You heard it right, my friends - according to an Oregon pastor’s prophecy, God so hates the queers, he’s prepared to destroy Portland. There will be earthquakes, floods, and buildings collapsing atop the LGBT Pride Parade. Thousands of queers (along with goodness knows how many non-queer allies and street vendors) will be sucked into the Earth’s gaping maw and crushed moments before their lungs fill with water and then they are finally killed by falling bricks. (Salem and the entire Willamette Valley are predicted to get it too, but I get the feeling that they’re just His collateral damage.)

It sounds like a terrible Father’s Day, frankly. You’d think the Father of All would pick some other day for carnage, but no. And why us? San Francisco is much gayer, Lord. Smite them! Smite them!

Here’s an intriguing detail from the Pastor’s dream - just in case anyone survives His earthquake, His flood and His collapsing buildings, God is conspiring to use terrorists to wipe out the survivors as they crawl from the damp rubble.

I saw a group of men. I think that there was about twenty of them. They all had large automatic weapons. I had the feeling that they were terrorists but I’m not sure. There were a few survivors wandering around, dazed from their injuries from the earthquake. Whenever this group of men came upon anyone wandering around, they would kill them.

You heard that right, folks - God is working with the terrorists! Just like Saddam did!

Well, I for one refuse to give in to God’s terror tactics and terrorist demands. I propose that on Father’s day, June 18th, every true-blooded American should have queer sex. And lots of it.. Do it whether you like it or not - because this isn’t about sexual pleasure, this is about standing up to the terrorists! If we don’t all have queer sex on Father’s day, then the terrorists will have won!!!

In the short time that remains, let’s prepare to Have Queer Sex For America. Here’s a helpful instructional comic book (not work safe) for any ladies who want to do their patriotic duty by having lesbian sex on the 18th, but aren’t quite clear on the details. I don’t know of any similar instructional comics for male-male sex, but there must be some out there, so keep your eyes open and ask your local comic book store owner. It’s also possible that there is, somewhere on the internet, a website with photos of gay male sex that guys can consult for ideas.

If Father’s Day ends without anything happening then you can be happy that you had hot queer sex and return home. If something does happen then you can be happy you stood up for America, a thought which comfort you in the moments before the earthquake, floods, falling rubble and terrorists bring about your demise.

The Pastor did say that people should “pass it on to whoever you know,” so below you’ll find his own description of the dream God sent him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Crooks and Liars has links to clips of the Daily Show’s recent segment on same-sex marriage, featuring Ed Helms interviewing Massachusetts anti-SSM activist Brian Camenker and a newly married gay couple. As Tom at Family Scholars says, “the juxtaposition of Camenker’s gay-marriage-advocates-are-like-Nazis analogy with the friendly gay couple interviewed is devastating.”

Meanwhile, Back At Gay Headquarters

The Family Scholars thread is hilarious, by the way, because a couple of Family Scholars readers immediately came forward to defend the Nazi analogy. One of them also complains about the environmental harms of pro-SSM activists “driving to gay headquarters everyday” (anti-SSM activists apparently work from home more often). Maybe it’s just me, but the phrase “gay headquarters” is just the funniest thing I’ve read in ages.

There’s a famous study, which many liberals are fond of, which involves putting a special cuff around the penises of homophobic young men. This cuff measures even tiny changes in the penile circumference. The homophobes are then shown homoerotic films; the cuff shows that their penises get bigger as they watch hot gay men doing what hot gay men do in such films. In contrast, a control group of non-homophobic men with cuffs around their dicks didn’t show any reaction to the hot gay men. The authors conclude that “Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”

I most often see this study brought up by liberals and lefties when they’re arguing with a right-winger about some queer rights issue; the point is that homophobes are homophobic because they’re repressing secret gay desires. I don’t like the way it’s brought up in argument, because it’s usually used as a sort of neener-neener “you only say that because you’re a closet case” ad hom attack.

But I’m also bothered by the study’s methodology and interpretation. First of all, measuring sexuality by strapping a cuff around Mr. Happy - while ignoring what the subjects say about their subjective state of arousal - is a reductive and simplistic way of defining male sexuality.

Second of all, sexual excitement isn’t the only thing that can alter a penis’ circumference. The study authors themselves, towards the end of their study, acknowledge that their data could be explained by homophobes feeling anxious and threatened, rather than by secret gay desires:

Another explanation of these data is found in Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck’s (1983) theory of the role of anxiety and attention in sexual responding. It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se.

To me, that seems more likely than the theory that homophobes are mostly closet cases - even though the closet case theory is, I admit, more fun.

My desktop is getting cluttered with links that I won’t have time to blog about….

Heidi at Letters of Marque on What Women Want: “In short, what this particular woman wants is a wife. And I resent (in a vague sort of way) the fact that socially and actually, it’s harder for me to get a wife than it is for a man to do so.”

Hilzoy does a terrific job refuting claims that the Violence Against Women Act is pork spending. (Sheesh!)

And also at Obsidian Wings, Edward points out that the US - in its immigration law - does expect married couples to actually share romance and affection. This conflicts with the claims of anti-same-sex-marriage folks who, ridiculously, have claimed that there is no connection between romantic love and marriage at all.

Kieran at Crooked Timber presents some data on wives and/or mothers in the workforce

From an essay on gender and Katrina in the Chicago Tribune: “And yet there is another equally important and starkly apparent social dimension to the hurricane disaster that media coverage has put in front of our eyes but that has yet to be “noticed”: This disaster fell hard on one side of the gender line too. Most of the survivors are women. Women with children, women on their own, elderly women in wheelchairs, women everywhere–by a proportion of what looks to be again somewhere around 75 or 80 percent.” I’d like to see more on this; I’m not sure if this writer is working from solid data or subjective impressions.

Some more ignored victims of Katrina, via Professor Kim: Latino immigrants, American Indians, and prisoners.

Anti-Feminist watch: Cathy Young, in my opinion the most intelligent anti-feminist journalist out there, has a blog.

Lucinda Marshall says it wasn’t just hysteria; women probably were were raped in Katrina disaster areas. Read her article, and her interview with Judy Benitez of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault. “Some have suggested that since there are not yet official reports of rapes in the Superdome or elsewhere during the hurricane aftermath, then clearly it is just so much histrionic rumor. The idea that because something cannot be measured, it does not exist is ridiculous.”

You know, I can forgive Yahoo and Google and Microsoft cooperating with China’s censorship program - I’d rather folks in China have censored access than no access. Plus, these folks would have faced censorship regardless of what US corporations do. But now Yahoo has cooperated with China police to throw a journalist in jail for ten years. There are some compromises that no one should be willing to make for money or access; Yahoo has now made it clear that had they existed in Nazi Germany, they would have been eagerly leading the SS to hidden Jews if there was a buck for them in it. They’ve moved far beyond disgusting. Hat tip to Tennessee Guerrilla Women, who links to a WaPo editorial on the subject.

Also at Guerrilla Women, Congressman Stacey Campfield - who is white - wants to join the Black Congressional Caucus. “The East Tennessee Republican says that when he was told that he could not join the Black Caucus because he is white, he thought, ‘What? Whoa!’” There are also quotes from some of Campfield’s semi-literate emails; he sounds like a generic right-wing troll, but he’s really a GOP congressman!

And once again at Tennessee Guerrilla Women, a new British study suggests that men die sooner in more patriarchal societies than in more egalitarian societies.

Las Vegas Weekly has a story about the UFCW union hiring underpaid, no-benefit workers to picket Wal-Mart. The story writer obviously has an anti-Union bias, but unless she’s outright lying then she has a point. Unions of all people have no excuse for mistreating workers.

You know, I somehow missed linking to the genuinely ridiculous Focus on the Family “Is Your Child Becoming Homosexual?” piece last month, which many bloggers made fun of, including Balloon Juice. If you want a good laugh combined with an undercurrent of dread about how genuinely warped by hate these so-called “Christians” are, give it a look. (Focus on the Family, perhaps in response to the widespread mocking, has seemingly taken the original page down).

Bush has given the Saudis a pass on their participation in international sex slave trading. Ecuador and Kuwait were given free passes, too. As Mark Kleiman comments, what’s a little slave trading among friends?

Scott at Lawyers Guns and Money has a good post pointing out the obvious: despite their claims that they’re concerned with “activist judges” and the like, when it comes to opposing queer couple’s interests, anti-SSM folks are concerned with substance rather than process.

Ann Althouse has an excellent post defending the use of foreign court opinions by American judges.

“The incidence of teen gonorrhea in the United States is 70 times that in the Netherlands and France.” Well, thank goodness for abstinence-only education! (Via Majikthise).

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Thanks to a friend who had been watching TV and come across a new documentary called ‘We Are Dad’, I recently became acquainted with a story of discrimination that is both heart-wrenching and inspiring. Perhaps some of you are already familiar with the case, but like myself, I’m sure some of you aren’t. At any rate, it’s worthy of shining the spotlight on it in hopes that more people will continue being vocal about the prejudices gays and their families face from the rabid right.

The story itself is about a gay couple Steven Lofton and Roger Croteau and their five HIV-positive foster children. In a recent article at Gay & Lesbian Times, the background of the story is given along with an interview of the director of ‘We are Dad’. Three of the children began their fostering in Florida, the prior residence of Lofton and Croteau before they made the cross country move to Portland, Oregon due to the need to be closer to Lofton’s elderly parents three years ago. Upon taking up residence, their family swelled to five children, though the three fostered out in Florida remained subject to the Florida laws and supervision.

Here’s where the story gets ugly. Apparently Bert, age 10, one of the three Florida children they have fostered since infancy has stopped testing positive for HIV, so Florida has deemed him adoptable. The kicker being that Florida is the only state that has a blanket ban on gay adoptive rights, which the Supreme Court has refused to consider:

On Jan. 10, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Lofton v. State of Florida, which challenged Florida’s ban on adoption by gay couples. The court declined by a 6-6 vote to reconsider an earlier 2-1 decision in 2004 by a three-member panel of the appeals court in Atlanta, Ga., which upheld the law. The ACLU, who filed challenge to the law in 1999, asked the Supreme Court to hear the appeal.

Florida is the only state with a blanket law prohibiting gays and lesbians from adopting children, and it stems from Anita Bryant’s 1977 “Save Our Children” campaign, which repealed the Dade County gay rights law. Bryant’s actions built an impetus against gay adoption in Florida.

Apparently to the people claiming to fight for ‘family values’, the only time it’s okay for children to be in long standing custodial supervision of gays is when the child is tainted with an ailment that makes them less normal. According to Lethimstay.com, a website dedicated to raising awareness of the struggles in the gay parenting community with regards to fostering and adoptions, it seems that since Bert is now a healthy adoptable child, the family that raised him is no longer suitable for him:

Every few weeks, a letter comes from the state, giving an update on the status of finding another family to adopt Bert. Because he no longer tests positive for HIV and is under the age of 14, Bert is deemed “adoptable.” Steve and Roger are legally prohibited from adopting him because of Florida’s ban. So the state continues its effort to find him another home, even though this is the only family he’s ever known…even though, like all five of the kids, he’s already home.

Anyways, I’d encourage people to take a look at this website and catch the documentary ‘We Are Dad’ if you can.

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I can’t even think of anything to say. From OutRage!:

Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran on 19 July 2005 for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality. [...]

Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex.

One youth was aged 18 and the other was a minor under the age of 18. They were only identified by their initials, M.A. and A.M.

They admitted to having gay sex (probably under torture) but claimed in their defence that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death.

Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes.

Their length of detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when they were possibly around the age of 16.

Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged.

Three other young gay Iranians are being hunted by the police, but they have gone into hiding and cannot be found. If caught, they will also face execution.

Direland has the best article on this I’ve read. This atrocity has been getting more attention than previous ridiculous Iranian execution of teens, possibly because the photos (which you can see at Direland) are so vivid.

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