Who needs enemies?
Category Archives: Right Wingers
Jesse’s Journal: Stonewall at 40


New PSA about “Traditional Marriage”
“Hah! Like you have a choice!” This is so on point.
It’s none of your business!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cI0955I5wXI
…and furthermore…if the churches continue to actively lobby against these particular legislations and participate in the electoral process by taking sides, we need to demand that their nonprofit status be TAKEN AWAY! They have a right to their opinion…but they don't have a right to my tax dollars to promote it.
The Defenders of Marriage
One would think this is self-evident — that if we take the "Bible-way" argument to its logical (idiotic) conclusion it wouldn't be pretty. And it wouldn't be as funny as this parody.
Oh and by the way…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=03PnU27cWDs
…catchy little tune, huh?
Dissent
Lest the news of Proposition 8 be the ultimate buzz kill for today (which it sort of is), it's worth reading the opinion from California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, who was the only judge dissenting in today's 6-1 decision upholding Proposition 8. Moreno, who was actually rumored to be on Obama's shortlist for the open Supreme Court vacancy that this morning went to Sonia Sotomayor, had this to say:
In my view, the aim of Proposition 8 and all similar initiative measures that seek to alter the California Constitution to deny a fundamental right to a group that has historically been subject to discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification, violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning. Such a change cannot be accomplished through the initiative process by a simple amendment to our Constitution enacted by a bare majority of the voters; it must be accomplished, if at all, by a constitutional revision to modify the equal protection clause to protect some, rather than all, similarly situated persons. I would therefore hold that Proposition 8 is not a lawful amendment of the California Constitution.
It's nice to know that at least one Judge has his wits about him.
Proposition 8 contradicts California's equal protection clause.
News Flash: Gay Priest! …oh…nevermind.
It comes as no big surprise to hear of the memoirs of Archbishop Rembert Weakland, former Catholic prelate of Milwaukee, and his admission therein that he is a gay man. Imagine that?! A gay priest.
What a shock.
Meanwhile, down Miami way, Father Cutie (pronounced "cue-tee-ay" no matter how cute he is) allows as how he's fallen in love with a woman, and "doesn't want to become the poster boy for anti-celibacy." Don't worry cutey. You won't.
We return once again, to the anti-sex of yesteryear…somewhere around the 16th century, when the Roman Catholic Church was worried about what was going to happen to all that real estate. Suddenly scriptural support for the celibacy of the priesthood was discovered….how conveeeeeeeeeeenient. Presto! No real estate problems. All the deeds stay with the church.
What is it that makes celibacy so desirable in a priest or a nun? Why is a lack of human, physical intimacy a recommend for spiritual superiority?
Once again the Roman Catholic Church's wisdom in the area of sexuality and human intimacy is reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Church's wisdom in the area of astronomy.
Which is to say: zero.
Free Speech
I think
as I please
And this gives me pleasure.
My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure.
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny —
Die gedanken sind frei.
— German 16th-century peasant
song (revived as a protest anthem against the Nazi regime)*
As emotionally satisfying as it is to hear that the British Home Secretary has banned San Francisco radio shock jock Michael Savage (ne Michael A. Weiner) and the despicable Fred Phelps and his family from entry into Great Britain, along with various and sundry mad Muslim imams, Egyptian clerics and Russian skinheads…it is, alas, the most wrong-headed ham-fisted response, to say nothing of an appalling lack of imagination.

argument for free thought — that die gedanken sind frei ("thoughts are
free") that the Nazis and every other absolutist dictatorship have
excelled in crushing — has not been advanced by those who know better. The easy way out is not the answer. It's convenient to simply stifle ugly speech, but it also serves to elevate its standing.
a world sorely in need of a crash course in the efficacy of free debate
received nothing of the

of ideas is valid, as long as the suppressors are convinced and self-assured that they are "more moral," of "higher character" and in
the right.
Charlatans of Intolerance
A week back the New York Times Magazine profiled the disturbingly (proudly) intolerant Evangelical Fundamentalists from Africa who have moved their "ministries" to the United States. Worth a read. But more worth a read is this Letter to the Editors:
Daniel Ajayi-Adeniran and Raphael Adebayo claim that the Redeemed are in America because it “has fallen into the thrall of wickedness.” If America is considered fallen, what does that say about the extreme poverty, disease, ethnic cleansing, tribal warfare and failed states of Africa where he and the Redeemed originated? In truth, the Redeemed came to America because this is where the money is, and because American freedoms allow all religions — even the most bizarre — not only to exist but to sustain their existence by exemption from taxes.
We chastised the leaders of the American automobile industry for flying to Washington on private jets, yet we subsidize by tax relief the purchase of a private jet for a religious group that prays for God to cancel debts supernaturally; believes text messages offer divine protection; prays for deliverance from curses, spells and sorcery, witchcraft, evil spirits, poverty and addiction due to demonic possession; petitions God to transform their followers into millionaires; and claims to perform miracles, see the future, raise the dead, avoid traffic jams, foresee coups, restore hair, cure kidney disease, depression and H.I.V.
How can we be so inconsistent?
STEPHEN T. MOSLEY
Newtown, Pa.
Indeed.