THEY ARE TAKING AWAY MY AMERICA – WE HEAR IT AGAIN

This time is not from the Tea Party 2009

 Town Hall meetings crackpot attendees.

This time is from the far-right, Christianist-Fundamentalist homophobes. It doesn't diminish, it is ever so abrasive and repugnant. One could imagine that those Tea Party extremists were just appalled that America was no longer positioned in the 1950's where the White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual white man had the control of everything. They...those Tea Party malcontents were acting out as a reaction to the diversity and the changes in attitudes our country has undergone in the past sixty years.

These Teabaggers would like nothing more than to return to the fifties when it was very comfy for them sitting up on the perch at the top of the food chain, but it wasn't very pleasant for us, for minorities and for gays. Those days are gone and will never return, at least not while we still have air being aspired by each and everyone of us.

The recent wave of violence against LGBT Americans is but an expression of the frustration that the homophobic minority feels. These people who call themselves Christians are in a tizzy over the progress made in recent years...with the enactment of hate crime bills, with the legalization of same gender marriage in 12 states already and the realization that it is a tidal wave they are not going to be able to stop either legally, from their homophobic pulpits or even at the ballot box...equal rights for LGBT people is here and no matter how many crimes, how much bullying, how many tweets and posts on the right wing echo chamber...it is going forward.

Michelangelo Signorile


"For years, those who are anti-gay have been emboldened by the often hateful declarations of homophobic religious leaders and by the attacks by groups like the National Organization for Marriage, which have demeaned gays. After decades of struggle, we're finally beating them back in the courts, in legislatures and even at the ballot box. And perhaps the frustration and anger by those who oppose us is now further empowering the thugs who take their hate and rage to the streets."

Something similar is happening in France, you see the push-back from a very misguided and ignorant minority as same sex marriage has been legalized. Amazing however is that a lot of the same homophobic Americans who are opposing equal rights for gays here in the U.S. are participating and immersed up to their necks in organizing and supporting demonstrations and even acts of violence in France.

This kind of reactionary backlash is happening everywhere. Just recently in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia there were mass demonstrations and even riots where LGBT were chased and attacked with the result of injuries. Even after their Prime Minister denounced it, the asshole Patriarch of the Orthodox church Ilia II still had the cojones to say that he urged protesters to leave the streets and for both sides “to pray for one another.” “We do not accept violence,” he said, according to Interfax. “But it’s also unacceptable to give propaganda” to homosexuality. A day earlier, he had urged the Georgian government to ban the gay rights march, writing that the majority of Georgians saw gay activism as “an insult.” 

Ilia II, the Georgian Orthodox patriarch, is widely acknowledged to be the most popular figure in the country and one who is primarily responsible for encouraging homophobia and even the attacks on gays.

This of course is typical of those religions that hold this kind of attitude towards homosexuality...it is the same in America as it is in Uganda...they will cry out that they are the ones being persecuted.

I ask you, if two people holding hands as they walk down the street in liberal-progressive New York city can't feel safe from attacks by homophobes...what would it be like to attempt doing just that in Tulsa or Little Rock? 

SOURCE: http://joemygod.blogspot.com/

SAY HIS NAME – MARK CARSON

Vigil held last night for yet another victim

 of hate crimes: Mark Carson.

Hundreds of LGBT New Yorkers turned out tonight for a candlelight vigil held at the West Village corner where Mark Carson, 32, was murdered early yesterday morning.

From the Daily News story:

“Mark Carson did not hide that he was gay, and when he went out on the town he would often head to Greenwich Village, where years before he was born, much of the struggle for gay liberation unfolded. Yet late Friday night, just blocks from the Stonewall Inn, among the most important landmarks of that struggle, he was confronted with a man screaming antigay slurs, who then stalked him before pulling out a silver revolver and fatally shooting him, the police said. Mr. Carson, who was 32, had recently moved from Harlem to Brooklyn after scrimping and saving money from his job at a yogurt shop in Midtown, according to Kay Allen, a friend for more than a decade. “He was a proud gay man,” Ms. Allen said. “A fabulous gay man.” She noted that he loved going to the Village. “His spirit was too big for this city,” she said. “He didn’t have a negative bone in his body.”

The question remains: how much more of this can we as a society take? When are those preachers who spew vitriol and homophobia from their pulpits going to be rejected by society? Surely when the religious donations stop coming and their congregations dwindling, then they might change their tune...or, if as a society we make a collective effort and reject them altogether.

Who is being persecuted in our society? It certainly isn't those homophobic religious crackpots who create problems like this to begin with.

This has nothing to do with freedom of religion or speech...it is no different than yelling “fire” in a crowded theater; these preachers know it as well as knowing that their interpretations of the Scriptures are erroneous, they are just as responsible for a teenage suicide as they are for this and a myriad of other killings... they are the “ABOMINATIONS”

I can offer a suggestion that might diminish these hate crimes: why don't we interrogate the perpetrators and find out when, how and who told them that it was acceptable to kill another human being? Why is it that they hold this anti-social behavior? We can do this when we call in the schoolyard bully and find out why he beat up the nerdy kid perceived to be gay and who told him this was acceptable. If we learn that it was from their parents or the teacher or the preacher, then let's contact the preacher and tell him that he has blood in his hands. We can start with the Pope. Just shame the shit out of them and then “SAY HIS NAME: MARK CARSON”


SOURCE: http://joemygod.blogspot.com/

ANTI-GAY VIOLENCE CONTINUES IN AMERICA

Yesterday, in NYC a Gay Brooklyn man was shot dead In Greenwich Village.

An unidentified 32-year-old gay man from Brooklyn was shot in the head at about midnight at West 8th Street and Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village after being chased out of a restaurant bt his attacker who was shouting homophobic slurs before he fired.

The gunman ran five blocks before cops cornered him at West Third Street and MacDougal Street, according to police radio transmissions where he was arrested and confessed to the shooting.

The victim was taken to Beth Israel Hospital where he passed away shortly after arrival.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said she was horrified by the attack.

And the religious fanatics are still claiming they are being persecuted and discriminated against for their “faith”. So far, I haven't seen any of these crackpots shot dead or beaten up.

It goes back to their idea of some claim to superiority because they stick their pathetic, undersized dicks into a dirty vagina...they think that makes them superior somehow and the Creator is going to look favorably at them for beating up or killing a fag.

SOURCES: http://www.back2stonewall.com/2013/05/anti-gay-violence-escalates-nyc-gay-man-shot-dead-greenwich-vilage.html

THE IRS FAUX SCANDAL

Oh, how the Republicans would have loved for the IRS controversy to have been a real scandal with some juicy shit.

This time I thought I wouldn't even bother writing anything on this IRS faux scandal, simply because there have been attempts in the past to turn a mole hill into a mountain on the part of Republicans and there will be dozens of other attempts before Obama leaves office.

Just like all the other faux scandals, conspiracy theories and downright crackpot fabricated lies, this too shall pass and the Republicans will be left with egg on their faces...it doesn't matter to them because their base is buying it and they will not be convinced of anything else short of striking them across the face with a 2 X4...and then we'd have to wait until they are through praying and come to their senses.

But seriously, are you kidding me? These organizations are not any kind of charitable or useful social enterprise to deserve a tax exempt status...they are purely and almost exclusively dedicated to administer large anonymous sums of money into the political campaigns of extreme, radical, right wing assholes and organizations.

INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA – NATURE HAS ITS WAYS TO CORRECT ITSELF.

 

Let's assume for one insane moment that

 the purpose of marriage is only for

 procreation.

The lame argument that marriage is between a man and a woman only because it's purpose is to reinforce the process of procreation and therefore assure the survival of the human race, then it is also logical to assume that this is something “natural” or left to nature to carry out.

By the same token, if it is nature and nature itself takes a path to correct its own errors then we couldn't possibly call it “unnatural” could we?

There are many plausible explanations and reasons for nature to embark on a course of self-correction, one of them and the most compelling one is that our world is overpopulated, there just isn't room for more humans nor is it prudent to sustain such large numbers of beings with the limited resources mother earth offers.

The other logical argument of course is that the idea of marriage for the sole purpose of procreation is unnecessary as there are very little chances for the human species to perish from a catastrophe or from illness at this point the way it was when this concept of having as many offspring as possible was forced upon the scarce human population.

However, the most compelling reason for nature to go the route of same sex predilection and perhaps the one that makes more sense is that each and everyone of us has an innate need to mate, to pair off with another human being and it is ingrained in our sexual desires and our finding the prospective mate attractive and sexually desirable. In the absence of this desire, it is the work of nature and it is self-defeating to contradict.

Homosexuality is just as natural as heterosexuality and for those who are still clinging to reject, humiliate, discriminate and even punish those who mother nature has blessed with a different sexual orientation, your argument, your hatred and your disapproval has gone down the drain.

HOME SCHOOLING IS NOT ALWAYS THE BEST FOR SOCIETY NOR THE CHILDREN RECEIVING IT.

There are more than a million children in America being home schooled. Not all of them are receiving a first class education and most are being made into intellectual cripples.

All across our country there is a third option to education: Home schooling (an estimated 1.7 million) If public education does not meet with the parent's expectations or the degree of excellence offered at a private learning institution that may be financially out of the question; some parents opt to teach their kids at home.

This could also be because of inconvenient locations or long travels to and fro their schools. But for the most part, those children receiving education at home are the sons and daughters of religious fanatics who are very unhappy with secular education because they believe that the emphasis should be on religion and not the normal skills like reading, writing and arithmetic.(I was a teacher myself so I'm not blowing hot air out of my ass)

These people just don't want to have their children incorporated into the rest of society, it is a choice to pull them out of the collective environment and forced to grow up and live in one that is more like a bubble, devoid of any contradictory ideas or teachings. It is a way of stamping out reality, it is also a great excuse to reject science, history and factual information. The kids learn what they are taught, what their adult teachers choose to teach them and nothing else.

It is somewhat ironic that some of these children long to get a higher education and the options left to them are severely limited to fourth rate higher learning institutions like Oral Roberts University (it ain't Ivy League...lol) where they step into more or less a continuation of their narrow minded, limited skills and biased...often prejudiced and racist as well as homophobic attitudes that are further reinforced at these Mickey Mouse Colleges.

When applying to regular reputable institutions of higher learning they are often rejected and rightfully so because they lack the academic skills and the ability to perform critical thinking and problem solving due to their inferior preparation.

These would be college students, their parents and their religious organizations will cry foul, will claim they are being discriminated and accuse the rest of society of separating them into a disgraced and unwanted category that is indeed humiliating to most, but it is of their own doing, their own choosing and it is the price they have to pay for insisting in hermetically isolating their children to the outside world.

Perhaps one of the most important reasons that these children are not receiving a first rate education is that the providers themselves are lacking the skills or completely unqualified to teach as they would be rejects of the educational system themselves. In my opinion, some of these children are growing up to be intellectual cripples. These home schooled don't include private religious schools that are doing a pretty good job of creating those intellectual cripples as well and those number in the millions.

There are organizations that defend their home schooling quests and most of them are Christianist-Fundamentalists that are motivated by their desire to advocate a theocratic society. The lead group in what is known as “the four pillars of home schooling” is the Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization run by politically active fundamentalist conservatives who not only maintain a tight grip on the public debate of home-schooling issues but, with a research institute, a lobbying organization and a new home-schooling “college” under their direction, have extended the reach of the HSLDA to issues affecting public schools. (read more at http://www.salon.com/2000/10/02/homeschooling_battle/)

Home-Schoolers Lose US Asylum Bid

“The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against a German home-schooling family who applied for asylum on the grounds of religious persecution. Home-schooling is illegal in Germany and some families have lost custody of their children over the issue.

The U.S. grants safe haven to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, but not necessarily to those under governments with laws that simply differ from those in the U.S., Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the court’s decision. “The German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution,” he wrote for the three-judge panel in the case, Uwe Romeike v. Eric Holder, Jr. Uwe Romeike said in an email on Wednesday that his family began home schooling to protect their children from bullying and teachings they didn’t agree with.

Unsurprisingly, the family's case has been championed by American evangelicals. Yesterday the Family Research Council denounced this week's ruling, claiming that the family has been "singled out and targeted by the Obama administration."  A petition to the White House in support of the family has over 120K signatures.  Lawyers for the family are vowing to take the case to the Supreme Court.”

SOURCES: http://joemygod.blogspot.com/
http://visual.ly/home-schooling-state-laws
http://www.salon.com/2000/10/02/homeschooling_battle/

ALL OF BRAZIL NOW HAS SAME SEX MARRIAGE

And the good news continue across the globe...Minnesota and Brazil now offer equal rights to all.

The National Council of Justice, which oversees the Brazilian judicial system and is headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, said government offices that issue marriage licenses had no standing to reject gay couples.

The Supreme Court "affirmed that the expression of homosexuality and homosexual affection cannot serve as a basis for discriminatory treatment, which has no support in the Constitution," said Chief Justice Joaquim Barbosa on the council's website, referring to a 2011 ruling by the top court.

Barbosa also said there was no reason for the government's marriage licensing offices to wait for the Brazilian Congress to pass a law authorising same-sex marriage.

Decisão do CNJ obriga cartórios a fazer casamento homossexual

Conselho também determinou conversão de união estável em casamento.
Decisão é passível de questionamento no Supremo Tribunal Federal.

Mariana Oliveira Do G1, em Brasília

O Conselho Nacional de Justiça (CNJ) aprovou nesta terça-feira (14), por maioria de votos (14 a 1), uma resolução que obriga os cartórios de todo o país a celebrar o casamento civil e converter a união estável homoafetiva em casamento.

Os cartórios não poderão rejeitar o pedido, como acontece atualmente em alguns casos. A decisão do CNJ poderá ser questionada no Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF).
Segundo o presidente do CNJ e autor da proposta, Joaquim Barbosa, que também é presidente do STF, a resolução visa dar efetividade à decisão tomada em maio de 2011 pelo Supremo, que liberou a união estável homoafetiva.

Obrigado Brasil, thank you Minnesota

SOURCES:

http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2013/05/apos-uniao-estavel-gay-podera-casar-em-cartorio-decide-cnj.html