Maine's Visitors Not Just From PA- Try California!!

These people came to Carmel, CA

They were not welcome. People told them to go home and called the police.

I wrote a diary about it:

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/...

I was shocked to learn that an anti-gay group held a rally just a few miles from my home yesterday. According to an article in today's Monterey County Herald, an organization from Pennsylvania called The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (check out their scary website) gathered at the intersection of Ocean Avenue and San Carlos Street carrying anti-gay signs and a red banner with a lion and the words "Tradition, Family, Property."

One Carmel resident described the demonstration as "fascist" and several others felt compelled to give these crazy folks the finger.

When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will.

- Abraham Lincoln.

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by: Fritz @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 12:30:54 PM CDT

From the Monterey Herald

Clad in suits and red capes adorned with a gold pin in the shape of a lion, a Pennsylvania-based group demonstrated Thursday in downtown Carmel in support of traditional marriage and against gay unions.

[...]

"I was assaulted by this sort of fascist presence and I felt I needed to be out here," [Tracy] Hydorn said, likening the demonstration to a Hitler youth rally.

[...]

"There are a lot of people I love that this is a hate message against," [Marshall Hydorn] said.

[...]

"I would like to see this kind of demonstration called to a halt," [Marshall Hydorn] said, calling it "malicious."

The group attracted occasional honks from passing cars, as well as a few epithets and rude gestures.

[...]

A Carmel police officer stopped by to talk briefly with [organizer John] Ritchie after receiving noise complaints.

[...]

When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will.

- Abraham Lincoln.

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by: Fritz @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 12:34:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Thanks, Fritz!

Had never heard of them before yesterday. Good to have the info...

"It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more."

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by: Louise @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 13:00:01 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Scary Website

I'll say!  It's quite obvious they're some far right, ultra-orthodox Catholic group that believes society should be made in their image.  

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by: Jon Michaels @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 14:36:40 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Are women allowed in the group?

I don't see any in the photo.  American Taliban.  Women are not allowed out of the house and kept uneducated and pregnant perhaps.

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by: Karen in Kalifornia @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 17:56:12 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

What a great question!!

"It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more."

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by: Louise @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 17:59:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I've been reading Lillian Faderman lately. :)

"Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers" is a great history of the social conscious of being what we today say out and proud as lesbian....wasn't that long ago the only option for women was to be married and run the kids and the household.  Figure this  red-caped gang is a throwback to that worldview.

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by: Karen in Kalifornia @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 18:27:58 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Were there women in the SS?

It's the Hammer of JUSTICE,
It's the Bell of FREEDOM,
It's the Song about LOVE between,
my Brothers and my Sisters
...All over this Land.

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by: Orion45 @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 21:38:04 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Counter Protesters

Too bad there weren't counter protesters nearby displaying signs the traditional marriage supporters were from California and Pennsylvania and they should stay out of Maine politics.

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by: Guy in SF @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 13:41:20 PM CDT

Different Clothes, Same Message

These guys remind me of Morman missionaries.  The only difference is that these clowns added suit jackets and red sashes.  

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by: Jon Michaels @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 14:07:53 PM CDT

Playing bagpipes badly - why? Fine way to alienate everyone in earshot.

Are these nit-wits ultra-Catholics who romanticize Bonnie Prince Charlie (of the royal house of Stuart, the prince who was defeated in 1746)? That might explain the bagpipes bit.

I  went to their website, and much to my surprise, they aren't sedevacantists  (ultra-Catholics who consider John XXIII and following popes to be illegitimate). They are monarchists or oligarchists (rule by Catholic aristocracy, preferably hereditary). I suspect that explains the fancy dress, red capes and all. A fair number of people who might agree with them concerning gay rights probably look at these guys in red cakes and think "dam' fruits". It doesn't look exactly Maine-appropriate.

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by: NancyP @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 14:22:32 PM CDT

True-nitwits is an apt description

I recommend Veronica Chater's memoir about her upbringing in the sedevacantist movement, Waiting for the Apocalypse. Chater mentioned her brothers had some association with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, which is interesting because unlike the sedevacantists (the SSPV and CMRI) and the Society of St. Pius X, the TFP hasn't openly broken with the Vatican. TFP was started in Brazil by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Along with Opus Dei, the Neocatechumenate Way, Focolare, Communion & Liberation, and the Legionaries of Christ, they are about as far right as you can get in the Catholic Church without breaking with the Vatican.

Frank Cocozzelli of Talk to Action also posted about a related group, Society for a Christian Commonwealth, back in 2006. The one thing that binds these groups is that they want to return to an idealized past. Of course, the past they want to return to was fine if you were a member of the aristocracy or royalty. For the ordinary folks, it wasn't quite so great. The encouragement the Catholic Right gets and its influence on the hierarchy is a sore point for me and for many other Catholics.  

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by: khughes1963 @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 19:16:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I was born into the aristocracy

and I don't want that past back.
These people are talking about even rolling back the Renaissance.....

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 22:51:21 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Wow...

It's POSSIBLE to be too far right for the Vatican?

The mere thought of this is... well, more frightening than anything Rod Serling could dream up on acid.

Damn you in advance for keeping me up all night trolling Wikipedia for everything I can find on these musty corners of the papist netherworld.  ;-)

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by: CubPaws2008 @ Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 02:25:04 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

One of the people associated with it

attended St Andrew's in Scotland.....

By the way, are the lot of you aware that many Papal orders require proof of Aristocratic descent? Some members of my extended family hold them and one order, to be granted , requires proof of noble descent on both sides of the family....

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 22:55:12 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I've run across these people before

Rich elitists, some of whom long for a return to monarchy, may from families whose members hold Papal orders....

Here is their philosoply, courtesy of wikipedia, quoting their source of inspiration:

In addition to supporting all official Catholic teaching, the group also argues for the need for authentic elites in society that raise, above all, the moral tone of general society, as witnessed by one of Corrêa de Oliveira's most available works, Nobility & Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII. In this book, Corrêa de Oliveira seeks to balance the notion of "preferential option for the poor" idea in some modern liberal Catholic social thinking, with support for the natural elite that exists in all societies, according to the teaching of Pius XII, that they may become the obligated class working for the good of society (Noblesse Oblige). "If the Revolution is disorder, the Counter-Revolution is the restoration of order. And by order we understand the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. That is, Christian civilization, austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacral, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal." Ardently anti-Communist, in line with the Church's social doctrine, the group's Catholic identity caused it to voice its opposition to the policy of Vatican rapprochement with Communism (Corrêa de Oliveira, The Church and the Communist State: The Impossible Coexistence).

In Corrêa de Oliveira's "Revolution and Counter-Revolution", three phases of "the gnostic and egalitarian Revolution", which progressively undermines the Church and social order, have taken place: 1) the renaissance up to and including the "Protestant pseudo-reformation"; 2) the "Enlightenment" & French Revolution which ushered in modern political liberalism; 3) the Communist revolution. The final phases that follow (now taking place) seek to eradicate the Church and Christian civilization while applying more radical egalitarianism and implementing neo-paganism.

One member maintains a website, where, amongst other things, he had causal shots of one of his heroes, Francisco Franco, which sickened me as I was in Spain not long after El Caudillo's death(which Chevy Chase kept re-assuring people of) and learned about the crusing of freedom and dissent by his regime, carried out arm and arm with Conservative Catholicism, even at my University, where he had chapels put into all of the buildings(most of which did not match the archetecture) to proclaim the victory of himself and the Church over liberal freedom

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 22:48:58 PM CDT

Seen this before!

"If the Revolution is disorder, the Counter-Revolution is the restoration of order. And by order we understand the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. That is, Christian civilization, austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacral, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal."

Translation: "We'd like to run everyone's lives for them and rule the world, so here's some pseudo-intellectual hogwash supposedly establishing our superiority and demonstrating that we deserve to do what we want to do".  Same claptrap, different group of aspiring tyrants.

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by: CubPaws2008 @ Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 02:28:54 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Franco's reich was a shot in the foot for the Catholics though.

The Spanish public's reaction against the Catholic church's highly public mutual back-scratching of Francisco Franco is one of the things that made gay marriage possible in Spain, which is otherwise still one of the most conservative states in the western EU. This also shows why gay rights in eastern EU states like Poland are so hard the get: the Catholic & Orthodox churches there were persecuted by their totalitarian regimes, not supported by them.

____________________________________
Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

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by: tavdy79 @ Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 06:37:52 AM CDT

[ Parent ]