Month: November 2008

Church-Sponsored Web Site Outs Anti-Gay Marriage Supporters

Trish

All those Mormons who are upset that their support of Proposition 8 in California — which took away the right of gay people to marry — is causing uncomfortable scrutiny of their quote unquote religion should take note. KnowThyNeighbor.org is going a step further by publishing the names of those who signed the petition to allow Florida’s version of Prop 8 (which also passed) on the ballot.

Some of those who gleefully supported this ill-conceived and backward amendment are crying foul. They never dreamed anyone would find out, they say.

The database is searchable, allowing you to see if your state senator or representative or governor signed. You can also check your own name for petition fraud. And if you suspect your disagreeable neighbor or homophobic boss signed, now you can find out.

Predictably, some of those who gleefully supported this ill-conceived and backward amendment are crying foul. They never dreamed anyone would find out, they say. But voter petitions are, quite properly, public record.

Sister sites spotlight similar efforts in Oregon and Massachusetts. The Florida site is sponsored by Jacksonville’s Christ Church of Peace.

Christ Church of Peace believes that all people are created equal by our loving Creator. Further, we believe that all tax-paying citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, deserve full equal rights, including the right to enter into civil marriage. And as such, are in agreement with our Florida Constitution.

This is about real, tax paying people being denied fair access to equal rights. Civil marriage is a legal institution, and confers more than 1,000 rights to couples.

Also listed are the five biggest financial contributors to the effort. While the California initiative was funded largely by Republicans and Mormons, Florida’s anti civil rights campaign was waged by Republicans and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family front groups. Note: I suspect there is a typo in the “as of” date, which lists March 31, 2006 instead of 2008.

Republican Party of Florida — $300,000.00
Florida Family Action — $70,946.86
Florida Baptist Convention — $25,000.00
Focus on the Family Action — $23,391.17
Judge Bill — $10,000.00

No, I have no idea who Judge Bill is.

This site is a goldmine of interesting information. Even more important, it sends a message that those who would deny others their rights can’t expect to shoot from the darkness.

Rationalizing the Anti-Gay Vote

Buck Banks

Despite its seemingly liberal-esque name, The Tallahassee Democrat is anything but. So it’s perhaps not surprising that one of its columnists wrote a piece that seems on the surface to be a well-considered view of the other side of the coin on Florida’s own recent vote to enshrine anti-gay bigotry in our state constitution.

Bill Coterell, who writes as the “Capitol Curmudgeon,” penned “Gay-marriage defense faces an uphill battle” for publication in the state capital’s newspaper today. He begins by alleging that economic boycotts such as those being proposed by gay activists in California don’t work, or if they do, they hurt the “little guy,” those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, rather than those who made whatever mischief is being protested.

The huge difference between the civil rights movement and the marriage controversy is that, at least in the backs of their minds, the segregationists knew they were wrong.

Then he slips in a little zinger that provides the first clue to where he’s going in the article:

In one ominous bit of modern McCarthyism, the artistic director of the California Musical Theater was forced out for donating $1,000 to the Prop. 8 campaign. Opponents of the ban announced that they would scour campaign-finance records for names of any other donors whose employers might be sensitive to picketing and boycotts. (emphasis added)

Well, there’s a reason campaign-finance records are public, and anyone donating to a campaign should know that they are making a public statement with their checkbook, and they must be prepared to take responsibility for it.

After musing about whether “provisions of constitutions [should] be for sale, via boycotts of states that won’t enact them or retaliatory firing of people who support them,” Cotterell mounts a classic non-sequitur argument:

Economic reprisal probably won’t amount to much, because people supporting gay marriage tend to be liberal. Liberals believe in church-state separation. Punishing a state for what some prominent members of a church did seems contradictory.

Whoa, there, Billy-boy, let’s examine your argument:

A) People who support gay marriage are liberal.
B) Liberals favor separation of church and state.
c) Therefore, liberals won’t punish an entire state for what some church does.

That doesn’t seem contradictory, just illogical and kind of dumb, Bill.

[…]

John Lennon Covers Everything in Five Minutes

Buck Banks

In 1969, a 14-year-old named Jerry Levitan talked his way into John Lennon’s Toronto hotel room, armed with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Impressed by the kid’s chutzpah, Lennon obliged him with a five-minute chat that covered war, peace, and the newly arrived Bee Gees.

Levitan teamed up with filmmaker Josh Raskin in 2007 to make “I Met the Walrus,” an animated film that turns Lennon’s thoughts into concrete, if trippy, images. It’s cool.

GOP Obama Supporter Proposes Prop 8 Compromise: Civil Unions for All, Leave ‘Marriage’ to Churches

Jon Ponder

The California Supreme court announced yesterday that it will hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the anti-gay amendment that overturned the right of gay people to marry in the state.
The Prop 8 debacle could be resolved by limiting the state of California prospectively to the issuance of civil unions for all couples, rather than marriage licenses, leaving marriage to the churches.
– Kmeic
In May, the same court, which is composed of seven Republicans and one Democrat — who are all elected for 12-year terms — decided 4-3 to strike down a law banning same-sex marriage.

The judges are being asked now to decide whether the constitution can be amended to make discrimination against a minority group legal, a move that directly violates the constitution’s foundational principle of providing protection of rights equally to all residents — or whether a change of that magnitude should have been made through the constitutional “revision” process instead. A revision to the constitution would have required a two-thirds vote by both houses of the legislature before going before the electorate as a ballot initiative.

In a recent San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmeic, who served as a high official in the Reagan and Bush I Justice departments but who supported Barack Obama this year, laid out a compromise to the constitutional debacle brought on by the passage of Proposition 8 that puts the solution in the hands of California’s governor:

[…]

Lo, the Intolerance of the Formerly Oppressed

Buck Banks

As Leonard Pitts Jr. pointed out in his column a few days ago, African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for president and in large majorities for gay marriage bans in states that had constitutional amendments on the ballot. Granted, as some commenters have pointed out, blacks are not a sufficient percentage of the population to have swayed the vote the opposite way, but such arguments miss the point — those who were so recently oppressed seem ever so ready to oppress the next guy for whatever reason.

Time.com/CNN currently is running this story on the issue.

Also, was it essential to the story for Time to interview only the African-American member of both a mixed-race gay couple and a mixed-race lesbian couple? Does the story seem fair and balanced?

Write-In Votes Reveal Keen Electorate

Trish

Hillary Clinton should have just held on until the write-in votes were cast. At least that’s what the results in Jacksonville show.

Write-in votes were released by the Duval County Supervisor of Elections office today, and there were some surprising results. First, the tally reached 736. Second, George W. Bush got two votes in favor of a third term. Next, not all of the candidates are still with us, and a few never were. Finally, Jesus out-polled God by 17 votes.

The full results:

  • Sen. Hillary Clinton (234)
  • Rep. Ron Paul (174)
  • None of the above (23)
  • Jesus (23)
  • Gov. Mike Huckabee (21)
  • Gov. Mitt Romney (14)
  • Gen. Colin Powell (8)
  • God (6)
  • Left blank but “Write-In” checked (6)
  • Undecided (5)
  • Vice Pres. Al Gore (4)
  • Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin [Local Potters House Church] (4)
  • Sen. Fred Thompson (4)
  • Obama (4) [Did these people not notice his name was already on the ballot?]
  • Mayor Rudy Giuliani (4)
  • Stephen Colbert (4)
  • Donald Duck (3)
  • Donald Foy [Local black Republican who recently switched parties to Independent] (3)
  • Mickey Mouse (3)
  • T. Boone Pickens (2)
  • Bill Cosby (2)
  • Blll McMillon [American Atheist party member] (2)
  • Bill Nye [The Science Guy?] (2)
  • Chuck Norris (2) [Siphoning the Huckabee vote]
  • Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice (2)
  • Frank Harden [Former radio announcer ] (2)
  • Franklin Graham [Son of Rev. Billy Graham] (2)
  • Lou Dobbs (2)
  • Pago Possum (2)
  • Gov. Sarah Palin (2)
  • Sen. Sam Brownback (2)
  • Gary Benzenburg (2) [?]
  • Pres. George W. Bush (2)
  • Sen. John Edwards (2) [Safe to say, one of these votes was not cast by Elizabeth]
  • Lee Goddard [Local newspaper sports writer] (2)
  • Tim Tebow [Florida Gators quarterback and first sophomore winner of the Heisman Trophy] (2)
  • Abstain (1)
  • Against All (1)
  • Alfred E. Newman (1)
  • Pres. Bill Clinton (1)
  • Bill O’Reilly (1)
  • Gov. Bill Richardson (1)
  • Bobby Bowden [Florida State University Football Coach] (1)
  • Bugs Bunny (1)
  • May the Best Man Win (1)
  • Me (1)
  • Morgan Freeman (1)
  • Mr. Bill (1)
  • Rep. Newt Gingrich (1)
  • None (Anarchy) (1)
  • Oprah (1)
  • Pat Buchanan (1)
  • Ralph Nader (1)
  • Hilary Bush (1)
  • Homer Simpson (1)
  • Jay Plotkin [Local state’s attorney candidate] (1)
  • Pres. Jimmy Carter (1)
  • Joe the Plumber (1)
  • John Doe (1)
  • Sen. Joe Lieberman (1)
  • Pres. Theodore Roosevelt (1)
  • They Both Suck ’08 (1)
  • Tiger Woods (1)
  • Tommy Chong (1)
  • Pres. Harry Truman (1)
  • Weird Al Yancovic (1)
  • William Crosby [?] (1)
  • Willie Nelson (1)

A Bailout Plan for Consumers: Use Treasury to Pay Off Americans’ Credit Cards

Jon Ponder

Last month, representatives from both the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Services Roundtable proposed reducing the amount of credit card debt held by financially troubled consumers by 40 percent:

The unusual joint request from the Financial Services Roundtable and the Consumer Federation of America highlighted the urgency of the situation: consumers — even those with strong credit records — defaulting at high levels on their credit cards, while banks battered by the credit crisis bleed tens of billions in red ink from the losses.

The reduction would have to be approved by U.S. Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, whose Treasury Department agency oversees national banks.

Here’s an even better idea: The Federal Reserve estimates that the total of all credit card debt in the United States is $900 billion. Why not use taxpayer money to pay off all consumer credit card debt in one fell swoop?

Hey, $900 billion is a steal in comparison with the money we taxpayers are shoveling out to Wall Street, the automakers and the citizens of Iraq.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I’ve got some in my fridge. It tastes fine to me.

— NASA engineer Bob Bagdigian, on a new $250-million water-recycling device that will process the International Space Station crew’s urine for communal consumption

Did Mormons Join Prop 8 Fight to Woo Christian Right after Romney, FLDS Debacles?

Jon Ponder

The presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, left, and the FLDS polygamy scandal exposed the schism between Mormons and Christian extremists

Many people within the Christian right view Mormonism as a demonic cult, primarily because they believe Mormon dogma asserts that Jesus was the brother of Satan. So why then would Mormons donate half the $40 million budget of the Christian extremists’ Proposition 8 campaign to end the right for gays to marry in California?
By revealing their hateful, almost gleeful aggression toward gays, any inroads Mormons may have made with Christian extremists in this sorry episode could well come at the cost of hobbling their efforts to join mainstream society forever.
Some are suggesting that the Mormon leaders were attempting to align themselves with the Christian right after tensions were exposed between them and evangelicals during the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, a lifelong Mormon whose grandfather had five wives:

The Southern Baptist Convention website categorizes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a “cult” that is “radically” different from historic, biblical Christianity.

A faith guide issued by the influential Christian right group Focus on the Family declares that “God cannot be identified … with the Mormon religion’s notion of god.” And each year, evangelical organizers behind the National Day of Prayer bar Mormons from speaking at their proceedings…

“It would be extraordinarily hard for mainline denomination people in the South to openly and strongly politick or be involved in a Mormon’s run for office,” said Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination and a fixture of the Christian right.

The division was so pronounced that Romney was forced to give a speech about his faith — an effort that was compared to John F. Kennedy’s speech on his Catholicism during the 1960 campaign. Unlike Kennedy’s speech, however, Romney’s was not well-received, mainly because it was delivered with all the emotional impact of a Powerpoint presentation.

It also hurt the Mormon cause when, two months after Romney dropped his presidential bid, a scandal erupted in which the state of Texas removed dozens of children from a compound operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a renegade polygamous Mormon sect. The visuals of the glassy-eyed “sister wives” in their 19th-century prairie dresses were a stark reminder of the Mormons’ history of polygamy, child sexual abuse and violence.

So did this spate of bad news lead the Mormon leaders to join forces with their Christian enemies, and, if so, was it a smart decision?

[…]