Chick-Fil-Ahole

"Families are very important to our country. And they're very important to those of us who are concerned about being able to hang on to our heritage. We support Biblical families, and they've always been a part of that."

Jesus, can't anybody see the logical disconnect between families being important and the right of some Bible pounding chicken plucker to interfere with the civil rights of his fellow citizens?  Freedom is important too and sure as hell, this kind of religion doesn't support freedom and has spent centuries killing people for thinking and acting free.

Well I guess not and it's just another example of how religion poisons everything; corrupts the critical faculties and undermines democracy.  Yes, it's Chicken Man Dan again "supporting Biblical Families" with a carefully extracted and deep fried opinion from a few extracts from the Greek section added on to the Hebrew Bible in the 4th Century CE.  

Tradition does not convey a right, particularly a right to interfere with freedom, nor does one "tradition" have the right to declare itself official in this free country any more than the smell of frying birds conveys wisdom or power or decency. 

So what about Lot's family, Abraham's family and all those Biblical examples of polygamy, romps in the sack with the serving girls, mistreatment of women, selling one's daughters into slavery and prostitution and the like?  Never mind.

Look, there's nothing that can't be supported by that pile of political hogwash written, edited, redacted and selected by ancient bastards greedy for power and that isn't being used by their smiling, Jesus plated contemporary imposters like Dan Cathy.  To be sure, he has the protected right to be an asshole, to act like he's got some special insight, to justify his petty, arrogant, small minded opinions about chicken plucking with what he calls the Bible and I call a fraud,  Indeed that's much more of a "heritage" than gay bashing, that horrible compilation of ancient ignorance having been used for every ill purpose including slavery, destruction of Native cultures and the burning of innocent women in this sad country.  And of course I have the right to call him any name I like, now that he's a public figure.

I have the right, as an American, to call him a malicious and ignorant and self-righteous idiot and we all have the right to take our hunger for greasy chicken to KFC or to that vacant lot a mile from here where they sell home made chicken, barbecue, greens, black beans and rice on the weekends and where they have a smile for everybody and mind their own goddamned Christian business.

"Chick-Fil-A Doesn't belong in Boston," says Mayor Thomas Menino. " you can't have a business in the City of Boston that discriminates against the population . . . and we're not going to have a company, Chick-Fil-A, or whatever the hell their name is, on our Freedom Trail."

Me neither, Mayor -- me neither. 

Don't Ask redeux

You know, unlike any of these elitist, protected rich boys running for office, I spent essentially a lifetime in the military: 21 years as an enlisted man. (Ron Paul did 2 years as a flight surgeon and 3 years in the National Guard; Rick Perry flew cargo planes - god, I hated C-130s - for 4 years.)

In that time, I know, for a fact, that I served with gays. They were forced to hide it, but most of us knew, and nobody really cared. (Most of the people who would have cared were too damned stupid to figure things out anyway.)

Now, during Clinton's era, he passed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) as an idiotic compromise. (The fact that the GOP hated it at the time, and were, more recently, rabidly trying to protect it, isn't the slightest bit funny. Not at all...)

Now, with DADT repealed, we have brain-dead idiots in Brokeback Mountain jackets telling us how sad it is that gays can serve openly in the military.



But, you know something odd? DADT was repealed, and the military didn't collapse.

It was only last year that the Marine Corps Commandant, Gen James Amos, said that the repeal of DADT would be a "risk." Now, three months after it was shot down, he's singing a different show tune.

Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime.

"I'm very pleased with how it has gone," Amos said in an Associated Press interview

It really isn't an issue. You want proof?

Two women share first kiss at US Navy ship's return

A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif., descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. Gaeta, 23, wore her Navy dress uniform while Snell, 22, wore a black leather jacket, scarf and blue jeans. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.

"It’s something new, that’s for sure," Gaeta told reporters after the kiss. "It’s nice to be able to be myself. It’s been a long time coming..."

Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity. Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets, a figure that she said pales in comparison to amounts that some other sailors and their loved ones had bought. The money was used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.

And, amazingly enough, the world didn't end. Society kept on going. It's weird. It's like it hardly even mattered, in the big picture.



Because, guess what? It makes no real difference to the military. Despite what some morons want you to believe.

Eugene Delgaudio needs to come out of the closet

For some time now, I've been getting emails from a group calling itself "Public Advocate of the US." I'm really not sure how this happened - I don't recall ever clicking a box saying "Please send me hot, steamy chunks of hate," but I've been known to drink occasionally when I'm on-line. (You know, red wine is not good for a keyboard...)

The guy in charge of Public Advocate (and potentially the sole employee) is named Eugene Delgaudio, and he's a twisted piece of work. He's apparently a member of the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun County, Virginia. He also likes to set up over-the-top protests of anything he feels is even dimly related to homosexuality.

When the GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) started a campaign to create a “safe space” to prevent the bullying of gay teens, Eugene came out in support of beating up children.

While the stickers and posters blatantly display the upside-down rainbow triangle and pro-homosexual slogan, the booklet is the real threat.

It includes detailed strategies to instruct teachers and students how to create a school environment more accepting of homosexual students and teach other students their lifestyle as a healthy alternative.

It also tells students how to get involved in school policy and how to initiate change to promote the Homosexual Agenda in everyday school life.

Because, you see, every student's right to beat up on fags is protected in the Constitution. ("I'm sure it's in there somewhere! Probably under "pursuit of happiness" or something...")

I think my favorite, though, would have to be his objection to the TSA pat-downs. Now, having been a military cop for 21 years, I can tell you that getting young cops to actually check the groin is one of the hardest taboos to get around. And I have found a knives taped to a guy's underwear. So an effective search has to be a little more "intrusive" than some people are comfortable with. However, as generations of drug mules can attest, you can still stuff quite a bit of stuff up your butt, or hang it down your throat. So the searches aren't really making us more safe.

That, however, is not Eugene's problem with the searches. He doesn't care if terrorists are allowed onto planes cradling bombs like small children. He's just worried that it's all part of the homosexual agenda!

That means the next TSA official that gives you an “enhanced pat down” could be a practicing homosexual secretly getting pleasure from your submission.

Or it could be any sexual pervert, homosexual or heterosexual, or even pedophile that operates the "naked scanner".

That means the next TSA official that operates the "porno scanners" you or your child or mother walk through could be lusting after the image on his screen.

The thought makes me sick.

Other things make him sick, as well. In fact, the idea of repealing DADT pretty much gives him a coronary embolism.

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen says he supports Congress using its lame-duck session to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

Mullen sides with the Radical Homosexuals instead of the troops, vowing that he would do what it takes to end the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy as soon as possible.

A Pentagon report on the impact of lifting the ban is set for release Dec. 1st, timed nicely with the return of the new Congress.

Of course nobody has asked the soldiers their opinions, and our troops are prohibited from any political activity other than voting.

You know, other than those surveys showing that repealing DADT is supported by most of the military, their families, and even by military chaplains. But, you know, other than them, nobody ever asks the military how they feel, right?

Incidentally, our troops are only prohibited from political activity in uniform - it's a subtle distinction, but one that's lost on Eugene.

(His brother, incidentally, plead guilty to child pornography after he paid two teenaged girls to pose all nekkid in a motel room. Not directly related, but makes you wonder about the gene pool our boy Eugene jumped out of.)

There's a strong tinge of paranoia about the man: aside from his assertions that "the homos want to kill me" (he would so love to be a martyr), he openly lies in his fundraising letters. And more than that, when he's called out about his lies, he just lies some more: when he lost a vote about treating transgendered people equally, he sent out an email to his followers stating:

If a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat "it" the same as a normal person.

When people called him on referring to a person as "it," he tried to claim that the word "it" referred to the "action of hiring a man or a woman."

Read that explanation again; can you parse his statement to mean that? Especially when the same letter referred to "cross-dressing freaks"?

Come on, Eugene. Remember the state slogan? "Virginia is for lovers"?

Why do you hate Virginia, Eugene?

John Shelby Spong

There have been times when I've sided with some of our 'founding fathers' in contempt for the religious practitioners who have conflated that poor, unsuccessful, would-be Jewish leader into a re-incarnation of Thor and the mouthpiece for their own miserable and ignorant minds. Ok, it's been more than many times and the Jesus I hear about most often is merely the blunt instrument in the hands of the angry and the ugly and the stupid.

Yes, I've read Dom Crossan and the Jesus Seminar people, but since he still implies that I'm the village idiot for not believing that the man he portrays as a man is more than a man, he only gets a partial pass from me. But then, on occasion, I bump into people like Bishop Shelby Spong who would restore that humanism, that tolerance that was amputated when Christianity was refashioned in the age of Constantine onwards, to its original place.

Of course I disagree profoundly about the nature of things, but about the nature of what we think and do and do to others, he restoreth something in me, even if it's not quite faith.

Gays R Us

No, really, gays are us. No matter which stereotype one insists fits a group as disparate as mankind in general, it's impossible to separate it from one's own prejudices. If there's any appearance of unanimity, it may be that people tend to vote their own interests and support candidates that promise to advance those interests, but Gays are conservative, liberal, libertarian and any other blurry concepts we use to muddy the political waters. So when AP rattles our cage and asks us to worry that the dissatisfaction of gay Americans with the lack of progress the current administration has made with respect to protecting their equality will cause them not to vote at all or commit political seppuku by voting for Republicans, I have to wonder if they aren't trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy here or at least cashing in on the fear of jumping back out of the pan and into the fire.

"Some fear that gay voters angry over pace of gains might sit out election"

blares the headline. Some fear the Andromeda galaxy will smash into us any day now. That's a cheap ploy more worthy of Fox than AP, as is the use of quotes from a handful of individuals to stand in for the voice of a huge group that doesn't speak unanimously anyway -- but still, we all know there is frustration.

Will that frustration provoke people for whom DADT is a thorn in the side or who advocate the right to marry one of the same sex to choose candidates in the same main stream that opposed voting rights for women and minorities, the right to marry outside one's race, to get a room at The Breakers or a seat in the front of the bus? Perhaps one of those right wingers who blame every storm, every shift in tectonic plates on allowing gay people the right not to be stoned in the public square?

Gay people also care, I would presume, about the economic charade that collapsed the economy, the lawless and predatory markets, the wars and the erosion of rights that they were meant to justify. They care about government intrusion into our privacy, government control by corporate interests and all the other things we all, rightly or wrongly care about. They care about pulling the economy out of the nosedive the previous pilot put it into as much as any American. If they have an "agenda" as the bigots assert, it sure looks like it involves life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as much as anyone elses and the agenda of those selling the idea that they are different and dangerous certainly has to do with something completely different.

Research this!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Big top

The Republicans sometimes like to talk about their big tent. Others, in consideration of the exploits and shenanigans of the party of values and families and apple pie may think it's more like a freak show tent, but we shall see soon enough which kind of tent the Donna Milo show winds up in.

Cuban born, 48 year old "Conservative" Republican Ms. Milo is running to unseat rather liberal Broward County Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Yes, Miami Cuban Republicans are pretty numerous and at first glance one who didn't know that Ms. Milo used to be a Mr. Milo, whose friends called him Ed, wouldn't think anything was out of the ordinary.

Donna Milo is a person who prides herself in getting to where she is by her personal ability and in spite of her differentness -- not like those who we support with our tax money or special favors to Cuban immigrants, perhaps. Will that differentness matter more to the GOP than the traditional Republican attitudes she publicly displays?

It remains to be seen whether the party so traditionally inimical to the rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people -- their agenda -- as they so often phrase it, will welcome her into the three ring big top with the other anti-Castro, pro-corporate liberal-bashing Miami paranoids or ushered out the side door.

Who, me?

O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.

-Job 13:5-

California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is very concerned about the "gay agenda" and he's been a fierce opponent of same sex marriage and a "family values" blowhard for a long time. Although many don't agree with my feeling that such obsession is a cover up, examples keep emerging with regularity and it's hard even to list the most humorous ones. Senator Ashburn was recently arrested for drunk driving in downtown Sacramento early Wednesday morning. There's no particular surprise there and I imagine many other patrons leaving the gay bar "Faces" in the wee hours had had a bit too much to drink. He was given a field sobriety test and promptly taken off to jail. I don't know what happened to his "unidentified male companion."

Perhaps it will be less of a surprise to hear that Angelo Balducci, a "Gentleman of His Holiness," was caught on a police wiretap negotiating for the services of male prostitutes with a Vatican Chorister. No official comments have yet been published.

The pattern emerged a long time ago, even before Wide Stance Larry tapped his toes in Minneapolis and whether you do or don't agree with me, I'm going to bet that more often than not, the biggest and most assertive opponents of gay rights and fantasy fabricators are dealing with difficult inner longings. Perhaps after all, if you'll forgive my radical libertarianism, the best way to hide them and to avoid suspicion is to simply leave gay people alone?