Maher to out gay Republicans; and CNN censorship - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

pig · 11-12-2006, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Intense1

It all goes back to this: liberals say that they believe that everyone has the right to live as they wish, but not when it comes to those who are not yet ready to out themselves, especially if they are republicans. Gay republicans are in jeopardy of being outted if they do not believe in the gay marriage agenda - and there are many.

Many gays do not support the whole "gay marriage" agenda - check out Tammy Bruce, for an example http://www.tammybruce.com/.

Liberals want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda....

Hey, at least that's not a broad generalization or anything. I mean, you realize that in light of the abortion debate, or, I don't know...ummm wiretapping without a warrant, etc - that one could also make an (in my opinion) rather asinine comment about the boogey-man "conservatives" that "want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda...." and it would have about as much merit.

Once again, its not about their position. Of course there are gay people who aren't in favor of gay marriage. This is about honest and hypocracy in terms of the position they adopt, and how they represent themselves. The "homosexual" aspect, in my opinion at least, isn't really *that* crucial. I'd have the same opinion if someone was a staunch supporter of the Drug War and MADD, and it turned out they were a heavy drug user who routinely drove drunk.

In fact, I find the sensationalist hype surrounding these disclosures to be an interesting reminder of how homophobic we are as a society. In the above example of the drugs / DUI - the reaction would be nowhere near this severe. Of course, the fact that you can successfully run for office on the "traditional marriage" slogan is a pretty strong indicator of our social homophobia in the first place.

host · 11-12-2006, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alansmithee

What might be best for the country is not always what is best for the individual. Maybe these "hypocrites" are merely putting what they believe to be the country's best interests ahead of their own personal interests.

....so, you think that you can just slip back in here....after 9 months' absence and start posting again?

Welcome back, alansmithee !

I don't think that you are correct... in simply dismissing this "self loathing" phenomena as altruistic. It has much to do with religiously influenced, dysfunction driven delusion, or possibly vice versa. More and more, I am struck by my observation that, with all of their talk of "discernment"....Ted Haggard's flock of faithful, and indeed, the larger collective of evangelicists have an unimpressive "track record" when it comes to picking spiritual and political leaders, dontcha think? Could one reason be that it is so difficult to distinguish their spiritual leaders from their political leaders?

Quote:

http://www.therevealer.org/archives/timely_002694.php
Haggard's Downfall
02 November 2006

By Jeff Sharlet

I was relaxing this afternoon, watching an episode of Big Love, the HBO series starring Bill Paxton as a Mormon hiding his polygamous life, when I heard from from "The Peter Boyles Show" in Denver: "Your buddy Ted Haggard's in a shit storm."

The "buddy" part was ironic -- since I wrote about Ted Haggard and his church, New Life, in the May, 2005 issue of Harper's ("Soldiers of Christ,") Ted has been decidedly less than friendly. I always wondered why. Although my article was critical, it led to a surge of more mild-mannered media for Ted, one of the most powerful but least-known evangelical bigs in America. Barbara Walters asking him about heaven, Tom Brokaw doing his "on the other hand" routine.

But too much attention can be a bad thing. Details are still coming in, but it seems a gay man in Denver named Mike Jones was watching TV recently when he saw one of his regular sex partners, whom he knew only as "Art," on the tube: Ted, welcome to celebrity.

I just talked to Jones on the phone. He's not vindictive, nor particularly political; he's voted for Republicans and Democrats. He struggled with his decision, out of compassion for a man in the closet. He was motivated, he said, simply by being a gay man who's been around long enough to know how Ted's politics play out in the ordinary lives of people Jones cares about. That's about as good a motive for outing someone as I've ever heard. This afternoon, Ted announced that he was temporarily stepping down from his positions of authority......

.....It's been big news at the state's major paper, The Denver Post, as well. That's because the story is bigger than Ted; statewide, he's one of the key forces behind two new anti-gay amendements. Nationwide, as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, he sets the political tone for the Christian conservative movement at an administrative level broader than the influence of better-known figures such as Jerry Falwell.

If the story is true, Ted's a hypocrite of the worst kind; then again, he's also another victim of the very closet over which he publicly stands guard, as are all the New Life church members he's led into it. That story may not make the mainstream media. Indeed, it seems unlikely that Ted's downfall will be reported with any more nuance than that of Mark Foley's political collapse. Sex, it seems, blinds the press to politics.

I'm re-posting my original Harper's piece below not because I think I got the story right -- if Jones' story is true, I missed it by a mile -- but because I hope it'll help the journalists now on the job get the story right by not making the mistake I did. The downfall of Ted Haggard is not just another tale of hypocrisy, it's a parable of the paradoxes at the heart of American fundamentalism. I wrote about the role of sex in Ted's theology, but removed it from the final edit of the story (some of it I refashioned into a short essay on Christian Right's men's sex books for <a href="http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/sharlet/sexasaweapon/">Nerve)</a>. I made the mistake of viewing Ted's sex and his religion of free market economics as separate spheres. The truth, I suspect, is that they're intimately bound in a worldview of "order," one to which it turns out even Ted cannot conform........

Soldiers of Christ: Insider America's Most Powerful Megachurch

The following is the first half of "Soldiers of Christ: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch," a feature by Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet in the May, 2005 issue of Harper's.

....... At the complex’s western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life’s founder.

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s “free market” approach to the divine. Pastor Ted will serve as NAE president for as long as the movement is pleased with him, and as long as Pastor Ted is its president the NAE will make its headquarters in Colorado Springs.

Some believers call the city the Wheaton of the West, in honor of Wheaton, Illinois, once the headquarters of a more genteel Christian conservatism; others call Colorado Springs the “evangelical Vatican,” a phrase that says much both about the city and about the easeful orthodoxy with which the movement now views itself. Certainly the gathering there has no parallel in history, not in Lynchburg, Virginia, nor Tulsa, nor Pasadena, nor Orlando, nor any other city that has aspired to be the capital of evangelical America. Evangelical activist groups (“parachurch” ministries, in the parlance) in Colorado Springs number in the hundreds, though a precise count is hard to specify. Groups migrate there and multiply. They produce missionary guides, “family resources,” school curricula, financial advice, athletic training programs, Bibles for every occasion. The city is home to Young Life, to the Navigators, to Compassion International; to Every Home for Christ and Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze). Most prominent among the ministries is Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, whose radio programs (the most extensive in the world, religious or secular), magazines, videos, and books reach more than 200 million people worldwide.

The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal. Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save face. He doesn’t strut, like Dobson; he gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email. “Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center”— New Life’s high-tech, twentyfour- hour-a-day prayer chapel —“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President’s office the following afternoon. “It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn’t there.

No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life. It is by no means the largest megachurch, nor is Ted the best-known man of God: Saddleback Church, in southern California, counts 80,000 on its rolls, and its pastor, Rick Warren, has sold 20 million copies of his book The Purpose-Driven Life. But Warren’s success has come at the price of passion; his doctrine, though conservative, is bland and his politics too obscured by his self-help message to be potent. Although other churches boast more eminent memberships than Pastor Ted’s—near D.C., for example, McLean Bible Church and The Falls Church (an Episcopal church that is, like many “mainline” churches today, now evangelical in all but name) minister to the powerful— such churches are not, like New Life, crucibles for the ideas that inspire the movement, ideas that are forged in the middle of the country and make their way to Washington only over time. Evangelicalism is as much an intellectual as an emotional movement; and what Pastor Ted has built in Colorado Springs is not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them.

New Life began with a prophecy. In November 1984 a missionary friend of Pastor Ted’s, respected for his gifts of discernment, made him pull over on a bend of Highway 83 as they were driving, somewhat aimlessly, in the open spaces north of the city. Pastor Ted—then twentyeight, given to fasting and oddly pragmatic visions (he believes he foresaw Internet prayer networks before the Internet existed)—had been wondering why God had called him from near Baton Rouge, where he had been associate pastor of a megachurch, to this bleak city, then known as a “pastor’s graveyard.” The missionary got out of the car and squinted. He crouched down as if sniffing the ground. “This,” said the missionary, “this will be your church. Build here.”

So Pastor Ted did. First, he started a church in his basement. The pulpit was three five-gallon buckets stacked one atop the other, and the pews were lawn chairs. A man who lived in a trailer came round if he remembered it was Sunday and played guitar. Another man got the Spirit and filled a fivegallon garden sprayer with cooking oil and began anointing nearby intersections, then streets and buildings all over town. Pastor Ted told his flock to focus their prayers on houses with FOR SALE signs so that more Christians would come and join him. Once Pastor Ted and another missionary accidentally set off an alarm and hid together in a field while the police investigated. It was for a good cause, Pastor Ted would say; they were praying for the building to be taken off the market so it could someday be purchased for a future ministry. (It was.)

He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings.

One day, while he was working in his garage, a woman who said she’d been sent by a witches’ coven tried to stab Pastor Ted with a five-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—“Control.”

Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted hadn’t come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage “spiritual war.”

He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS. He assigned everyone in the church names from the phone book they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fifteen of his targets put their houses on the market. His congregation “prayer-walked” nearly every street of the city.

Population boomed, crime dipped; Pastor Ted believes to this day that New Life helped chase the bad out of town. He thinks like that, a piston: less bad means more good. Church is good, and his church grew, so fast there were times when no one knew how many members to claim. So they stopped talking about “members.” There was just New Life. “Are you New Life?” a person might ask. New Life moved into some corporate office space. Soon they bought the land that had been prophesied, thirty-five acres, and began to build what Pastor Ted promised would be a new Jerusalem. .......

Quote:

http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/sharlet/sexasaweapon/
Sex as a Weapon 
Decoding the Literature of the Christian Men's Movement
by Jeff Sharlet

A discussion of the Christian men's movement — Iron John for fundamentalists, Promise Keepers to the tenth power — is best begun with some mean-spirited fun. Not because there is anything laughable about loving Jesus or thinking about gender, but because the language with which conservative evangelical men combine these two passions, at conferences and in "cell groups" and in books with titles such as You, The Warrior Leader; The Barbarian Way and Fight on Your Knees often seems as if it's been lifted directly from Beavis & Butt-Head, absent the adolescent giggles. The movement itself is deadly earnest, and worse, a threat — legally, emotionally, sometimes physically — to all those who can't or won't conform to its perversely precise dream of a nation of sexually self-regulating spiritual warriors. I’ll get to that. But first, some yuks.
Take, for example, God's Gift to Women (the title of a manliness guide for young men), male "headship" of the American family. Women can't get enough of good headship, but a man must be careful; a woman's hunger for his headship may lead him to abuse its potency through the sin of anger. A few years ago, I learned in an evangelical magazine what to do in such a situation: push your anger down and store it inside your heart, where Jesus will work it over it until it is ready to be "released," transformed into "white-hot brother love."
Christian men love some brothers more than others. Most loved of all, besides J.C., may be the Scottish warrior William Wallace, basis for the film Braveheart. In Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul — still a hardcover bestseller four years after publication — John Eldredge writes of a present given to him by his wife: "Stasi slipped out of the room with the words, ‘Close your eyes . . . I have a surprise for you.'" When she tells him to look, Eldredge finds "a Scottish broadsword exactly like the one used by William Wallace. I had been looking for one for several months."
Apparently, Braveheart isn't just for lovers. In God's Gift To Women: Discovering the Lost Greatness of Masculinity, Eric Ludy writes of his youthful "introduction to ultimate manhood" in the form of Wallace, "one of history's most provocative men." Ludy, who opens his book by recounting a recurring nightmare of being "ushered in front of a mob of scrutinizing females" who find him inadequate, describes the image of William Wallace, riding to battle, that won him over: "His countenance was calm but intense. His sword was drawn. His cheeks were suffused with blood." Ludy asks himself, "Who is this man? And how can I get what he has?" (italics Ludy's).
Such questions have a double meaning that's obvious to the Christian men Ludy writes for, and it has nothing to do with Braveheart's broadsword: It's about Jesus. But the fact that so much of the language used to discuss Christ is homoerotic is no coincidence. The first miracle of Jesus to believers is that his appeal crossed so many boundaries of the ancient world. Rich
What's sad about books like God's Gift to Women is that they translate sexuality into codes of combat, and clichéd ones at that.
and poor, Jew and gentile, men and women — every kind of person loved him, and what's more, desired him. Theologians of far greater subtlety than Eldredge and Lundy suggest that while Christ was biologically male, his gender is harder to fix, since he held a literally erotic power over followers of all persuasions. For that matter, "eros," as a concept of any nuance in Western culture, owes its endurance to the Christians who for 2,000 years have been dreaming about God and how to know him, completely, fully, in spirit and in flesh.
What's sad about books like God's Gift to Women and Wild At Heart is that they attempt to contain the mystery of that question in metaphors that translate its inherent sexuality into codes of combat, and clichéd ones at that. The "enemy," of course, is Satan, but his names are legion: pornography, homosexuality, feminism, humanism, the monolithic foe Christian conservatives call, simply, "the culture." In a chapter dedicated to "military maneuvers," Lundy spells out his personal, three-point "battle strategy": "1. An identified point of attack [a personal vice to eradicate]. 2. A POW targeted for rescue [a non-Christian acquaintance to convert]. 3. A constant readiness to fight and fight hard."
Eldredge, one of the most influential gurus of the Christian men's movement, takes an even more aggressive tone. "A boy wants to attack something," he writes with approval, "and so does a man." Such hostility is not a sin to overcome, but the heart of headship, "a man's heart, his passions, his true nature, which he has been given by God."
Nonetheless, writers such as Eldredge and Lundy shy away from intellectual conflict. Even as they preach a metaphorically violent, domineering, and paternalistic vision of manliness, they dodge the natural question of that what happens when such men venture from their sacred hearths into the world. Not so Dr. James Dobson, one of a handful of the evangelical kingmakers to whom George W. Bush paid court before announcing his bid for the presidency in 2000. Dobson is most-recently known in the secular world for his charge that Spongebob Squarepants had been recruited as an agent of the "homosexual agenda," but for the millions who tune into his radio shows or read his books or subscribe to one of the publications produced by his organization, Focus on the Family, Dobson has long served as a source for wisdom that embodies the feminist adage that the personal is political.
Not that Dobson acknowledges a debt to feminism; indeed, he sees it as a threat to Christianity. The problem, as he outlines it in Straight Talk to Men, a Dobson "classic" originally published as Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, is that men, in a righteous attempt to resolve the problems of sexism, have ceded too much power to women. As a result, he insists, women are engaging in a parody of male headship and most men lack the guts — and the sensitivity — to stand up to them. "Everything we do is influenced by our gender assignment," he writes. "Any confusion… in the relationship between the sexes… must be seen as threatening to the stability of society itself." Dobson, unlike other Christian manliness gurus, gets specific about the consequences, illustrated in this new edition of Straight Talk through an
"Homosexuals" is kind of a code within the Christian men's movement.
imaginary dialogue between a group of "yesterday's husbands and fathers" (from 1870) who've been transported into the present to talk to a representative of "the culture."
The culture's spokesman paints a lurid portrait of today's world, in which boys typically look at pornography depicting women "hanging from trees, and being murdered with knives, guns, ropes, etc."; in which "it its legal for a father… to have a homosexual experience with his son"; in which women are called to combat in a time of war, because men are not up to the job. "I miss John Wayne," laments Dobson.
The focus here is, as always, not on women, but on men, Jesus and John Wayne on the one hand, those whom C.S. Lewis — who privately enjoyed being dominated by his wife — called "men without chests." That is, "homosexuals."
I place "homosexuals" in quotes to suggest that the very term itself — so often referred to with code such as Lewis' — is itself a kind of code within the Christian men's movement. Lesbians, as one might imagine, are not popular among evangelicals; but then, they are not really imaginable. In the theology of "Jesus plus nothing," there is no room for anything that is not man-God (or God-man, if you're particular about such things), and that includes female sexuality. Many of the man-manuals advise loving attention to wives and speak of the joys of married, heterosexual sex as a bulwark against the culture (which is queer by definition, since it is not Christ-centered, a peculiar oxymoron at the heart of the faith), but they also teach a "sensitivity" that is called to stand in for the sins of their cavemen fathers. In an interview with New Man, a Christian magazine, John Hagee, a popular pastor who is the author of What Every Man Wants in a Woman, explains what, in turn, every woman wants in a man (which is odd, since Hagee's wife, Diana, is the author of a book of that name, and would have presumably been the more logical explicator): "nonsexual affection."
Well, sure. That this is news to anyone is hard to believe. But more shocking is Hagee's announcement that nearly every woman he's counseled over the years has told him that "It's really no big deal if I never have sex again with my husband." This makes sense only if one accepts the division of identity increasingly popular in evangelicaldom: young men are knights and young women are virginal maidens, and even after marriage that formula, in a sense, continues: Men must get dirty in battle, women must stay pure at home. Sex is for the fellas.
Some fellas respond to that "spiritual reality" by seeking out other fellas; guys, the thinking goes, are always up for a good time. The oversexed female as public enemy has been replaced by the oversexed male; and in the worst case scenario, he is gay. Or perhaps it is, for the Christian right, the best case scenario — as the 2004 election proved in the eleven states where conservative activists put anti-gay rights laws up for popular voting, rhetorical gay bashing has proven one of the most effective organizing tools in recent American political history.
Of course, if you ask Dobson why homosexuality looms so large in the evangelical mind, he'll tell you it's because godless humanists planted it there by way of subversive signals in our television programming. Ask Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National
"The gay man" is the new seductress sent by Satan to tempt the men of Christendom.
Association of Evangelicals, and good cop to Dobson's bad cop at the top of the evangelical world, and he'll offer a more nuanced answer. Like most fundamentalists, Haggard believes that sexual sin is among the worst; he also knows it is the most common. Evangelicals, he'll say, aren't more obsessed with sexuality these days; rather, homosexuals are, somehow, more homosexual. The official line is that gay marriage marks a tipping point (Haggard, like many evangelicals, is a fan of Malcolm Gladwell's book of that name) into wholesale hedonism. The unofficial line, among leaders such as Haggard and Dobson is that it's a fight their side has already lost.
But the specter of gay marriage still serves a function. Christian conservatives take pains to distance themselves from the sexism of their forefathers. Every Christian man-guide emphasizes the claim that women play just as important a role in the maintenance of what evangelicals view as society's all-important unit, the family, and it's more than dishwashing, suckling, and sex (though what else they are to do is not often discussed). Women must submit to their husbands, but their husbands in turn must commit to "serving" their wives. The phrase that comes to mind is "separate but equal."
But with Christian womanhood restored and redeemed, a crucial character in the Christian conservative morality play has gone missing: the seductress. It is no longer acceptable to speak of loose women and harlots, since sexual promiscuity in a woman is the fault of the man who has failed to exercise his "headship" over her. It is his effeminacy, not hers, that is to blame. And who lures him into this spiritual castration? The gay man.
Christian conservatives loathe all forms of homo- and bisexuality, of course, but it is the gay man (singular; he's an archetype) who looms largest in their books and sermons and blogs and cell group meetings. Not, for the most part, as a figure of evil, but one to be almost envied. "The gay man" is the new seductress sent by Satan to tempt the men of Christendom. He takes what he wants and loves whom he will and his life, in the imagination of Christian men's groups, is an endless succession of orgasms, interrupted only by jocular episodes of male bonhomie. The gay man promises a guilt-free existence, the garden before Eve. He is thought to exist in the purest state of "manhood," which is boyhood, before there were girls.
Most Christian conservatives are deadly earnest in their proclamations of love for the sinner, even as they hate the sin. Indeed, that love is at the heart of books like Wild at Heart, and Jim George's A Man After God's Own Heart, and Every Man's Battle, a self-help manual for giving up masturbation which was co-authored by a couple of buddies. They love the gay man because he is a siren, and his song is alluring; and because they believe that the siren is nonetheless stranded at sea, singing in desperation from a slippery perch on a jagged outcrop of stone. The gay man, they imagine, is calling to them; and they believe they are calling back — as if all of human sexuality was a grand and tragic game of Marco Polo.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet

foolthemall,

how do you feel about someone lying on their resume?

Bad. Bad bad bad. But you typically don't put irrelevancies like orientation on your resume. Or, for that matter, irrelevancies like "I've been faithful to my wife" or "I go to church every Sunday".

host · 11-12-2006, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Intense1

It all goes back to this: liberals say that they believe that everyone has the right to live as they wish, but not when it comes to those who are not yet ready to out themselves, especially if they are republicans. Gay republicans are in jeopardy of being outted if they do not believe in the gay marriage agenda - and there are many.

Many gays do not support the whole "gay marriage" agenda - check out Tammy Bruce, for an example http://www.tammybruce.com/.

Liberals want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda....

Tammy Bruce= fringe and flawed.......

Last night, my wife and I watched this:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/lastlettershome/

Two of the fathers of dead US soldiers were so shattered that they did not speak in front of the camera....they left it to their wives to try to put their loss into words. One mother said that she knew her son's (killed in Iraq) saliva was on the lip of the envelope flap of his "last letter home", and knowing that gave her a feeling of contact with him.

Several "next of kin" said that, when the military chaplain and two soldiers in dressed in "class "A"s, appeared at their door to "inform them", they reasoned that, if they did not let them in the house, their soldier would not be dead.
My wife has not heard anything from her deployed son in the last 14 days.

Watching "Last Letters Home", last night, I tried to imagine how we would cope with "a knock on the door".....it something that I hadn't thought of, before. None of the dozen changing, "reasons" that president Bush has "communicated", to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq, or continued US and NATO "presence", in Afghanistan, is IMO, worth one drop of blood of any American soldier, nor one tear of a grieving loved one.

If Tammy Bruce is "so sure", she should enlist in the military herself, and spare another soldier, a fourth "rotation" into "service" in Iraq. I find her role as propagandist chearleader for a war criminal POTUS, an affront to what most of us now know.
Just read my "sig" at the bottom of this post.....

www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
PRESIDENT BUSH – Overall Job Rating in recent national polls
...........................................Approve....Disapprove

Newsweek 11/9-10/06 31%.......63%

Quote:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti.../8/24514.shtml
The Death of Right and Wrong

Tammy Bruce
Tuesday, April 8, 2003

I have been fascinated watching the meltdown of today’s Leftists as they lose their collective mind over the war to liberate the Iraqi people. I was wondering how long it would take for the left to publicly expose their betrayal of principles they have touted for so long.

This war is made, through and through, of the stuff the caring, compassionate, “I’m-for-the-Underdog” Superhero for the Victimized and Disenfranchised Left wing of American politics has always claimed as its realm. Finally, through their own actions, the lie of the morally superior Left has been exposed.

On its face, the condemnation by the Left Elite of a war that represents the classical liberal principle of freeing and empowering people, ending violence and tyranny, seems inexplicable. But it’s not.

As I explain in my new book, “The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values” (Crown Forum, April 22, 2003), today’s supposed protectors of individual liberty are no longer able to act on principle or on doing the right thing because, for them, there is no right thing. The scourge of moral relativism rules the day for the Left Elite and commands the rejection of the most basic notions of right and wrong, good and evil.

Ranging from maniacal street protests to vile anti-America diatribes on award shows and news programs by celebrities, Leftists still protest a war which even they know will be ridding the world of a barbaric regime which oppresses, tortures and murders its own people. Women and children, the heralded domain of the feminist establishment, have never been safe from Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical reign, and have experienced the most horrific of lives – which included rape rooms and other torture chambers.

It has been nothing short of obscene to listen to the rantings of Leftists claiming the war should stop to “save Iraqi babies.” In fact, it is only this war that will finally save those babies.

How dare American feminists in particular oppose this action. They didn’t even have the moral footing to voice support for Operation Iraqi Freedom when Hussein’s thugs began using children and pregnant women as human shields for soldiers and as hostages in homicide car bombings.

It is in his nature to defile and destroy life. We’re now finding out it is in the nature of the Feminist and Gay Elite to not care as they bow to the God of Moral Relativism.

That’s why the war to liberate Iraq, and the reasoning behind it, is such a threat to the Left – specifically because it highlights a moral standard of decency, a standard which is universal and cuts across religious and political grounds. It reminds Americans and everyone else of the value of acting on what’s right and just.

And judgment! That, of all actions, is the greatest sin in the bacchanalian world of the Left. In their moral void, anything which exemplifies virtue and values must be condemned. This is why – even at the expense of the lives of innocent people in Iraq and the frames of minds of our soldiers – they so selfishly condemn and still work to stop the liberation of Iraq.

It is also why, I predict, the Left in this country will work to stall, demean and politically sabotage the postwar rebuilding effort. While that also doesn’t make much sense for the ‘compassionate’ arm of American politics, we know now that it’s not about what’s right – it’s about them, and their reliance on the death of right and wrong.

In the effort to secure a culture the Left wrongly thinks needs to be void of values for their lifestyles to thrive, the Iraqi people are to be sacrificed. Because it would inconvenience the Left to no end should personal responsibility and values come back into vogue.

When you consider the recent track record of the Left when it comes to important social issues, their rejection of action that will save lives and make the world a better place doesn’t seem so out of character. In “The Death of Right and Wrong,” I describe the world as defined by the leaders of the Left Elite, where:

* Murdering your children isn’t murder if you’re a woman – it’s postpartum depression.

* Sex addiction, compulsion and promiscuity aren’t problems if you’re gay – they’re part of an “alternate lifestyle.”

* Murdering a police office isn’t murder if you’re black – it’s a “heroic” act.

* Vandalizing, degrading or mocking the symbols of a religion is only a hate crime if the object is Islam or Judaism. If the target is Christianity, it’s “art.”

* Murdering 3,000 American civilians isn’t terrorism if the murderers are Muslims – it’s the Freedom Fighter’s heroic last act against an oppressor.

I detail these examples and so many more which exemplify how the Left is driven by an agenda to change Americans’ fundamental values and to make discerning right from wrong the new blasphemy.

It is an agenda intended to indoctrinate you into the same corrupt moral relativism which rules their world – a Looking Glass world which also absurdly insists freeing the Iraqi people is to be condemned. Where Americans are to sit and do nothing as others suffer. Because you are not to come to judgment. You are to understand that there is no good and no evil. Where the inner child of the depraved and murderous, like Saddam Hussein, is to be ‘understood’ and negotiated with.

For far too long, the cynical malignant narcissists who control Left-wing special interest groups have worked to convince their constituencies that values are dangerous. It’s time we put a stop to that lie.

The war to liberate Iraq has been a terrific first step in reminding the world that America, once again, has the courage to act on what’s right. Whether Leftists here at home and around the globe like it or not.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Set aside the whole "is it right or wrong" thing for a second. A closeted anti-gay politician is an easy target for a politically-motivated take-down, and it's just bad politics to be that vulnerable to attack. If your political tent is pitched on such shifty sand, I think you deserve what you have coming to you.

Bad politics, yes. A justification for outers, no. Expected != justified. You've got a leap here to explain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

Imo, closeting yourself is not good.

I think Maher is all right. Hypocrites go home.

Nope, not good. Also not your business, nor Maher's.

You've got to have a good reason to invade one's privacy and divulge the details to the world. There is simply no good reason here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet

I'd have the same opinion if someone was a staunch supporter of the Drug War and MADD, and it turned out they were a heavy drug user who routinely drove drunk.

Why? It wouldn't change the fact that they're doing good - or bad - politically.

'Course, drunk driving is a danger to other people. 'Course, if you believe in the drug laws (I don't), there's another good reason to 'out' him. And if you want to get him into rehab, that might maybe be a a third good reason to threaten him with a very public outing. Though I don't know how effective that'd be and a private discussion might be just as or more fruitful. Your comparison breaks down on at least two of these points.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host's article

He was motivated, he said, simply by being a gay man who's been around long enough to know how Ted's politics play out in the ordinary lives of people Jones cares about. That's about as good a motive for outing someone as I've ever heard.

Sure, about as good a motive as I've ever heard, too. Which is to say, a pretty poor motive. A man's privacy gets violated and no good actually comes of it. Only the shallowest of the fence-sitters are actually going to think, "Hm... one of those traditional marriage advocates is a hypocrite... this proves that the cause is bunk!" People like Haggard simply get like-minded replacements. There's no real progress made.

seretogis · 11-12-2006, 10:12 AM

Tammy Bruce is a neo-con apologist.

As far as homosexuals being against gay-marriage legislation, I can understand that position completely. It is not necessarily hypocrisy. The solution to dealing with same-sex marriage is not to add yet another law, but to change or remove current law which restricts and defines marriage -- a social institution. If the word "marriage" is so precious that it couldn't possibly be associated with filthy filthy homosexuals, take it away from everyone and replace it with "civil union." Straight, gay, and other couples could then all get the same "civil union license/registration" and then perform whatever religious, spiritual, or personal ceremonies they'd like on their own to complete their "marriage."

Halx · 11-12-2006, 10:34 AM

This thread got interesting when Jess added that last bit. However, I have to step in and say one thing.

If you want to run for office, run under your own values. If all you are is some puppet, bending your own values to meet the expectations of your constituents, then you are.. well.. nothing special. What is the definition of a politician? Someone who presents themselves to be society's most obediant bitch?

If I am voting someone ahead of myself (which means, to me, giving someone OTHER THAN MYSELF a vote of confidence to do the right thing) then I am voting for them based on what their decisions WOULD BE if they had to wing it. Now, who do you want for a leader; someone who is not true to themselves, or someone with a real drive and passion for the policies they enforce?

This is what is ridiculous about politics. There are no leaders, only slimy businessmen sucking on the teat of public opinion.

Moskie · 11-12-2006, 11:36 AM

I'm confilcted on this one.

On one hand, I don't think it should be neccesary for a politician's sexual orientation to be public information. Much in the same way I wouldn't want any of their sexual habits to be made public. They're American citizens with a right to privacy.

But if current politics demand that homosexuality be a political issue, then this information is relevant. So... not sure.

But, while we're at it, can we out congresspeople who are closet agnostics/atheists? I'm sick of politicians claiming they love the Jesus, when you know they're lying through their teeth to get the votes. I mean, why not?

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Halx

If you want to run for office, run under your own values..

But who's to say that the people in question aren't doing this? Perhaps their true values include a negative view of homosexual activity and it's their personal life, not their political life, in which they are failing to live up to those values?

Not to mention, there's also seretogis' scenario as a possibility. And really, I'm thinking there's quite a few possibilities besides these two.

And at any rate, even if there is hypocrisy, what is the practical difference to a voter in getting a straight anti-gay rep versus getting a closeted anti-gay rep? Besides the opportunity for petty humiliation of the closeted one, I mean.

Lizra · 11-12-2006, 11:51 AM

I want politicians to be honest. Just as atheists should not have to make apologies for their beliefs, neither should gays. Honesty is the first quality I am looking for in a political representative. I would not vote for a hypocrite. The closet is a place to hide.....I want my politicians to be strong enough to not hide.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

Nope, not good. Also not your business, nor Maher's.

You've got to have a good reason to invade one's privacy and divulge the details to the world. There is simply no good reason here.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

I want politicians to be honest. Just as atheists should not have to make apologies for their beliefs, neither should gays. Honesty is the first quality I am looking for in a political representative. I would not vote for a hypocrite. The closet is a place to hide.....I want my politicians to be strong enough to not hide.

In this case, I guess the bottom line is that I don't see your desire for this particular kind of honesty as being valuable enough to outweigh the hurt/damage caused by a public outing.

Unless you can show me how you're concretely harmed by a politician keeping their orientation private.

Lizra · 11-12-2006, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie

But, while we're at it, can we out congresspeople who are closet agnostics/atheists? I'm sick of politicians claiming they love the Jesus, when you know they're lying through their teeth to get the votes. I mean, why not?

Yes!

I am sick of people being ashamed to admit they actually don't believe in heaven and hell etc.

Great idea! I'm tired of the song and dance on these issues. Bah!

Down with cultural bullyism.

Moskie · 11-12-2006, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

But who's to say that the people in question aren't doing this? Perhaps their true values include a negative view of homosexual activity and it's their personal life, not their political life, in which they are failing to live up to those values?

Not to mention, there's also seretogis' scenario as a possibility. And really, I'm thinking there's quite a few possibilities besides these two.

And at any rate, even if there is hypocrisy, what is the practical difference to a voter in getting a straight anti-gay rep versus getting a closeted anti-gay rep? Besides the opportunity for petty humiliation of the closeted one, I mean.

I think we're skirting the issue here, though. Whether this information about a politician personally sways YOU, or should sway any one particular voter is one thing. But whether it should be available information that can sway voters, in general, is another. I think it's the latter idea that deserves the most discussion...

Lizra · 11-12-2006, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

In this case, I guess the bottom line is that I don't see your desire for this particular kind of honesty as being valuable enough to outweigh the hurt/damage caused by a public outing.

Unless you can show me how you're concretely harmed by a politician keeping their orientation private.

I guess I want to get to the place where outing does not cause hurt or damage. It will take time....but it needs to be done. The era of J Edgar Hoover is over! Homosexuals have been around forever, and always will be. We need to get over it, accept it, and get on with other issues. I don't think it should be such a big deal.....if people quit hiding in closets, it probably wouldn't be.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie

But whether it should be available information that can sway voters, in general, is another.

Yeah, that's the question. And my answer is that the costs outweigh the benefits - because I don't see any benefits, even for those who would be swayed. There's nothing concrete in the alleged benefits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

I guess I want to get to the place where outing does not cause hurt or damage.

This would be a great place to be. Unfortunately, as you acknowledge, we aren't there yet.

Lizra · 11-12-2006, 12:37 PM

The benefit would be knowing that the person you are voting for is not a political hypocrite....that they have the basic character to stand by their own personal convictions/actions, and not just say whatever they think it will take to get "their side" to win, and in power. Imo...our political landscape is too much about spin and power, and not enough about real debate on the important issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

This would be a great place to be. Unfortunately, as you acknowledge, we aren't there yet.

We will never get there by hiding in a closet though.

So...it appears Maher has the right idea, to me.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

The benefit would be knowing that the person you are voting for is not a political hypocrite....that they have the basic character to stand by their own personal convictions/actions, and not just say whatever they think it will take to get "their side" to win, and in power.

But two things about that:

1. How does this knowledge benefit you?

2. How does this knowledge tell you that their political choices are wholly motivated by an unprincipled thirst for power? And like I asked before, how do you know that their personal life - as opposed to their political life - isn't the part of their life that contrasts with their principles?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

We will never get there by hiding in a closet though.

So...it appears Maher has the right idea, to me.

I'm not seeing how involuntary outing helps the process of getting to that place... and I am seeing how it could hurt the outed. Lose-lose, as I see it.

Lizra · 11-12-2006, 01:06 PM

That knowlege benefits me by helping me decide who is the best person to hold an office. I need truth to make good decisions. I would not want to vote for someone who is living a lie....This issue of accepting homosexuality as ahealthy and normal variation in our society is important and needs to be taken seriously. Double talk is not helpful.

Hiding and lying makes this issue seem less real/important than it truely is....imo.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

That knowlege benefits me by helping me decide who is the best person to hold an office. I need truth to make good decisions. I would not want to vote for someone who is living a lie....This issue of accepting homosexuality as ahealthy and normal variation in our society is important and needs to be taken seriously. Double talk is not helpful.

We're talking about typically anti-gay closet cases here, so they're not going to help the idea of homosexuality as a healthy, normal thing either way, whether hetero or closeted.

How does knowing about a particular case of living a lie actually improve the quality of your decision? How is straight/anti-gay better than double-life/anti-gay, given equal political stances and actions?

host · 11-12-2006, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

We're talking about typically anti-gay closet cases here, so they're not going to help the idea of homosexuality as a healthy, normal thing either way, whether hetero or closeted.

How does knowing about a particular case of living a lie actually improve the quality of your decision? How is straight/anti-gay better than double-life/anti-gay, given equal political stances and actions?

Reading your efforts here, I wonder if even you know, how much of your opinion is shaped by the financing of Richard Mellon Scaife, via AIM, continued today by
L. Brent Bozell III, protege of Reed Irvine?

Quote:

http://www.aim.org/publications/medi...2001/04/6.html
HORRIBLE COVERAGE OF A HORRIBLE MURDER

By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
April 6, 2001

.....The Washington Times reported that the only network to report on the Dirkhising trial was the Fox News Channel. The Shepard case made front page news and the cover of Time. Politicians and Hollywood types joined forces to demand new hate crime laws to cover homosexuals.

The media deny there is a double standard. A spokesman for ABC News called it "a local crime story that does not raise the kind of issues that would warrant our coverage." Time's Jonathan Gregg has said: "The reason the Dirkhising story received so little play is because it offered no lessons. Shepard's murder touches on...intolerance and the pressure to conform, the use of violence as a means of confronting one's demons. Jesse Dirkhising's death gives us nothing except the depravity of two sick men."

Wrong! The Dirkhising case shows that sadism and child abuse is an important part of the gay lifestyle. That is the dirty secret homosexuals refuse to publicize. They have enormous influence within the media. A homosexual New York Times reporter has said that three-quarters of the people who decide what's on the front page of the New York Times are barely-closeted homosexuals.

Quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1283764/posts
NYT Obit: Reed Irvine, 82, the Founder of a Media Criticism Group, Dies (The Times plays catch-up)
New York Times ^ | November 19, 2004 | MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

.....He was moved to found AIM by his disgust at the coverage, primarily by television, of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, where he felt that the networks were unduly sympathetic to antiwar protestors.

Within a decade of the group's beginning, AIM and Mr. Irvine had succeeded in forcing attention on themselves and their agenda. He appeared on many television panel discussions. He questioned editorial decisions at annual stockholder meetings of major newspapers and journals. He demanded and sometimes received the right of rebuttal on television documentaries. He was invited to present his complaints at regular meetings with senior executives of news media companies, including The New York Times.

Mr. Irvine's own weekly column was syndicated to some 100 papers. He and his organization attacked not only the editorial emphasis, or play, given to particular stories but also the choice of reporters and newscasters, whom they accused of conflicts of interest or ideological bias.

Mr. Irvine's initial strategy relied on writing letters to editors, but when this yielded no response, he began buying advertising space for his rejected letters. He also bought shares in news media companies to be able to voice complaints at their annual meetings.

The organization reached the peak of its influence during the Reagan administration, when its paid membership reached 40,000 and its budget was $1.5 million.

In those years, AIM was powerful enough to help shape nationwide television programming. One of its most visible successes came in 1985, when PBS broadcast "Television's Vietnam: The Real Story," an hourlong documentary produced by AIM. The documentary was a rebuttal to PBS's 1983 series "Vietnam: A Television History," which AIM attacked as being overly sympathetic to the North Vietnamese. .......

Quote:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/rec...cipientID=1374
Grants to Accuracy in Media, Inc.

Click date for grant details. (click the link above)

12-31-2005 300,000 General operating support Sarah Scaife Foundation
12-31-2004 425,000 General operating support Sarah Scaife Foundation
1-1-2004 12,500 General support F.M. Kirby Foundation
12-31-2003 425,000 General operating and program support Sarah Scaife Foundation
1-1-2003 10,000 General support F.M. Kirby Foundation
1-1-2002 250,000 No comment provided Sarah Scaife Foundation
1-1-2002 10,000 General support F.M. Kirby Foundation
1-1-2001 335,000 No purpose given. Sarah Scaife Foundation

Moskie · 11-12-2006, 01:45 PM

You're probably talking to the wrong people here, FTA. The real people that you should be having this conversation with are the constituents these congressmen represent. They're probably for gay marriage amendments, being Republican. How do you predict they will react to learning their representatives are gay? My guess is that the congressmen's popularity would take a hit. Assuming that were to happen, that would show the information is, definitively, relevant.

Most of the left you're talking to here would probably *gain* respect for congressmen that come out of the closet. So maybe our perspectives don't reflect the real issue here....

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie

How do you predict they will react to learning their representatives are gay? My guess is that the congressmen's popularity would take a hit. Assuming that were to happen, that would show the information is, definitively, relevant.

Anti-gay marriage constituents considering homosexuality relevant doesn't make it relevant. Perhaps you're right about me asking the wrong people, but I wouldn't merely ask anti-gay marriage constituents whether they considered it relevant. I would ask them why it's relevant. I would ask them to justify their interest in exposing this particular aspect of a politician's private life.

Host, I don't understand your aim in posting those articles. What's your point?

loquitur · 11-12-2006, 04:06 PM

Everyone has things about themselves that they don't advertise and would rathen not be made public. Some of them are trivial, some are important, and each of us would probably differ as to which is which. But in the final analysis, each person gets to define what makes him/herself be who s/he is, and how important to his/her self-definition any single particular aspect is.

To put it another way: we each choose the face we present to the world. For example, I'm not naturally charming and not naturally extroverted. But to be successful in my line of work I have to learn to be charming and somewhat extroverted. it's not really me; I'm much more of a bookish and cerebral type than a glad-hander. My wife knows this, and some of my close friends, but I have no particular desire or need to have these aspects of my personality become common knowledge.

I mention this not because I think that sexual preference is on a par with personality type - clearly it's a different kind of personal characteristic - but rather to make the point that each of us chooses how s/he presents him/herself to the world. And the choice of how to do that is uniquely each of ours; it's as much a part of who we are as the choice of clothing or the part of our hair.

If I like to look at porn, I don't tell that to my business colleagues. If I wipe my ass with my left hand instead of my right, I don't mention it in polite company. If I prefer having sex with my wife doggie style, I don't need other people to know about it.

What's more, I might even think (to take a hypothetical example) that it's not a good thing that I like to look at porn. I might have any number of negative characteristics that I am not proud of and prefer to suppress. That doesn't mean anyone has the right to go tell everyone else that I like to look at porn, or that I bite my nails in private, or that I like to scratch my ass. Even if I do those things, I don't have to be proud of them and - this is crucial - I may still think they are wrong. maybe I'd advocate restricting access to porn in order to help me save myself from urges to look at it. Or, even if they are not wrong, they are none of anyone's business. (no, I don't urge restrictions of this type - I'm libertarian through and through - but I'm giving these examples for purpose of argument).

Sexual activity of all kinds, including sexual preferences, are precisely like any other kind of activity or trait. It's up to the owner to decide what becomes public and what does not. No one else has the right to interfere with anyone's life or personality or self-definition that way. It's a very intrusive, very personal violation. And for what? To demonstrate that someone is a "hypocrite?" Actually, no - because it takes a few assumptions to get to the conclusion that the person is a hypocrite. Yes, you might think the person is a hypocrite, but that doesn't mean s/he is - it could simply mean that s/he is wrestling with something, or indulged a curiosity, or what have you. You simply don't know how the behavior you happen to focus on fits into that person's life. It could be that the person "knows" what s/he is doing is wrong, and wants outside restrictions in order to help him/her stay away from it, and to remove temptations.

In short, you have no way to know what the person's motivation is, and no real basis for painting them as hypocrites - all you know is that s/he prefers to keep some aspect of life private. Be very careful about this sort of "outing" - there may one day be something you prefer to keep private, that someone else might think has to be exposed, for reasons of their own that you might not share - it might not even be sexual in nature. What goes around comes around.

Finally, there is apparently an assumption among the supporters of "outing" that all Republicans or republican supporters or voters hate gays or advocate restrictions on gays. To begin with, simply as an empirical matter, I doubt most people especially care about what other people do; they simply want to be left alone. You can't simply assume that a Republican voter hates gays. I have voted Republican at times in the past, and I would venture to say I have more gay people in my home on a regular basis than most; my occasional choice of a Republican candidate had zero to do with gays - what it had to do with is regulation, taxes and national security. That's what happens in a two party system: yo'ure left with the choice of which party's candidates match more of the preferences you have at a particular moment than the other party's. There is no such thing as a candidate who matches me in all opinions, which means I'm always compromising. I would guess most gay Republicans do too. To suggest, as the "outers" do, that a free-market libertarian who happens to be gay should have to vote for a welfare state democrat in order to be able to maintain his privacy is totalitarianism - i.e., you have to do things the way the "outer" thinks you should do them, or else suffer the consequences. Bah.

In the final analysis, people are entitled to respect. ALL people.

Lizra · 11-12-2006, 04:20 PM

Well....I could repeat myself, again, about how it is important to me that "public people" asking other people to vote for them.... to represent them when making laws that affect us all be honest about who they are and what they do....but I won't bore you all again.

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 05:30 PM

loquitur...

Thanks for stating so eloquently in a single post what I was aiming to say in 20 or 30 clumsy smaller posts.

host · 11-12-2006, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

Anti-gay marriage constituents considering homosexuality relevant doesn't make it relevant. Perhaps you're right about me asking the wrong people, but I wouldn't merely ask anti-gay marriage constituents whether they considered it relevant. I would ask them why it's relevant. I would ask them to justify their interest in exposing this particular aspect of a politician's private life.

Host, I don't understand your aim in posting those articles. What's your point?

My point is that I suspect that you, and certainly closeted gay republicans who
attain high profile, elected office, or, as in Ken Mehlman's case, prominent republican party office, are influenced by the 35 years campaign against the news media (AKA "working press") that features, as a cornerstone, the demonization of homosexuals. The Scaife financed apparatus cited in my last post, spearheaded first, by the late Reed Irvine, founder of AIM, and then by his protege, www.mrc.org 's Bozell, has had a great deal of influence over the media's coverage of homosexuals and gay rights issues.

The purpose is to mobilize the christian right to support an ultra-conservative agenda, and to tar the major press outlets, and their reporting, as tainted by liberal bias to the point that the information that they distribute is wholly unreliable....hence the "need" for alternative "news"....that has pushed out, for many conservatives, the "news" that the rest of us, receive, digest, and arm ourselves with as one of several components of information that helps us navigate in the "reality based" environment that we function in.

The vacuum created after the news gathering apparatus is pushed aside, is filled by approved aim.org , and mrc.org "organs"....Limbaugh, Drudge, townhall.com, NRO, powerline blog, and to an extent, by foxnews and washington times ....of course, Scaife's Pittsburgh "newspaper" is there to provide "approved" news, too.

This movement created distortion....consider Rep. David Dreier, and his life mate and house mate, and chief of staff, Brad W. Smith....this is the legislative work these two have supported:

Quote:

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/the-outing/1322/

....... Raw Story has provided some fascinating details about Smith. It appears that he is the highest-paid chief of staff to any House committee chair. Smith’s $156,600 salary is just $400 less than that of White House chief of staff Andy Card and Bush political commissar Karl Rove. By comparison, the chief of staff to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee makes $126,000, while the chief of staff to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee makes just $100,696. New Jersey Democratic Governor Jim McGreevey was recently forced to resign when it was about to become public that he had put his boyfriend on the public payroll at a salary slightly less than the one which Dreier pays Smith.

Neither Dreier, Smith, nor the congressman’s press secretary would return several telephone calls and detailed voice mails seeking comment. A staff member on Monday hung up the phone when I called back........

........Frank threatened to out a number of gay-baiting Republican fellow congressmen, the rule insists that outing is only acceptable when a person uses their power or notoriety to hurt gay people.

Dreier clearly meets that standard, for his voting record is strewn with anti-gay positions. To cite just a few: He opposed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have banned discrimination against gay people in hiring; voted for the gay-bashing Defense of Marriage Act; voted for banning adoption by gay and lesbian couples in the District of Columbia (3,000 miles away from Dreier’s district); voted to allow federally funded charities to discriminate against gays in employment, even where local laws prohibit such bias; and voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Dreier is not just a political homophobe but a heartless AIDS-phobe as well, voting against the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program designed to give shelter to the impoverished sick, and against funding for the federal ADAP program that furnishes the poor with the AIDS meds they need to stay alive.

Dreier can probably survive outing in his district and be re-elected, and it won’t hurt him much with Arnold and his cronies either. But Dreier’s days as a key member of the ultra-homophobic Hastert-DeLay House GOP leadership may be numbered.......

....and here is Bozell, in 1992:

Quote:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Pol...ophy/HL380.cfm

..........That is where the third element of the equation, media watchdog organizations, comes into play. The godfather of the movement is, of course, Reed Irvine and his Accuracy in Media organization. Formed in 1969, AIM was for years virtually the only group which dedicated itself exclusively to the fight against the liberal press. In the '70s others began producing credible studies documenting the liberal tilt within the press. To counter the growing evidence, the press cynically fell back to another line of defense: Our coverage of Topic X may have been biased, but this does not scientifically prove we are personally biased.

Media Bias Exposed
This argument collapsed in 1982 when Drs. Robert and Linda Lichter and Stanley Rothman published "Media and Business Elites," a survey to determine the personal persuasions of the press itself, and the evidence clearly demonstrated just how leftist the national media were: From 1964 to 1976, the media had voted for the Democratic candidate at least 81 percent of the time; 90 percent favored abortion; 76 percent found nothing wrong with homosexuality; only 47 percent believed adultery was wrong; 50 percent had no religious affiliation. Rather than admit their biases, reporters retreated to their final line of defense: OK, the media may be biased, but I'm not. With that in mind, the Media Research Center was launched to restore political balance in the media by exposing and neutralizing the liberal agenda within the so-called objective press.

The cornerstone of the MRC is its research capabilities. Today the MRC has the most sophisticated research operation ever assembled, more advanced than any university or media organization. Researchers tape, analyze and input into a computerized database summaries of every single network news show, including virtually all ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and PBS news broadcasts, weekly news shows, political talk shows, and special reports.

The MRC research capabilities are virtually boundless. ..........

..........David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote the masterful series on the media's promotion of the pro-choice movement, spent considerable time at our offices conducting research for his piece. Indeed, I will go so far as to warrant that 90 percent of the stories in both the electronic and print media which deal with the political bias in the industry have their origins in the Media Research Center.

The Future is Bright
Why should conservatives be optimistic about the media? Because our future is bright, but only if we take advantage of it............

......Imagine, if you will, a future wherein the media willfully support the foreign policy objectives of the United States. A time when the left can no longer rely on the media to promote its socialist agenda to the public. A time when someone, somewhere in the media can be counted on to extol the virtues of morality without qualifications. When Betty Friedan no longer qualifies for "Person of the Week" honors. When Ronald Reagan is cited not as the "Man of the Year," but the "Man of the Century."......

FoolThemAll, I deliberately take the opposite POV of Richard Mellon Scaife and his late puppet Reed Irvine, and his living puppet, L. Brent Bozell III, nephew of William F. Buckley. It is the only way that I can keep their disinformation from infecting my POV. I think that their 35 year old "psy-op" is clouding your thinking, just as I think it has kept republican gays closeted. I think it is a pox on the land. It's influence is everywhere, and it is the antithesis of what I believe, free thinking people in a republic where the press is challenged to act as the "fourth estate", should be exposing themselves to.

I think that you are not keeping away from this narrowcasting, and a symptom of the effect of it's influence on you, is the basis for your posts on this thread. I know that my opinion has not been salted by the influence of Scaife's money and ideology. I would learn to enjoy gay sex if it was a way to keep Scaife's psy-ops out of my brain!

FoolThemAll · 11-12-2006, 06:25 PM

Host...

This is the first I've heard of the name Scaife, though I've heard of similar views before.

I don't agree with his demonizations of homosexuals, and I don't see what it has to do with my views on this topic. You're going to have to be more clear in the link between the two.

ratbastid · 11-12-2006, 07:07 PM

loquitur: thanks for your post. I'm still not sure I agree with you 100% (in particular, I think that personal responsibility changes when you have a public public life) but I can certainly see the reason and logic--and especially the compassion--on that side of the fence now. That's the sort of post we need more of in Tilted Politics. Great work.

flstf · 11-12-2006, 08:26 PM

Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed".

Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.

host · 11-12-2006, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flstf

Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed".

Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.

See posts of FoolThemAll and flstf ......their posts do not reflect the opposite POV of L Brent Bozell III and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Read recent Bozell column, appearing in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper and website, both owned by Scaife. Bozell's www.mrc.org receives much of it's funding from Scaife controlled trusts. Bozell was protege of Scaife funded homophobe, the late Reed Irvine, founder of <a href="http://www.aim.org/static/20_0_7_0_C">AIM</a>:

Quote:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_474925.html
Dems' mocking 'outrage'

By L. Brent Bozell III

Sunday, October 15, 2006

After more than 100 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC about the Mark Foley Internet-messaging scandal, it wouldn't be hard for the average Joe to conclude the Democrats are now the Party of Moral Values.

Democrats are demanding that Republicans return the monies Foley gave their campaigns. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader who would very much like Denny Hastert's job, is predictably fanning the flames. "We want to know," she thunders, "why the Republicans chose to protect Mark Foley's political career rather than protect the children who were in our charge."

To which I want to thunder back: Is there a muzzle large enough to fit a mouth such as Nancy Pelosi's?

Unwind that sound bite. Since when have the Democrats really been the party to protect children from the sexual advances of adults? Let's get to the point: Since when have Democrats like Pelosi cared, really cared, about men seeking out boys for sex?

There's an organized lobby for this perversion: the National Man-Boy Love Association. In 1997, NAMBLA made national headlines when a 10-year-old Massachusetts boy named Jeffrey Curley was abducted by two men, choked on a gasoline-soaked rag when he wouldn't consent to sex, was murdered and then sexually assaulted.

Curley's parents sued NAMBLA, since one of the killers said he was discouraged from following his fiendish desires until the organization encouraged him. The Curleys' lawyer explained how the group instructed perverts on how to lure children into sex, citing a NAMBLA publication he calls "The Rape and Escape Manual." Its actual title is "The Survival Manual: The Man's Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships."

What does this have to do with the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi? The ever-prescient Mark Levin connected the dots on his radio program. NAMBLA easily found lawyers to defend them against the parents of the murdered boy -- the American Civil Liberties Union. Democrats like Pelosi are demanding that every Republican return any dirty Foley contributions they received, but do you think a single one of them has ever returned a dime generated for their coffers by the ACLU?

The American Spectator reported that in a 2001 "gay pride" parade in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi was just three spots in the parade from radical gay advocate Harry Hay, who avidly spoke in favor of sex with teens and fiercely advocated for NAMBLA's inclusion in gay-pride parades. Did Pelosi ever protest NAMBLA's presence in parades?

But go back to Pelosi's sound bite, because there's something there that's even more jarring: Since when do ultraliberals like San Fran Nan believe that a 17-year-old is a "child," anyway?

Consider the most sacred of sacred rights of liberals, abortion. When a teenage girl desires an abortion (or two, or three), do abortion-enabling liberals like Nancy Pelosi defend her as a "child"? Kansas pro-life attorney general Phill Kline fought last year to press abortion clinics to give him medical records of underage girls who sought abortions as part of an investigation into sexual abuse of minors. Liberals such as Planned Parenthood fought for what they called the privacy of "women's medical records."

And if liberal Democrats think sex between adults and children is gravely wrong, why are they accepting massive donations from Hollywood? One odd twist in the news networks' shock-and-awe Foley bombing is that their entertainment network cousins relish the very same activity, for fun and laughter, on their sex-drenched dramas.

ABC News broke open the Foley case. ABC Entertainment distributes "Desperate Housewives." During the last May sweeps, they pushed this plot: Bree, the red-headed Desperate Housewife, started seeing a man who was not only a drunk, but a sex addict. Bree's children then started trying to seduce him, and ultimately their mother came home to find her gay teenage son, Andrew, in the bedroom with her new beau. For ABC, this was all a delicious plot twist, a naughty giggle. No one was outraged. No Democrat returned contributions from Disney.

No, liberal Democrats in Congress are not the standard-bearers for "child protection" when it comes to sex. And neither are the news networks that suddenly are outraged -- outraged, we say! -- about Mark Foley's behavior.

ABC, CBS and NBC provided exactly zero coverage of the Curley v. NAMBLA suit. (But they did briefly cover NAMBLA -- when allegations about it floated into the Catholic priest abuse scandal of monstrous Father Paul Shanley in Boston in 2002.) What of Planned Parenthood's re-labeling of children as adults to ensure the privacy of their abortions? ABC, CBS and NBC didn't cover that controversy, either. Outrage over the glorification of man-boy sex in entertainment? Not a peep.

None of this is meant to minimize what is rightful outrage over Foley's scummy behavior, and the actions (or inactions) of anyone covering them up. It is simply to demonstrate that some have a right to be outraged. And some don't.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center.

see host's posts.....host endeavors to post the opposite POV of whatever Scaife and Bozell are marketing. host is certain that Scaife funded propaganda and psy-ops are persuading him of the opposite of whatever Scaife and Bozell want host to think "he knows". host wants Scaife's efforts to influence his opinion to be more than a waste of money, and host wants to alert people who may not have noticed, to consider what Scaife and Bozell are doing to them.

Lizra · 11-13-2006, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flstf

Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed".

Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.

Good idea!

Maybe we will get (a little) less manipulative bullshit and more substance from the politicians....start calling them out when they are full of crap. I'm tired of having so much time and money wasted by lies and decption. Put em on notice Maher......

FoolThemAll · 11-13-2006, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

See posts of FoolThemAll and flstf ......their posts do not reflect the opposite POV of L Brent Bozell III and Richard Mellon Scaife.

I take it that, somewhere in those articles you posted, these people had something to say on the topic of outing closeted homosexuals. Perhaps their opinion coincided with mine.

Uh... so?

Is it your contention that, because Bozell and Scaife are wrong in their demonization of homosexuals, they couldn't be right about anything else?

I'm still struggling to figure out what the hell your point is, host. Could you please be more clear in showing the relevance of your posts to the topic at hand?

loquitur · 11-13-2006, 05:12 PM

thanks, Ratbastid. In my dotage I have learned that most people are flawed and that each person is unique and worthy of respect on his/her own terms, rather than trying to impose my terms on them.

I'm glad some people found my words persuasive. For those who didn't, well, we'll just agree to disagree.

Intense1 · 11-14-2006, 09:52 PM

After reading all the posts and trying my best to think through all the issues, I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask:

1. Is it absolutely essential that the voters know all about the candidates they are faced with at the polls?

2. If an elected official proves to have values or habits different from what they claimed in their campaign, should they be ousted? (or even outted?)

These are a couple of things I've been wondering in reading all of your very deep thoughts, and I was just wondering.....

Cynthetiq · 11-15-2006, 09:13 AM

so just who did Bill Maher out that friday night? or was it just more Geraldo's Vaults of Al Capone?

Moskie · 11-15-2006, 09:38 AM

Nobody.

The topic seems to have been intentionally avoided, as the discussion veered elsewhere. But, after his comments on Larry King were edited out in other time zones, Maher made no mention of the promise on his show Friday. I did not see it myself, but here's an article:

http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=66&id=11516
no, i don't read gaywired.com. i got it off of google. i swear.

Strange, indeed.

Cynthetiq · 11-15-2006, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Even more troubling for Bill Maher fans is why the HBO host of Real Time With Bill Maher failed to follow up on his promise on Larry King Live to "name" more gay Republicans in positions of power on his Friday night show. Not only did Maher fail to do so, but he avoided any mention at all of his appearance on Larry King or the censoring of his interview with him by CNN - prompting fans to wonder if he too had fallen sway to pressure from the RNC or possibly from higher-ups at HBO not to make good on his word. No statement by Maher about the incident has been forthcoming.

I see... all talk and no cock... what little respect i had for him has totally evaporated. He now falls into the pot of "shit stirrer" or as we like to call on internet forums, trolls.

Lizra · 11-15-2006, 09:55 AM

Bummer...I wanted some outings.....

Maybe he couldn't find any!?

Moskie · 11-15-2006, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

I see... all talk and no cock... what little respect i had for him has totally evaporated. He now falls into the pot of "shit stirrer" or as we like to call on internet forums, trolls.

I don't know... Bill Maher *is* a shit stirrer, and it would have stirred more shit if he were to out some congressmen on air. He might even know he's wrong, and I bet he'd still do it. So why didn't he?

host · 11-15-2006, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra

Bummer...I wanted some outings.....

Maybe he couldn't find any!?

They're described, right here:
http://www.proudofwhoweare.org/

Quote:

Both anti-gay Republican party and anti-gay evangelical movement appear to have been led by closeted gay men.

From today’s headlines it seems quite possible that closeted gay men have been holding the top jobs in both the anti-gay Republican party and the anti-gay national evangelical Christian movement......

go figure....who-da thunk it?

11-12-2006, 10:12 AM	#46 (permalink)
seretogis Huggles, sir? Location: Seattle	Tammy Bruce is a neo-con apologist. As far as homosexuals being against gay-marriage legislation, I can understand that position completely. It is not necessarily hypocrisy. The solution to dealing with same-sex marriage is not to add yet another law, but to change or remove current law which restricts and defines marriage -- a social institution. If the word "marriage" is so precious that it couldn't possibly be associated with filthy filthy homosexuals, take it away from everyone and replace it with "civil union." Straight, gay, and other couples could then all get the same "civil union license/registration" and then perform whatever religious, spiritual, or personal ceremonies they'd like on their own to complete their "marriage." __________________ seretogis - sieg heil perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

11-12-2006, 10:34 AM	#47 (permalink)
Halx Please touch this. Owner/Admin Location: Manhattan	This thread got interesting when Jess added that last bit. However, I have to step in and say one thing. If you want to run for office, run under your own values. If all you are is some puppet, bending your own values to meet the expectations of your constituents, then you are.. well.. nothing special. What is the definition of a politician? Someone who presents themselves to be society's most obediant bitch? If I am voting someone ahead of myself (which means, to me, giving someone OTHER THAN MYSELF a vote of confidence to do the right thing) then I am voting for them based on what their decisions WOULD BE if they had to wing it. Now, who do you want for a leader; someone who is not true to themselves, or someone with a real drive and passion for the policies they enforce? This is what is ridiculous about politics. There are no leaders, only slimy businessmen sucking on the teat of public opinion. __________________ You have found this post informative. -The Administrator [Don't Feed The Animals]

11-12-2006, 11:36 AM	#48 (permalink)
Moskie Pure Chewing Satisfaction Location: can i use bbcode [i]here[/i]?	I'm confilcted on this one. On one hand, I don't think it should be neccesary for a politician's sexual orientation to be public information. Much in the same way I wouldn't want any of their sexual habits to be made public. They're American citizens with a right to privacy. But if current politics demand that homosexuality be a political issue, then this information is relevant. So... not sure. But, while we're at it, can we out congresspeople who are closet agnostics/atheists? I'm sick of politicians claiming they love the Jesus, when you know they're lying through their teeth to get the votes. I mean, why not? __________________ Greetings and salutations.

11-12-2006, 01:06 PM	#58 (permalink)
Lizra Insane Location: rural Indiana	That knowlege benefits me by helping me decide who is the best person to hold an office. I need truth to make good decisions. I would not want to vote for someone who is living a lie....This issue of accepting homosexuality as ahealthy and normal variation in our society is important and needs to be taken seriously. Double talk is not helpful. Hiding and lying makes this issue seem less real/important than it truely is....imo. __________________ Happy atheist

11-12-2006, 01:45 PM	#61 (permalink)
Moskie Pure Chewing Satisfaction Location: can i use bbcode [i]here[/i]?	You're probably talking to the wrong people here, FTA. The real people that you should be having this conversation with are the constituents these congressmen represent. They're probably for gay marriage amendments, being Republican. How do you predict they will react to learning their representatives are gay? My guess is that the congressmen's popularity would take a hit. Assuming that were to happen, that would show the information is, definitively, relevant. Most of the left you're talking to here would probably gain respect for congressmen that come out of the closet. So maybe our perspectives don't reflect the real issue here.... __________________ Greetings and salutations. Last edited by Moskie; 11-12-2006 at 01:52 PM.. Reason: extra thoughts....

11-12-2006, 04:06 PM	#63 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Everyone has things about themselves that they don't advertise and would rathen not be made public. Some of them are trivial, some are important, and each of us would probably differ as to which is which. But in the final analysis, each person gets to define what makes him/herself be who s/he is, and how important to his/her self-definition any single particular aspect is. To put it another way: we each choose the face we present to the world. For example, I'm not naturally charming and not naturally extroverted. But to be successful in my line of work I have to learn to be charming and somewhat extroverted. it's not really me; I'm much more of a bookish and cerebral type than a glad-hander. My wife knows this, and some of my close friends, but I have no particular desire or need to have these aspects of my personality become common knowledge. I mention this not because I think that sexual preference is on a par with personality type - clearly it's a different kind of personal characteristic - but rather to make the point that each of us chooses how s/he presents him/herself to the world. And the choice of how to do that is uniquely each of ours; it's as much a part of who we are as the choice of clothing or the part of our hair. If I like to look at porn, I don't tell that to my business colleagues. If I wipe my ass with my left hand instead of my right, I don't mention it in polite company. If I prefer having sex with my wife doggie style, I don't need other people to know about it. What's more, I might even think (to take a hypothetical example) that it's not a good thing that I like to look at porn. I might have any number of negative characteristics that I am not proud of and prefer to suppress. That doesn't mean anyone has the right to go tell everyone else that I like to look at porn, or that I bite my nails in private, or that I like to scratch my ass. Even if I do those things, I don't have to be proud of them and - this is crucial - I may still think they are wrong. maybe I'd advocate restricting access to porn in order to help me save myself from urges to look at it. Or, even if they are not wrong, they are none of anyone's business. (no, I don't urge restrictions of this type - I'm libertarian through and through - but I'm giving these examples for purpose of argument). Sexual activity of all kinds, including sexual preferences, are precisely like any other kind of activity or trait. It's up to the owner to decide what becomes public and what does not. No one else has the right to interfere with anyone's life or personality or self-definition that way. It's a very intrusive, very personal violation. And for what? To demonstrate that someone is a "hypocrite?" Actually, no - because it takes a few assumptions to get to the conclusion that the person is a hypocrite. Yes, <i>you</i> might think the person is a hypocrite, but that doesn't mean s/he is - it could simply mean that s/he is wrestling with something, or indulged a curiosity, or what have you. You simply don't know how the behavior you happen to focus on fits into that person's life. It could be that the person "knows" what s/he is doing is wrong, and wants outside restrictions in order to help him/her stay away from it, and to remove temptations. In short, you have no way to know what the person's motivation is, and no real basis for painting them as hypocrites - all you know is that s/he prefers to keep some aspect of life private. Be very careful about this sort of "outing" - there may one day be something <i>you</i> prefer to keep private, that someone else might think has to be exposed, for reasons of their own that you might not share - it might not even be sexual in nature. What goes around comes around. Finally, there is apparently an assumption among the supporters of "outing" that all Republicans or republican supporters or voters hate gays or advocate restrictions on gays. To begin with, simply as an empirical matter, I doubt most people especially care about what other people do; they simply want to be left alone. You can't simply assume that a Republican voter hates gays. I have voted Republican at times in the past, and I would venture to say I have more gay people in my home on a regular basis than most; my occasional choice of a Republican candidate had zero to do with gays - what it had to do with is regulation, taxes and national security. That's what happens in a two party system: yo'ure left with the choice of which party's candidates match more of the preferences you have at a particular moment than the other party's. There is no such thing as a candidate who matches me in all opinions, which means I'm always compromising. I would guess most gay Republicans do too. To suggest, as the "outers" do, that a free-market libertarian who happens to be gay should have to vote for a welfare state democrat in order to be able to maintain his privacy is totalitarianism - i.e., you have to do things the way the "outer" thinks you should do them, or else suffer the consequences. Bah. In the final analysis, people are entitled to respect. ALL people.

11-12-2006, 04:20 PM	#64 (permalink)
Lizra Insane Location: rural Indiana	Well....I could repeat myself, again, about how it is important to me that "public people" asking other people to vote for them.... to represent them when making laws that affect us all be honest about who they are and what they do....but I won't bore you all again. __________________ Happy atheist

11-12-2006, 05:30 PM	#65 (permalink)
FoolThemAll Walking is Still Honest Location: Seattle, WA	loquitur... Thanks for stating so eloquently in a single post what I was aiming to say in 20 or 30 clumsy smaller posts. __________________ I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

11-12-2006, 06:25 PM	#67 (permalink)
FoolThemAll Walking is Still Honest Location: Seattle, WA	Host... This is the first I've heard of the name Scaife, though I've heard of similar views before. I don't agree with his demonizations of homosexuals, and I don't see what it has to do with my views on this topic. You're going to have to be more clear in the link between the two. __________________ I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

11-12-2006, 07:07 PM	#68 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	loquitur: thanks for your post. I'm still not sure I agree with you 100% (in particular, I think that personal responsibility changes when you have a public public life) but I can certainly see the reason and logic--and especially the compassion--on that side of the fence now. That's the sort of post we need more of in Tilted Politics. Great work.

11-12-2006, 08:26 PM	#69 (permalink)
flstf Easy Rider Location: Moscow on the Ohio	Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed". Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.

11-13-2006, 05:12 PM	#73 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	thanks, Ratbastid. In my dotage I have learned that most people are flawed and that each person is unique and worthy of respect on his/her own terms, rather than trying to impose my terms on them. I'm glad some people found my words persuasive. For those who didn't, well, we'll just agree to disagree.

11-14-2006, 09:52 PM	#74 (permalink)
Intense1 Crazy Location: Music City burbs	After reading all the posts and trying my best to think through all the issues, I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask: 1. Is it absolutely essential that the voters know all about the candidates they are faced with at the polls? 2. If an elected official proves to have values or habits different from what they claimed in their campaign, should they be ousted? (or even outted?) These are a couple of things I've been wondering in reading all of your very deep thoughts, and I was just wondering..... __________________ (none yet, still thinkin')

11-15-2006, 09:13 AM	#75 (permalink)
Cynthetiq Tilted Cat Head Administrator Location: Manhattan, NY	so just who did Bill Maher out that friday night? or was it just more Geraldo's Vaults of Al Capone? __________________ I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not. What's the best nation in the world? DO-NATION!

11-15-2006, 09:38 AM	#76 (permalink)
Moskie Pure Chewing Satisfaction Location: can i use bbcode [i]here[/i]?	Nobody. The topic seems to have been intentionally avoided, as the discussion veered elsewhere. But, after his comments on Larry King were edited out in other time zones, Maher made no mention of the promise on his show Friday. I did not see it myself, but here's an article: http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=66&id=11516 no, i don't read gaywired.com. i got it off of google. i swear. Strange, indeed. __________________ Greetings and salutations.

11-15-2006, 09:55 AM	#78 (permalink)
Lizra Insane Location: rural Indiana	Bummer...I wanted some outings..... Maybe he couldn't find any!? __________________ Happy atheist