When you think of today’s Republican party, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Some might say “less government regulation”, or “opposition to homosexuality”. One thing is for sure: few will deny the powerful collusion of the religious right in the policies and decisions the party makes. They know how important that base is, and they cater to it. In fact, if you want a perfect example of this, look no further than John McCain, who went from principled and decent to Christian lapdog in just a few short years. It’s a transformation that John Stewart doesn’t let anyone forget.

So you would think that everything is hunky-dory over at the major headquarters of Right Wingers, but apparently the GOP isn’t doing enough for some. Enter James Dobson, who for the last few days has dedicated his radio show to various speeches he’s written over the years criticizing Republicans for ignoring basic “moral principles” in order to become elected. Here’s the final portion of his speech:

It’s a lack of conviction that there is a boss to the universe and that there are moral standards that we are held to and we need officials who will stand up and represent them. What that conveys to the constituency I’m talking about is that principle does not matter, it’s party over principle. That there are some things that you stand for whether it is popular or politically astute to do so or not. That’s what that pro-moral community stands for.

And yet it seemed to me that what I heard from the Republicans in Indian Wells was we cannot have power if we stand on principle – please don’t take away our power. What good is it to have power if you don’t use it for good?

The Republican Party was born in the crucible of conviction and courage and moral righteousness, that’s where the Republican Party started. It took a stand against slavery in a day that cost six hundred thousand lives in the Civil War. But they knew is was wrong and they took a stand on it, whether win, lose, or draw, that’s God business. They took a stand on what was right.

If they party has left that and it is now going to mouth these two things every two years and then go on to something else, I think we need to look for another. And it would be tragic if that happened. I don’t want that to happen. There are many state houses of government where Republicans will suffer if that happens. It will be a disaster for the country, but somebody said “if you do that, you have no voice at all.” I don’t think we have a voice now. I can’t hear the voice.

Ah yes, the old “The Republican Party fought to end slavery” line. Too bad that the party has since done a complete 180 in terms of it’s political ideology, otherwise he might actually have a point. In any case, it only brings up the fact that as we speak, Republicans are on the wrong side of history concerning gay marriage and civil rights in general. This, I suspect, is due primarily to the GOP courting the most racist, bigoted segment of American society. Being in bed with these people has fundamentally altered the party, and because of this, Republicans run the risk of alienating future voters as they will continue to be seen as the political party for our embarrassingly out of touch grandparents.

Thank you James, for reminding us who really pulls the strings of the Republican party now.

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If you’re planning on renovating your home and wonder where to buy your lumber, I recommend that you might give Home Depot a try. Why? Well, the company has a very pro-gay attitude, so much so that the American Family Association has pledged to boycott them, “Homo-Depot”.

Never heard of these guys? Here’s a short description from their website:

The AFA is a non-profit organization that advocates traditional family values and the reform of American culture “to reflect Biblical truth on which it was founded.”

That’s a pretty nice way to describe them. I would argue that my description, however, is a little more accurate:

The AFA is a non-profit organization that advocates bigotry and close-mindedness, and the erosion of American values of democracy and equal rights in order to reflect their Bronze Age book of mythology.

What specifically is Home Depot doing that so outrages these douchebags? The AFA objects to the fact that the company insurance plan covers sex change operations and offers extended insurance to same-sex partners, thereby promoting the “lifestyle” of homosexuality, rather than making these human beings feel ashamed of being gay.

You could argue that the company is only trying to attract the immense purchasing power of gays (who tend to be well educated and middle class), but so what? In exchange for this pandering they are going above and beyond what other companies are doing, and that’s not something one should ignore. The AFA sure isn’t, and we shouldn’t either.

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If you’re black and gay, you have my pity. I can’t imagine a minority group so vehemently opposed to homosexuality. They often make the sermons of white Alabama preachers seem almost tame by comparison. It’s no secret that as a group, African Americans are more religiously conservative than the average American. Since many believe in the literal word of God, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for tolerance and understanding when it comes to homosexuality.

I read an interesting article on CNN discussing the issues of religious gay men who happen to have a darker skin pigmentation, and it made me sad for all those men and women who continue to live in the closet, convinced that they have somehow been cursed and that God can cure them of their same-sex attraction. But they can no more change this than they can their own skin color, or their height. The resulting theological conflict causes anxiety, fear, self-hatred and self-loathing, as well as completely retarding their sexual and emotional development. While they should be out enjoying themselves and finding loving same-sex partners to share their lives with, they often isolate themselves from others, terrified that people in their community might find out about their secret.

It’s no secret that a significant portion of African Americans voted yes on Prop 8 in California, and while they only make 10% of the population, it was enough to pass the law by a narrow margin (70% of them ended up voting for the amendment). On the eve of the historic vote that would see the first black president, the rights that gays and lesbians had fought so hard to gain were taken away. California became the first state to alter its constitution specifically to take away rights that had previously been allowed. What I find tragic is that the open bigotry of black preachers is no different than the open bigotry that had previously been preached from white pulpits some 50 years ago, warning of the dangers of interracial marriages. These “value voters” created special laws that prevented these unions. In their own way, they too were trying to preserve the “sanctity of marriage”. It’s only a historical accident that this has fallen out of vogue with most people, due in no small part to the tireless effort of individuals who believe in the value of equal rights rather than skin pigmentation.

All of this nonsense and heartache can be avoided by simply declaring that the principles espoused by a Bronze Age manuscript are dangerously out of date with modern society. Why any black man should be ashamed or angry over something as trivial as his sexuality is ludicrous. Only something as stupid as religion could cause such pointless misery.

NOTE: Here’s a confused article saying that Gay is not the “new black”. The author argues that gays really haven’t had it as bad as black people, being only oppressed for a paltry 40 years. Even if this were true (which it isn’t), does it make their struggle for equal rights not as “worthy”?

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A gay couple in the North West Territories, the frozen butthole of Canada, was recently awarded $13,000 in a ruling involving a landlord who tried to evict them, simply because they were gay. The landlord contended that the legal arrangement he made with the couple was null since he genuinely feared that God would smite him. Naturally, he quoted the King James Bible as proof that God hates sodomites, but the arbitrator in the case found that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that God would punish anyone for harboring homosexuals. Personally, I think it’s all a bunch of bigoted bullshit that shouldn’t even be humored with a response. If any ignorant idiot tells you that the Bible condemns homosexuality you should kindly point out that, in the same book where it claims it’s an abomination for people of the same sex to lay together, it also says that one should stone to death disobedient children. Talk about a guide to higher moral values, eh?

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If there’s one thing you have to credit religion with, it’s their ability to insert themselves into things, often painfully and occasionally in a way that merits jail time, but mysteriously enough results in no real punishment. Religion is so skilled at doing this that they manage to convince throngs of people to believe that without them, the fabric of their lives would fall apart. Take marriage for instance, how many Christians in North America believe with absolute certainty that the legal contract of marriage is bound to their religion? They are convinced that the union of minorities that they revile, formerly other skin pigmentation and now sexual orientation, ought to be restricted, if not outright banned.

“From the beginning, the church has taught that marriage is a lifetime relationship between one man and one woman,” the bishop wrote in his diocese’s newspaper The Courier. “It is a sacrament, instituted by Jesus Christ to provide the special graces that are needed to live according to God’s law and to give birth to the next generation”

In Montana, there are serious legislative attempts to make homosexuality a crime, a reminder that bigotry can remain veiled for only so long. The fact that this is happening on the eve of a new decade in the 21st century should be a rude wakeup call for anyone still slumbering in America. Your country is being systematically dismantled by religious conservatives intent on creating a hybrid of theocracy and democracy. As you can imagine, these two elements are completely incompatible with one another, and it’s precisely this reason that the very founding document of your nation forbade this. The Founding Fathers knew first hand the M.O. of theocrats intent on suppressing the rights of not only those they disagree with, but also of their own flock.

Marriage isn’t a religious institution. It’s a contract that a person enters according to the rules of our society, not those of Rome nor those of the local mullahs. Meanwhile, religions proclaim that they can dictate for others, who don’t share their delusions, what their own rights are. How then are we supposed to react to the free exercise of religion when it interferes with the freedom of others? It reminds me of the asinine utterances of Christian fundamentalists who interpret the Constitution as meaning: “you’re have freedom of religion, not freedom FROM religion”.

How can I pretend to be surprised when religion itself is antithetical to freedom? What has historically been the punishment for the crime of apostasy in Christianity? The Old Testament makes no bones about it: kill anyone that tries to turn you away from Yahweh, your God. Islam may still take the notion of deserters very seriously indeed, but it’s only been recently that the crimes of heresy haven’t been investigated by Christian Inquisitions.

There’s a reason “free-thought” is associated with atheism and agnosticism; it is only by the virtue of being free to contemplate a Universe without a creator that we can come to be fully liberated. Perhaps a person who does so will still continue to believe in a God, but the ability to contemplate otherwise, even for a brief moment, is not something our ancestors benefited from. In many parts of the world that have abandoned their murderous campaigns against apostates, it is the fear of persecution, death and alienation that prevents so many others from coming forward and announcing that they too have nothing one would characterize as belief. What then, do we make of freedom when these institutions are in positions of power?

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We know that the Family Research Council are a bunch of lying bigots who hate homosexuals, but they’ve really been taking it up a notch lately. Just last week they released a bogus ‘study’ claiming that if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, straight soldiers would be at a heightened risk of being raped by gay soldiers. Now comes word that the FRC didn’t only lobby Congress against DADT legislature and same sex marriage, but against a bill voicing America’s disgust at Uganda’s death penalty for homosexuals.

It’s time for the Southern Poverty Law Center to reclassify the Family Research Council as an official hate group, not merely anti-gay as they are now listed. According to the FRC’s official lobbying report for the first quarter of 2010, they paid two of their henchmen $25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute homosexuals. The resolution passed in the Senate on April 13th, but remains languishing in the House almost four months after being referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Did the FRC’s lobbying kill it? As we learned last week with Malawi, international pressure CAN sway even the most virulently anti-gay government.

Below are three screencaps of the 20-page Family Research Council lobbying report supplied to me by Duncan Osbourne at Gay City News. Among the other items they lobbied against are the overturn of DADT and DOMA, which is to be expected. But it’s almost astounding, almost, that they would lobby the members of Congress against denouncing the death penalty for LGBT people.

Maybe if Christians would just leave everyone the fuck alone, I wouldn’t piss on them so much. But stuff like this just highlights how involved fundamentalists are in the political process and how they’ll do whatever it takes to force their exclusionary and divisive beliefs on everyone. Honestly, I just don’t understand why religious people are so obsessed about who’s sticking what in which hole. There’s a great documentary out there I recommend everyone watch called Outrage which basically makes the argument that a lot of the most vicious opponents of homosexuality are closeted men. Considering how many people fighting this stuff have been caught with their members in the chocolate cookie jar, it doesn’t surprise me.

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Here’s a remix of a few videos coming out of Uganda where the National Taskforce Against Homosexuality (represented of course by Christian leaders) is trying to whip up anti-homosexual sentiment by claiming the gays are all about poo-poo eating and butt fisting. They say a few other things, but this clip really shows how strangely pre-occupied they are with the poop angle for some reason. It’s hilarious in it’s stupidity, but it’s hard to keep laughing once you remember that gay people in Africa are being harassed, jailed, and tortured because of stuff like this.

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I’m still amazed that any rational, intelligent person can doubt as to whether or not religion still causes all kinds of harm in this world. I think the problem is that few people actually bother to find out what is going on in parts of the world where religious fundamentalism is still prominent. There are countries aroud the world where the toxic effects of religion are being felt by innocent men and women. The latest story of misery and dread comes from Malawi, where two men were arrested after they took part in an engagement ceremony.

For their crime of loving one another, they face about a decade of hard labor, and considering that they refuse to appologize or back down, they’ll probably end up serving the full sentence. Why are they taking a stand? Because the plight of other gays is at stake, and when countries like Uganda try and pass “kill the gays” legislation, there are some with the moral fortitude to put the wellbeing of others ahead of their own:

Gay sex is still illegal in 37 countries in Africa. A recent poll by the Pew Research Centre found that 98% of people in Cameroon, Kenya and Zambia disapprove of homosexuality. But encouraged by legal advances in South Africa, a new wave of activist movements are making a stand and pushing the boundaries in Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe and other countries in ways unthinkable a generation ago. Gay and lesbian lifestyles are also much more visible.

This assertiveness is apparently being met by a ferocious backlash from religious fundamentalists and politicians determined to preserve the status quo. It has been described as a proxy war between US liberals and Christian evangelicals, both of which pour in funding and support to further their cause.

As far as religious fundies are concerned, homosexuality is an abomination, and no amount of broken lives (or in some cases, deaths) will stop them from continuing to advocate their seething hatred of gays. As far as they are concerned, their invisible sky-daddy has commanded that same sex attractions are morally wrong. It doesn’t matter if someone is born that way; why would they worry about something as inconvenient as reality interfereing with their beliefs? It’s never been a problem before…

(props to the Freethinker for the find)

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