Ignorance Lives

Bigotry has no supporting arguments.

Bigotry is the lack of argument and rational thinking. It's ignorance directed by hate.

The sense of entitlement that a bigot possesses to impose his hate onto society is an infantile characteristic, a projection of hate often accompanied by seeking a society-wide entitlement for their self loathing.

Civil rights workers are typically concerned about the rights of blacks and gays, women and Arabs, Jews and defendants.

Bigots are more unpredictable, though often they are big supporters of guns and violence.

Frank Rich discusses the gay civil rights movement 40 years after Stonewall.

Wisconsin Marriage Ban Will Go

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

- Judge's opinion defending state statute banning marriage between difference races, overturned in Loving v. Virginia (1967).

Sooner we hope but Wisconsin's ban on gay marriage will go the way of the state bans against blacks marrying whites.

Battles over banning gay marriage will mark the political culture this Summer-Fall with predictably dumbed-down news coverage carefully crafted not to offend bigots.

Several legal cases are proceeding.

In Wisconsin William C. McConkey v. J. B. Van Hollen challenges the gay marriage ban on a question of ambiguity of the GOP referendum that brought this ban into the Wisconsin constitution.

And make no mistake the gay marriage ban is a Republican project, supported by the religious right advancing their god-given "Judeo Christian principles and values."

Evaluating the arguments for banning gay marriage, honest observers agree the 'it's what I believe' statement doesn't count as a serious defense of a position, though that's the justification most often heard.

The plain truth is bigotry is behind the effort to ban gay marriage.

Many people and especially the Republican Party [at least those Republicans not yet out] simply do not like LGBT people, explaining their belief that raging hell fires await gays who will be punished by god.

Ignorance and delusion, that's the staple of the Republican Party.

In one federal case, to once and for all rid America of the lawful unequal treatment of gays under the law, the Perry, Stier, Katami and Zarrillo v. Schwarzenegger suit seeks a ruling guaranteeing gay Americans equal protection, due process and privacy rights just like every other American.

So, it's worth noting the God-wants-it-that-way argument was also advanced by bigots 42 years ago in the landmark Loving v. Virginia case overturning state statutes banning marriage between people of different races.

The same Equal Protection and Due Process argument in Loving v. Virginia are made in the Perry, Stier, Katami and Zarrillo v. Schwarzenegger brief.

And Wisconsin GOP's gay marriage ban efforts reflect the same ludicrous sentiments against gay marriage held by the bigots in defense of anti-miscegenation statutes.

In Loving v. Virginia, the opinion notes that the Virginia trial judge stated in accepting a guilty plea of a couple marrying in defiance of the ban of blacks and whites that:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Anyone want to defend that nonsense?

Christian, Mormon, or just plain stupid, opposing gay marriage is a political exercise in bigotry and ignorance that ultimately will fail through the courts upholding civil rights or the legislatures upholding civil rights.

Sanity

Update: CIA WATERBOARDED KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED 183 TIMES IN ONE MONTH (via Huffington Post)

Two extraordinary pieces in the Sunday Times on rightwing depravity and rightwing stupidity:

April 19, 2009
Editorial
The Torturers’ Manifesto
To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation.

They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and,
most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions. ...

From Frank Rich:

WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic 'The Village of the Damned' with the Broadway staple 'A Chorus Line'? You don’t need to use your imagination. It’s there waiting for you on YouTube under the title 'Gathering Storm': a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism. ...

Far from terrifying anyone, 'Gathering Storm' has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from 'the homo storm' strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A 'New Jersey pastor' whose church has been 'turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch' declares that he likes gay people, 'but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.' ...

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead. ...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Public decency in Iraq

Illegally invading Iraq didn't work wonderfully to create an authoritarian client oil state, nor did it work out so very well to make a society recognizing human rights.

A million dead, millions displaced from their homes, millions traumatized, our own military reeling, 10,000s of young men and women injured and traumatized for life, and on and on.

Here's a gem from this morning emblematic of how wonderful Iraq is now:

A freelance journalist imprisoned in northern Iraq for violating a public decency law by writing a story about homosexuality has been pardoned and released, the writer and officials said Wednesday.

Public decency.

That's in the liberal, semi-autonomous part of Iraq. These guys make the Mormons and the religious right look like civil libertarians.

Reminder on Romney's Support for Gays

Update: Jim Talent: Romney will stop ‘the militant gays’ [Good, we certainly have to watch for those guys!]

I wonder if GOP presidential aspirant and aspiring bigot Mitt Romney's campaign will be handing out a flier like this in Iowa declaring Romney's support for equal rights for gays when he was governor of Massachusetts.

From Huffington Post (via The Note in 2007):
"As that shakes out, ABC has obtained one flier Romney doesn't want you to see. It's from 2002, with Romney was running for governor with Kerry Healey as his running mate. 'Mitt and Kerry Wish You a Great Pride Weekend! All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference.' (It's even pink.)"

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U.S. Set to Deport Gay Iranian

Bush and his gay-hating pigs can always be counted on to if not lead, at least emulate, the worst of the world's bigotries.

from Doug Ireland at Z-Net:

President George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but tragically they may find common ground about the disposability of Hassan Parhizkar's life.

Since November 7, a mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.

A deportation order to send him back to Iran has been issued, and any day he could be put on a plane back to Tehran, where he was born.

"I am very afraid, and so very frustrated," Hassan Parhizkar told me in a truncated, collect telephone call from jail.

"My asylum request has never been before an immigration judge. I just don't know what to do, I just don't know what to do..." he added in a voice choked with tears.

See more at Doug Ireland at Z-Net.

Now would be a good time for Bush to bash Iran's anti-gay idiocies, grant Mr. Parhizkar asylum, and tell the world that deep-down, Bush is a loving humanist.
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Larry Craig May Not Resign

The Politico and just about everyone else reports that Larry Craig may not resign

The reversal angers GOP colleagues who have urged him to quit and stop embarrassing the party, squashing their fading chances to prevent a strong Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate in 2008.

I say: Be proud, Larry, stay and fight! Just stay away bathrooms; real men hit the bars, dood (that's what my gay friends tell me).

Please contact Larry and tell him stay.

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Closeted Gay Republican Sen. Larry Craig's Video Supporting Mitt Romney for President

I have met several gay Republicans. I never really asked, but how can they associate with a party that has as a primary campaign tactic a naked appeal to bigotry. [Evangelical gay basher pictured above-right with President Bush.]

Really, what is wrong with these people? There is nothing wrong with being gay, you idiots. There is something wrong with appealing to bigotry and supporting hate against gays; and it's weird doing while being gay.

Here's the link featuring the outed and now criminally outed Sen Larry Craig (R-ID) speaking of coded, gay-bashing family values. The video was removed by the Romney campaign but Talking Points Memo has a link.

Update: Via ThinkProgress:

In an editorial, The Idaho Statesman writes that “Sen. Craig owes Idahoans an explanation.” “This is a painful time made worse by the fact that Craig so far has been less than forthcoming. … [V]oters now deserve the full story from their senior senator.” The paper has a longer profile of Craig here.
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