It’s true that public opinion surveys are not showing any 2010-style GOP “wave,” but Democrats are rightly nervous that when polls begin identifying likely voters closer to November, superior Republican “base enthusiasm” could put a thumb on the scales in their favor.
Thursday Reads: Through the Looking Glass?
Posted: July 31, 2014 Filed under: 2014 elections, 2016 elections, Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, Rick Perry, the GOP, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics, VAGINA Rick Santorum, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: Bobby Jindal, Ed Kilgore, GOP crazies, impeachment, insanity, IRS, John Boehner, John Dickerson, Lois Lerner, Marco Rubio, Nate Silver, right wing talk show hosts 36 Comments
Reading Woman, Armando Barrios
Good Morning!!
I’ve spent the past week or so reading escapist literature and watching old TV shows in an effort to anesthetize myself against the overload of bad news we’ve been hit with lately. Yesterday I was feeling a lot better–my escapism seemed to be working to improve my overall mood.
Then last night as I was surfing around in search of interesting reads for this morning’s post, I came across something that jumpstarted me right through Alice’s looking glass.
You’ve probably heard about it too. Lois Lerner, who used to work for the IRS and who is at the center of one of the GOP’s crazy efforts to create a scandal that will bring down President Obama used the word “crazies” in a private e-mail to a colleague who was complaining about right wing radio hosts. Here’s the text of e-mail as quoted in The Washington Post yesterday.
During the exchange, Lerner says she is traveling in Great Britain. The name of the person she is emailing with was blacked out.
Lerner: “I’m ready. Overheard some ladies talking about American today. According to them we’ve bankrupted ourselves and at through. We’ll never be able to pay off our debt and are going down the tubes. They don’t seem to see that they can’t afford to keep up their welfare state either. Strange.”
Other person: “Well, you should hear the whacko wing of the GOP. The US is through; too many foreigners sucking the teat; time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end. The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.”
Lerner: “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes.”Other person: “And I’m talking about the hosts of the shows. The callers are rabid.”
Lerner: “So we don’t need to worry about alien teRrorists. It’s our own crazies that will take us down.”
My initial response was the same as that of Mark NC at News Corpse (a site that makes fun of Fox News), So F**king What? Former IRS Official Says That GOP Crazies Are…CRAZY!
Republicans and their friends at Fox News have mastered the art of building mountains of bullshit from the lowliest troll-hills. It’s one of their favorite tactics to malign Democrats. Just grab a sentence fragment from a long speech and pretend that it is the whole of the comment from which it was extracted. Then feign outrage that such an awful remark could have been uttered.
The latest example of this rhetorical deceit was demonstrated when the GOP chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp, unscrupulously and selectively released some emails purported to be from Lois Lerner, the former IRS official who has been hounded by malevolent cretins like Rep. Darrell Issa in an attempt to fabricate ammunition to use against President Obama. Despite hundreds of wasted hours (costing millions of taxpayer dollars) engaged in hyper-partisan investigations, the Republican Inquisition has produced nothing implicating the President in any untoward activity.
The emails that Camp is now crowing about are just as meaningless as all of the other bogus “smoking guns” that these wingnuts have claimed would topple the administration. The headline that Camp has wrenched from the documents is that Lerner may have referred to certain individuals as “crazies” or “a-holes.” And, of course, this would only be an atrocity if those individuals were Republicans. Suffice to say that Camp wouldn’t give a Fig Newton if they were Democrats.
As Camp characterized this affair, Lerner was allegedly caught red-handed expressing her disgust for Republicans. And as the person at the center of the controversy over whether the IRS improperly subjected Tea Party groups to extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, Camp believes that these emails prove that she was biased. Consequently, Camp regards the emails as justification for appointing a special prosecutor and escalating the legal assault on Lerner and, ultimately, the White House.
There’s just one problem. The emails don’t don’t say what Camp alleges they say. And even if they did it wouldn’t mean anything. Most people in government have personal opinions and allegiances. There isn’t anything wrong with that, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the fair execution of their duties. And the evidence shows that Lerner’s department scrutinized applications of all political persuasions. The only organization that was denied tax-exempt status during the time in question was a liberal group.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. (center), flanked by the committee’s ranking member, Sander Levin, D-Mich. (right), and Sam Johnson, R-Texas.
Please read the rest at the link.
So this humorous site agrees with me, but more mainstream sites are seemingly going along with the Camp’s notion that this e-mail is evidence of a major scandal. For example, Dave Wiegel characterized it as a “bombshell,” although he does point out that Lerner’s anonymous “e-mail partner” was talking about talk radio hosts, not Republicans in general. Huffington Post reported that Lerner had made “two disparaging remarks about members of the GOP.” Both HuffPo and Politico write that in one e-mail Lerner referred to Republicans as “a–holes,” but they sidestep the fact the context was a discussion of right wing talk show hosts.
As we approach the midterm elections, I can’t help but feel that most of the mainstream media is cheering for a Republican takeover. Am I the crazy one?
Here’s another example from self-described libertarian Nate Silver, Democrats Are Way More Obsessed With Impeachment Than Republicans.
House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that Republicans have no plans to impeach President Obama, and that all the impeachment talk was driven by Democrats hoping to stir up their base.
Boehner’s statement isn’t literally true: There have been mentions of impeachment around the edges of the GOP and by some Republican members of Congress. But on the whole, Democrats are spending a lot more time talking about impeachment than Republicans.
Consider, for example, the Sunlight Foundation’s Capitol Words database, which tracks words spoken in the House and Senate. So far in July, there have been 10 mentions of the term “impeachment” in Congress and four others of the term “impeach.” Eleven of the 14 mentions have been made by Democratic rather than Republican members of Congress, however.
Impeachment chatter has also become common on cable news. On Fox News this month, Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, called for Obama’s impeachment, for instance. But for every mention of impeachment on Fox News in July, there have been five on liberal-leaning MSNBC.
OK, so that’s this month. And this proves what? Democrats are throwing around the word “impeachment” in hopes of calling attention to what Republicans have been saying for years! So f$%king what?!
Again, I must resort to News Corpse for a sensible interpretation of the impeachment talk, CONSPIRACY: President Obama Is Trying To Impeach Himself.
Ever since the first inauguration of President Obama, right-wingers have been trying to undo the people’s decision to make him America’s chief executive. They declared that their top legislative objective was to make Obama a one-term president. In pursuit of that goal they have blocked most of his policy initiatives, judges, and government reforms. At the same time they have been hyper investigatory on everything from Fast and Furious, to the IRS, to ObamaCare, to his birthplace. All of this was squarely aimed at crippling or revoking his presidency.
This year Obama’s critics came out of the impeachment closet and began openly advocating for that legal nuclear option despite not having any legal basis for it. While many Tea-Publican whack jobs were earlier to the gate, Sarah Palin burst onto the scene a couple weeks ago with her own demand that Congress do their duty and trump up some phony articles of impeachment. It got so absurdly intense that Obama addressed it himself with fitting mockery.
So of course the next shoe to drop in this melodrama is that, along with everything else in the world, Obama is to blame for this too. In fact, according to some in the rightist crackpot community, it was all part of his nefarious plot to embarrass the GOP. Here is what Texas Republican Steve Stockman had to say about it when interviewed by the ultra-fringe rightists at WorldNetDaily:
“President Obama is begging to be impeached. […] He wants us to impeach him now, before the midterm election because his senior advisers believe that is the only chance the Democratic Party has to avoid a major electoral defeat. Evidently Obama believes impeachment could motivate the Democratic Party base to come out and vote.”
There you have it. The evil genius in the White House orchestrated the whole Obama-hate campaign from its earliest days in 2008 just so that he would be able to use impeachment, which is every president’s dream, as an election strategy six years into his presidency.
Earth to Nate Silver and the rest of the mainstream media: Steve Stockman, although insane, is an actual member of the House of Representatives, not some fringe character with no influence. And he has plenty of company in the House and even in the Senate (Ted Cruz anyone?). These people are crazy and they are in positions of awesome power.
GOP idea men?
Here’s one more example of mainstream acceptance of GOP insanity before I end this post and run screaming into the street while pulling my hair out in handfuls. From John Dickerson of Slate (via CBS News), Why the GOP’s class of 2016 hopefuls may be the best in generations.
What if they held a presidential campaign and a think tank broke out? House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who is considering running for president, offered his thoughts on poverty last week. Sen. Marco Rubio has been giving regular policy speeches on poverty, college loans, and helping the middle class. Former senator and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is promoting a book of policy proposals on education, family, and revitalizing American manufacturing. Sen. Rand Paul is offering ideas on criminal justice and will give a big foreign policy speech in the fall. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has given speeches on health care and education aimed at a national audience. His staff recently sent an email titled “policy leader” that linked to a Time piece about how he is preparing to be the candidate of ideas in 2016.
What the f&cking f&ck? Rich Santorum? Bobby Jindal? Marco Rubio? Paul motherf&&cking Ryan?! These are “candidates of ideas?” Dickerson continues,
Who isn’t trying to be the ideas candidate in the 2016 campaign? Texas Gov. Rick Perry is working to overcome his 2012 debate aphasia, so he’s trying to show some policy chops. Though former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush holds controversial ideas on Common Core education standards and immigration, those close to him say he won’t run unless he can promote those ideas with gusto.
It isn’t usually this policy-thick in the GOP presidential field. In primaries, there is sometimes one conservative candidate who tries to position himself through the creativity of his proposals, but mostly candidates engage in displays of strength on questions of orthodoxy–how much they want to cut taxes, shrink regulation, and lock up the borders. Now the Republican candidates are not only seeking to distinguish themselves from each other with the quality and originality of their ideas, but they are making the case that unless the party promotes new ideas, it will not prevail.
The class of candidates for 2016 has the potential to be the most robust in almost 40 years–perhaps in modern Republican history. It depends on who finally decides to run, of course, but six governors and four senators are thinking seriously about it.
GOP idea men?
I’m sorry. Dickerson thinks these morons are competing with each other on “quality and originality of…ideas?” Am I nuts? Am I hallucinating this crap? Surely Dickerson can’t really believe this sh#t.
Here’s a little sanity from Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly, Can the Big Brains of the GOP Survive the Primaries? and Damon Linker of The Week, Why GOP reformers are bound to fail. But even Kilgore seems to believe that Republicans will take over the Senate. From Talking Points Memo:
At least Kilgore thinks that catering to the base could hurt Republicans in the 2016 presidential election.
Why? Why would anyone vote for these insane right-wingers? And why is the media rooting for them? I just don’t get it. Am I crazy or what?
Now it’s your turn. What stories are you following today? Share your thoughts and links in the comment thread.
Abortion Rights: The Constitutional Right Under Assault by Christofascists
Posted: January 19, 2013 Filed under: abortion rights, VAGINA Rick Santorum, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights 24 CommentsAll over the world, control, abuse, and forced servitude of women and children are major issues. The United States is no exception as radical 
christian groups attempt to deny women access to health, education, and selfhood. Roe v. Wade turns 40 and the assault on the Right to Abortion and to an autonomous self–separate from state and religious interference–has never been more threatened. Roe is being regulated into oblivion in many states where arcane religious views take precedent over the rule of law and the Constitution. Indeed, many of these folks believe a pregnant woman’s body belongs to the state or to any male they deem relevant.
A new study shows hundreds of women in the United States have been arrested, forced to undergo unwanted medical procedures, and locked up in jails or psychiatric institutions because they were pregnant. National Advocates for Pregnant Women found 413 cases when pregnant women were deprived of their physical liberty between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2005. At least 250 more interventions have taken place since then. In one case, a court ordered a critically ill woman in Washington, D.C., to undergo a C-section against her will. Neither she nor the baby survived. In another case, a judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion. We’re joined by Lynn Paltrow, founder and executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. “We’ve had cases where lawyers have been appointed for a fetus before the woman herself, who’s been locked up, ever gets a lawyer,” Paltrow says. “[We’ve had] cases where they’ve ordered a procedure over women’s religious objections, and one court said, pregnant women of course have a right to religious freedom — unless it interferes with what we believe is best for the fetus or embryo.” The new study comes on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision on the right to abortion — a right that has been under siege ever since.
Since state law requires the Alabama Women’s Center to list the days when abortion procedures might be performed, anti-abortion protesters are able to plan their harassment for days when the women visiting the clinic are likely to be seeking an abortion. The protesters are now monitored by local police officers, and clinic escorts will park women’s cars for them so they can slip into the back door of the clinic to avoid confrontations.
Pamela Watters, one of the women’s health advocates who helps organize clinic escorts, told the Alabama press what the volunteers have been up against since they started escorting women in October:
This week, pro-life protestor Joyce Fecteau, 70, was arrested for assault based on an incident alleged to have happened the week of Christmas. A pro-choice protestor told police that Fecteau sprayed her in the face with what Fecteau says is holy water.
Fecteau told The Huntsville Times that she was spritzing holy water to cleanse the air of smoke from a pro-choicer’s sage smudge, and that the pro-choice protestor walked into the spray. […]
Pro-choice marchers recalled a particularly painful event last month when a woman whose baby had died en utero was coming to the clinic to have it removed. In an awful coincidence, that was the day, Watters said, when the pro-life demonstrators collected a children’s choir on the sidewalk to sing “Happy Birthday Dead Baby” to anyone driving in.
“Will had to physically restrain the father,” Watters said, nodding to one of the men marching in a pro-choice jacket. “And by the time she walked through them, she was an emotional wreck.”
Even though Roe has guaranteed women’s constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 40 years, the case study in Alabama highlights the anti-choice activity that works to undermine legal abortion services at the state level. Alabama already places some of the nation’s most stringent restrictions on women who seek abortions. Women are required to receive counseling intended to talk them out of terminating their pregnancy, undergo a 24 hour waiting period, and take a mandatory ultrasound. Late term abortions are not permitted, and insurance plans in the state’s health exchange won’t cover abortion services. Nonetheless, anti-abortion activists aren’t satisfied — they also want to physically and emotionally intimidate the women coming and going from women’s health clinics.
The last two nights of TRMS have had segments dedicated to showing the appalling actions taken by religious radicals in this country to stop women from exercising their constitutional right to abortion. The show focused on Mississippi’s outrageous crusade to close its last abortion clinic as well as showing the struggle of activists to re-open the murdered Dr. Tiller’s clinic in Wichita, Kansas.
The last two nights of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show featured segments on how abortion rights are under attack in 4 states (Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota), both by anti-choice zealots and GOP Governors (Bryant [MS], Dalrymple [ND], Daugaard [SD]) and their legislatures, as part of the War On Women playbook to drastically curtail and/or end abortion rights and to defund Planned Parenthood, to name a few.
The right has made a series of attempts for the last two years at restricting access to family planning, women’s health, and abortion services. Most of this has come with insane comments. This reactionary drivle religious crusade against our secular and constitutionally formed governments comes from the usual suspects. Most of these are men paid to shout “fire” in crowded restaurants when a waiter lights a candle. Rush Limbaugh–the loudest of these misogynists–incited his listeners to violence last week. This commentary is by Amanda Marcotte at TRS.
But recently, anti-choicers have grown a bit tired of pretending that this is about “life” and instead tipping their hand more frequently to the fact that this is about punishing women for being sexual beings. The war on contraception makes it hard to pretend you care about fetuses, even though they do try to tie it back to that as often as possible with flimsy excuses, like pretending that cutting off family planning subsidies won’t lead to more abortions. So it makes sense that, in this environment, Rush Limbaugh would go ahead and put violence against women seeking abortion—which had previously been a no-no amongsts antis to talk about—on the table.
“You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.”
While most of us think of Limbaugh as an ass clown who should never be taken seriously, for the far right that creates the pool for potential anti-abortion terrorists to come from, this guy is a god. And if not to them directly, to the people around him, so these ideas will trickle out. The far right’s discourse is structured along a “how far can we go?” kind of framework, and they’re constantly looking to each other for “permission” to take it to the next level. Well, now Limbaugh has given them that permission. Killing women seeking abortion has been put on the table.
And boy how he put it on the table! It’s hard not to picture what “abortion by gun” would look like: A sort of rape by gun followed by the violent murder of the woman. It’s taking the subtext of gun nuttery—and how nuts feel that guns give them symbolic phallic power—and making it straight up text. That’s not subtly giving permission, but practically an invitation.
Rick Santorum is perhaps one of the most verbal advocates of theocratic takeover of our laws. He’s at it again. Like most of these freaks, he believes that keeping children safe from public education and college is the primary way to keep them indoctrinated into his fact-denying reality. Of course, he believes taxpayers should support the brainwashing of children by religious zealots in home-based and church-based christian-style madrassas.
Rick Santorum said the nation’s colleges are promoting a “sea of antagonism toward Christianity” and “indoctrinating” its youth with ideals that support gay marriage, abortion and pornography.
Santorum called in to Tony Perkins’ “Washington Watch” on Tuesday to talk about the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. The conversation dealt not only with abortion but also included other “symptoms” that have changed the nation.
Perkins spoke broadly, saying pro-choice Americans represent a troubled country that doesn’t choose life, meaning “That is to follow the principals, the teachings, the instructions of God … You see that as you’ve been in Washington, D.C. There is a rejection of this idea of truth, and that there is a foundation or morality, which needs to be upheld.”
Santorum agreed, adding that less young people devote themselves to Christianity. “If you look at the popular culture and what comes out of Hollywood, if you go to our schools and particularly our colleges and universities, they are indoctrinated in a sea of relativism and a sea of antagonism towards Christianity.”
“Abortion is a symptom. Marriage is a symptom. Pornography [is a symptom],” he continued. “All of these are symptoms to the fundamental issue that we’ve gotten away from the truth and the ‘Truth-Giver.'”
On this blog, a lot of time is spent investigating patriarchal attitudes about women’s roles, and how in a patriarchy women are expected to be a servant class to cater to men and not people in their own right. In this system, children face a similar kind of oppression. As women are believed to be the servants of men, children are believed to be extensions of the father, and to display utter fealty to his way of thinking so he can demonstrate his power to other men. That’s why conservatives are so hostile to public education. The children are to believe what Daddy believes, no matter how silly Daddy’s beliefs, and if that requires censoring the truth and going out of your way to hide it from children, so be it. The rights of children to have an education will always bend in this worldview to the rights of the conservative Christian father to control the brain space of his kids.
That’s why conservatives are so dogged in trying to find ways to get into the schools and replace biology with creationism. It’s a symbolic battle for them. Winning it is achieving a symbolic demonstration of their belief that the father’s right to brainwash his child trumps the child’s right to an education.
Let’s not forget that 2011 and 2012 saw an incredible number of states pass laws attempting to deny women their constitutional right to reproductive health and abortions. Many are working their way to the courts now. We can only hope that Fat Tony’s seat on SCOTUS is the first one President Obama gets to fill in his second term.
Reproductive health and rights was once again the subject of extensive debate in state capitols in 2012. Over the course of the year, 42 states and the District of Columbia enacted 122 provisions related to reproductive health and rights. One-third of these new provisions, 43 in 19 states, sought to restrict access to abortion services. Although this is a sharp decrease from the record-breaking 92 abortion restrictions enacted in 2011, it is the second highest annual number of new abortion restrictions.
While we celebrate 40 years of our constitutional right to have an abortion, we should not forget that there are many zealots out there that will not rest until they force their religious convictions on every woman in this country.
Know your Right Wing Christofascists!
Posted: October 3, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections, religious extremists, right wing hate grouups, VAGINA Ralph Reed, VAGINA Rick Santorum, War on Women | Tags: Jerry Farwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, religious hate speech, religious violence, right wing religious hate groups, theocracy 64 Comments
Here’s a list of the 10 Most Dangerous Religious Right Organizations in the country. These folks are determined to undermine the US constitution that prevents mixing of specific religious doctrines with US law. These people don’t want freedom for their religious practices. They want the US government to enshrine their petty theocratic agendas into law and to persecute the unbelievers.
1. Jerry Falwell Ministries/ Liberty University/Liberty Counsel
Revenue: $522,784,095
2. Pat Robertson Empire
Revenue: $434,971,231
3. Focus on the Family (includes its 501(c)(4) political affiliate CitizenLink)
Revenue: $104,463,950
4. Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund)
Revenue: $35,145,644
5. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Lobbying Expenditures: $26,662,111
6. American Family
Association
Revenue: $17,955,438
7. Family Research Council
Revenue: $14,840,036 (includes 501(c)(4) affiliate FRC Action)
8. Concerned Women for
America
Revenue: $10,352,628 (includes 501(c)(4) affiliate CWA Legislative Action Committee)
9. Faith & Freedom Coalition
Revenue: $5,494,640
10. Council for National Policy
Revenue: $1,976,747
The Christian Right has basically infiltrated the Republican Party and is most evident as “Teavanagelicals”.
ON AN INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL, the merger of Christian Right and Tea Party interests is remarkably advanced. The alliance has served as the very foundation stone of theFaith and Freedom Coalition, the latest venture of that intrepid politico-religious entrepreneur, Ralph Reed, which has sprouted chapters in many states, most prominently Iowa, where it sponsored the first candidate forum of the 2012 cycle. There is even a term to describe this new strain of conservatism: the “Teavangelicals,” a subject of a recent broadcast by Christian Right journalist David Brody, which, among other things, examined the conservative evangelical roots of major Tea Party leaders. Most recently, a host of organizations closely connected with the Christian Right and “social issues” causes have signed onto the “Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge,” the Tea Party-inspired oath that demands a position on the debt limit vote that is incompatible with any bipartisan negotiations.
But this convergence between the two groups goes well beyond coalition politics and reflects a radicalization of conservative evangelical elites that is just as striking as the rise of the Tea Party itself. Indeed, the worldview of many Christian Right leaders has evolved into an understanding of government (at least under secularist management) as a satanic presence that seeks to displace God and the churches through social programs, to practice infanticide and euthanasia, to destroy parental control of children, to reward vice and punish virtue, and to thwart America’s divinely appointed destiny as a redeemer nation fighting for Christ against the world’s many infidels.
As an illustration of this phenomenon, it’s worth unpacking a few lines from a recent missive by televangelist James Robison, the convener of two recent meetings of Christian Right leaders in Texas to ponder their role in 2012, and also of a similar session back in 1979 that helped pave the way for Reagan’s conquest of conservative evangelicals. Says Robison:
There are moral absolutes . No person’s failure reduces or redefines the standards carved in stone by the finger of God and revealed in His Word. We must find a way to stop judges and courts from misinterpreting the Constitution and writing their own laws.
“Activist judges” who have developed and applied protections for abortion rights, non-discrimination, and church-state separation have long been a bugaboo for the Christian Right. But Robison appears to be extending this traditional list of evangelical grievances, adding his blessing to the Tea Party’s objection to the string of Supreme Court decisions that enabled the federal government to enact New Deal programs like Social Security that protect people afflicted by personal “failure” from the consequences of their actions.
They have more impact than just trying to deny the civil rights of GLBT, the reproductive rights of women, and the suppression of religious minorities in the US. They have a global agenda that is as much of a terrorist movement as any religious extremist movement abroad. They support governments that believe in not only persecuting but killing GLBT citizens with money and other resources. They actively support militia’s that kill and maim GLBT citizens and non-believers and work to keep women’s status as property and breeding chattel.
In recent weeks, police have descended on the Harare offices of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), seizing the group’s publications and computers as evidence, they claimed, in an ongoing investigation. The police sought to also arrest staff, but the organization’s lawyer has kept them free for now.
The gay rights activist organization is — absurdly — accused of seeking to overthrow President Robert Mugabe’s government and teaching people to commit acts of sodomy.
This police activity underscores the effort of the Mugabe-led ZANU-PF ruling political party to incite anti-LGBT hatred in mobilizing its base for elections next year. Mugabe faces a challenge from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi, who recently adopted a pro-LGBT rights position.
In one raid, police forcibly entered GALZ premises and began arresting advocates gathered to discuss the draft constitution under debate. The draft includes anti-gay provisions shaped with help from the US-based Christian right group American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) through its Zimbabwe office. The proposed provisions explicitly prohibit homosexuality and, mimicking American efforts, define marriage as between a man and woman.
Some activists were injured trying to escape over a security fence armed with an electric razor wire. Those caught — 31 men and 13 women — were arrested, bundled into police vehicles, and kept in filthy cells for what GALZ staffer Miles Rutendo remembers as “a night in hell.” Police beat and stomped on the backs of gay rights advocates forced to lie on the wet floor. One victim passed out and was rushed to the hospital.
The physical and mental abuse did not end with their release. In a country where LGBT people suffer brutal harassment, these activists’ sexual preference was exposed to neighbors, families, and workplaces. Their families forced some from their homes. Whether any lose their jobs remains to be seen.
Additional, rallies have been held through out the US that are well within in the boundaries of first amendment free speech rights but definitely fall into the hate speech realm.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins topped a full day of speakers at “The America for Jesus 2012” prayer rally.
Robertson, a former Republican candidate for president, called the election important, but didn’t mention either major political party or candidate by name.
“I don’t care what the ACLU says or any atheists say. This nation belongs to Jesus, and we’re here today to reclaim his sovereignty,” said Robertson, 82, who founded the Christian Coalition and Christian Broadcasting Network, and ran for president in 1988.
Organizers plan another prayer rally Oct. 20 in Washington, D.C., two weeks before President Barack Obama faces Republican Mitt Romney in the presidential election.
Perkins asked the crowd to pray for elected officials including Obama.
“We pray that his eyes will be open to the truth,” Perkins said.
A number of event organizers, though, have been vocal critics of the Democratic president.
Steve Strang, the influential Pentecostal publisher of Charisma magazine, which was distributed at the rally, recently wrote in a blog post that America is under threat from a “radical homosexual agenda.” He also said Obama “seems to be moving toward some form of European socialism. Speaker Cindy Jacobs has blamed a mysterious Arkansas bird-kill last year on Obama’s repeal of the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which allows gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
Speakers throughout the day condemned abortion, gay marriage and population control as practiced by Planned Parenthood. Christian rock music filled the historic mall as speakers challenged the crowd to overcome the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and slothfulness.
Yup, these are the same folks we’ve been fighting since the 1980s. It’s going to be a continual fight to keep theocracy out of our state, local, and federal government and to stop the hate-filled agendas of these religious extremists.
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