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The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend:
"a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."

He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior." (CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)


Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).

"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008



Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:

A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist."
(Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)

"A nutty lesbian blogger."
(MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)


Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush


who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
--"Joe"

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Filing the edges off of racism

by: Pam Spaulding

Sun Jan 13, 2008 at 08:00:00 AM EST


I really can't say it any better than Portly Dyke over at Shakesville, so please go read her essay about how the desire to will away public expressions of racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, paired with desensitization have brought us to where we are today.

It's not that all expressions of racism are equivalent -- they range from ignorant miscues to out-and-out egregious exposure of personal animus toward a group of minorities, from Andrew Cuomo's use of "shuck and jive" (along with his sad excuses for using it), to Imus and "nappy headed ho's", to Dog the Bounty Hunter ("I'm not going to take a chance ever in life for losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some f**king n**er heard us say n***er and turned us into the Enquirer magazine"). These didn't happen in a vacuum.

But as a society, even well-meaning progressives are finding ways to excuse statements that would have never flown a couple of decades ago. I had a similar reaction to Portly Dyke when she started hearing this excuse...PD:

I entered a conversation about whether a white news commentator might not have known that suggesting that other golfers "lynch him (Tiger Woods) in a back alley" was a racist comment worthy of public sanction.

Among the various arguments I read was this one: Given the commentator's age, she might not really understand the charged context of the word "lynch" in reference to a person-of-color.

And somehow, vaguely, in the back of my mind, I remembered a time when I could not imagine that I would be hearing this argument from progressives.

...I could remember that, in the 80's, even though there were still many, many confrontations with the MSM and mainstream culture, and much consciousness-raising yet to be done, I didn't think I would have been having this very basic argument about using the word "lynch" (or arguing about whether rape was "gray", or "gag gifts" featuring detached female body parts were "just a joke" rather than sexist) -- with progressives.

...My problem with filing off the edges of our outrage at such racist words and actions is just that -- it's filing off -- it's erosive -- and the problem with erosion is that if you let it go on long enough, you'll eventually wind up with nothing at all.

Go read the rest -- particularly the back and forth in the comments. She also included this Brave New Films video I've featured before, with incredible racist statements from talking heads at Faux News. No one in these segments was fired or reprimanded for saying nasty and outrageous racist statements things on the air.  I'm also sure none of these people in this video -- including Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a favorite black pundit brought on to say the most vile things -- consider themselves to be racist. The edges are so filed down on the "benign" aspects of racism that the label is reserved only for extreme violence against a POC, or extreme cases of institutionalized bigotry that cannot be ignored.

Also:
* The simplicity and beauty of Dog the Bounty Hunter's racist tirade

Pam Spaulding :: Filing the edges off of racism
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I'm consistently amazed about how people respond to racism
You get this incredible apologism from people who would like to think of themselves as generally sensitive to race, but then they go off the deep end trying to find ways to justify what someone else said.  Then you get people told they should resign for using the word "niggardly."  

[Head.  Explodes.]

I'm only a click away.


What, me racist?
Thanks for posting the link, Pam--I went over to read the post as well as the comments and I found the discussion to be enlightening for several reasons.

There is a lot of back and forth regarding the origins of expressions that are racist and a good deal of surprise over the racist overtones of expressions ('cakewalk' and 'shuck and jive' in particular) that they had previously been unaware of. Among some of the younger posters (ones born in the 80's from what I can tell) there were posts that began with the assertation that they grew up unaware of racism--that is until it was pointed out to them (in a civilized fashion that encouraged discourse rather than defensiveness) that the very idea that they couldn't be racist because they were unaware of racist overtones within their own cocooned communities was something to be examined. The continuing discussion that followed is encouraging because it's exposing some of the things that underlie the whole 'we're not racist in this country anymore' delusion.

Portly Dyke points out that she still continues to deal with her own racist perceptions and in pointing that out makes it clear that it's an ongoing process of unlearning responses that are ingrained in us from all manner of input. Admitting that there is indeed a problem is one way of pushing back one's fear of discussing the issue at all.

I know that I become uncomfortable with such dialog for fear of saying something offensive and thereby exposing my out racist thinking. Me? Racist? Nonsense! I'm a liberal-thinking out lesbian! How can I be racist?

I am though, as I think most, if not all, people are to one degree or another. I catch myself couching my own thoughts in categories of 'us' (whites) and 'them' (Black, Hispanic, Asian or whoever the group may be that I'm thinking about discussing) That shows that I still categorize by race. How do you get past that? Being aware of it is one way. Speaking about it to people outside my comfort zone, i.e. people of other ethnicities is another. Refusing to tolerate speech that marginilizes people is yet another.

Ongoing dialog and refusal to let such speech pass as a 'joke' is imperative. If someone says something you understand to be racist and they don't, point it out.  Education does not only take place in classrooms, after all.

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

Douglas Adams - 'The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy'  


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