I had the urge to post a mini gay news roundup again, mostly because I hadn't done one here in a long time. Someone sent me an email the other night that reminded me why I blog in the first place -- given the ignorance and hatred out there spurred on by this Administration and its AmTaliban base.
I only get a few angry letters, and they are usually from the homo-haters that visit my blog, Pam's House Blend. This one is typical; I'll just share it (and that news roundup) with you, in its unedited form after the jump.
[Warning: sadly, references to carpet munching, pole smoking, fudge-packing and patty caking (whatever that is) are ahead.]
Subject: Amazing Website
Date: Sat, July 23, 2005 10:23 pm
Why is it that anytime someone disagrees with the homosexual lifestyle, they are a "homophobe?" You stupid ignorant homos who made up that word are so DUMB that the logic of the word as it relates to those who are accused of being one makes no sense. "Phobe" signifies fear, who is afraid of you warped people? Why dont you carry your nasty carpet munching and pole smoking selves to a secluded island and do all the nasty fudge-packing and patty caking you want to. Stay to yourselves so your nasty lifestyle will die out. The reason faggots and lesbos get such a bad name is because of dyke bitches like you who are always pointing fingers and looking for handouts. You call a guy, who happens to be a pator a homophobe because he is against homosexuality? I am no Bible scholar, but I do know there are various places in the Bible that teach against that perverted lifestyle. If this guy did not follow his Bible, then he would be going against God. Lets see support the rump rangers and butches or support God...no contest! and dont give me your crap about God being a loving and accepting God. He loves everyone, just not there lifestyle. I know this stuff and I am not even a Christian! Get a life you nasty muff diving dyke whore!
This kind of dumb*ss is exactly why I blog. It's great motivation. Not that I think I'll have any impact on this dude -- he's too far gone -- but if I can rile someone up by merely stating my observations about the world I live in, then it's great to have a venue to expose such wingnuttery and ignorance.
I get pleasure out of the fact that the visitor to my blog had to have wasted at least a half hour (given the intelligence level exhibited) wiping the drool from his chin and the keyboard while he thought about "muff diving" and "pole smoking" as he typed his vitriol.
He obviously had nothing better to do on a Saturday night, including stroking his own inadequate pole.
Karl Rove, Chimpy, Dobson and Falwell -- this is your base. You scam it, you own it.
AND NOW, on to the news roundup.
Many great diaries have been posted about the awful execution of two gay teens in Iran, so I won't cover that here, except to point to my entry at My Left Wing: Two gay teens executed in Iran - what you can do.
When will they stop trying the 'gay panic' defense?
Someone tried it again in New Zealand. It didn't work. Perhaps the defendant didn't realize that his history of paying to boink a man wouldn't be compatible with such a defense. Oh, and he stole from the guy he that killed.
A New Zealand jury convicted a college student of murdering a gay stamp collector after deliberating overnight. The defendant, Dick Faisauvale, 19, claimed that Robert Hunt sexually attacked him after inviting him home for a meal.
Faisauvale told the Auckland court he feared he was going to be raped, so he cut and stabbed Hunt 42 times. Faisauvale's attorney, Panama Le'au'anae, told the jury that Faisauvale was not a cruel, cold, conniving, calculated killer, but a young man who feared for his safety.
But the prosecutor, Philip Hamlin, told the court that Faisauvale was not as innocent as he claimed. Faisauvale even admitted he had previously been paid for sex by another man. Hamlin added that Faisauvale told a friend he took a knife to steal Hunt's TV, DVD and car. The court agreed with the prosecution, convicting Faisauvale of murder.
Queer-bashing at Latvia Pride parade
Bigot: Latvia's Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis
Anti-gay violence erupts, and again, officials, by publicly stating intolerance, fan the flames of bigotry.
Latvian police have arrested protesters after they shouted insults and threw eggs at people taking part in the Baltic state's first gay pride march. The few dozen marchers were outnumbered by hundreds of protesters who blocked the narrow streets of the capital.
Police were forced to alter the march route and to form a chain around the parade participants to protect them. The march had sparked outrage in Latvia and only went ahead after a court overturned a council ban on the event. Officials said that six of the protesters had been detained for their part in disrupting the march.
Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis had opposed the event, saying Riga should "not promote things like that". "For sexual minorities to parade in the very heart of Riga, next to the Doma church, is unacceptable," he told LNT television on Wednesday.
Closeted gay Alberta avoids the altar even after gay marriage is official
Partners Keith Purdy and Rick Kennedy (right) arrange to sign their marriage license. Chronicle photo by Kim Komenich
I knew, based on news reports and exchanges with Canadian Blenders that Alberta was extremely conservative. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein finally relented on his opposition to gay marriage once it was practically a done deal. But the truth of the matter is, the closet is still keeping gay residents from getting hitched. I thought this story was particularly interesting because of the juxtaposition between our Red state rednecks and the Canuck ones.
On the first day that gays and lesbians in this conservative Canadian province could get a license to marry, just five same-sex couples did so.
But this province is known as the Bible Belt of Canada and is the only one in the famously liberal nation that celebrates family values with an official holiday.
Canada on Wednesday became just the fourth country in the world to allow same-sex marriages, but many in Alberta simply aren't ready to accept so radical a notion. Eight of the nation's 10 provinces and one of its three territories have in recent years allowed gays and lesbians to marry, but most people in Calgary, which culturally is closer to the red states of the American heartland than the progressive cities of Toronto and Vancouver, are only grudgingly following suit.
"You could transplant here from Dallas and there's no difference, other than the accent and the weather," said Darcy Schack, the spokesman for the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Association in Calgary, who also runs a firm that builds oil drilling equipment. "It's very much an oil-driven town, very redneck and very conservative."
Calgary, a thriving city of about 1 million people roughly 450 miles northwest of Spokane, Wash., is the province's largest city, and it guards its image as a frontier town of rugged individualists. Even its gay community defines itself differently than most. Here, the most popular event of the year is not Gay Pride, but the Gay Rodeo, where serious cowboys ride bulls and serious drag queens wrestle steers.
The city's gays and lesbians say they are more cautious about protecting their sexual orientation in a province considered Canada's stronghold of resistance to same-sex marriage. And though they've won a right that would have gays and lesbians in many parts of the United States lining up to be married -- as was the case last year in San Francisco -- many here chose to stay home instead.
"It's a very closeted gay community," Schack said after learning the small turnout for marriage licenses Thursday. "One couple was planning to marry but ended up just going on holiday. A couple of people were looking at it but just backed off. It's a little shocking."
When the change came, it came quickly. Overnight, marriage licenses throughout Alberta went from denoting "Bride" and "Groom" to "Partner 1" and "Partner 2."
"Growing up, you knew that you would be unable to marry or, if you did, you would be unhappy," said Woody George, 31, who has been with his partner, Scott Middleton, for five years. The couple participated in a mock Newly Wed game Wednesday night at a Calgary bar, though neither they nor any of the participants were newly married. "Now that we can, it defines what Canada -- and I would think the United States -- is all about: Everybody is equal."
I added a few Freepi comments as a bookend.
Actual Freeper QuotesTM
"It's because their relationships are based on dysfunctional sex practices, and they require multiple partners to satisfy their unnatural lusts. Their strange unions have nothing to do with love or a life time commitment like a real heterosexual marriage."
"Calgary is THE best city in all of North America, in my humble opinion. And yet most of Alberta is so "redneck and conservative" that it makes Calgary look like a den of Communist homosexuals in comparison."
"So why doesn't the province secede from the sewer that is modern Canada?"
"This is not a shock. I seem to recall reading a recent article somewhere that stated that the "marriage" rate for homosexuals in one of the European countries where it has been legal for a while was far far below heterosexual married couples."
"There is a stronger secessionist sentiment in Alberta than in Quebec, but you don't hear about it very much because Alberta is so far west and doesn't get a lot of media attention. Ironically, the North American Free Trade Agreement has done more to keep Alberta in Canada than anything else. This is because NAFTA specifically prevents the Canadian government in Ottawa from implementing the kind of excessive control of the Alberta oil and gas markets that devastated the province back in the 1980s under Trudeau's National Energy Plan. The secessionist movement in Alberta will probably get stronger over time, but the reality is that Canada is such a large and sparsely-populated country that the Federal government in Ottawa isn't even capable of enforcing most of the laws it passes (hence the large-scale violation of the mandatory gun registry laws that goes on in Canada's rural areas)."
"I grew up in Ottawa, but have lived in the west since 1973 (Calgary since '86). I'd love Alberta to secede, especially to become the 51st State. If I knew of a credible separatist movement I'd join in a minute."
*Also, see this related story:
Prince Edward Island dragging its heels in implementing Canada's new same-sex marriage law.
Here's a "news" roundup over at Agape Press that has so many tasty tidbits couldn't resist sharing.
* ...Alan Chambers says leaving behind his life as a homosexual man was the equivalent of the Hebrews' biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt. Chambers, who is president of Exodus International, addressed hundreds of Christians at the 30th annual Exodus Freedom Conference, which bills itself as the largest annual gathering of former homosexuals. [I posted on this here.] He said homosexuality is "a bondage issue," but "there's an alternative." This week's gathering at a Southern Baptist conference center outside Asheville, North Carolina, brings together leaders of Exodus-affiliated ministries, people who identify themselves as formerly homosexual, and others linked to the movement for six days of speeches, workshops and fellowship. Rev. Jerry Falwell is to address the conference today.
* More crap from discredited homo-bigot "scientist" Paul Cameron [last post on this cretin, about homos and DUI levels, is here]: ..A Family Research Institute spokesman says a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals some interesting facts about what homosexuals and smokers cost the American taxpayer in terms of health-care expenses. The Institute's Dr. Paul Cameron has taken the CDC numbers and broken them down to an individual level. By his calculations, smokers cost U.S. taxpayers $156 billion a year. "For direct medical costs, days at work lost, all the indirect cost of fires and whatever, it figures out to a little over $3,000 per smoker, per year," he says. But on the other hand, Cameron notes, homosexuals cost American taxpayers $102 billion a year. And since there are so few homosexuals as compared to smokers, he says the individual cost is more than $25,000 per homosexual per year. This calculation is based on the AIDS factor alone, without taking other unhealthy aspects of the homosexual lifestyle into consideration, such as transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases or the high incidence of depression and attempted suicide among homosexuals.
* ...Not all conservatives are happy with President Bush's nomination of John Roberts to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice. Some prominent right-wing voices are raising questions as to whether enough is known about the nominee. One who has voiced that sentiment is columnist and best-selling author Ann Coulter. And another syndicated columnist, Harvard Law School student Ben Shapiro [Pam: and author of Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism is Corrupting our Future], shares Coulter's concerns about Roberts. "He's a stealth candidate," Shapiro asserts, "just like [David] Souter was. We don't know where he stands on Roe v. Wade. His only statement on Roe v. Wade came as a brief that he signed back in 1992 ... that cannot be guaranteed to reflect his actual views." The 21-year-old conservative [ATTENTION: Operation Yellow Elephant!] feels Bush should have chosen a judge more definitively to the Right and perhaps even controversial. Shapiro says Bush should have nominated someone like Judge Michael Luttig and forced the Left to filibuster a highly qualified candidate.
* What is the Center for Moral Clarity, and why is this boob running it?...A Christian minister and author who was a key voice among Evangelicals voicing biblical viewpoints during the presidential race last year indicates he is pleased with George W. Bush's choice of Judge John Roberts as a Supreme Court nominee. World Harvest Church's Pastor Rod Parsley is the author of the book Silent No More, which tackles American cultural issues from a biblical viewpoint. He also founded the Center for Moral Clarity during the 2004 election year. Since the announcement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement plans, Parsley says he has encouraged people of faith to be just that -- people who believe, by faith, that the President would keep his campaign promise to choose strict constructionist nominees, which Parsley feels Bush has done in Judge Roberts' case. "The President went through the list of all those candidates and put forth what he believes in his heart is the best nominee to the Supreme Court," the pastor says, "and I think everyone is just amazed at what a brilliant pick this was by our president." Parsley says Bush showed not only his brilliance but that "he's a principled man, a man of prayer," [Was Chimpy on his knees again?!] by nominating Roberts, a judge who was appointed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals only two years ago and confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a vote of 16-3, then unanimously confirmed again by the entire Senate.