it doesn’t apply to you because when it was first written, black people were property.

Then, you toss her out, refuse to shake her hand because you don’t want her “whiteness to rub off” on you, and you yell at her as she’s leaving, telling her not to stop to talk to people.

Mr. Matthews, your attitude, belligerence and demeanor tell us everything we need to know about what’s wrong with the black community. It is people like YOU.

You, who will verbally abuse a woman half your size, berate and belittle her, tell her she’s stupid and then throw her out because you don’t agree with her. You, who demand that the government do something to help you rather than pulling yourself up out of your situation. You, who insist that the government is responsible for changing a culture that you have helped create. You, who rather than calling out those who help perpetuate the culture you’re lamenting, will celebrate rap artists and their violent and misogynistic lyrics and blame anyone but yourself for the consequences.

Would you call out the members of the New Black Panther Party, whose leader King Samir Shabazz called on followers once to kill “crackers” and their babies? Of course you wouldn’t. You probably believe Shabazz is right and he’s empowering black people to rise up. You’ll call me a racist, however, because I’m white and I don’t like Barack Obama. I didn’t have much respect for white leftists Al Gore or Bill Clinton, either, but that doesn’t matter much. To you, the only reason I could possibly have to dislike Obama is if I’m a racist, truth be damned.

You, Mr. Matthews, are indicative of the biggest problem in your own community. You expect everyone else to fix you. I’ll tell you what I tell alcoholics and drug addicts that I deal with professionally: you have to want to change yourself before anything will get better. It may suck at first, but it starts with YOU. Once you change yourself, you can talk about changing the world around you. The same thing can be applied to your “culture”.

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What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Feb 1, 12 6:49 PM

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” -C.S. Lewis

This picture was spotted on Facebook. It was linked by a liberal friend of mine who does agree with it. She also happens to be the only liberal I know who doesn’t openly hope that I’ll be shot in the face. We agree to disagree on politics, pretty much sticking to films and other such subjects.

Look carefully at this, and ponder the claims.

First, Gingrich. The very first claim made is the only honest one – yes, he has been married three times. I don’t like it. There’s a lot of conservatives who don’t like it. I’m not, however, willing to use it as a reason to push him out of politics because of it. The second claim is that he was indicted for scandal; this is either a bald-faced lie or an ignorant mistake. The whole scandal revolved around the improper usage of tax-exempt donations and using the chairman of GOPAC to help him develop the legislation that the GOP would support during his tenure as the Speaker of the House; the use of a consultant violated House rule 45 (which apparently bars the use of official resources for unofficial purposes, yet I cannot find a single document that lists what the rules were for the 104th Congress), as did apparently allowing a man named Donald Jones to use his Congressional office to work on a reading program for children that was supposed to tie in with the Speaker’s “Earning by Learning” program.

“Indicted” means just cause was found to bring charges before a court because a crime was committed. Gingrich was investigated but never indicted – nor was he ever impeached. In fact, 83 of the original 84 ethics complaints against him were dropped after an extensive four-year investigation because it was determined that none of the violations occurred while Gingrich was the Speaker of the House – which was when the violations were alleged to have taken place. The only complaint that remained was a claim that he had failed to abide by federal tax law in regards to donations. THAT was tossed as well when the IRS and a federal judge determined the law had not been broken (the original complaint stated that GOPAC had improperly funded his campaign and failed to publicize its list of donors). In the end, he was fined $300,000 to repay the cost of the investigation.

The third allegation is where the C.S. Lewis quote comes in. It simply says “racist/homophobic”. The only evidence anyone has ever provided that he’s a racist was his comment, made in 2008, that “Spanish is the language of living in the ghetto.” He was talking about the importance of teaching English in this country. Now, he almost immediately apologized for how it sounded, but not one of the people who claim he is a racist has acknowledged that fact. He clarified that what he was trying to say was that English is the language spoken in the United States and it is important to learn our language if you want to really succeed here. He is correct about that, and there’s nothing racist about it. Every other claim is that he’s used “coded racist speech” (translation: we want to call him a racist to shut him up but he won’t cooperate and use overt hate speech so we’ll read into his words whatever we want).

Homophobic? I don’t think so. He has said that he doesn’t believe genetics have to be followed, he believes homosexuality to be a choice, and he is against gay marriage, but I don’t consider that homophobic. A person who has an irrational fear of homosexuals is a homophobe, and not one person can claim that he has an irrational fear of us (see my previous post for genuine evidence of homophobia). It is ridiculous to claim that the man is a racist or a homophobe because there is no evidence of either – and when you do call him those things, when you come up against the real deal you no longer have a word to describe them.

Now, for the claims about the Big O!

Married once – yes, that’s true. Has he been faithful? We honestly don’t know. At least three separate claims of infidelity from both Barack AND Michelle have been made, but the press is sleeping on the job. They’re about as interested in investigating these claims as I am in having my wisdom teeth removed.

No scandals? I beg to differ. Fast & Furious leaps to mind – under Bush, it was known as Project Gunrunner and when they figured out it was going to be a failure they killed it. Obama resurrected it, gave it three times the original budget and four times the manpower, and it became a train wreck on steroids. Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, has already lied in Congressional hearings about his knowledge of the program – and is now dodging subpoenas. At least one ATF official, Patrick Cunningham, has pleaded the Fifth (and has since resigned). There’s Carol Browner and Ken Salazar, who both helped draw up the completely illegal offshore drilling ban, complete with invented claims attributed to a Congressional panel that actually strongly objected to the ban. The administration was later called out by a Louisiana judge for continuing to enforce the illegal ban. There’s the administration’s loan to Solyndra, $535M to be exact. More recently, other “green” companies that received millions of taxpayer dollars – Evergreen Energy, Beacon Power Corp., and electric car manufacturer Ener1 – have gone belly-up, with several others teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

There was the no-bid $433M contract awarded to Siga Technologies for an experimental smallpox drug that some experts say may not even work. There’s the ongoing issues with former NJ governor Jon Corzine, who quietly got his Obama campaign donations back although Obama hasn’t commented on Corzine’s role in the MF Global scandal (and Corzine wasn’t the only MF Global head who had supported Obama). The Obamacare waivers, however, are one of the biggest scandals of all – every single one went to DNC supporters, including labor unions, Nevada casinos and fancy restaurants in Pelosi’s district responsible for thousands in Obama campaign money (literally 20% of those waivers landed in Pelosi’s district).

Oh, but he ended DADT! That’s great, right? Well, I’d buy that if it weren’t for his continued support of DOMA, originally signed into law by Bill Clinton (sorry, lefties – claiming that he doesn’t because he’s telling the DOJ not to defend it in court isn’t enough, he does not support repeal at all). You’ll never see a photo like this containing Mitt Romney. He has no scandals in his personal life and he signed gay marriage rights into law when he was governor of Massachusetts. The gay left has no response to him, so they’re going to attack Newt.

And, really…Jeremiah Wright? Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn? Tony Rezko? ACORN?!? No scandal, my backside.

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Put It In Context, Part 2

Jan 26, 12 5:45 PM

(Before anyone asks, yes, I will address the repartee between Gov. Jan Brewer and President Obama – just not right now. I’m giving Obama the opportunity to respond.)

As I mentioned in the last post, I have been accused of doing nothing but complaining about the mean things that liberals say. Also, as I mentioned, the person who made that accusation has never read anything I’ve written calling out those on the right that I disagree with (that would include George W. Bush and Joe Arpaio). So, without further ado, here is the promised outing.

Meet Jeffrey Don Davis.

In Todd Starnes’ report on the incident at Shawano High School in Wisconsin, there were three or four out of a few hundred who posted genuinely hateful comments. This guy led the pack. He was good enough to make his profile picture available to the public on Facebook. He apparently went to technical school at Texas State Technical College and studied computer networking. He also apparently has no idea that Sarah Palin vetoed a very popular bill as soon as she took office in Alaska – the bill that would have stripped same-sex partners of state employees of any and all benefits. I say that because he has her listed as one of the people who inspire him. He lists several other people who wouldn’t agree with what he does. Here is a sampling of his drivel:

“Joe Distefano But it’s ok for a perverted hate pig like you to express your hatred of decent people who do not want to be exposed to your disgusting behavior. As for expressing our beliefs in GOD, GOD himself judged homosexuals and found them to be severly lacking.”

“Dawn Dickinson I have news for you Dawg, some sex change bulld*ke does not a man make.”

“Joe Distefano I speak my anti-pervert opinions in public and the only demeted ****** who ever dared to criticize me spent the night in the hospital. Opposition to sexual perversion (including homosexuality) in public is nothing more than good taste and common decency.”

“Joe Distefano Yes homosexuality is a perversion just like pedophilia, bestiality, incest, coprophagia, necrophilia, etc. Actually I had a pervert call me a bigot for opposing homosexuality, I spit in his face, he swung at me and I kicked the **** out of him. Once again you POS, anytime you want to see a bigot, just look in the mirror.”

“Joe Distefano Once again idiot, don’t try speaking for your betters, you have more than enough trouble speaking for yourself. Jesus’ father, GOD sentence homoNazis to death.”

“Jeff Taylor I”ll bet you’re mighty macho when another ****** takes your boyfriend to the bathhouse and leaves you in your mother’s basement.”

“Chris Green I take your word that you’re a faggy-behind-a-keyboard.”

“Jeff Taylor If you want to hit on that pervert, buttboy, take it somewhere that decent people don’t have to see it. In typical fag fashion you give up and accuse me of being a fag too. At least your STDs still allow you to think enough that you realize that decent people consider accusations of homosexuality to be insulting.”

“Chad Jonathan Walls As compared to your peach fuzz? Do you keep those cats around to lick cream off your face or do you keep them around to molest. After all, homosexuality is a perversion just like bestiality.”

“Jeff Taylor Go **** yourself instead of the little boys your chase after you demented stool sample.”

“Conrad Shull while an animal like you seeks to put your filthy hands in the pants of little boys. NAMBLA is a homosexual org.”

“The truly intolerant bigots infesting America are homoNazis. I don’t ask for their tolerance. They will tolerate my opinion whether they want to or not and that’s a rule that I personally enforce.”

“Michael Fitzpatrick I don’t ask old faqqots like you to tolerate me. You will tolerate me whether you like it or not.”

THAT, liberals, is hatred. You cannot reason with a person who will threaten you like this. Most of the others engaged me in honest, civil conversation – they asked questions that weren’t staged as thinly-veiled challenges and respected my right to disagree, as I respected theirs. But when you behave like this, whether you’re a religious nutcase on par with Fred Phelps or you’re a liberal claiming that you don’t have to tolerate what you classify as hatred (usually things far milder than this guy and the two who agreed with him), you invalidate your own argument. You make yourself a hypocrite with what Mr. Davis said just as surely as you would by saying, “you anti-gay collaborators need to remember what was done to the Nazi collaborators – they had their heads shaved, their throats slit, and their bodies hung from lampposts.”

In short, here is my belief: Jesus never touched on homosexuality. He did, however, tell us how we should behave. Nowhere in scripture did He give us any command to be belligerent, get in people’s faces, spit on people, judge them, hate them, or spark a fight and later claim you were defending yourself.

I don’t issue threats. I don’t need to. All I will say is that the bible also does tell us to be wise, and while we are to love mercy, we are also to obey justice. If you do wrong and I catch you, I will act appropriately. It is reprehensible that you would try to claim that your religion gives you the right to behave as if there are no rules. You’re an embarrassment to conservatives and the biggest single reason why I find it so difficult to talk to liberals.

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Put It In Context, Part I

Jan 24, 12 4:23 AM

Recently, in the comments of the vlog I posted where I called out gay liberals for their blissful ignorance, one user said that it was somehow one-sided to “only call out liberals who say mean things.” Of course, this was a user with whom I had never had a discussion before and he had no idea that I have, in fact, called out the people on the right who have uneducated ideas about what homosexuality is about; he was commenting on a single video and had no idea what my beliefs were, but he assumed and, naturally, he never admitted he might well be wrong.

This is going to be one of those Come-To-Jesus posts where we sit down and have a good talk about the religious view of homosexuality and the place of both in society.

It starts with a story out of Wisconsin. The Hawks Post, the student newspaper at Shawano High School, published an op-ed mashup between two students of opposing viewpoints. That is perfectly normal for a high school newspaper. What isn’t normal, however, is the subject matter: gay marriage. Even more abnormal was the fact that the student who wrote the dissenting opinion did so from a completely religious perspective, something that doesn’t really jibe with the continued assault on the rights of religious students to express their beliefs.

According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, that student wrote, “If one is a practicing Christian, Jesus states in the Bible that homosexuality is (a) detestable act and sin which makes adopting wrong for homosexuals because you would be raising the child in a sin-filled environment. A child adopted into homosexuality will get confused because everyone else will have two different-gendered parents that can give them the correct amount of motherly nurturing and fatherly structure. In a Christian society, allowing homosexual couples to adopt is an abomination.”

Pretty harsh. Scripturally inaccurate, for sure, but I’ll address that later. First I want to point out a few other things. The article was seen by a 13-year-old student whose parents are a gay couple, one of several in that school district who lead very balanced, healthy homes. When he asked his fathers about it they were both stunned and upset; they talked to the superintendent of the district, who also expressed shock at the article. Almost immediately, the district issued an apology and called the article a form of bullying. One of the fathers was quoted in the article I linked above saying that the printing of that article in a school paper “sets us back 20 or 30 years” and claimed that it could lead to bullying of gay students at the school.

I have a few things to add to this debate before I get into anything else.

1. This debate has no place in a public high school newspaper. Period. It never should have been done. The reason I say this is that it was an op-ed mashup; when you give one student the green light to write in support of any gay rights, you open the door for other students with deeply-held religious beliefs about this subject to insist that their opinion be printed as well. They are going to find ways to express their beliefs, but when you give those beliefs space in a school-sponsored publication you might as well be giving those views some form of validity. It should have been left alone.

2. Once the damage was done, the worst thing the district could possibly have done was attack the dissenting student. Believe me, that is exactly what they did when they apologized and called him a bully. That student doesn’t understand why his views are so reviled, and he is going home to a family and a church body that is affirming what he wrote as a courageous stand. Everything you say against him is, to them, persecution; you are validating everything they’re teaching him.

3. Far be it from me to criticize a parent, since I am not one myself…I am, however, an aunt, and I also remember quite well what it was like when my mother would pound on my principal’s desk about the things they were teaching that she didn’t like. It was embarrassing because it made me a target of the real bullies in school who didn’t claim any religion at all. If you push too hard, you’re setting your own kids apart more than anyone else is. Plus, if you get upset about it, they will, too – turn it into a learning experience, and do it peacefully. You might make more friends than you thought you could.

Todd Starnes of Fox News reported on it as well, and if you read the comments you’ll see some pretty intense back-and-forth from some genuinely intellectual people and other folks who…well, aren’t quite that well educated. If they were going to let one student write about the subject, then it was only fair that they let a dissenting opinion in, and since they made that decision they should be standing by it. Instead, the district has behaved in the worst way possible.

I’m going to say what they are not going to let anyone else say…while this student has his right to his opinion, he is wrong.

Jesus never, not once, addressed homosexuality. Never in any of His sermons, prayers or responses to the religious leaders did He ever say one word about homosexuality. The only place where it is called an abomination is in Leviticus 20 (which this student did cite) – the very same ceremonial law that also called for the death penalty for adulterers, children who disrespect their parents, idolaters, soothsayers (what we know today as astrologers), and married couples who have sex during the wife’s menstrual cycle (no, I’m not joking). That ceremonial law takes up nearly the whole of Leviticus, and the ceremonial law was exactly what Jesus meant when He said He had come to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17). The ceremonial law and the moral law were very distinct and separate. Jesus’ sacrifice – His torture, death on the cross, and resurrection – was the atonement for sin that the ceremonial law called for according to scripture. The biggest reason for the ceremonial law was to set Israel apart completely from other nations, and because Christ is the way to salvation now, the ceremonial law is moot for us.

Nowhere is that point so clearly made than in Galatians 2:15-16: “We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.” In the very next chapter Paul reminds the Galatians that if you only cite part of the law but do not keep it all, you call a curse on yourself. I would caution religious conservatives who like to point out those scriptures – you’re taking scripture out of context.

My next post will be a little different. I will be dropping names, pictures and direct quotes from a couple of genuine hatemongers.

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