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.
UPDATE: Nadler answered the question that I discussed with Joe earlier:
Q: Can you explain the value of submitting DOMA repeal legislation even if it's not likely to pass this session? Finally putting the issue on the table seems to give us a sense of which elected officials are with us -- and who isn't there yet. What are other benefits from your perspective?
Nadler: First, even if DOMA repeal is not likely to pass this session, we must begin the fight if we are eventually to repeal it. Introducing repeal legislation, as Pam said, enables us to find out who is with us and who we need to work on. We begin now a period of outreach and political organizing to bring about eventual passage. The sooner we begin the fight, the sooner we will prevail.
Join people over at Americablog for a live chat with Congressman Jerrold Nadler at 2PM ET. This thread is an open chat for reactions. Some information on what will be discussed is below.Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) recently introduced a bill to repeal DOMA, filed as The Respect for Marriage Act.
REPEAL OF SECTION ADDED TO TITLE 28, UNITED STATES CODE, BY SECTION 2 OF THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT.
Section 1738C of title 28, United States Code, is repealed, and the table of sections at the beginning of chapter 115 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking the item relating to that section.
SEC. 3. MARRIAGE RECOGNITION.
Section 7 of title 1, United States Code, is amended to read as follows: ''§ 7. Marriage
''(a) For the purposes of any Federal law in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual's marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State.
''(b) In this section, the term 'State' means a State, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or any other territory or possession of the United States.''
Rep. Nadler noted on his own site that the range of supports is indicative of the need to repeal the law:
Among the bill's backers are former President Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) into law in 1996, and former Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), who first introduced DOMA. They join the dozens of civil rights organizations and 91 original co-sponsors of the bill who are pushing for a full repeal of DOMA.
Today, President Clinton said: "I want to thank Congressman Nadler for his leadership on this issue, and Reps. Baldwin, Polis, Conyers, Lewis, Velazquez and Lee, for introducing the Respect for Marriage Act in the House of Representatives. Throughout my life I have opposed discrimination of any kind. When the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, gay couples could not marry anywhere in the United States or the world for that matter. Thirteen years later, the fabric of our country has changed, and so should this policy."
Today, Bob Barr said: "I join with former President Bill Clinton in commending Rep. Jerry Nadler for introducing the 'Respect for Marriage Act of 2009.' This legislation would strengthen the principle that each state is free to set the definition of marriage the citizens of that state have adopted. Rep. Nadler's legislation would also repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and by so doing, remove the federal government from involving itself in matters of defining 'marriage,' which historically and according to principles of federalism, are properly state matters and not federal."
Oddly, Americablog blogger John Aravosis chosen to use a New York Times article on the improvement to the lots of transgender federal workers, entitled New Protections for Transgender Federal Workers to highlight the need for an apology from President Obama on the DOJ's recent DADT DOMA brief. Aravosis' piece begins as follows:
Lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees, officials said Tuesday.
The guidelines will be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors to be distributed and posted online in the next couple of months, and they could also be included in other materials for managers. They will list transgender people - those who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates - as among several groups protected by antidiscrimination laws.
This is a good thing, and an important step for the transgender community...
A "good thing" John? Really? You really think so?
Well, back to that point in a short bit. Aravosis, in this recent piece, calls for President Obama to apologize, and lists other grievances he has for the Obama Administration:
Not a word from the White House about that little chestnut. And there's the rub. It's great that the White House suddenly feels the need to act on a number of issues that help the gay community, only after we collectively beat the crap out of them. And they seem intent on finding every non-top-of-the-agenda item they can to "fix" in order to boost their pro-gay bona fides. Today, for example, we learn of the government's apology to Frank Kameny for having fired him 40 years ago for being gay. This is good thing. But again, it is not an explanation for how our president's DOJ could compare us to incest and pedophilia, and for why our president refuses to issue a stop-loss order preventing real governmental discrimination taking place today in 2009, not in 1957. It's almost as if the Obama administration hopes that if it can piece together a big enough list of small items, they can make us go away on our biggest issues, Obama's biggest promises, to repeal DOMA and DADT.
Let's remind the White House once again why we are all here:
• Will this president apologize for comparing our community to incest and pedophilia?
• Will he explain why the brief gratuitously argued for the dismantlement of the legal underpinning of our civil rights (suggesting that Loving v. Virginia had nothing to do with gay marriage equality)?
• Will he explain why our civil rights do not matter his making an exemption - which he is in his rights to do - to the standard, but not exclsuvei [sic], practice of a president defending existing law? Why won't he oppose DOMA in court?
And then there's DADT...
Funny now that Aravosis uses a piece that begins with a transgender component to begin an screed against the president's policies towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. It's "funny" because John Aravosis has pretty much said that he doesn't believe transgender people belong in the -- or perhaps I should say "his" and not the -- "gay community". And of course, he never apologized for his statement.
Hey, if Mr. Aravosis wants to rail against the Obama Administration for not doing enough for the LGBT community, I'm going to side with him -- the Obama Andministration hasn't done enough. But, for him to use a New York Times on transgender federal employement issues to argue that the Obama Administration owes the LGBT community an apology on the DADT brief? Oooooooooh no. That doesn't get a pass from me at all.
Mr. Aravosis owes an apology to the transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community for personally approving of kicking transgender people and issues out of the broad lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community for the benefit of ENDA 2007/2008, and now he currently owes a fresh apology to the transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community for using a story about the transgender subcommunity to make a point about the Obama Administration's treatment of LGBT people.
Frankly, the term is overused, but I'm still going to use it here because I don't have a better term to describe how I feel about Aravosis' use of the transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community to make a point about the Obama Administration: I'm offended by Aravosis' statement. When John Aravosis issues an apology to the transgender subcommunity, and he writes a piece about how he now embraces lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in a broad lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement, then in my opinion he will have at least some sort of moral authority on which to turn news about the transgender subcommunity into calls for apologies.
Please. Mr. Aravosis should take a read at Matthew 7:
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Mr. Aravosis should be pulling the plank out of his own eye regarding trans people and issues before using transgender people to make a point on LGBT civil rights -- before using trans people and issues as a starting point for making a statement about how the Obama Administration needs to appologize regrding LGBT civil rights -- and that horrid DADT DOMA brief of a couple of weeks ago.
While cruising through a list of recent stories on transgender issues, I discovered that in a posting made Monday by Aravosis (who recently slammed United ENDA in a transphobic rant) in which a simple postscript demonstrates his utter lack of understanding about the nature of marriage rights.
PS As an aside, I've just learned that there's at least one senior transgender leader in America who is married (and I'm sure other straight transgendered people are married). That's nice, and I support their right to marry. But I do find it odd that the gay community is being asked (well, told) to put our employment rights on hold until the transgender community can get theirs, but the transgender community isn't putting its marriage rights on hold until we get ours. Then again, I'd never ask them to put their rights on hold until I got mine.
This shows that not only is he unaware of how transgender people are affected by marriage prohibitions for same sex couples, but how tirelessly the transgender activists work at the grass roots level for those very same rights.
The Americablog event has really gotten under my skin over the last week or so. I have my own blog, so I have written about it to express myself. I never blogged much at all about GLBT issues until this came along. My own blogspace has focused on Texas and local politics, New Orleans, music and silly stuff. For the record, I transitioned into living full-time as a female over fifteen years ago. My GLBT involvement was elsewhere, albeit limited. Until now. Hey, it's my blog, right?
I had some direct exchanges with John Aravosis in his comment threads, and eventually I was banned. I think he is a little too sensitive. I really admire what he has done on some issues. On GLBT inclusion, I think he is wrong, and his approach and what he says have been a little too revealing.
I am really not that nice to the Americablog owner over at my blog, but, if you read what I say, you will see that he isn't that nice either. Many of you may know that already. I mainly focus on what he says and the meaning of his words, but a few lines may be a little personal. Read it if you like. The blog whoring is really incidental to saying that I have changed what I blog about to deal with the implications of the non-inclusive ENDA bill and the neo-rejectionism that Americablog's owner espouses.
It's been a bumpy week for the transgendered sort. We should have had a chance to be thrilled that sexual identiity was included in a hate crime bill on the federal level. That's really pretty amazing. But then Barney Frank came along, and decided that we didn't need employment protections after all. And the Human Rights Campaign went along with this. After days of soul-searching, HRC has decided that they won't SUPPORT an employment discrimination act that protects gays and lesbians. But they won't denounce it either. Donna Rose, the only transgendered member of the HRC board, has just resigned in protest and frustration.
There's something additionally horrid about all of this. There are a lot of transgendered activists who are not in the slightest suprised by this. We saw it coming. We hoped the leopards would change their spots, but knew it was wishful thinking.
Frank has said disparaging things about transgendered people before. Peekhere, from 2000. He's quoted in far right-wing articles for his antitransgender views. Transgender advocates don't trust him, never have. Now do you see why?
The Human Rights Campaign was one of the very last alternate-sexuality political groups to include transgender people, and they did so grudgingly. Donna Rose became a member of the HRC board. Most transgender activists felt that HRC was only after what little money we had. Now, when we need them to be firmly in solidarity with the entire GLBT community, there is luke-warm support. We're not suprised.
And then there is Americablog. I'm not providing a link, because I don't go there anymore. John Aravosis used to be someone I looked up to, until the last week. He's been the most outspoken gay activist for jettisoning the transgendered protections from the bill. His attitude has been that so long as gay people get something at all, it doesn't matter about the rest of us. He's belittled commenters in his blog that dared disagree with him. However, he says he'll support us, that he'll come back for us. He says this while simultaneously questioning why the Transgendered are grouped with the Gay, Lesbians, and Bisexuals at all. Is there any wonder that we doubt his dedication to our subset of the fight?
As a contrast, there has been really pretty overwhelming support for keeping the T in the GLBT. Even on Americablog, despite the site owner's beligerence, support has been strong. Pam's House Blend bloggers have been supportive, with only a few fairly polite disagreements. We appreciate the inclusion, and we'll keep fighting to help our ENTIRE community, G,L,B, and T.
But yes, we're skittish. I hope no one is suprised.
Well, John, you make a number of things very clear. You think the trans community was able to enter the LGB community not as a natural evolution of the community, as you pointed out happened with women and bi’s, but through shame and fear. Fear? You’re afraid of what, our political power? I don’t think so. But maybe some folks in our community are afraid that trans people will highlight the gender nonconformity in the gay community and drag straight-acting gays into the sunlight.Shame? Maybe, and if so, then for good reason. They should be ashamed of themselves. That they feel so privileged and so righteous is shameful.
I agree with you that there are “senior” gay journalists – among others - who don’t get it. Barney Frank is apparently one such; Tammy Baldwin is not. Evidently the old school is not old enough to have read Susan Stryker’s history of gay America to realize that it was the gay guys who were added to the trans community at the dawn of the “gay” rights revolution. We were at Dewey’s Compton’s and Stonewall. I celebrate the fact that gays and lesbians were depathologized in 1973; I mourn the ensuing turnabout, when newly “mainstreamed” gays and lesbians turned on the gender nonconformists, including gay drag queens, and piled on to psychiatry’s pathologization of us. Jim Fouratt spewed his vile notion that trans women are nothing more than cowardly gay men who couldn’t accept their homosexuality, and Janice Raymond and her 2nd wave radical lesbian feminists characterized us as the surgical construct of the patriarchy to be used as an avant garde to invade women’s spaces.
You’re right – there hadn’t until this past week been an up swelling in the non-trans queer community to be trans-inclusive, just an evolution of adding one more letter to the alphabet soup – a change in nomenclature which has mirrored our own improved understanding of who we are and how we can identify to be as inclusive within our sub-community as possible. It saddens me that you ridicule that evolution. Yet there had never been any kind of mass gay action in support of sexual minority rights until Stonewall, run by trans women, and then little thereafter until death started to sweep the gay community. I have pointed out repeatedly that surveys, including those of HRC, show there is as much support for a trans-inclusive ENDA as a non-trans-inclusive one. Just because most Americans have never met one of us (or at least not outside of Oprah) doesn’t mean Americans don’t understand discrimination when they see it.
If Barney can’t get the bill passed, then he should leave it to Tammy to get the job done. I can speak to the wavering Congresspersons in half an hour and give them enough of an understanding to respond effectively to any hate speech from the Republicans. Instead we show our cowardice again and run.
The bottom line is that when we’re in the equation, the LGBT community can’t hide from gender nonconformity and all the sub-issues that raises. You’re right – let’s deal with it. Generalized fear of transgender people can be overcome just as so many Americans have overcome their generalized fear of gay men. We can make this a better country together, and do so without sacrificing anyone. Please feel free to post this response on your blog.
If John Aravosis had just kept to arguing about whether the bill would pass, or be vetoed, or whatever, and had kept it within the bounds of the political arena, many people would have disagreed with him on principle, but it would have been a matter of political expediency versus doing what's right.
But he didn't stay with that. From his very first post on AmericaBlog, he has been about isolating transgendered people from the rest of the LGBT community, because he doesn't believe, and has NEVER believed, that the IS such thing as the LGBT community -- because transgendered people should never have been included.
John Aravosis over at Americablog has an excellent post documenting some of our favorite organizations' alliance and support of junk scientist Paul Cameron.
The American Family Association, Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition and Concerned Women for America have been proponents of Cameron's work because it "validates" their anti-gay agenda. The tactic is simple -- cite the false and misleading "science" often enough, both in print and on the air, and if they make it sound credible, no one will question it. The Southern Poverty Law Center has named Cameron's Colorado Springs-based Family Research Institute as an active hate group.
Cameron's work is controversial even among conservative groups. For example, the Traditional Values Coalition claims to speak for 43,000 churches. For three years, the coalition has quoted Cameron's studies on its website in an article headlined, ''Report Shows Homosexual Foster Parents Apt To Molest Children," and has told its membership to ''read and distribute Dr. Cameron's report."
But when The Boston Globe asked the Traditional Values Coalition last week about Cameron, the group responded within minutes by removing all references to Cameron from its website. The group's spokeswoman, Daniella Lopez, said Cameron's research had been ''mistakenly" put on the website. She would not say why the group thought it was a mistake to publicize Cameron's research.
Friend of the Blend Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has delved deeply into the misleading "research" of Cameron many times. Here's his thumbnail on the FRI head:
As head of the Family Research Institute of Colorado Springs, Dr. Cameron has written dozens of articles in the journal Psychological Reports which purport to show that gay men and women pose many dangers to society. He was an adviser to former congressman William Dannemeyer (R-CA) in the 1980's, and in 1992 he was a paid consultant to Colorado's Attorney General Gale Norton (who later served as President Bush's Secretary of the Interior) when she was defending a constitutional amendment to prohibit civil rights laws based on sexual orientation. He continues to be a primary source of information for those who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians.
...Paul Cameron presents himself as a "published professional," even though almost all of his work appears in a pay-to-publish journal. Unfortunately, he has a problem with the truth, which has gotten him in trouble with several professional organizations. And when he's challenged, he also has problems with his temper. We have a few examples which provide a startling glimpse of what goes on inside the mind of Paul Cameron.
Most famously, in 1993 Cameron was touting a paper of his, "The lifespan of homosexuals." that claimed the average lifespan of gay men was 42 and lesbians was 44. It was debunked for its absurd methodology, but it didn't stop the right from citing it time and again.
Most recently, he presented "research" that boggles the mind to the -- "Federal Distortion of Homosexual Footprint. Cameron has also made the ridiculous assertion that Homosexuality More Dangerous Than Smoking.
And he's hopping mad at the White House too, since they are all running for cover, denying Ken Hutcherson's assertion that the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives anointed him "Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief." He used that to go over to Latvia to promote "marriage protection."
Hutch, who stands in the pulpit Antioch Bible Church outside of Seattle, is now the subject of an FBI complaint filed by Dave Coffman, a gay attorney in Seattle, who charges that Hutch has violated a federal law with his claim of agency to speak on behalf of U.S. policy. Eli Sanders, of The Stranger's blog, Slog, which broke this big:
I just spoke with Special Agent Fred Gutt of the Seattle FBI office. He said his office doesn't comment on complaints unless they result in criminal charges. However, he spoke with me about section 912 of the federal criminal code:
"There are various federal laws regarding false impersonations that we do investigate, 912 being one of them," Gutt told me. "That certainly would fall under our purview? This statute, if someone decided to represent themselves as a representative of the White House, could be pertinent."
Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
Hutch has offered up his first bit of evidence, an audio file of his visit in Latvia where he states that he has "the power and the commission" to address certain questions in the country.
The audio is vague, but he's promising video proof that he had the approval of the White House.
This is just more of the history of lying liars in the Bush White House. They either have to let Hutch hang out to dry as an impersonator breaking fed law, or come clean and say that they did in fact give Hutcherson the title and the power to go over and promote bigotry abroad in the name of the U.S. government. Hutch also posed for photos with Latvian Pastor Alexei Ledyaev and Jay Hein, Director of the Faith Based and Community Initiatives Department of the White House.
What do you think they're going to do to their bible-beating, anti-gay friend? Toss him overboard?
This story has blown up over at Americablog (see here, here, and here). One of the more persistent, outlandish anti-gay pastors around, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church (near Seattle) is making the White House sweat.
"Pastor Hutch" is claiming that the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has named him "Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief," and so he has been freely identifying himself as an agent of the Bush White House. Look at what kind of "envoy" Hutch is (John @ Americablog):
Hutcherson then claims he used his new White House anointed status to meet with Latvian government officials and go bother our US embassy officials in Latvia. And who reportedly tagged along with Mr. Hutcherson on his White House endorsed trip? None of than religious right anti-gay activist Scott Lively, a man accused of publishing Holocaust Revisionism by HateWatch. You see, Lively is the guy behind the theory that gays were the really masterminds behind the Holocaust.
Hutcherson also says he was there pushing Latvia to oppose gay marriage. Good God, do these people ever quit? Hutcherson also lectured the US Embassy officials about their supposed support for the homosexual agenda - I'm sure they had nothing better to do than meet with this goofball now officially representing the Bush the White House.
I asked Hutcherson what the title and the partnership mean in terms of his work in Latvia. He replied:
"In my meetings, I can represent as being with them [the White House] and having the power I need to get things done."
Hooboy. That gave someone agita at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because the shill at the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives then denied Hutch had any such "powers."
Hutcherson just called me again. He sounded quite perturbed that he is being cast as, in his words, "a liar," and he told me that he is rushing to get his hands on video of an interview with Latvian television that he said will prove his claims.
The video, Hutcherson told me, was shot after a Feb. 8 meeting at the White House between himself; Jay Hein, the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and Pastor Alexei Ladyaev of Latvia's New Generation Church.
...Hutcherson said the video will show that Hein met with him, knew of his new title, and approved of his mission to Latvia. As Hutcherson put it to me:
I'm gonna prove that I had those meetings, I'm gonna prove that I got that title behind me, and I'm gonna show you the video that says I was coming to Latvia and the purpose why.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) recently introduced a bill to repeal DOMA, filed as 
