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.
Okay. It sure looks like the Fort Worth, Texas Mayor Mike Moncrief made an apology for the Rainbow Lounge incident in this video (and reported in this article), but apparently looks apparently can be deceiving. The Mayor said the following in response to a specific question in a city council meeting regarding the Rainbow Lounge incident:
"The mayor and council are always sorry if anyone is hurt ever in our city," Begley said Wednesday. "The mayor has asked for a thorough investigation of what happened in the Rainbow Lounge to the point that he's asked for the U.S. attorney to get involved ...They want to make sure that all voices are heard ... but the apology is that anyone is ever hurt in any incident."
Well, with that clarification, whether an actual apology was issued is so much more...well, unclear.
Engh, it's politics. Apparently no politician ever really apologizes, even when it appears clear that he or she is actually apologizing.
A major paper has pick up on this story, and capture the outrage over the Stonewall weekend police raid at the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth, Texas. In "A Raid at a Club in Texas Leaves a Man in the Hospital and Gay Advocates Angry," James McKinley, Jr. of the NYT captures the major issues at play and added a few more details about the event.
So many questions have been raised about the police account that on Friday afternoon, Mayor Mike Moncrief asked the United States attorney for the Northern District of Texas, James T. Jacks, to review the Police Department’s investigation.
Tom Anable, a 55-year-old accountant who said he was in the bar during the raid, said that for more than a half-hour the officers entered the bar repeatedly in groups of three and escorted people out. Then around 1:40 a.m., he said, the officers started to get rougher, throwing one young man down hard on a pool table.
Minutes later, one of the state agents approached Mr. Gibson, who was standing on steps to a lounge at the back of the bar with a bottle of water in his hands, and tapped him on the shoulder, Mr. Anable said. Mr. Gibson turned and said, “Why?”
Then the officer, who has not been identified, twisted Mr. [Chad] Gibson’s right arm behind his back, grabbed his neck, swung him off the steps and slammed his head into the wall of a hallway leading to the restrooms, Mr. Anable said. The agent then forced Mr. Gibson to the floor, Mr. Anable said.
“Gibson didn’t touch the officer,” Mr. Anable said. “He didn’t grope him.”
Angry allies and members of the LGBT community there have created a new organization, Fairness Fort Worth, to track the investigations and inquiries regarding the raid and plans a benefit concert to help those injured.
The Stonewall weekend police raid at Fort Worth's Rainbow Lounge, which resulted in a man, Chad Gibson, receiving a brain injury from the brutality exacted by "law enforcement" has turned into a perfect example of homophobia as a defense. The police chief, Jeff Halstead, has not only bought into the officer's questionable reasons for the violence -- allegations that a bar patron fondled them or made sexual gestures at them, something witnesses deny strongly, but he's proud to release a statement like this:
Monday, police chief Jeff Halstead said the officers' actions are being investigated. However, he also said that officers that entered the bar during the scheduled inspection were touched inappropriately.
"You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive," he said. "I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."
News 8 talked with council member Joel Burns shortly after he visited Gibson in the hospital Monday afternoon.
"It's my hope that the fact that this is a gay bar and the violence that happened there are not in any way tied - obviously as someone who loves Fort Worth [and] as someone who is gay - I don't want those two things to be connected," he said.
Neither the TABC nor Fort Worth police revealed why the bar was selected for what police called a bar check. But, Halstead said the checks always result from either citizen or law enforcement concerns. The bar's owner questioned that and pointed out the Rainbow Lounge has been open for less than two weeks.
Meanwhile, Gibson is suffering from brain injury.
Gibson's mother, Kelly Carter, called it heartbreaking."He's got bruises here on his head," Carter said. "He's got [them] all down his shoulder. He's got a ring around his wrist where they had tied him."
Allow me to translate the chief's comments: "Them faggots in that thar bar touched mah officers and now they're complainin' about some rough stuff and one little ol' faggot with a brain injury? Those perverts should be grateful they're alive."
This is a classic example of the Gay Panic Defense. In the very recent past all a straight man who brutally murdered a gay man had to say was, "He made a pass at me!", and the jury would ignore the evidence and let the murderer off. The Gay Panic Defense doesn't fly in many courts of law these days but it still has currency in the court of public opinion. And the chief of police in Forth Worth, a major U.S. city, is attempting to use the Gay Panic Defense to convince the citizens of Fort Worth to ignore the evidence-to ignore photographic evidence and credible eyewitness accounts-and let his officers off.
Police say seven people were arrested for public intoxication and at least a dozen more were restrained. The incident was captured on camera and posted on local blogs. The scene was topic of conversation at Sunday's Million Gay March in Dallas, and the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas released a statement following its Sunday morning worship services.
"After more than a generation of progress, this action shows that there is still much work to be done to ensure that all Americans enjoy 'equal protection under the law.' It is tragic that lesbian and gay taxpayers are still abused by the very people who are paid by our taxes."
..."I've worked in gay bars in four different counties in Texas, I've never seen anything this aggressive," club bouncer Justin McCarty said.
Fort Worth police arrested seven people for reported public intoxication, and for reportedly inappropriately groping an officer. It's an allegation witness Chuck Potter disputes.
"I can guarantee there wasn't a man in this bar that would've touched one of those officers, knowing they were arresting people."
There's a good piece at The Guardian by friend-of-the-Blend Nancy Goldstein, "Stonewall's unfinished legacy." The LGBT community has come a long way in so many facets of American society -- thus we'll see many select luminaries of the community gather today to celebrate that progress at the White House in the vein of St. Patrick's Day.
In 1969, and for most of the 20th century, LGBT people had no place to congregate in public other than a few mafia-owned rat holes like Stonewall that charged exorbitant entrance fees, sold us expensive, watered down liquor in dirty glasses and blackmailed patrons to the tune of millions of dollars.
In addition to being targeted for witch-hunts, dishonourable military discharges and blacklists, LGBT people could be arrested for solicitation if we so much as accepted a cigarette from an undercover cop. Officers often beat and raped us down at the station. Law enforcement and the mafia alike were emboldened by a legal system that considered us criminals and a medical profession that routinely subjected us to lobotomies, electroshock and even castration in its quest for a cure.
However, it's safe to say, given the Fort Worth "fag-bashing" police raid that took place during a Stonewall commemoration at the Rainbow Lounge this past weekend, those being feted at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue weren't there to see patrons at the Rainbow Lounge experiencing "progress" with their faces being pushed into the floor and sent to the hospital by law enforcement.
Nancy addresses the feeble and manipulative attempts by the Obama administration to address the insult to the community of its DOMA defense brief.
After five days of online near-rioting, the administration went into damage control with a weak and hasty response that mandated extension of benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees - an option that already existed, with all the crippling limitations mentioned above. (The biggest irony: under DOMA, federal employees still cannot add partners to their health insurance.)
It reminded us what it was like to be taken for granted at the Stonewall Inn: welcomed into the club so long as we're willing to be overcharged for watered-down liquor in dirty glasses and stashed in the back of the bar. It confirmed our status in the eyes of the powers that be as second-class citizens whose money is still good.
You can add that we're in the the club until someone calls the police to ensure we know our place by engaging in a friendly, welcoming beat-down.
Is this what the police in Fort Worth, TX call "Stonewall Commemoration"? A gay club called the Rainbow Lounge opened in the city and Todd Camp, the founder of Q Cinema and former reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was celebrating his birthday at the club and two Stonewall docs were being screened.
That evening the Fort Worth Police decided to pay a visit and re-enact good-old-fashioned "law enforcement." Camp told the local LGBT news outlet The Dallas Voice about the incident:Photo of police pinning a patron to the ground. (by Chuck Potter via The Dallas Voice).
The not awesome thing was the paddy wagon of homophobic police that showed up ... looking for trouble. My group and I were sitting on the back patio at a picnic table. Nobody was being wild out there. [The police] came through with flashlights, being loud asking what was going on out here, then asked why everyone was all the sudden being quiet. When one group started up their conversations again, they took one guy away. I left shortly after and as I walked through the front bar there were numerous cops with plastic handcuffs all ready to go. I [left] the bar and they [had] a big van in the parking lot and numerous cars on the street. And just so you know, it wasn't fire hazard crowded or seedy wild in there. ... The worst part is [friends later told me] that [the police] had numerous people face down on the ground outside. I just moved to Fort Worth from Dallas, so this is such a shock to me. I know Dallas would not put up with this. ... I am still so shocked it is 2009 and this just happened.
An eyewitness said that she was initially pleased to see the police, thinking they were there to protect patrons since the bar was in a rough part of town. That quickly changed.
She asked why they were there and he said a disgruntled employee had said that the bar was overserving people. She told him she had been drinking but that she had a designated driver. He told her that she was fine. She said they only arrested men and seemed to be targeting effeminate men.
Another patron, Chad Gibson, was slammed to the floor by the cops and his sister reported to the Voice that he was hospitalized and has bleeding in his brain. And what does the police department have to say about this incident?
The statement also said that "an extremely intoxicated patron made sexually explicit movements toward the police supervisor" and that person was arrested for public intoxication.
...A second "intoxicated individual" [referring to Chad Gibson] was arrested for public intoxication after making "sexually explicit movements towards another officer," and a third person assaulted a TABC agent by grabbing his groin. That man was escorted outside and arrested for public intoxication, but was released to paramedics because of his "extreme intoxication" and the fact that he was vomiting repeatedly.
The statement said that while some officers were outside dealing with the vomiting suspect, another officer inside requested assistance in handling an intoxicated patron who was resisting arrest, and that this person was "placed on the ground to control and apprehend him."
Eyewitnesses, not surprisingly, viewed that interpretation of events quite differently, saying Gibson weighed "maybe 160 pounds soaking wet" and didn't resist, but stumbled when one officer grabbed him by the arm. And about those sexual gestures and provocations?
Rainbow Lounge owner J.R. Schrock said claims that patrons made sexual advances to the officers and that one patron groped an officer were lies.
"The groping of the police officer - really? We're gay, but we're not dumb," Schrock said to the crowd that gathered at the bar Sunday afternoon. "That is a lie, and I am appalled by it.
A rally was held yesterday at the Tarrant County Courthouse. Click over to the Voice to see the photos. Thanks to the numerous Blenders who sent tips in about this incident.
A major paper has pick up on this story, and capture the outrage over the Stonewall weekend police raid at the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth, Texas. In "
The Stonewall weekend police raid at Fort Worth's Rainbow Lounge, which resulted in a man, Chad Gibson, receiving a brain injury from the brutality exacted by "law enforcement" has turned into a perfect example of homophobia as a defense. The police chief, Jeff Halstead, has not only bought into the officer's questionable reasons for the violence -- allegations that a bar patron fondled them or made sexual gestures at them, something witnesses deny strongly, but he's proud to release a statement like this:
This is from 
