Right Wing Blames “Hollywood” For Prop 8 Ruling
It’s all Hollywood’s fault. Unable to admit that Prop 8 was nothing more than simple bigotry, and angry that the 9th Circuit called them on it, the right wing has decided it’s a Hollywood conspiracy. As is typical in this type of attack, the Alliance Defense Fund also made certain to throw some vitrol towards Hollywood’s northern sybling, San Francisco. Here’s the full quote from the Alliance Defense Fund:
“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage–tried in San Francisco–turned out this way. But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court. Every pro-marriage American should be pleased that this case can finally go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ProtectMarriage.com legal team’s arguments align with every other federal appellate and Supreme Court decision on marriage in American history.”
I was born and raised in Hollywood, and I live in San Francisco. And I couldn’t be prouder to be from either.
[Photo via Wikipedia.]
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Loading ...Prop 8 Reactions: Crazy Right Winger Edition
The right wing anti-marriage crowd has responded with typically crazy reactions. Everything from saying the ruling was a Hollywood conspiracy, to simply saying it was “absurd” to blaming San Francisco . Here are the reactions:
Bill O’Reilly Stands Up for Ellen & JC Penney
Here’s one guy you wouldn’t expect to be against the proposed boycott of JC Penney for hiring Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson. It’s Bill O’Reilly, who says he doesn’t think the boycott “is in the spirit of America.” He goes on to say it’s a “which hunt” reminiscent of “a McCarthy-era blacklist.”
Here’s Mediaite’s recap of the segment that aired on Fox News:
“Is it right for any organization to call for a company to fire a spokesperson that has not done anything wrong?” O’Reilly first asked, wondering what was wrong with DeGeneres making a living. “Just because something is legal doesn’t mean its moral,” Rios [who supports the boycott] replied, though that didn’t seem to be a strong enough reason for O’Reilly, who noted that JC Penney was a private corporation that could hire whoever it wanted. “I don’t think that’s the spirit of America,” he replied. She continued that “it isn’t about Ellen DeGeneres, but it is about mainstreaming something that is not acceptable to Christian people all over the country.” O’Reilly wasn’t buying it.
“What is the difference between a McCarthy-era blacklist and Million Moms” not wanting DeGeneres employed, O’Reilly asked. He added that he understood the objection, but didn’t see why the group didn’t just call for a boycott, instead of demanding certain executive decisions from the company. “You’re dodging the essential question… a conservative group in this country is asking an American citizen based upon her lifestyle, and I don’t think that’s correct.” Rios continued to argue that the problem wasn’t DeGeneres, but that “we are seeing homosexuality so embedded in our culture in alarming ways.”
“It’s a witch hunt and it shouldn’t happen,” O’Reilly concluded.
Here’s the video:
[Image via Wikipedia.]
Read more about the right wing boycott of JC Penney over Ellen at QClick Radar.
CNN Contributor Roland Martin’s Homophobic Superbowl Tweets
CNN contributor Roland Martin set out a series of Homophobic tweets after viewing David Beckham’s Superbowl ad. He said: “Ain’t no real bruhs going to H&M to buy some damn David Beckham underwear! #superbowl,” “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl,” and “I bet soccer fan @piersmorgan will be in line at H&M in the morning to get his hands on David Bechman’s [sic] underwear line! LOL #superbowl.”
These are his tweets in which he makes multiple offensive cracks and then takes offense when people point out they’re homophobic:
There’s more! Read it →
Student Invites Westboro Baptist Church To Picket LGBT Classmates
Westboro Baptist Church, America’s craziest homophobes (and that’s saying something), are on their way to protest at two high school in the St. Louis area. They claim this is at the “request” on a student at one of the schools, reports Unicorn Booty:
Fort Zumwalt East High School students got the shock of a lifetime last week when they learned that the Westboro Baptist Church was on its way to come rage against the school’s gay students after being personally invited by one of their classmates.
Margie Phelps of Westboro Baptish Church told KDSK TV that “We’re going to stop by two high schools in the area to tell those young people to tell those young people who have been lied by every adult they’ve encounter, that it’s not okay to be gay, never has been, and never will be.”
Clayton High School is of course the site of the totally amazeballs Phelps-a-Thon, the Gay-Straight Alliance’s fundraiser which will earn donations for every minute that the WBC protests outside of the school. This move by clever Clayton students is a total game-changer that completely turns Westboro’s hateful preaching upside down.
Rick Santorum Says Gays Don’t Deserve “Privilege” Of Marriage
Campaigning in Fulton, Georgia, Rick Santorum told a gay man that he doesn’t deserve the “privilege” of marriage. Why? The usual religious right junk, plus more. Apparently heterosexual marriage (as long as it produces offspring) is an “intrinsic good” and so straight people get the “privilege” of marriage. As for same-sex marriage? Well Santorum says it doesn’t “benefit society.”
You’re not entitled “to special treatment under the law…[Marriage is] not a right, it’s something that has existed since the beginning of human history as an institution where men and women come together for the purposes of forming a natural relationship as God made it to be. And for the purposes of having children and continuing that civilization. It is an intrinsic good…And as a result of that, we extend a privilege. We extend certain privileges to people who do that because we want to encourage that behavior. [...]
Two people who may like each other or may love each other who are same-sex, is that a special relationship? Yes it is, but it is not the same relationship that benefits society like a marriage between a man and a woman.
[Via ThinkProgress.]
Cleveland Police Harass, Beat, Abuse, Jail Gay Couple
Two gay men have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit after Cleveland police harassed, raided the house of, abused, stripped and jailed them. This is the story, as reported by Fox 8 in Cleveland.
This past April, Jonathan Simcox and Steven Ondo “were walking home from a bar on the near west side when they started arguing. They say a neighbor, who happened to be an off-duty Cleveland police officer came outside and confronted them. He came out over shouting, saying, ‘Shut up, you`re disturbing the peace’. I pushed to get past him, as soon as I did that he knocked me on the ground, and just started beating me, hitting me, standing over top of me, and punching me repeatedly.” Cleveland then showed up at their house, arrested them and “hauled them off” to jail.
That’s bad enough, but it got a whole lot worse. A week after being released from jail, a Cleveland police SWAT team raided their house, saying they were wanted on a warrant for “assaulting a police officer.”
“[An officer] grabbed me by my shirt, and punched me twice in the face, after he punched me, he threw me up against the wall,” said Simcox.
Fox 8 says that, during the raid, they “were wearing only underwear and t-shirts. Simcox asked if they could go get dressed, to which an officer replied: “You can go get them shoes, but faggots don`t deserve to wear pants in jail.” In jail, for “at least one whole day their repeated requests for pants were denied.”
So what happened to the assault charge? “They went to trial, it was proven they didn’t do anything wrong, they were found not guilty.”
Shame on Cleveland. This is a horrifying example of what happens when LGBT Americans are routinely denied our rights and vilified over and over by the right wing.
Hate Group Slams JC Penney for Hiring Ellen DeGeneres as Spokesperson
One Million Moms, a front for the anti-gay hate group American Family Association, says “JC Penney Offends Traditional Families Again” for hiring Ellen DeGeneres as JC Penney’s new spokesperson. They said:
Recently JC Penney announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres will be the company’s new spokesperson. Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war then their brand transformation will be unsuccessful.
Apparently being “an open homosexual” and shopping at JC Penney is incompatible. I think that would be news to many people who shop here, as well as to the company.
Anti-Marriage Zealots Target Starbucks for Supporting Marriage Equality
Marriage equality is getting close to passing in Washington state, with support from local economic powerhouses like Nike, Microsoft and Starbucks. Now, the National Organization for Marriage, America’s leading group of anti-marriage-equality crackpots, is attacking Starbucks.
NOM’s president, Brian Brown said: “Americans should be able to drink a peaceful cup of coffee without worrying that a portion of the company’s profits is going to be used to push gay marriage without a vote from the people.”
Jonathan Baker, NOM’s head of “corporate fairness” (that’s some bigotted doublespeak for you!) continued: “Increasingly, gay marriage extremists are arguing that people known to oppose same-sex marriage should not be hired, or even, should be fired. Diversity and tolerance are a two-way street. Having waded into a social issue where Starbucks has no special competence, the company has an obligation to reassure its customers, vendors and employees that it will respect the most important diversity—diversity of opinion.”
Let me translate that into plain English for you: NOM is saying a company is discriminatory and intolerant if they don’t hire bigots. That’s seems to be the right wing’s favorite message: if you support equal rights for all Americans, you’re really discriminating against bigots because you won’t tolerate their hateful beliefs. As I said, these people are crackpots.
Romney Campaign Publicizes Support From Pastor Who Links 9/11 and Marriage Equality
Mitt Romney’s campaign has released a letter from Roberto Miranda and 20 other far-right religious leaders. In the letter, the group talks about how Romney prevented Massachusetts from being “flooded” by same-sex couples after same-sex marriage was legalized there:
He and his staff identified and enforced a little-known 1913 law that allowed them to order local clerks not to issue marriage licenses to out-of-state couples. Absent this action, homosexual couples would surely have flooded into Massachusetts from other states to get “married” and then demanded that their home states recognize the “marriages,” putting the nation only one court decision away from nationalizing “same-sex marriage.”
Miranda feels that the 9/11 terrorist attacks are directly linked to marriage equality in Massachusetts:
[He] sees marriage equality as the work of the Devil and has drawn a “direct correlation between marriage equality and the September 11th terrorist attacks.” “Is it exaggerated to see prophetic significance in the fact that on September 11, 2001 Boston served as the point of departure for the deadly forces that spread so much destruction and havoc in this nation and all over the world,” he asked. “What took place at the material level is now being carried out at the moral and spiritual level, as the virus of homosexuality and gay marriage begins to spread dramatically all over this nation and perhaps the world.”
