Category Archive

Apparently this fellow named Larry Temple thinks that some regular ol’ workaday dad from the suburbs, who plays catch with his kids and grows veggies in his backyard, is “radical”.

Or maybe he thinks that whole “all men created equal” stuff that our country is founded on is “radical”….

Or maybe he’s just confused. And unsure. And insecure.

What is clear, however, is that Larry hasn’t figured out that fighting for fairness and standing up for justice, equality and honest-to-goodness, pure-as-sunshine love is actually the right thing to do — hardly “radical.”

That said, I wonder if Larry goes to gay bars with Petey LaBarbera and Dave Smith to help with “research”.

Perhaps Larry would give folks the honor of explaining why guys such as himself so loathe people that are in love with each other that they’re willing to denounce and discriminate against them — and hypocritically call their anti-family stance “family values”.

Regardless, thanks for the compliment and the link, Larry.

Dave Smith of strident gay-hatin’ fame has a post over at Illinois Review whining about tax dollars that are given to Planned Parenthood for women’s health services… In his frothy zest to get his screed against women online, he spins himself into a pretzel:

While Planned Parenthood claims that these funds are not used for abortion, obviously having this constant supply of tax dollars coming in as part of your budget makes all other areas of operation much easier to sustain.

Yes, obviously having this “constant supply of tax dollars” coming to provide the women’s health services for which those tax dollars are being granted would make one’s operation easier to sustain… That’s the point, Mr. “anti-family” Smith.

Not every woman can afford health care for herself — thus as the compassionate society we are we “care for our neighbors as we do ourselves.”

Does Mr. Smith complain about other doctors that receive grants in order to perform routine medical care?

(Yes, some — not all — Planned Parenthood clinics provide abortion services. Such medical procedures, as Planned Parenthood has stated, are funded through a combination of donations and direct fees to medical patients. But as most rational folks know, Planned Parenthood provides many more medical services than just the one Mr. Smith finds offensive including counseling, regular exams, disease treatment and prevention, etc.)

And how about those trillions of Mr. Smith’s tax dollars being spent on “collateral damage” for our president’s lies? Is Mr. Smith just as forcefully seeking to cut off that spigot of money and bring our intrepid, loyal troops home? Or does Mr. Smith somehow excuse and apologize for all that?

The other day political journalist Rich Miller noted that Illinois Review editor Fran Eaton was violating copyright laws by posting subscriber’s only material he had written for Capitol Fax. Today, she does the same by copying + pasting an entire Illinois Times article.

Even more interesting, Ms. Eaton labels the fact-based article about Illinois conservatives’ efforts to demonize Sen. Barack Obama (and, in particular, infopimp crass distortions about his church and his faith) “amazing” and “entertaining” as if it was somehow inaccurate.

In fact, the article has all the stock conserv-o-partisan players — Ms. Eaton, Dave Smith of the Illinois anti-Family Institute, Jill Stanek of “Debby Does…” fame, and a host more. It connects the dots on the history of Obama opposition from these comrades and also points to the many ways they are willing to twist and distort his words and the words of those with whom they like to tar and feather him as they try to advance their conservative agenda while desperately trying tearing him down any way they can.

Did Ms. Eaton forget that she herself wrote a post decrying Sen. Obama’s abiding faith and how she considers his faith dangerous to the conservative agenda? Other times, she has simply called Sen. Obama “dangerous” not because he actually is but because of her partisan-tinged misunderstandings of his church’s tenets. Yet here, in her post copying an article about her repeated partisan attempts at sliming Sen. Obama, she claims to be “humble”.

Humble? Ms. Eaton has been systematically info-pimping her schlock for well over a year.

As we saw with Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, conserv-o-partisans are avoiding the high negatives of their failed policies by attacking the Democratic candidate’s strongest attributes. In 2000, we got lies from George Bush wherein he falsely claimed Al Gore said he invented the Internet, etc. VP Gore of course never said that, but it didn’t stop then-candidate Bush from info-pimping this and similar lies in an effort to undermine Gore’s credibility and whitewash then-Gov. Bush’s own lacking credibility. Same in 2004 in which veterans who never served with Kerry (and even a few who had, despite the fact they sung a different, completely opposite tune before 2004) bald-faced lying about Sen. Kerry’s time in Vietnam.

Now, circa 2008, we have these myopic, hollow attacks on Sen. Obama’s former pastor, the hard truths to which his pastor has borne witnessed, his fellow church congregants and even Obama’s fundamental Christian faith which guides him each and every day…

But hey, at least we’re not talking about the effect of conservatives’ failed policies on the economy, our international standing, and more.

Update: Ill Review commenter “Marriage Defender” exclaims:

The Illinois Times is a left-wing Christian hating rag!

What a coinky-dink! I’ve repeatedly explained how Fran Eaton and other conserv-o-partisans write their own Christian hating screeds at that “right-wing rag” known as Illinois Review, among others. (Of course, one has to rely on those same partisans’ definition of “anti-Christian” in order to discuss such things….)

The idiocy continues, thanks to the Republican News Channel’s enabling.

Gay-hatin’ Dave “claims to be Christian, but doesn’t act like it” Smith of the misnamed Illinois “Family” Institute has a post over at Illinois Review mocking what he calls “San Fransicko Values” (pun likely intended) because he, like gay researcher Petey LaBarbera, don’t like gay Americans being, y’know, gay.

Two points on this. First, “far-left, liberalest San Francisco liberalis” Markos Moulitsas recently pointed out to the NRSC (which has itself also recently mocked “San Francisco Values”) the many contributions that “San Francisco Values” add to our nation, namely the Internet Economy:

I’m sure the NRSC’s computers use components made by San Francisco Liberals, use search engines run by San Francisco Liberals, utilize networking gear manufactured by San Francisco Liberals, run software applications written by San Francisco liberals, and maybe even phones (iPhones and Treos) and operating systems created and built by San Francisco Liberals. I’m sure NRSC staffers wear jeans invented by San Francisco liberals,  use services such as Netflix, TiVo, eBay and Intuit created by San Francisco liberals, and if they’re blogging, they’re likely using tools built by San Francisco liberals.

I went over to their website to see if any of it was designed or built by San Francisco liberals, and — gasp! — it was! In their code I found snippets from San Diego-based Webside Story, which also has an office in the San Francisco Bay Area. They use del.icio.us, a service owned by the San Francisco liberals at Yahoo. They use Twitter on the site, which quite tragically is based in San Francisco (full of San Francisco liberals, I bet). Then there’s Google Analytics. Google, of course, is just FULL of San Francisco liberals being yet another Bay Area company that dabbles in innovation, entrepreneurship, tolerance, and creativity — you know, “San Francisco values”. Guess who else Google owns? Yup — YouTube — which the NRSC ALSO uses on their site.

The damn thing is just LOADED with San Francisco-created widgets and tools! And it’s not just their website. Did you know that the NRSC has a Facebook page? I bet they didn’t even know that Facebook is HQ’d in the SF Bay Area! But apparently, we’re still supposed to fear San Francisco liberals.

Now, Illinois Review is a blog hosted by Typepad, a service of the company Six Apart. Guess where Six Apart’s American HQ is… Hypocrites like Dave Smith and the like don’t even realize those “values” they’re railing against are the very values of innovation, progress, democracy and liberty that allow them to blog their hate-filled rants in the first place.

San Francisco, California is just as much an American city as Boulder, Colorado or Omaha, Nebraska or Wheaton, Illinois whether Davey and his gay watching pal Petey care to acknowledge it or not.

The second point is that, as an Ill Review commenter noted, gay folks aren’t the only Americans who sometimes pursue their happiness to the nth degree. But far be it from hypocritical America-haters like Dave Smith to realize that our nation was founded as an experiment in acceptance (not just tolerance), equality and liberty — real American values that Mr. Smith, Petey the Gay Researcher and their ilk profess to despise as they rake in their enmity-inspired monetary donations.

We have real problems in this country — the housing market is imploding, millions lack healthcare, the economy is shakey and (oh yeah) we’re fighting two wars. What Americans do in celebration of their liberty should not be considered a problem worthy of so much angst and hate, let alone prompt more discussion than any of those real problems.

It’s as if these conservative gay researchers needed to make their Q4 budget goals and so they went ahead and infopimped a bunch of porn photos and video in order to goad a few more folks into parting with their “donations” in exchange for more bashing on their fellow Americans.

The strangely anti-family and arch-conservative Illinois “Family” Institute tells us that ‘homosexual monitor’ Petey LaBarbera is in dire need of some help to continue pursuing his constant supervision of homosexual activity:

Please support Peter and Americans For Truth — the only national group focusing solely on educating and alerting America to the real threat to freedom and children posed by the homosexual/bisexual/transgender movement. (emphasis added)

So, being gay is a threat to freedom but somehow the fact that conservatives are working their tushies off to deny gay Americans equal rights and protections under the law is not? What is wrong these extremists who insist on bringing their nanny-state attitudes into everyone’s bedrooms?

In an even more bizarre twist, that IFI alert was sent out in response to a Holiday Inn conference center which decided to cancel a gay-bashing event set up to raise funds for Petey’s Americans for Truthiness money machine. Of course, it was conservatives at Concerned Women for America of Illinois and Missouri who started the whole “don’t let Americans use hotels if you disagree with their bedroom practices” jig in the first place (Missouri’s CWA branch being, curiously enough, led by a man; and the very manly Petey himself was also a senior “analyst” for CWA). Apparently these cons have never heard of karma. (What was it that IFI said about a threat to freedom?)

Several folks have noticed that often the people who most rail against a given sexual proclivity — like Sen. Larry Craig and his long history of ardent gay-bashing and Rep. Mark Foley with his record of child “protection” work — seemingly do so because they are trying to force others to protect themselves from what they consider their own prurient interests. (What was it that IFI said about a threat to freedom?)

Of course, debate by kilobyte is one thing. Anti-gay conservative extremists in other states are going several steps further, and it’s only a matter of time before Petey’s allies cross the line (indeed, some already have). In Ohio, “concerned” nanny-state extremists have taken to invading Christian churches that believe God’s love is for all people, whether gay or straight. Those loving churches have graciously welcomed such belligerent protesters (who apparently forgot God’s command to love thy neighbor as thyself). I think it unlikely that such mean-spirited “their way or the highway” congregants would return that favor. (What was it that IFI said about a threat to freedom?)

In addition, Petey’s comrades from Kansas, the ultra-conservative Westboro Baptist Church followers, have taken to protesting at military funerals across the country, claiming our brave soldiers deserved to die because America has gay people living in our country. (What was it that IFI said about a threat to freedom?)

Why Petey wants to review gay porn, gay parades, and gay pageants as well as frequent gay bars, men’s bath houses and homosexual “adult” stores is between him and the friends he makes while he’s “researching” gay folks. I could care less. Petey is his own person, responsible for how he excercises his own liberty. But, why he doesn’t bother to “research” heterosexual proclivities, including those among his fellow fundamentalists, is curious (h/t Lloydletta).

In fact, the virulently anti-American Petey and his conservative friends obsession with other men (gay or not) is really quite strange overall… We’re all Americans, why can’t these people accept that?

(Why “anti-American”? They ardently oppose Americans who just happen to be gay. They are free to do so, just as we patriots are free to acknowledge their anti-American and anti-liberty stands. Call a spade a spade.)

Dave Smith has a post up at IFI decrying modern-day slavery (aka, human trafficking). Clearly no one is in favor of such a degrading and horrendous practice. It is a global problem with men, women and children being conned into horrific working conditions as modern indentured servants or outright kidnapped into myriad forms of slavery.

It happens on every inhabited continent with people taken from almost every country — including Americans being enslaved — and transported to a variety of other places and put to work as home servants, in farmfields, in sweatshops, on construction projects, and, yes, as Dave notes, even the illegal underground sex trade. Our current administration has talked about it some, but done relatively little to end these transgressions.

Dave being Dave, his focus is on the role of the illicit sex trade in human slavery — a significant number of the women and children enslaved are disgustingly put to work as unwilling sex workers.

Pimping is illegal. Indentured servitude is illegal. Prostitution is illegal. Fraud is illegal. Kidnapping is illegal. Rape is illegal. Forced labor is illegal. Slavery is illegal. Abuse is illegal. Child endangerment is illegal. Child pornography is illegal.

The laws being broken by these slave-traders are legion.

But Dave can’t just stop there. He felt compelled to conclude his reasonable post decrying slavery with a diatribe against free speech simply because he disagrees with that speech. He ends up railing against porn in general because some of the slave-traders have begun forcing women into unwilling pornography.

Fine. He doesn’t like porn. I get it — a lot of people don’t like porn. But for better or worse our Constitution allows consenting adults to film themselves doing whatever legal activities they may enjoy doing.

But why did Dave feel a need to take the very serious issue of slavery and veer off into a rant about porn? It demonstrates yet another of his strange fetishes that he twists his talk of such abuses into an admonition of those things which are allowed in our land of the free. Commenters to his crosspost at Illinois Review picked up that ball and started slamming the ACLU and other legitimate groups with their guilt-by-association ad hominems. It’s a strange jump from slavery to the American Civil Liberties Union but apparently not for these folks whose cups are brimming with hate for anything and everything they despise.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not defending the slave-traders. Far from it. They’re despicable cretans and ought to rot in a jail cell til they die and go to hell to burn for eternity. But I question why Dave and his commenters think it necessary to discuss an evil on which we all agree and then try to associate it with legitimate (even if unsavory) free speech.

And libertarians ally themselves with these people?

You can learn more about the modern-day slave trade at HumanTrafficking.org and the Salvation Army. You can also contact your Congressman, Senators, and the President to ask them to focus on this issue.

For those of you who are just as weary as I am of the Christianists’ constant blaspheming in this country in which they pretend to know God’s Plan and “hear” Him telling them things (let alone their intellectual dishonesty), you may be interested to read the “dialogue” I have been having with Dave Smith of the Illinois “Family” Institute.

Feel free to add your own thoughts over on that thread or start some new comments here.

It all started just before the weekend when Mr. Smith posted a demonstrably false conclusion about marriage licenses in Massachusetts, claiming that a decline in marriage licenses among gay Bay Staters was evidence that ‘the marriage trend was over’…

Actually, the stats Mr. Smith refer to really just indicate that most of the pent-up demand for marriages has been met in the past few years (and that couples don’t like getting married in the cold months between January and April — that’s also true of heterosexuals). Someone equally biased in a different direction might look at marriage trends among heterosexuals and falsely conclude there is no ‘new’ interest because there is no significant increase in hetero marriage licenses. Which, while true that heterosexual marriage licensing remains fairly consistent, it’s entirely untrue that it’s because of any more or less interest. It’s simply a steady rate, much like the current rate for gay marriage licensing will prove to be in Massachusetts now that it is leveling off. Sheesh.

You’ll note that despite his numerous comments, Mr. Smith never actually accounts for his wildly inaccurate conclusion.

Logic seems to escape Dave Smith of Illinois Family Institute. But, when does logic ever play a role for a zealot who has a chance at being overly partisan (especially when there’s a little hate-mongering to also be had)?

The rabidly anti-gay Mr. Smith thinks marriages have “hit the skids” in Massachusetts. Now, the number of marriages have indeed significantly fallen off but the reason is easy for any rational person to figure out.

Mr. Smith pulls out a few statistics to draw his completely bizarre conclusion:

Nearly two-thirds of the 9,695 marriages that have taken place took place in 2004, the year the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision took effect. Some 6,121 homosexual marriages took place in 2004, with 2,060 same-sex couples marrying a year later in 2005, and even fewer, 1,427, in 2006. As of late April of this year, only eighty-seven couples decided to take advantage of the state’s issuance of marriage licenses to homosexual partners.

The numbers are extremely small as compared to the state’s population. Homosexual partners in Massachusetts seem to have lost interest in the institution of marriage — as it is not being sought after by the gay community. (emphasis added)

“Hitting the skids” and “lost interest” have nothing to do with it and is an entirely false conclusion.

Rather, after years of not being able to marry their one true love, these committed couples were finally granted the right by the state of Massachussetts and thousands of Bay State couples quickly jumped at the chance. Now that all those adoring couples who wanted to marry are married there is less ‘pent-up’ demand for marriage licenses.

Duh.

Strangely enough, Mr. Smith is the head of an organization that claims to be pro-family, pro-love, pro-marriage and pro-commitment. Why then does he rail against those very things? Is it simply because these nearly 10,000 pro-family, pro-love, pro-marriage and pro-commitment couples just happen to be gay?

The answer, sadly, seems to be yes. In his hatred for gay Americans, Mr. Smith attempts to find (even to “make up”) any excuse he can for why they should not be allowed to marry their soulmate despite the clear fact that heterosexual couples (such as myself and my wife) have been completely unaffected by marriages in the Bay State whether between homosexuals or heterosexuals.

In fact, my wife finds it romantic to see so many happy couples who are positively ebullient as newlyweds and we exchange knowing glances at each other whenever we see photos of their nuptials on TV or in print. Their love has made our love grow that much stronger. Then again, unlike Mr. Smith and the Illinois Review editor who approved the posting of his guest essay, we don’t hate gay people so their love would not cause us such consternation in the first place.

Mr. Smith didn’t stop there unfortunately. He piled on a bit more hatred for gays at the conclusion of his diatribe:

These numbers are not surprising as monogamy has never been the norm in the homosexual lifestyle, especially among homosexual males.

Mr. Smith would define ‘monogamy’ as having only one single sexual partner during your entire lifetime (and abstaining until marriage at that). Given that definition, monogamy is not the “norm” among heterosexuals either — just ask the Republican presidential candidates and their ex-wives and ex-mistresses.

But far be it from Mr. Smith to actually think such dirty, even if honest, thoughts when he has a chance to ooze such vile animus against his fellow Americans simply because of his interpretation of his book of faith.