Victory in Malawi

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Michael

Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza of Malawi were sentenced to 14 years in prison for the ‘crime’ of being gay. After Malawian Christians showed what the consequences of legislated morality look like, worldwide pressure fell upon Malawi. This has resulted in President Bingu wa Mutharika publicly correcting the evil in his nation.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were released late Saturday, hours after President Bingu wa Mutharika pardoned them without condition. But in giving his pardon, which he said was on “humanitarian grounds only,” Mutharika warned that homosexuality remains illegal in the conservative southern African country.

Of course, I can’t say I’m surprised he only corrected his error in judgement of good and evil for this specific couple. It’s tough for bigots to correct their fundamental problems, especially with sexual immaturity. But to be fair, Mutharika has said he pardoned the couple on humanitarian grounds, not because he approves of their acts. That’s still sexual immaturity, but it is tolerance. It’s superficial tolerance – we all know gays are still not safe from persecution in Malawi – but it’s at least a very, very slight step in the right direction.

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All the gay news

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Michael

Or at least some of the latest updates:

  • Bigots suffered a set back recently when it was ruled they had to disclose the names of their fellow bigots who contributed to bigotry in Maine last year. Now a federal judge has issued a block.
  • Bigots are being challenged in Massachusetts. It is being argued by non-bigots that DOMA is a violation of state rights. I find this argument interesting the same people arguing against this are the ones who argue for the expansion of state rights in regards to brown people in Arizona. But the difference is obvious: marriage is to be regulated by the states; immigration is federal. Of course, none of that matters to those who just hate brown and/or gay people.
  • Gay closet Republican #743,029 Roy Ashburn has compiled a stringent pro-bigot voting record in his political career. He claims he was doing it out of concern for his constituents. But now that everyone knows he likes penis (eww!!!! amirite?), he’s begun to change his stances. Crazy how that works.
  • One man in D.C. has wed 44 same-sex couples. He tried to save his eternal soul from hell by marrying a heterosexual couple, but I think God is on to him. His transgressions against the arbitrary whim of the malevolent Yahweh are definitely going to land him in hell for eternity. I mean. That’s fair.

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Christians jail gay couple

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Michael

In overwhelmingly Christian Malawi two men have been sent to prison for 14 years for being gay.

The harsh sentence was immediately deplored by human rights groups around the world, but Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa, in reading his judgment, seemed adamant in his ruling. He said he was especially offended that the two lovers celebrated their relationship in public with an engagement party.

“I do not believe Malawi is ready at this point in time to see its sons getting married to other sons, or cohabitating, or conducting engagement ceremonies,” the magistrate said. “Malawi is not ready to smile at her daughters marrying each other. Let posterity judge this judgment.”

Posterity will judge this judgement precisely the same as the majority of today’s generation judges 19th century America. There is no reasonable justification for what Malawian Christians are doing to Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza – hence the use of religion to bring about yet another horrendous event in history.

The nation’s clergy have been united in condemning the gay couple. “God calls homosexuality an abomination, which is greater than a simple sin,” the Rev. Felix Zalimba, pastor of the All for Jesus Church in Blantyre, said Thursday. He said church and state were aligned in agreement: “These two must repent and ask God’s forgiveness. Otherwise, they will surely go to hell.”

Aww, that’s so sweet. I guess Malawian Christians are just looking for out the spiritual well-being of the couple.

Malawi is a welfare state that suffers from massive poverty. That poverty, as demonstrated here, goes far beyond monetary woes. And while the educational system has improved dramatically over the years, it still lags severely; it’s about what one would expect from a so-called third world nation. This presents a dilemma. Donor nations might be tempted to withdraw funds in protest of such fervent bigotry, but that would act to also cause harm to all the people who just need clean water and enough food.

I say do it.

Remove all monetary funds from the nation. Still donate food and practical goods, but force it to come up with its own cash. No nation of any common sense ought to be donating money that’s going to partially go towards funding prison operations in Malawi.

Better yet, let’s not just give direct resources; let’s also direct funding. Promote secular ideals and education. Make the nation more than 80-some percent literate; the power of the Catholic Church was long centered on the low literacy rates around the world – someone who cannot read is powerless to fight the lies of priests. The Malawian Christian tragedy is no different.

What’s really ugly about all this is just how obvious it is that religion is the fuel to this fire. This is an extension of the sort of religious fire that burns in the U.S. against gays. In Maine it took roughly a decade to make it illegal to fire someone for being gay. (‘You want to work that cash register? No, faggot!’) In most other states, it remains legal to fire based upon sexual orientation. People who hate gays want to strip them of their basic rights – and more importantly, their basic humanity. The only impediment in the U.S. to the criminalization of homosexuality is the civil libertarian strengths of the Constitution. (Not to be confused with economic libertarian strengths: no such thing exists.) Without those influencing the very cultural of America, who knows just how far the religious would take their bigotry? Perhaps a high rate of literacy would help hold back criminalization to this extreme, but it’s difficult to say. After all, a number of states have had laws which made sodomy a crime.

Another significant issue in the bigotry of Malawian Christians is the lack of separation of church and state. Without any barrier, any rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, religious dogma holds an undue sway on government. Those who are silly enough to think freedom of religion somehow doesn’t also inherently mean freedom from religion ought to reflect on the jailing of Chimbalanga and Monjeza. Their fate has in large part been dealt to them by religion and its entanglement with government.

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Bigot gets fired

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Michael

Jonathan I. Katz is a ridiculous excuse of a human being. Here’s what he says about gay people.

Unfortunately, the victims are not only those whose reckless behavior brought death on themselves. There are many completely innocent victims, too: hemophiliacs (a substantial fraction died as a result of contaminated clotting factor), recipients of contaminated transfusions, and their spouses and children, for AIDS can be transmitted heterosexually (in America, only infrequently) and congenitally. The icy road was lined with unsuspecting innocents, who never chose to ride a motorcycle. Guilt for their deaths is on the hands of the homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers who poisoned the blood supply. These people died so the sodomites could feel good about themselves.

What of those cursed with unnatural sexual desires? Must they forever suppress these desires? Yes, but this is hardly a unique fate. Almost everyone has desires which must be suppressed. Most men and women think adulterous thoughts fairly often, and find themselves attracted to members of the opposite sex to whom they are not married. Morality requires them to suppress these desires, and most do not commit adultery, though they feel lust in their hearts. Almost everyone, at one time or another, covets another’s property. They do not steal. Many people feel great anger or intense hatred at some time in their lives. They do not kill.

I am a homophobe, and proud.

This bigot was given a prominent position within the Obama Administration, working on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. To compound Obama’s error, the guy is also a global warming denier to some extent. (“To some extent” = global warming is happening and is caused by people, but it’s somehow good for us.) A person such as this deserves to be shunned and pushed away from any prestigious position or stature – that should be obvious. In fact, it should have been obvious that such a person shouldn’t have been given any sort of distinguished label in the first place. Fortunately, at least hindsight is 20/20.

Dr. Chu has spoken with dozens of scientists and engineers as part of his work to help find solutions to stop the oil spill. Some of Professor Katz’s controversial writings have become a distraction from the critical work of addressing the oil spill. Professor Katz will no longer be involved in the Department’s efforts.

Good.

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Go fuck yourself, Tim Pawlenty

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Michael

Because some things are so obviously absurd, they don’t deserve more than a good ol’ “go fuck yourself”.

In a move likely to burnish his presidential prospects among social conservatives, Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed a bill that granted same-sex couples the same end-of-life rights as married couples. The bill, which passed the legislature last week, would have given gay partners the power to decide about how to dispose of a body and file wrongful death suits.

“Marriage – defined as between a man and woman – should remain elevated in our society at a special level, as it traditionally has been. I oppose efforts to treat domestic relationships as the equivalent of traditional marriage. Accordingly, I am opposed to this bill,” he said in his veto message.

You’re opposed to the bill because you’re a fucking bigot. That’s it. Go fuck yourself.

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Catholic bigots harm child’s education

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Michael

A child in Massachusetts was set to attend school at St. Paul Elementary School, but the sexually immature chief bigots, Rev. James Rafferty and Principal Cynthia Duggan, rescinded their acceptance of this new student because his mother is a lesbian. But in a surprising move, another sexually immature Catholic leader has stepped up to the plate in an attempt to quell the flaming bigotry.

The head of education for the Boston Archdiocese offered Thursday to help find a different Catholic school for a boy denied acceptance at a Hingham Catholic school because his parents are gay.

In a statement, superintendent Mary Grassa O’Neill said she spoke with a parent of the 8-year-old boy and “offered to help enroll her child in another Catholic school in the archdiocese.”

“We believe that every parent who wishes to send their child to a Catholic school should have the opportunity to pursue that dream,” O’Neill said.

Insofar as someone has a “dream” involving Freddy Krueger, sure that’s a dream.

This is surprising on a couple levels. First, I attended a Catholic school – which, incidentally, offered an excellent education bar the religion – and I vividly recall being told on multiple occasions that any and all students were welcome. The specific examples given were students of different religions, but it was a blanket statement we were being given, so I presume someone having a gay parent would have been just as irrelevant. Of course, this is New England, the place where bigotry tends to be less prevalent. Second, the Catholic church is against all sorts of random junk. No meat on Good Friday, no divorce, no birth control – plenty of parents go against all these haphazard (sometime irresponsible) teachings of the church. It is only the overwhelming sexual immaturity of these Christians which can explain the pointed bigotry towards gays. It’s disgusting.

While it looks like a new, clear policy is going to come from the Boston archdiocese which does not arbitrarily discriminate, that isn’t the case in another recent act of shame.

The Massachusetts case is similar to a decision by a Catholic school in Boulder, Colo., the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which said two children of lesbian parents could not re-enroll because of their parents’ sexual orientation. The Denver Archdiocese backed the school’s decision.

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Allow fewer and fewer children to be polluted with the mind virus of religion while growing animosity towards an already battered institution? Sure.

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Obama expands rights for all

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Michael

I’m not sure how I managed to miss this story, but Obama has expanded visitation rights in hospitals that will primarily benefit gay couples.

The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation in a memo that was e-mailed to reporters Thursday night.

Administration officials and gay activists, who have been quietly working together on the issue, said the new rule, once in place, will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, a move that covers the vast majority of the nation’s health care institutions.

While those who irrationally hate gays because they think homosexuality is all about sex (and that’s just icky!) are going to paint this as special rights for gays, it is an expansion of rights for all.

Obama’s memo to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius orders the development of new rules to ensure that hospitals “respect the rights of patients to designate visitors” and to choose the people who will make medical decisions on their behalf.

This is common sense. Even with legal documents in place, gays and some unmarried straight couples still face horrific discrimination in hospitals. Specifically, this recent memo is in response to the case of Lisa Pond and Janice Langbehn.

Ms. Pond had filed a living will, a binding legal document, that appointed Ms. Langbehn to make medical decisions for her should she become too ill to speak for herself.

But even after copies of that document were faxed to the Florida hospital where Ms. Pond was dying, nurses refused to allow Ms. Langbehn and the couple’s three children into the room.

It is difficult to imagine that a heterosexual couple — even an unmarried heterosexual couple with a similarly long-standing relationship — would be treated the same way.

In another case (from the same link), a couple had designated each other as the person in charge of medical decisions should the other become ill.

Like Ms. Pond, Ms. Ritchie had a living will that designated her partner to make medical decisions for her. But hospital officials wouldn’t provide Ms. Reed with any information on her partner’s condition. Without that information, she couldn’t possibly make informed medical decisions, as Ms. Ritchie had intended.

Things like this are the successes of bigoted voters who go to the ballot box thinking they’re protecting some institution. This isn’t about abstract social constructs. It is about human beings. This goes beyond the petty narrow-mindedness that pervades so many; the happiness of others is what matters. Equal rights for all will increase happiness while not affecting the currently privileged one bit.

What is so damned hard about this? Institutions matter only insofar as they protect people.

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Is this really for the sake of goodness?

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Michael

Clay Greene and Harold Scull were an elderly gay couple in love. Throughout the 20 years they spent building a life together they had assembled all the necessary legal paperwork – wills, POA papers, advanced directives – to be as certain as possible the other would be secure should something happen to one of them. This was especially important for Clay, 77, as he was healthier and younger than Harold, 88.

It didn’t matter.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

The county described Clay as nothing more than a “roommate” to a judge, sold all his property at auction, and would not allow him to see his most cherished human being during the final months of one of their lives. Now that Harold has died, Clay has nothing. He has been freed from his forced imprisonment at the nursing home, but all his possessions, his memories, his life – it’s all gone. It’s utterly gone.

This is what 53% of Mainers voted to allow last November. It’s what 30 other states have demanded be possible. It’s what the liars who claim the government has no interest in allowing same-sex marriage want. All these people, these majority Americans, desire that people be mistreated, abused, disregarded based upon sexual orientation.

Why is there no shame?

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Don’t visit Fulton, Mississippi

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Michael

Constance McMillen wanted to go to her senior prom with her girlfriend. Her school said no and canceled the event out of nothing more than pure bigotry. Upon the news, donations, scholarships, and invites to privately held, inclusive proms ensued. Soon a judge ruled that Constance’s rights had been violated, but he did not force the school to go forward with the prom for two reasons: 1) it was originally scheduled at a time too soon from when the ruling happened and 2) a private prom to which Constance was to be invited was being hosted. That didn’t stop her town of bigots from excluding her, though.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.

“They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”

Last week McMillen asked one of the students organizing the prom for details about the event, and was directed to the country club. “It hurts my feelings,” McMillen says.

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”

To make things worse, there’s actually a Facebook fan page called Constance quit yer cryin. Here are the sort of comments from her fellow students (comments that are now buried under posts from the decent people who have discovered this bigotry):

Mitchell Henderson: lulz rug munchers are hilarious. Come join me in hell, there’s ipods all around for dance parties. As long as you bring someone to scissor with.

Melody Carol: JAlthough, she asked and they said no, she should have just stfu and dealt with it. The school did not need to cancel the prom to shift attention from here. That’s just gay.

Brittany Kay Brown: jeremy, that’s your fault for not coming out of the closet. IAHS is not a bigoted school. This whole town is based on Christianity.

Caleb Waddle: i just wish she would shut up and quit makeing the freakin county stupid you say well its there fault but since when did the public do anything to you just shut the freak up already.

Traci Taylor: Carnathan who wants to c 2 girls makn out…especially one of them thats parents are totally against it.

Comments via PZ.

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Don’t ask, get told on

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Michael

A gay soldier in Kansas has been given the boot because she got legally married in Iowa.

Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian. The 28-year-old’s honorable discharge under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.

The Bigot Brigade PD basically ratted Newsome out because she wouldn’t cooperate with helping them find her spouse on an outstanding warrant. The BBPD claims they were running a proper investigation, but that’s an incredibly thin lie. They had no business reporting anything to the military. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome’s home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

“It’s an emotional issue and it’s unfortunate that Newsome lost her job, but I disagree with the notion that our department might be expected to ignore the license, or not document the license, or withhold it from the Air Force once we did know about it,” Allender said Saturday. “It was a part of the case, part of the report and the Air Force was privileged to the information.”

Steve Allender (adminInt3@rcgov.org) is a liar. The marital status of a third party in their investigation is irrelevant. It doesn’t take some half-ass cop out in the boonies to see that.

“This information was intentionally turned over because of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and to out Jene so that she would lose her military status,” said Robert Doody, executive director of ACLU South Dakota. The ACLU is focusing its complaint on the police department, not the military, and Newsome said she and her attorney have not yet decided on whether to file a lawsuit.

“The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ piece is important and critical to this, but also it’s a police misconduct case,” Doody said.

The BBPD has no idea what is appropriate action. It’s a department full of petty and vengeance to the citizen who crosses them, evidently. They should have had no expectation that a third party would help them with their investigation – but they did. They precisely expected Newsome to cow-tow to their demands to make their jobs easier. When she didn’t, they sought to ruin her career.

Of course, what would be an obvious case of bigotry without the overt bigotry?

Despite claiming that she had played by the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rules, she got married to her lesbian lover in Iowa after an activist state supreme court said she could.

Well, that was tell number one. A marriage license, Ms. Newsome, is a public record. If you want to keep your sexual preference hidden from your superiors, it’s best not to advertise it to the whole world.

This is from some dying dinosaur named Bryan Fischer. Apparently Fischer thinks gays want to keep who they are private. No, no, really. People just love faking it.

Second, when the police came to her home seeking to execute an arrest warrant on her lesbian “wife” (“husband?” — it’s hard to know these days), they found the wedding license lying right in the middle of the dining room table. If you want to keep your sexual preference a secret, there are better ways.

For instance, one could hide a marriage license behind a smarmy aura of asshole. To date, no one has been able to confirm Fischer’s marital status.

Rapid City, S.D. law enforcement officials saw the wedding license and did their legal duty by reporting what they had found to the military.

What law is that again?

Ms. Newsome received an “honorable discharge” in January. (This is not your father’s military: she committed what is a crime under the UCMJ, and has the word “honorable” on her discharge papers. Go figure.)

There must be a mistake on Fischer’s website. It says he’s from Idaho, not Uganda.

Newsome’s partner in sexual deviancy is apparently not a model citizen, currently being under indictment for one felony and three misdemeanor counts of theft. That’s another tip for Ms. Newsome — if you don’t want get outed, it might be best not to “marry” somebody who robs people.

Do donation baskets count as robbery since they purport to be used for good causes but instead continue to support religion?

Gates’ theory — you get to break the law as long as you don’t rat yourself out — is absurd. Imagine if we applied that to any other realm of law enforcement. You, sir, get to go right on holding up banks because all we have to go on is ironclad eyewitness testimony from tellers, managers and other bank patrons. Please, please, pretty please admit you did it so we can lock you up. Otherwise, we will be forced to let you go so you can rob and pillage some more.

Idaho simply must be a mistake.

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