Civil Liberties • LGBTQ • Life and Life Only

Gay Marriage as a Wedge Issue: Bigotry Hits a Tipping Point

April 19, 2009
by Celeste Fremon
80 Comments

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The Colbert Coalition’s Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
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“When the gay community is granted personal freedoms, ours get taken away. How? Shhhhh. Did you see all that lightening?”
– Stephen Colbert, April 16, 2009

*******************************************************************************************************
Frank Rich’s Sunday column, The Bigots’ Last Hurrah, is dead on. The gay marriage haters—while still noisy and able to wield some power here and there (as we saw with Prop 8)—are a waning force. The tipping point has arrived. It may take another decade or more for the laws to catch up with the change in the cultural/historical weather. But the sea change is occurring right now.

Rich opens his column with a description of the preposterous ad (embedded above), which is the anti-gay marriage fanatics’ unintentionally hilarious response to the legalization of gay marriage in Kansas and Vermont. (The wickedly terrific Stephen Colbert parody is embedded just under the original.)

I’ll let Frank Rich say the rest. Here are some clips.

Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.

“Gathering Storm” was produced and broadcast — for a claimed $1.5 million — by an outfit called the National Organization for Marriage. This “national organization,” formed in 2007, is a fund-raising and propaganda-spewing Web site fronted by the right-wing Princeton University professor Robert George and the columnist Maggie Gallagher, who was famously caught receiving taxpayers’ money to promote Bush administration “marriage initiatives.” Until last month, half of the six board members (including George) had some past or present affiliation with Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. (One of them, the son of one of the 12 apostles in the Mormon church hierarchy, recently stepped down.)

Even the anti-Obama “tea parties” flogged by Fox News last week had wider genuine grass-roots support than this so-called national organization. Beyond Princeton, most straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont. There was no mass backlash. At ABC and CBS, the Vermont headlines didn’t even make the evening news.

Read the rest, but Rich’s last ‘graph is the important one:

As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid

And that’s the simple truth.

By the way, I notice that, at posting time, the Gathering Storm has under 500 thousand viewers on YouTube. The Tea Parties, while certainly gathering some kind of minor populist momentum, still had approximately one third the number of attendees nationwide as those who showed up at a single location (downtown Los Angeles) for the Gran Marcha of March of 2006.

However, there was one truly stupendous populist wave that broke worldwide last week.

And that is the response to this right here.

PS: I NEVER get tired of watching it.

80 Comments

  • Interesting that this outfit is little more than an “elite cabal.” Who knew ? The sheer dishonesty of this cluster of Phd-festooned Goons is stunning. (Reminiscent of the neo-con intellectual elites whose deliberate dishonesty was strategy, rooted in Straussian contempt for “the little people” who could only be prodded to accept the essential “ubermensch” agenda if it was packaged as an imaginary emotional narrative.

  • “…..strategy, rooted in Straussian contempt for “the little people” who could only be prodded to accept the essential “ubermensch” agenda if it was packaged as an imaginary emotional narrative…”

    Very well said.

  • Florida must be one big “elite cabal” when it voted in 2008:
    Yes – 62.1%
    No – 37.9%

    “This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”

    Passed in Florida in 2008
    62.1

  • Gathering Storm – Accurate Says Washington Post

    — A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.

    — A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

    — Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

    — A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

    We are not required to pay the price for other people’s religious views about us,” said Jennifer Pizer, director of the Marriage Project for Lambda Legal, a gay rights legal advocacy group.

    “In their role as a participant in the marketplace, they are being required to do that in a non-discriminatory way,” said Brian Moulton, Human Rights Campaign senior counsel.
    Battles are increasingly including private businesses. Last August, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Guadalupe Benitez, who is a lesbian, when she sued the North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group after doctors said their religious beliefs prevented them from artificially inseminating her.

    The court ruled that North Coast Women’s Care did not have a free-speech right or a religious exemption from the state antidiscrimination law.

    Sometimes, organizations that don’t wish to serve gays give in rather than go to court.

    The online dating site eHarmony agreed to provide gay and lesbian matchmaking services to settle a complaint by a gay New Jersey man accusing it of discrimination. The new site, CompatiblePartners.net, started Tuesday.

    “People seem to say that if you enter the world of commerce, you lose all your First Amendment rights” to free exercise of religion, said Jordan Lorence, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that has represented several businesses. “They . . . have become nothing more than vending machines, and the government can dictate the conditions under which they dispense their goods and services.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/09/AR2009040904063.html?hpid=topnews

  • Yeah, and racist restaurateurs were forced to serve black people…terrible violation of their sincerely held beliefs. What is the world coming to ?

    Do you really believe that any damned fool dogma couched in “religious belief” trumps civil rights ? The hysteria generated by Gathering Storm is dishonest in that it is vague and hyperbolic, conflating commerce with religion, and talks about changing the way “I live.” This is total bullshit. There is no difference between this “personal choice” smokescreen and the arguments against the civil rights bill or Brown v The Boad. Put it on the line that the issue is discrimination and that you believe in it.

  • Fuck the voters of Florida. A majority of Florida voters supported segregation at one time. The courts took them on because they were a disgrace to the nation.

  • Your 14 year old daughter is picked up for a date by an 18 year old male.
    Your 14 year old son is picked up for a date by an 18 year old Gay male.

    As the parent how do you feel about the dates?

  • Liberals love to give labels to conservatives to make them appear evil. Rather than being a moral supporter of the traditional meaning of marriage, I’m a bigot if I don’t accept a perverted version.

    Originally, homosexuals just wanted to be left alone, then acceptance, then to teach our young kids, then to be boy scout leaders, then disproportionate amount of the medical research dollars, then adoption, then speech codes, then special protections under civil rights statutes, and now marriage. There’s no end to “just all they want” and there’s no end to their political attacks and personal destruction of anyone with the nerve to say that they are wrong. Honestly, what’s next from them? A new federal cabinet position for their causes?

    This is not a civil rights issue. It’s an issue of morality. But, the Sodomites have formed a powerful political force to which only the brave will stand up against them.

    Quit attacking and mislabeling people who stand up for their moral convictions by shining light on perversions. If homosexuals are entitled to protest, then so are people who uphold morals and traditional values.

  • Pokey, in answer to your question about the dates and the 14-year-olds, I’d feel equally unhappy about both.

    14-year-olds should not be going out with 18-year-olds. It’s asking for trouble.

    But would I suddenly have a worse knot in my stomach because somehow the gay 18-year-old was, by definition, up to no good, and the straight 18-year-old was just a tad older, but such a sweet boy..?

    NO. That’s preposterous.

    But in answer to the real question: how would I feel if my son were gay?

    I’d feel very, very sad—precisely because of the responses expressed on this thread.

    I’d be filled with fear and sorrow because I’d understand that he (or she, if it was a lesbian daughter) would have to contend every day with people who regarded his very existence as immoral and a perversion.

    But I would also understand to the core of my being that the only immorality and perversion in the situation is on the part of those who would condemn or revile him in any way.

    Shame on all of you.

    And while we’re on the subject, Woody and Pokey, how would you feel if your son was gay? How would you treat him? What would you tell him? How would you advise him to deal with the parents who looked at him as a pervert?

    And since gay teenagers are four times more at risk for suicide than straight teenagers (some studies say as much as 7 times more at risk, but four times seems to be the median), how would you help make sure that he wasn’t made to feel so hopeless about himself by people with your attitudes, that he killed himself?

    Just curious.

    By the way, transgender teens are the most at risk for suicide or murder. What if, heaven forbid, you had a son who was a transgender kid? Would you just hand him the gun and tell him to be done with it?

  • BTW, Celeste, I don’t need a lecture from you and your saying shame on me for my holding widely held religious and moral views, just because you’re intolerant and don’t hold the same.

  • If your moral and religious views demonized…say, blacks or women—if because of those views, it means that you feel morally bound to impinge on the rights and well-being of others, you still remain the intolerant one.

    By the way, speaking of hypothetical, if Jesus showed up in 2009, where do you think he’d be on the subject of gays? Demonizing and marginalizing them?

  • Thanks for answering my hypothetical question!

    I’d feel equally unhappy about both.
    We all know you’re lying to yourself about this answer.
    I’d be filled with fear and sorrow
    This is the honest answer that we would all have.

    You are well aware of the consequences of a Gay lifestyle and the complications that are entailed and would morn what this could possible mean for your son even if you moved tomorrow to the Netherlands.

    the gay 18-year-old was, by definition, up to no good

    I would assume that both 18 year olds boys found my 14 year olds sexually attractive, but would not assume that the Gay 18 was up to (MORE) No Good as you implied.

    The fact that you implied this indicates that you believe that most of the population would view the 18 year old Gay male more suspiciously then the 18 year old straight male and you would probably be right in your assumption. NAMBA and other groups have not done anything to dissuade this opinion.

    what would you tell him
    I believe that Sexual Preference is a continuum and not a binary condition and that, a decision to head down this road should not be taken lightly. We all know many people that have experimented with Gay life style but later became heterosexual. We also know confirmed gay individuals.

    As a result I would be VERY HONEST with my son, explaining what the gay lifestyle entails and what this would possible mean for his life, but re-assure him that I would always love him and be proud of him. I would encourage him to NOT head down this road unless he was sure to his core that he was Gay, re-assuring him again of my love and support.

  • Celeste, everyone has the same rights, whether or not you want to accept that. What’s wrong is the extension of the term “rights” into a “societal stamp of approval,” which I choose not to give.

    I also don’t approve of incest, pedophilia, and beastiality, although I suspect that there are people who would call me intolerant for holding that belief and would act the same way that you’re acting to me in your defense of homosexuals.

    Also, you’re trying to connect homosexual “rights” with affirmative action programs for blacks and women and with issues like the perverted ruling okaying the killing of unborn babies. Those are not rights as the laws intended.

    Sometimes these special “rights” programs are expanded and diguised as “diversity,” a stupid term meaning that people should be judged based upon their “group affiliation” and not upon their individual qualifications. I believe that is going against the Constitution rather than upholding it.

    Anyway, people don’t choose to be black or to be female. People can choose not to live a homosexual lifestyle.

    Also, where did this “well-being” term get dragged into the discussion about alleged rights? I would say that the “well-being” of a person is better when he chooses to live a moral and righteous life.

    I don’t know the limits on what you would accept, but am I shameful if I don’t accept everything that you do? Actually, I would say that people are better off under my definition of well-being than yours, so your beliefs result in them being worse off.

    If anything, I would want to help people grow in desire to to change and become more normal rather than get worse. You would oppose any program to help homosexuals cast off their burden.

    From a legal perspective, we all can defend Constitutional rights as defined by original intent rather than by threatened lawmakers or activist judges. We may want to help with the well-being of others. But, there is no law saying that we have to, and there is no law saying that the U.S. guarantees “well-being.” You simply have the opportunity to pursue it.

    So, forgive me for not approving the killing of babies and for not approving perversions.

  • Liberals love to give labels to conservatives to make them appear evil.

    Actually, conservatives do a pretty good job being evil, e.g., the torture memos.

  • Liberals think that making a terrorist wear pink underwear is torture unless it was a lifestyle choice.

  • Celeste, this came up in another discussion regarding the Annenberg School roughing up of a journalist, but it seems to apply here with your intolerant attacks on intolerance.

    …The left’s double-standard on speech goes back to Herbert Marcuse. A new left icon, Marcuse taught ‘60s radicals that it was their moral duty to censor the right.

    In his essay, “Repressive Tolerance” (published in 1965), the Marxist scholar explained that because conservatives are “oppressive,” revolutionaries should be “intolerant towards the protagonists of the repressive status quo.”

  • JN, whatever I would say, you wouldn’t accept.

    I do think that this exchange at another site, but on a different topic, may help to explain why you can’t see what I do.

    Comment:

    I learned long ago that the ability to differentiate between and among various values, realities, and choices was a mark of a civilization that was farther along the path of being developed and sophisticated (in the truest sense), and that an inability or lack of interest in differentiation was a mark of a more primitive, “back to the primordial ooze” kind of society.

    This point was made clear long ago in a commentary on a rather silly fad of the time called “unisex,” where men and women (especially in the Nordic countries, as I recall) tried to look exactly alike in their haircuts, clothing, and style. I can’t remember exactly who wrote it, but it was a William Safire-type piece in the New York Times magazine, I think.

    At any rate, rising to the intellectual and emotional challenge of learning to differentiate among and between things and ideas, etc., is hard work, and a job many Americans and others seem unwilling to accept. It seems far simpler and easier not to bother with it and just assume that everyone and everything has equal and eternal value. And of course, many people feel this way right at the same time that they’re differentiating like crazy in the supermarket, the clothing store, and the dating personals.

    Calling people to a higher level of thinking and behaving is indeed a frustrating thing.

    A Reply:

    Very interesting point. Yes, that is precisely what liberalism is about. It’s so much easier to have a simple phrase or formula (“Everyone’s equal,” “All people want the same things,” “All people long for freedom,” “Discrimination is always wrong”), than to try to understand and articulate the nature of things, people, cultures.

    According to Eric Voegelin in The New Science of Politics, it is the very complexity of the world, specifically the complexity of the world as articulated by Christianity, that drives people to simplistic ideologies that basically reduce the world to a single idea and its evil opposite. Liberalism is one such ideology. ….

  • Oh.

    So, you’re civilized and I’m not. Thanks for clearing that up!

    This is actually a very interesting argument you make: accepting differentiation in sexual lifestyle and identity is simplistic an ideological, but demonizing gays as immoral transgressors against your one true way is an example of embracing complexity and diversity.

    When I say it’s “interesting,” I mean it’s deeply contradictory.

    (I’m trying to be especially polite here. I can tell you’re pretty worked up about this topic.)

  • Randy, conservatives didn’t torture anyone. Those were CIA operatives, like Valerie Plame.

    Woody, I said torture memos. You know what a memo is? It’s something people write. The justifications for torture were written by conservatives.

  • (I’m trying to be especially polite here. I can tell you’re pretty worked up about this topic.)

    The word you’re looking for here is aroused.

  • it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.

    Very few of the people who oppose gay marriage are part of any movement. Rather, they are responding to the continued push of the Gay movement to topple one part of society after another.

    Gay marriage forces religious organizations to stop providing very useful services (adoption, for example) because otherwise they will be forced to treat gay couples as normal adoptee parents. Gays have tried to destroy the Boy Scouts, another valuable organization, because it had the temerity to not cave in to Gay demands. For gay activists, if they can’t have it, nobody else can either.

    By the way, speaking of hypothetical, if Jesus showed up in 2009, where do you think he’d be on the subject of gays? Demonizing and marginalizing them?

    He sure wouldn’t be encouraging sodomy. He probably wouldn’t be demonizing them either, he’d be forgiving them and asking others to do the same.

  • “the continued push of the Gay movement to topple one part of society after another”

    John Moore is badly in need of Depends…

  • The quality of Lawrence Auster’s thought:

    Here’s some commentary from Lawrence Auster, whose blog Woody linked in his cowardly and incompetent comment #20:

    “I think that of all the issues that may force conservatives to start looking for ways to secede–literally–from American society, the forced approval of homosexuality and forced association with homosexuals is at the top of the list. When a society not only approves homosexuality, but approves it officially and requires approval of it (as happens symbolically in Chapter 19 of Genesis) that society has passed a line into sheer evil that spells its doom and makes it impossible for decent people to support it.”

    “Straight” talk from the Hate-America Right, also known as Woody’s World !!! Lawrence Auster and the rest of these flaming crazies are officially invited to depart the premises and go fuck themselves. Would be good riddance. The sooner the better.

  • Randy, give me a break. You’re saying that conservatives are evil because of the torture “memos” rather than the torture? I don’t buy that as your intent from comment #15 for a minute. Plus, those memos were not written by conservatives.

    But, if you want to evaluate the memos, you can’t be selective. Look at ALL of the memos.

    Now that the memos showing the rulings of interrogation techniques have been released, the Obama administration should release additional documents that show what the interrogations yielded to make it an “honest debate,” former Vice President Dick Cheney told FOX News on Monday.

    …”One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort” (how many American lives were saved), Cheney said.

  • reg, my comment was “cowardly and incompetent?” That seems rather subjective on your part. It takes courage today to stand against politically correct and destructive attitudes like yours. Most people, the real cowardly ones, give in to avoid pain from the left rather than stand up for principles and truth.

    People like you are so hypocritical. It’s not okay to condemn homosexuals or Islam, but it’s open season on Christianity.

    Before homosexuals formed a united political movement and showed economic strength, people weren’t afraid to discuss their disease honestly. Even the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality on its official list of mental disorders, when it had the nerve to not be politically correct.

    Homosexual acceptance is based upon force rather than any reality of their problem.

    Get some help for your problem, reg, rather than demand approval.

  • “JN, whatever I would say, you wouldn’t accept.”

    Maybe chickenshit would be a more appropriate word. You run away from questions all the time when you’ve got nuthin’. You’re a warped little man.

  • I answer questions honestly and can choose to not waste time in arguments with people who are incapable or unwilling to accept another side. Calling me chicken just shows that you’re stupid. You homosexuals never give up on your personal attacks.

  • You’re saying that conservatives are evil because of the torture “memos” rather than the torture? I don’t buy that as your intent from comment #15 for a minute. Plus, those memos were not written by conservatives.

    That’s precisely what I meant, peckerwood.

    If you don’t think David Addington, John Yoo, Stephen Bradbury and Jay Bybee are conservative, then I hope your mama helps you get your shoes on each morning, since you can’t tell left from right.

    As for Cheney’s comments, I don’t give a flying f^%$ what or if Cheney thinks. Torture is a crime against humanity. Nothing justifies the use of it. That’s the law.

    reg,

    Woody and John Moore are positively tumescent with rage about gay marriage.

  • Best of Woody’s Woodies aimed in my direction yet: ” You homosexuals never give up on your personal attacks.”

  • Randy, if you want to label an entire group from a select few whose affiliation is not widely known or accepted, then how are you and the Unabomber getting along? Oh, wait. He murdered – not tortured – people, but it was okay because it was for a liberal cause. No, let conservatives define conservatives.

    – – –

    reg, I would say “bite me,” but you would enjoy it.

    – – –

    Do you guys really want to know who has their panties in a wad over the homosexual marriage debate? It’s not conservatives. It’s the homosexuals and you guys who want to redefine marriage.

    There was a time when we didn’t have to worry about the homosexual agenda, because we could count on them being ashamed enough to not want anything but to be left alone…sort of like an unwritten “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

    Once sin is widely approved by society, then that society’s days are numbered.

  • “reg, I would say “bite me,” but you would enjoy it.”

    12 years old !!!! (with apologies to intelligent 12 year olds.)

    The increasingly degenerate, deranged Hate America Right speaks: “Once sin is widely approved by society, then that society’s days are numbered.”

  • Versus reg’s mature 13-year old comments – Fuck the voters of Florida, John Moore is badly in need of Depends…, Best of Woody’s Woodies…

  • reg responds to my comment: The increasingly degenerate, deranged Hate America Right speaks: “Once sin is widely approved by society, then that society’s days are numbered.”

    The American Right cares for America. It’s the Left, like Obama, who is critical of our country with every chance. The left hates our country and wants to eliminate people with Christian values.

    Let’s see how reg’s beloved Left speaks and acts. Maybe Randy would find this pertinent to his site. He can write on Brazil and reg can cover the homos.

    Prominent Pro-Family Activist Julio Severo Flees Brazil to Escape Charges of “Homophobia” – April 9, 2009

    Julio Severo, one of Brazil’s most prominent pro-life and pro-family activists, has fled Brazil to escape federal prosecutors who sought him following a complaint of “homophobia” filed against him for his unfavorable coverage of the nation’s Gay Parade in 2006, according to Severo.

    …”Therefore, faced with this absurdity, I was forced to leave the country with my family: a wife in the advanced stages of pregnancy and two little children,” Severo writes on his blog. “We are now in a place that is completely foreign to us. What choice did we have?”

    And….

    WND: Brazilian president seeks to “criminalize homophobia” – April 14, 2009

    The president of Brazil says “opposing” homosexuality makes you a sick person, and he believes such thoughts need to be criminalized.

    It was only a few decades ago when the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, before it succumbed to a pro-“gay” campaign to discontinue that definition.

    Now Brazilian chief Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who won a narrow re-election following a cash-for-votes scandals, has held the First National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals to condemn the biblical belief that homosexuality is wrong.

    Lula, on June 5, not only officially opened the event to promote homosexuality across his nation but also issued a presidential sanction for the conference.

    Calling for “the criminalization of homophobia,” he said opposition to homosexuality is “perhaps the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head.”

    He said “prejudiced” people need to “open their minds and clean them.” ….

    All they want is to be left alone or acceptance?

    Consider this fair warning.

  • Woody (aka Homus Erectus…but just barely) – Not as revealing as your notion that calling someone homosexual is a put-down. You’re a nasty little bitch – and probably, like most flaming homophobes, a sad-ass closet case. I’ve never had this obsession with the evil of homosexuality. Frankly, it’s not something I think about much except when confronted with bigots who conspire to make other people’s lives miserable because of some combination of ignorance and cowardice. You’re very small. Very, very small.

  • “wants to eliminate people with Christian values”

    I’d love to “eliminate” pondscum such as yourself – people who hate the relatively liberal, tolerant America that actually exists among the majority and foster such nonsense as “secession” because their panties are twisted – but your values are no more “Christian” than the Grand Kleagle was “Christian.” By “normative” standards, bigots such as yourself are increasingly the real deviants. Worst sin – you’re boring.

  • Dream on John “Kill the journalists” Moore. You’re a homphobic dwarf and you both bore the shit out of me.

    Dead Men Walking !!!!

  • Randy, if you want to label an entire group from a select few whose affiliation is not widely known or accepted, then how are you and the Unabomber getting along? Oh, wait. He murdered – not tortured – people, but it was okay because it was for a liberal cause. No, let conservatives define conservatives.

    Let me see, there’s strawmen, tu quoque and non sequiturs in that comment. I’m sure there’s probably a community college there in Atlanta that has a logic course you can take. maybe then you can start arguing with the grown-ups.

    Ted Kaczynski was never working in the White House, so your comparison is false on its face, as usual.

    The pro-torture commentariat based on everything I have seen is coming from the starboard side of the political spectrum. As you have defended waterboarding, if the shoe fits . . .

  • The pro-torture commentariat based on everything I have seen is coming from the starboard side of the political spectrum. As you have defended waterboarding, if the shoe fits . .

    It’s because the right is, well, correct.

  • Randy: Ted Kaczynski was never working in the White House

    Kaczynski’s evil twin worked in the White House – Al Gore.
    Did Al Gore say it? Or was it the Unabomber?
    It may be more difficult to decide than you think.

    Randy, you’ve gone to a lot of effort to avoid admitting that your comment linked all conservatives with torture, oh, I mean the torture “memos.”

    – – –

    reg: You’re a nasty little bitch; Worst sin – you’re boring; you both bore the shit out of me.

    That says it all about reg. The snippy name calling, saying that being boring (to him) is worse than the KKK, and his fantasies about John and me “boring” him from the rear.

    reg, you prove everything that I say about the fanatic attacks of homosexuals against people who stand up for principles and their religious beliefs. Tolerance only goes one way to you.

  • “fantasies about John and me ‘boring’ him from the rear.”

    Proof of my worst fears about “Woody” – aka Homo Impotentus. Too bad he had to lift the curtain on his sad little psyche.

  • It’s because the right is, well, correct.

    It’s a crime against humanity and it’s illegal under US. Whether the right – in your opinion – is right is irrelevant. What part of illegal don’t you understand.

    Woody’ latency is showing.

  • reg, you’ve been outed, but don’t think for a minute that I bat on your team. Just be glad that some black women will marry effeminate men.

    – – –

    Randy, Obama authorized blowing off the heads of three pirates who were holding one American hostage, but you oppose the “torture” (your words) of one Islamic terrorist that resulting in saving thousands of lives in L.A. That seems somewhat of a contradiction.

  • Randy, Obama authorized blowing off the heads of three pirates who were holding one American hostage, but you oppose the “torture” (your words) of one Islamic terrorist that resulting in saving thousands of lives in L.A

    Woody,

    I can’t believe that you are that butt stupid.

    Here’s something from the Bush White House webpage:

    Khalid Shaykh Muhammad was the individual who led this effort. He initiated the planning for the West Coast plot after September 11th, in October of 2001. KSM, working with Hambali in Asia, recruited the members of the cell. There was a total of four members of the cell. When they — KSM, himself, trained the leader of the cell in late 2001 or early 2002 in the shoe bomb technique. You all will recall that there was the arrest of the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, in December of 2001, and he was instructing the cell leader on the use of the same technique.

    After the cell — the additional members of the cell, in addition to the leader, were recruited, they all went — the cell leader and the three other operatives went to Afghanistan where they met with bin Laden and swore biat — that is an oath of loyalty to him — before returning to Asia, where they continued to work under Hambali.

    The cell leader was arrested in February of 2002, and as we begin — at that point, the other members of the cell believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward. You’ll recall that KSM was then arrested in April of 2003 — or was it March — I’m sorry, March of 2003. [My italics]

    The cell leader was arrested and the plot was ended the year before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was even arrested, so your premise is utter bulls*#$%.

    You’ll swallow anything the right feeds into your mouth.

  • Randy, in response, you accept anything that the left crams up your rear. You may have missed something that the Obama White House intentionally deleted whn it released the memos on the interrogations.

    President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists. Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    Admiral Blair sent his memo on the same day the administration publicly released secret Bush administration legal memos authorizing the use of interrogation methods that the Obama White House has deemed to be illegal torture.

  • Blair, unlike you doesn’t support the use of torture:

    Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future.

    Surprise us some day. Tell the whole story.

  • The cell leader was arrested and the plot was ended the year before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was even arrested,

    So from this, we are led to conclude that KSM, who planned 9-11 and the LA plot, was retired and no more plots were in process

  • So from this, we are led to conclude that KSM, who planned 9-11 and the LA plot, was retired and no more plots were in process

    Did I say that or are you being deliberately obtuse? Woody claimed that the torture of KSM prevented a plot. I showed that the Bush administration’s own chronology shows that to be false.

    As for the rest of your typically strawman argument, I’m certainly not in opposition to KSM going to jail for the rest of his miserable life. What I do oppose is his being tortured.

  • And hence you oppose the demonstrated extraction of useful intelligence (per DNI) from him.

    What Woody and Mr. Kill the Journalists have done is provide us a good lesson in logical fallacies.

    Woody has engaged in tuquoque. Mr. KTJ and Woody have engaged in strawman arguments.

    Now Mr. KTJ is engaging post ho ergo propter hoc. I do not oppose the extraction of useful intelligence from terrorism suspects. I oppose committing cries against humanity in order to effect that. So does the DNI.

    You guys really need to learn how to argue like adults.

  • You guys really need to learn how to argue like adults.

    You mean, like lawyers? No thanks, I see the result of that often enough.

    Let me rephrase my ‘strawman’:

    And hence you oppose the demonstrated only successful method of extraction of useful intelligence (per DNI) from him.

    As to “crimes against humanity” – Oh, the humanity! Until after world war II, torture mean something that caused lasting severe physical or mental damage.

  • You mean, like lawyers?

    No like people who argue logically.

    And hence you oppose the demonstrated only successful method of extraction of useful intelligence (per DNI) from him.

    Now you’re just fabricating things. As you were not involved in the interrogations you have zero basis on which to make that claim.

    As to “crimes against humanity” – Oh, the humanity! Until after world war II, torture mean something that caused lasting severe physical or mental damage.

    More straw. First of all, we prosecuted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding US soldiers during WWII. As for the rest of your statement, here’s the definition of torture from the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, or as I prefer to call it, the law:

    For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

    You’re punching above your weight. I present facts, you present logical fallacies and fabrications.

  • From A Man For All Seasons:

    “What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? … And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

  • Some of Moore’s comments he’s just pulling out of his butt (“the only successful method of extraction”) but the most ironic is that he’s making snide comments about lawyers’ logic, when a crew of twisted “conservative” lawyers who are as irresponsible and deluded as he is came in and tried to pretty this crap up.

    The DNI’s position is as follows, not as Crazy John deliberately distorts it:

    “The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

  • Randy, you don’t precisely know which plot or attack was stopped with coereced information or if a prior plot was re-hatched and stopped. There is documentation that lives were saved, but it might compromise intelligence to be more specific.

    You don’t argue intelligently or honestly. You duck and weave, parse words, and insert overly technical limits to squash discussion – a discussion that you couldn’t win if you allowed it to proceed.

  • reg, Blair, under instructions from the White House, is quickly backing down and changing his story. Maybe you are, but we’re not stupid enough to go for such a “clarification,” after he stated his original intent.

  • This thread is pretty much a definitive map of the descent of the “conservative” mind into derangement and depravity. (I’m not talking about Woody’s obsession with gay sex – sublimated in hours on end of watching men tackle each other – as “depravity.” That’s just sad given how much it appears to terrify him.)

  • Woody – you were definitively made a fool of with your parroting of GOP talking points. You were trashed by facts. Deal with it. You’re a know-nothing who confuses whining and wimpering with debate. Better either shut up…or call somebody gay. Because that’s very convincing and makes you sound like a serious person.

  • Randy, you don’t precisely know which plot or attack was stopped with coereced information or if a prior plot was re-hatched and stopped

    Woody, I know enough to know that all of the wingnut right is referring to Marc Thiessen’s op-ed yesterday in the WaPo and, given your ovine tendencies, I have little reason to believe otherwise.

    So, unless you believe that the Bush administration had a time machine and went into the future knowing that KSM would be captured in March 2003 in order to waterboard him for info on a plot taking pace the prior year, as usual, you’re full of it.

    You don’t argue intelligently or honestly. You duck and weave, parse words, and insert overly technical limits to squash discussion – a discussion that you couldn’t win if you allowed it to proceed.

    I have not lied Woody. I’ve relied on facts. I have done nothing to keep this discussion from proceeding.

    You’re whining. Wussy.

  • I haven’t been trashed by “facts.” Your “facts” contain a contradiction as to the time frame as to when something occurred. My “fact” is just as valid as your “fact” — probably more.

    – – –

    Okay, reg, you’re gay. You call me everything under the sun, but at least I call you by a label that makes you proud.

    Yeah, I spent the weekend at a private book-signing party at the Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa, attended the A-Day game, and got to meet with Alabama All-Americans and Hall of Famers. They would love for you to say to their faces that they are homos.

  • It’s fine for you to hide behind the internet wall and insult people when you know what they would do if you did it to their faces.

  • Randy, I wish to remain somewhat anonymous from crazy people, not necessarily liberals or conservatives. I’ve had bad experiences with certified nuts, especially one in particular who is in the SCV and thinks that the War Between the States isn’t over until he says it’s over. I actually had to have the police remove him from my office on more than one occasion. I don’t mind you knowing who I am, but I hope that you can appreciate the reason for and respect both my need and my family’s need for privacy.

    But, when it comes to standing up for principles and being honest, you’ll find me saying things that I believe even when it’s unpopular with whomever I speak, unless they are psychos, in which case I’ll change the discussion to the weather or excuse myself.

  • Woody – I have nothing against some guys on a football team. My beef is with you and I’d say everything I have ever said to you to your face. Why do you feel a need to hide behind a bunch of football players who have nothing to do with anything. Seems a bit weak IMHO. The fact that you obsess over these men while bragging about your homophobia and slinging around “gay” like it’s an insult isn’t their fault.

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