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.
Josh at Right Wing Watch emails me some of the most over-the-top stuff and this is no exception. With the hanging of that census worker Bill Sparkman in Kentucky with "FED" on his chest, it's not hard to compile TEH CRAZY. Take a look at the legitimacy that Faux News gives the deranged Michele Bachmann as she whips up hysteria and paranoia over the 2010 Census.
Over at Jesus' General, one of his commenters is a census worker who works in the deep woods of western North Carolina mountain country. This person gives a first-hand account about the sentiment out there.
The overwhelming anger is directed straight at the President. No question. Fear and racism at the core that has manifested into anti-government radicalism. We're threatened and intimidated almost daily, just for trying to earn a days pay and uphold the Constitution. I've been called an "employee of president nigger" and team members have been bitten by dogs and threatened with shotguns.
Lord have mercy, if this turns out to be some backwoods, irate, homicidal teabagger, the already close-to-untethered 24% of right-wing crazies will up the violence ante. (Facing South):
The Associated Press reports that the body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and substitute teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky's Clay County. Sparkman has worked for the Census since 2003.
Co-workers became worried about Sparkman when he failed to show up for a Sept. 10 work assignment at Johnson Elementary School in Laurel County, Ky., WKYT reports. Sparkman recently earned his teaching degree while working two jobs and fighting cancer.
Lucindia Scurry-Johnson, assistant director of the Census Bureau's southern office in Charlotte, N.C., told the AP that law enforcement authorities have said the death is "an apparent homicide." The bureau has suspended door-to-door operations in Clay County until the investigation is complete.
And take a look at this batsh*t insane first comment posted on Facing South's web site:
As we've blogged many times before on the Blend, Jamaica is one of the most homophobic places on the planet. Its government regularly issues anti-gay statements that border on calls for violence against LGBTs. More than 70 percent of Jamaicans oppose any rights for LGBTs; dance hall music features popular artists who call for violence against gays and lesbians in their lyrics.
Yet anyone who flips on the TV can see how the Jamaican government courts U.S. tourists to the island nation.
It's time to stop sending any hard-earned dollars to this country. As long as the officials in Jamaica can count on tourism dollars from the U.S., they have little reason to stop the anti-gay domestic terrorism it perpetrates and enables. Our LGBT brothers and sisters in Jamaica will continue to suffer.
On American docks, six hundred miles west of this homophobic hellhole, tourists regularly line up to board massive luxury liners destined for Jamaica. The tropical island earned $2.1 billion from tourism in 2006, an increase of 24 percent over 2005. More than three million people visited Jamaica in 2006, with 1,025,000 arrivals from the United States.
Clearly, the answer to Jamaica's love affair with lynching is an aggressive campaign designed to put the clamp on tourism - particularly the cruise industry. The goal should be to strangle Jamaica's economy and force the island to change or suffer severe consequences. With tourism Jamaica's second largest source of revenue, such a campaign could have a powerful impact that achieves tangible results.
Human rights activists have given Jamaica the infamous title: "The Most Homophobic Place on Earth." If you love your gay friends and family members, you won't visit Jamaica. If you care about the human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, you won't buy Jamaican products.
Isn't it time we stop rewarding this hate state with our tourism dollars? Isn't it time to stop drinking Jamaican beverages, such as Myers Rum and Red Stripe Beer?
This nation should be avoided at all costs until the Jamaican government takes action to end the country's virulently homophobic climate and draconian laws that persecute homosexuals. Until Jamaica takes the following easy steps an official boycott is in effect:
1) Publicly commit to end gay bashing on the island and improve the human rights situation
2) A statement from the Prime Minister clearly and unequivocally condemning violence against GLBT people and expressing regret for past violence
Lord, have mercy -- it sickens me to think what it must be like in Jamaica if you're LGBT. The ignorant, homophobic pronouncements from elected officials and religious leaders are incessant, and stokes the already-horrible violence against sexual minorities. Here's another from the prime minister, Bruce Golding. (Pink News):
The Prime Minister of Jamaica has said that the country will not decriminalise homosexual acts and that he has a duty to "protect" the country.
Bruce Golding was speaking in Parliament in support of a new sexual offences bill.
"We are not going to yield to the pressure, whether that pressure comes from individual organisations, individuals, whether that pressure comes from foreign governments or groups of countries, to liberalise the laws as it relates to buggery," he said.
What's especially heinous is that this kind of hysteria makes it all the more difficult to have effective HIV/AIDS education and prevention on this island nation.
The purpose of this thread is to help Freepers and lurkers decide upon what the best mode of self defense would be in the case of the breakdown in social order such as happened with the Rodney King riots.
Joe Brower owns one of the RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms) ping lists. I tried to convince him to open this vanity because he and his friends are more knowledgeable about guns. He says, "there have already been threads on the subject you mention right here on FR, although I can't locate them now. Tell you what -- you start the thread and then ping me, and I'll then flag my RKBA list for comments. I'm sure some folks in that group would be able to provide links, as well as plenty of timely advice. "
This scenario is called the SHTF scenario, where the acronym stands for $#|+ Hits The Fan. So this will be the SHTF gun thread for November 2008... Of course, gun ownership isn't for everyone. But it is the most accessible safety measure under our constitution, which is as our founding fathers intended. Recall where the police were when the Rodney King riots started: they left the scene for their own safety. If that were to happen in your neighborhood, what is your plan?
And what were the comments like on this thread? View some below the fold.
The horrible circumstances of LGBTs in Iraq has gone largely uncovered by the MSM. It has, however been covered extensively for some time in the LGBT press (see Doug Ireland's coverage going back to 2006 and the UN reports on the horrors, including the military death squads). CNN finally picked up the story, so perhaps more attention will be given to the plight of our brothers and sisters in that country.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the situation for gays and lesbians in Iraq has deteriorated. Ridiculed under Hussein, many now find themselves the targets of violence, according to humanitarian officials.
Lesbians are also victims of harassment and violence, but not nearly as often as gay men. It's unknown how many homosexuals have been killed by militias in the lawless streets of Iraq's cities, but some Web sites post pictures of Iraqis they say were killed for being gay.
..."Gay men and lesbians in Iraq face a lot of risks right now, because homosexuality is sometimes interpreted by people in Iraq as being a Western import," said Scott Portman with the Heartland Alliance, a group that promotes human rights worldwide. "So they can sometimes be targeted by insurgent groups or militias, in part, because of animosity toward the West and, in part, because homosexuality is not well-accepted in Iraqi society."
...When CNN asked Iraqis in Baghdad how they felt about homosexuals, we found intolerance to be widespread. One man said he considers gays no different from "criminals and terrorists." Another claimed homosexuality was "illegal under Islamic law, and they [gays] should be punished by law like criminals."
What, if anything will Obama and McCain say about this topic? Don't hold your breath.
Good Samaritan Beaten Protecting Trans Woman
(New York City) A priest who attempted to protect a 21 year old transwoman from four teens who were hitting and verbally harassing her was beaten in front of a shelter for gay and trans young people.
Wow. Sometimes the fringe right just takes your breath away. If only they could all be as up-front as right-wing extremist, racist and homophobe Hal Turner (go a little past halfway down the page of the site to read the filth).
Lexington superintendent Paul Ash of Newton has been threatened by a New Jersey radio host urging listeners to "use threats and violence" against Ash for the school district's new diversity curriculum.
The radio host says "I advocate parents using FORCE AND VIOLENCE against Superintendent Paul B. Ash as a method of defending the health and safety of school children presently being endangered through his politically-correct indoctrination into deadly, disease-ridden sodomite lifestyles." The site lists Ash's last known addresses, a phone number, and a birth date.
This is beyond BS. And you know what? Sean Hannity is tight with Turner. The Nation exposed how Hannity has tried to distance himself from the rancid comments of Turner. Read below the fold.
Check out this bold letter to the editor from a die hard homophobe -- the writer is miffed at the idea that people would stay away from the island nation because of its hostility toward gay citizens.
It fully angers me to hear that this group of foreigners think they can dictate the policy and laws of another sovereign nation because they trade products and services with them. It was selfish, shortsighted thinking like this that led to Haiti being in the state it currently is.
I always thought that the laws of a nation were dictated by what that society decided was right and wrong and that we were in a world where, if my countries laws and polices were not the same as yours, we could agree to disagree.
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett apparently doesn't give a damn about his countrymen and women either. Read below the fold.
Lawrence King, a 15-year-old at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California was shot in the head and back and lies in a hospital, declared brain-dead, with his body now kept alive by life support, so that his organs being preserved to donate to save another life. The tragedy is that King was likely targeted because of his gender non-conformity.
King was said to have sometimes worn makeup and feminine jewelry. Said classmate Michael Sweeney, "He would come to school in high-heeled boots, makeup, jewelry and painted nails -- the whole thing. That was freaking the guys out."
Fellow students also tell the Los Angeles Times that King was harassed on a regular basis. He had been involved in an argument with a group of boys that included his alleged shooter, who is said by a witness to have specifically threatened him, on Monday.
"He didn't deserve it," said friend and confidant Mariah Thompson. "I would always tell him, 'Don't let them get to you.'"
The suspect, who has not been identified by authorities, fled the scene but was quickly apprehended in neighboring Port Hueneme.
And the fundies say there is no need for measures to protect LGBT students from harassment and violence. From the Gay-Straight Alliance Network:
The shooting has been characterized as a "personal" attack and "bad blood" between two students, but advocates caution the violence at the Oxnard junior high is more aptly characterized as a tragic example of widespread homophobia in our schools. Every day young people are subject to bullying or harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.
While there were reports of the victim receiving support at school due to the bullying he endured, no other bullying prevention efforts have been reported. This terrible event sheds light on the need to provide better education for all students about respect for diversity and differences.
"With young people coming out at younger ages, our schools - especially our junior highs and middle schools - need to be proactive about teaching respect for diversity based on sexual orientation and gender identity," said Carolyn Laub, executive director of Gay-Straight Alliance Network. "The tragic death of Lawrence King is a wake-up call for our schools to better protect students from harassment at school. As a society, we can prevent this kind of violence from happening."
The GenQ Street Angels want volunteers with policing, military, security or medical experience to join.
They could be patrolling in Sydney's Oxford Street precinct and the King Street strip in Newtown as early as the first weekend in November.
Recent polls in gay and lesbian newspaper The Star Observer revealed about 70 per cent of readers believed Oxford Street was unsafe. Fewer than 35 per cent thought increased police patrols were enough to remedy the situation and almost 60 per cent said they were in favour of community security patrols.
Most trouble seemed to happen outside clubs that allowed queueing patrons to cluster on the footpath, Mr Stopps said. "This is where abuse and violence starts," he said.
The murder of Michael Sandy in Brooklyn last year was heinous. A group of thugs arranged on the Internet to meet him for sex, then attacked Sandy, who fled into traffic on the Belt Parkway and was hit by a car. Four were involved, with the youngest assailant, who was only 17; he has since flipped on the rest of his friends.
Now one of the defendants, Michael Fortunato, is on trial for the murder and is claiming that he's gay, and that the rendezvous with Sandy was a ploy designed by Fortunato to out himself to his friends. This is sick BS. (NYT):
All along, homosexuality has defined the case. Prosecutors have used it as a sword, seeking heavier sentences for a hate crime.
As the trial began in Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday, Mr. Fortunato’s lawyer, Gerald J. Di Chiara, sought to use sexual orientation as a shield. Without much explanation of how he planned to introduce this fact or turn it to his advantage, Mr. Di Chiara offered it to the jury in his opening argument. Not only was Mr. Fortunato gay, Mr. Di Chiara said, but so was the main prosecution witness, Gary Timmins, 17, who has pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in exchange for his testimony.
In fact, Mr. Di Chiara continued, Mr. Fortunato had planned to tell his friends of his sexual orientation on the night in question. Luring a gay man out to a secluded lot in Sheepshead Bay was part of that plan, Mr. Di Chiara said.
...Mr. Fortunato, he said, might have planned to smoke marijuana with Mr. Sandy as a means of testing his friends’ sentiments about homosexuality. Or, he said, perhaps Mr. Fortunato had wanted to swindle a gay man, to see how his friends reacted to a gay person. Or, he said, perhaps Mr. Fortunato had simply wanted to rob somebody.
According to the New York Daily News, investigators recovered a cache of homoerotic images and messages from Fortunato's computer.
If anyone had any doubt that the closet can kill, here we see the answer that blows doubt away. This young man thought that he could prove his machismo to his friends by fag-bashing and robbery. Nothing could be worse than being gay.
The prosecutor, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, said the plot was hatched by Fortunato, who told his friends, "You could always get a gay guy to meet you," and trolled a chat room called "Brooklyn Man 4 Man" for a victim. Fortunato boasted he had ripped off a gay man he had lured to a motel in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, she said.
Only when faced with additional jail time because of the status Sandy's murder as a hate crime was Fortunato ready to come out of the closet. I seriously doubt that he would have told his friends that he was gay if they had been successful in simply robbing or beating up Sandy that night. The self-loathing obviously ran deep. In the end, this defense cannot possibly succeed in deflecting the fact that it's a hate crime. As a reader aptly pointed out, the basis for the assignment of a charge of a hate crime is the intent of the accused, not the identity/orientation of the accused.
"Here's the unmentionable secret: Racism isn't that big a deal any more. No sensible person supports it. Nobody of importance preaches it. It's rapidly becoming an ugly memory." -- departing White House press shill Tony Snow, on an October 2003 edition of Fox News Sunday
Guess we'll have to retire that hoary one, huh? This comes from The Smoking Gun, which has the full arrest report up. It's hard to read the sickening charges.
A black West Virginia woman was sexually assaulted, stabbed, and tortured while being held captive by her white abductors, one of whom told her, "That's what we do to niggers around here." The 23-year-old victim was freed Saturday after cops responded to the home of Frankie Brewster for a "welfare check on a female that was reportedly being held against her will." When cops arrived, Brewster claimed she was the only one home, but then the victim limped to the door and said, "Help me." According to six harrowing criminal complaints, the woman, who apparently had been held for more than a week, had four stab wounds in her left leg, bruised eyes, and had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and humiliated. The woman told police that she was forced to lick Brewster's "toes, vagina, and anal cavity." Brewster's son Bobby forced the woman to eat dog and rat feces, according to one complaint filed in Logan County Magistrate Court. The victim, who is now hospitalized, was raped at knifepoint, choked with a cable cord, and had her hair pulled and cut during the ordeal.
More details emerged today about the assailants, and they are real winners. It's below the fold.
I really hadn't planned on writing a part four, since parts one, two, and three pretty much said it all. But some things bear repeating, especially when another kid gets called a "faggot" and brings a gun to school.
A 16-year-old was sentenced Friday to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the shooting death of his high school principal.
Eric Hainstock was convicted a day earlier of the first-degree intentional homicide of Weston Schools Principal John Klang last September in Baraboo, Wis..
...Hainstock said that a group of kids had teased him by calling him "fag" and "faggot" and rubbing up against him, the complaint said, and the teen felt teachers and the principal wouldn't do anything about it. So Hainstock decided to confront students, teachers and the principal with the guns to make them listen to him, according to the complaint.
(Note that transgendered individuals aren't included in this study, which will appear in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. If TG victims of violence and property crime were represented and compared with LGBs, you have to believe TGs would most certainly be at the top of the list. Since the Matthew Shepard Act covers transgender and gender identity, that data collection should have been occurred as well. - promoted by pam)
A new study has found that almost 4 in 10 gay men and 1 in 8 lesbians and bisexuals in the U.S. have been victims of violence or property crimes because of their sexual orientation. The study was written by University of California, Davis psychology professor Gregory Herek and based a poll he conducted of a nationally representative sample of 662 self-identified gay men, lesbians and bisexuals.
Overall, 21 percent of the people in the survey reported being the victim of violence or a property crime -- including physical assault, sexual assault, theft and vandalism -- because of their sexual orientation. In addition, 49 percent said they had been verbally abused because of their sexual orientation, 23 percent reported being threatened with violence, 12.5 percent reported having objects thrown at them, and 11 percent reported housing or job discrimination. The total exceeds 100 percent because some individuals reported being the target of multiple attacks.
This study comes out as federal hate crimes legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity is being considered in the Senate where a majority of Democrats support the bill and the majority of Republicans oppose it. The Bush Administration has threatened to veto the bill should it pass Congress which shows yet again that the president and the GOP is out of step with the majority of Americans who support expanding hate crimes law to include LGBT people.
Homo-hating right-wing leaders are engaging in a misinformation campaign to try to derail the bill claiming that it would infringe on their right to preach homophobia from the pulpit. As Christian right leader and founder of Focus on the Family Dr. James Dobson said, "The Hate Crimes Act will be the first step to criminalize our rights as Christians to believe that some behaviors are sinful. Pastors preaching from Scripture on homosexuality could be threatened with persecution and prosecution."
The anti-gay hordes are flooding the offices of members of the Senate with phone calls, emails and faxes beating us by a ratio of about 5-1. We cannot let them and their vicious brand of anti-gay hatred win. We must contact our senators and urge the passage of this important legislation. If you have contacted them once, do it again. The stakes in this fight are high and our opponents will use whatever tactics necessary to stop us. We cannot let them win.
Use the HRC Action Center to contact your senators here.
Let's revisit my hate crimes post that focused on the murder of Aaron Hall from last week. That post is still getting quite a bit of traffic, and I need to clarify something that's arisen time and time again in the comments section. Plus, I've found some other articles online that I'd like to point out to our readers.
The point of my original entry was to try to explain why the media wasn't reporting about Aaron Hall's murder as a reason why Indiana should have a hate crimes law. And I stand by my original assertion - it's simply too murky of a case to use as a defining example of a hate crime.
In looking back over my old post, one of the most clipped paragraphs on other sites was this one:
Now, as I said earlier, this is indeed a horrible and gruesome murder. The details of what happened that night and during the week following will turn your stomach. But the problem that folks are going to have in trying to promote the story as a reason to enact hate crimes legislation (and the reason why I haven't blogged about it before) is simple - Aaron Hall wasn't a gay man. He was a middle-aged, white, straight man and the last I checked, hate crimes legislation was about protecting members of a minority group when someone commits a crime intended to intimidate other members of the community. This simply doesn't fit the definition of a hate crime.
I realize that my original post wasn't clear enough, but I intended this portion to go with the rest of the argument and not as a stand alone piece. I understand that perception counts when deciding whether or not a hate crime has been committed. Instead, I was trying to point out that the accused were trying to play the "gay panic" card after the fact - a move that has resulted in the hate crime allegations. In the next paragraph I attempted to explain:
While the attackers are trying to use the "gay panic" defense for their actions, the facts simply don't match up to mark this as a hate crime. The "gay panic" defense, which is not legally recognized, means that the attacker was propositioned by a gay person and responded violently when they "panicked." It has been used successfully in some cases and the defendants are trying to use it here. Unfortunately, for the overzealous bloggers though, "gay panic" and "hate crimes" aren't necessarily inter-related.
And I still think this is correct - while "gay panic" is a form of hate crime, it isn't a hate crime if the perpetrators only attempt to use that excuse after the fact. It's the motivation when the crime happened that's important - not the story concocted afterwards. I think that too much has been made of the hate crimes assertion and too little of the perpetrator's (or their advisor's) choice of defense.
Now that I have the time to explain myself a little more fully, let's look at the facts of this case as they've been reported...
Aaron Hall was a white, middle-aged petty criminal with a meth and alcohol addiction.
According to Hall's family and friends he wasn't gay.
Official reports say that Garrett Gray, Coleman King and Robert Hendricks were drinking with Hall shortly before his death
Gray and King are accused of beating Hall to death after Hall grabbed King's crotch and asked him to perform oral sex.
The beating went on for hours until the three men loaded Hall's body into the bed of a pickup truck and dumped him in a ditch beside a country road.
The men went back and retrieved Hall's lifeless body and hid it in Gray's garage
Ten days after the beating, the body was discovered in Gray's garage after one of Hendrick's friends turned in the trio
But some important questions haven't been answered with this recounting. Right now to some it sounds like a straight-forward hate crime. But let's put on our thinking caps and look at this a little more closely. After all, if I can put reasonable doubt in your mind, how easy will it be for the defense lawyer to do the same thing in court? We'd all hate to see these three creeps get away with murder, so perhaps our focus should come off of "hate crimes" and be put into investigating the real crime(s) involved. It's not my intent to see these men walk for a horrendous murder. I just don't want to see it labeled as a hate crime, end up not being one and damage our chances at finally passing needed legislation here in Indiana.
These are some of the questions and concerns I have about the gruesome killing:
I had a boyfriend who was bashed, before I knew him. He was beaten with a bat and left for dead in a Dumpster. His skull was fractured in the attack, his jaw and teeth were badly damaged, and he lost a testicle. He was found and taken to an ER. A few more hours and he would have been scooped up into a garbage truck and crushed to death under tons of refuse.
Interesting how sanctity of life means protecting a fetus -- but has no meaning at all where gays, bisexuals or transsexuals are concerned; interesting how some religious groups are even willing to show support for men who have murdered other human beings.
Despite that, I don't own a firearm; nor do I have any kind of blade beyond kitchen and utility knives. I own no daggers, and I gave away my swords. I have a four-foot fighting staff and a pair of tonfa, but I believe anything more drastic would be a capitulation to a kind of paranoia that I don't want to have. My home is peaceful and I want to keep it that way. I recognize the need for self-defense, but I do not want to harbor weapons that make bloodletting easy or casual.
Interesting, too, how thou shalt not kill seems to go by the wayside when we're talking about different people in different lands.
In the 80s, it was a scandal -- of sorts -- that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer regularly. There was more than a little concern that the woman who was closest to the president used little more than tea-leaves and dowsing sticks to judge the future.
Today, we have a "president" who says his greatest inspiration is Jesus Christ. How convenient that he combines an interjection with a reference.
To me, the idea of a president kneeling and asking a phantom for guidance, ignoring the seasoned advice of military and civilian professionals who have lived through virtually every aggressive or diplomatic detente imaginable -- going instead with his "gut" -- is terrifying.
I know there's no such thing as The Button. Nevertheless, Bush's finger is on it.
Here's part two of Reality Check?, continuing the first installment.
John Hardy, a minister of the New Testament Church of God in Kingston, writes in the Jamaica Observer about a ridiculous theory explaining why the country is so homophobic -- repeated rape by the Brit slaveowners of male slaves on the island has ingrained them to hate gays.
The black slaves and most of their descendants developed this hatred for homosexual activities because of the painful experiences that their forefathers endured during slavery.
It is alleged that if and when a white slave master suspected that black male slaves were showing any sign of resistance to their enslavement, the most cruel and brutal treatment would be meted out to them. One such treatment would be sodomisation. Sodomisation could take place in one of three ways:
* The white slave master could sodomise the black males privately or publicly.
* Black slaves could be forced to sodomise each other in front of slave masters and other members of the plantation.
* Wooden objects known as ramrods would be used to sodomise the black male slaves, until at times blood and excreta would spurt out of their bodies as water gushes out of a broken fountain.
It is this painful and humiliating experience of 400 years of slavery that gave rise to Jamaicans' homophobic attitude.
OK. How, then does he explain negative attitudes toward lesbianism? Better yet, what about women's attitudes towards men, white, black, brown or otherwise -- for being repeatedly raped and sodomized against their will? Shouldn't they all turn lesbian if it's all about the scar of sexual humiliation? My god, the ignorance. He offers this observation and prediction for us:
It may take another 400 to 500 years before Jamaicans become more tolerant to homosexual activities.
Those who find it strange that Jamaicans are so homophobic must interpret that attitude as a people saying "do not remind us of our painful and humiliating past", a people saying "don't push from the back because it is a painful act".
There is no excuse for the homophobia in Jamaica. Not the levels of continued violence against innocent people minding their own business. It's not as though there are maurauding bands of gays and lesbians forcing themselves on the citizens of the island nation.
Commenting on the institutional lunacy of the Bush administration got me thinking. I still can't imagine any reason they'd be pressing so hard for useless wars on so many fronts -- unless they sincerely believed that their behavior was going to facilitate their mythical Armageddon, followed by an equally-foolish "rapture".
But if you look around the US, you'll see other, more general signs of social illness. Racism and bigotry -- in the form of anti-immigrant movements -- are at a high we've not seen in decades; ethnically-motivated violence is on the rise; the Klan and neo-Nazi groups, formerly on the wane, are seeing swelling in their ranks.
One teen I know recently referred to Iraqis as ragheads and was genuinely shocked when I called him out on it. And why shouldn't he have been surprised? After all, he was basically following the example set by Bush, Cheney and most local elected officials for more than half a decade -- about a third of his entire life. Xenophobia and bigotry interdigitate.
Troglodytes will always be among us; but in the last seven years they have ceased maintaining their respectful silence while in the presence of their betters. They bleat about having a "mandate" and have so cowed the US that even our elected officials -- which actually do have a mandate -- refuse to do what is necessary to return this nation to a better, more ethical and right course.
It saddens me profoundly that this nation has so completely slid backward. Bush might as well have handed Osama the keys to Washington.
Bush's legacy is not simply going to be thousands of dead US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Afghanistani and Iraqi civilians -- and, if he has his infantile way, quite a few Iranians as well. If that were all, it would be sufficiently terrible to brand him a traitor to the United States.
But to his treachery abroad we can add the destruction of our national infrastructure -- education, healthcare and disaster relief are all but nonexistent now -- the destruction of our planetary environment by refusing to cap CO2 emissions -- and the destruction of our national tradition of liberalism and acceptance of those who are wildly unlike ourselves. It took us fifty years of strife to forge a society that was broad-minded, largely compassionate and generally peaceful; it took a tenth that time, under Bush's shitty leadership, to almost totally dismantle our once-shining beacon on a hill.
We should be ashamed.
Following is the first installment (of five total) of another Jack Chick-style tract, titled Reality Check?. This one is considerably darker in tone than Darwinism: the Devil's Religion, because the message is serious enough that I don't think levity is warranted.
Josh at 
As we've blogged 
The murder of Michael Sandy in Brooklyn last year was heinous. A group of thugs arranged on the Internet to meet him for sex, then attacked Sandy, who fled into traffic on the Belt Parkway and was hit by a car. Four were involved, with the youngest assailant, who was only 17; he has since flipped on the rest of his friends. 
