Herman Cain Happy to Usurp States on Abortion, Marriage

What ever happened to honest conservatives? You know, the ones that believed in minimal government, states rights and individual freedom?

It seems they're turning those tasks over to the liberals. When it comes to abortion, marriage, gay rights and religion, the Republicans are showing their true colors: the conservatives are one hundred percent in favor of taking away individual liberties and states' rights.

CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network) got an exclusive interview with Herman Cain that perfectly illustrates how Republicans are advocating a federal takeover.

"Yes I feel that strongly about [a pro-life Constitutional amendment banning abortion]. If we can get the necessary support and it comes to my desk I’ll sign it. That’s all I can do. I will sign it. ... I think marriage should be protected at the federal level also. I used to believe that it could be just handled by the states but there’s a movement going on to basically take the teeth out of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act ... we do need some protection at the federal level ... I would support legislation that would say that it’s between a man and a woman.

I just don't get how Republicans can talk out of both sides of their mouths with such ease. One minute

Bachmann, Romney and Cain: Religious Rights Trump Gay Rights

What do you do when two groups' civil rights come into direct conflict?

Three of the front-running Republican presidential candidates (Bachmann, Romney and Cain) say that religious rights trump gay rights when the government is giving out our tax dollars. And a fourth, Texas Governor Perry, almost certainly would have said the same thing if he'd been able to stay for the debate (he had to return to Texas because of the wildfires).

This shows a stunning misunderstanding of the United States Constitution and the very meaning of civil rights.

The question they were responding to was about gay couples adopting children. Many of the adoption agencies in this country are run by Christian churches, particularly the Catholic Church. And these same agencies get a lot of funding from the federal government. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Catholic adoption agencies don't want to let same-sex couples adopt children. The Catholic Church claims it violates their right to religious freedom.

Many Americans don't realize that outside of employment and housing, it's perfectly legal for an ordinary citizen to discriminate against anyone for any reason. If I were a racist, it would be perfectly legal for me to

Dollywood Asks Lesbian to Change Shirt

Would you be offended by this T-shirt?

marriage is so gay

Well, probably not, because you're reading my blog.

I'm not a huge country-music fan, but I've always liked Dolly Parton. Her commonsense no-nonsense philosophy and self-deprecating humor are wonderful. She mostly keeps her politics and religion to herself because she believes an entertainer should entertain. (Imagine that ... an entertainer who doesn't think her fame makes her an instant expert on religion, politics or relationships! It's refreshing.)

So I was surprised to read this headline:

Philip Spooner - 86 Year Old Vet Speaking for Gay Marriage

An amazing speech by a true American hero. Pass it on ...

Arkansas Shows It Has More Than Hillbillies: Elton John Baby Pics

Here in the United States we have a bad habit of stereotyping our states. Kentucky has nothing but tough farmers with shotguns over their shoulders and a scarecrow in every field; Texas is filled with gun-toting cowboys; if you're from New York you are either Jewish or from Brooklyn or both ... and so on. And if you're from Arkansas, you're a dumb hillbilly.

Well, it seems the citizens of Arkansas have shown us that they're made of better stuff than that.

The story started when Us Weekly magazine put a big picture of Elton John, his husband and their newly adopted baby on the front cover of the magazine. This apparently offended the sensibilities of Harps Grocery story chain, which put a "family values" shield in front of it so that children couldn't see the cover.

That's the same shield they use to hide pornography from the kids. Not only that,

New Hypocrites Club Nomination: Republican Joe Miller, Alaskan Senate Candidate

Congratulations to Alaskan senatorial candidate Joe Miller on his nomination to the Hypocrites Club.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC managed to get a great interview. There's a lot of good stuff in the interview, but here's what jumped out at me:

• Gay marriage is a states-rights issue that should be decided locally. "The fact of the matter is, it's a state issue."
• But wait ... Miller also says, "There's the Defense of Marriage Act, which I support."

Got that? It's a states rights issue, but Miller will take away that right if he can.

Miller uses taxation, as his excuse. "As a consequence of the taxation structure [of] the federal government, there clearly is a role" for the federal government. This is quite amazing, double hypocrisy if you will, since taxes are like poison to Republicans and Tea Baggers.

So which is it Joe? Aren't Republicans all about limited government? Aren't states' rights part

Gay Marriage and Mormon Hypocrisy: canadianjohnson's Funny Chart

Here's a really amusing chart of Mormon hypocrisy about marriage by canadianjohnson over at reddit.com. If you want to use this, please link to the original, http://i.imgur.com/UJKCH.jpg, so that the author gets proper credit. Enjoy!

Good News for Gay Rights: Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

It looks like the religious right got its clock cleaned on this one. U.S. District Court judge Joseph Tauro said that the federal law banning gay marriage is unconstitutional. If it's upheld by a higher court after the Obama administration appeals it, it will have far-reaching implications. It could send shock-waves across the country.

Why, you might ask, would Obama's administration appeal it? Good question! Because even though Obama is a supporter of gay rights, an appeal would strengthen this ruling. As it stands, it only applies to Massachusetts, but if the law is upheld on appeal, the precedent would become the law of the land for a much wider area. Plus, it will almost certainly be appealed clear up to the Supreme Court.

Pope: Abortion, Gay Marriage are "Most Insidious" Problems Facing the World

What worries the Pope the most?

Could it be the AIDS crisis in Africa, for which he is partly to blame, that will kill tens of millions of people? Nah, that doesn't bother the Pope much.

Maybe he's worried about global warming, which threatens hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people with starvation, flooding and disease? No, that's not it either.

What about the fact that North Korea and Iran are developing nuclear weapons, and so many other countries like Israel, Pakistan and India already have them? No, wrong again.

Or maybe the Pope is concerned about terrorism? Does the Pope worry that terrorists could kill thousands, and maybe trigger another war like Iraq in which another 150,000 innocent civilians will be killed? No, that doesn't seem to worry the Pope.

Then it must be the pedophilia crisis, where the Pope's own priests and bishops molested tens of thousands of little kids? Surely that's top on the Popes list of horrible things. Right? Wrong!

The biggest crisis in the world is homosexual marriage and abortion! Got that?? According to Pope Benedict XVI, gay marriage and abortion are among the most "insidious and dangerous" threats in the world today.

The Pope worries that terminating a pregnancy when the fetus has no brain, not even any nerve cells, is a crime equivalent to terrorism. Can he truly believe that a young, desperate unmarried woman who has made a terrible mistake and seeks an abortion to prevent an even greater tragedy is a "more insidious" danger to the world than Osama bin Laden?

If two men or two women love each other and want to make a life together as a committed couple, the Pope says that their love is a threat to society.

Mike Huckabee: Gay Marriage is like Incest, Drugs and Polygamy

Is 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee deliberately torpedoing his own campaign? Can he really be this stupid?

Huckabee is now comparing gay marriage to incest, drug use and polygamy, according to the transcript of an interview he gave this week. Got that? Incest, raping your own child or sibling.

Disgusting.

But now I'm confused. I thought politicians were a bunch of clever, political animals. They're supposed to get up there and pander to the crowds. Some good ol' boy from the South who's still racist knows he'd better keep it to himself. A young Democrat from New York who thinks his constituents are too dumb for democracy and that they need a socialist government to take care of them, well he'd better not say it out loud.

So what's with Huckabee?

Roseanne Barr: Mormon Church Caused Marie Osmond's Son's Death

Update (March 8): Reports have surfaced claiming that Michael was not gay, and Roseanne has retracted her statement. Nevertheless, the underlying sentiment remains: The Mormon Church is viciously anti-gay, in spite of their professed love for everyone. They are still damaging families across America, and while we may never know the truth about the Osmond family, I'm leaving this blog intact because the message is still important.

Leave it to Roseanne to tell it like it is.

"Marie Osmond's poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that "depression" is a lie!

"Yet the Osmonds still talk lovingly about their church, saying nothing about its extremely anti-gay Crusade. Marie also has a gay daughter! ...

"G-d is trying to use you for something good and this is your opportunity! Your church is wrong and on the wrong wrong wrong side of things! Get as vocal about that as you are about your diet. G-d bless you too, Marie.

"Take a hard look at the facts now as you use this very sad time for introspection, healing growth and prayer, and become a strong symbol for loving mothers who make no apologies for hatred against their own kids!"

Right on, Roseanne!

It makes me sick too. What a brainwashing job.

AMA Tells the Government Off about Gays

Today's headline, "AMA: Government Policies Hazardous to Gay Health," illustrates perfectly the difference between religion and science. Religion is harming and killing people with its two-thousand-year-old morality leftover from tribes that were wandering around in the Middle Eastern deserts, whereas science is trying to prevent deaths and make people happier and healthier.

The American Medical Association, the nation's largest group of doctors, adopted a resolution at their bi-annual meeting in Houston yesterday, which states unambiguously that the government's policies are harmful to gays.

First, the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy means that gays can't talk about medical issues with their doctor, because doctors are required to report a gay man to superior officers. That's bad for the patient, and violates a doctor's duty to keep patients' medical information private. And second, bans on same-sex marriage leads to health-care disparities. Gay couples become second-class citizens when it comes to their health.

It's hypocritical when conservative and evangelical religious people claim to "hate the sin, but love the sinner," yet their actual politics harms and kills people. Those who deny equal rights to same-sex couples are showing their true colors: they are bigoted and hateful, plain and simple. Anyone who would deny health care to another human, regardless of that person's sexual orientation (or sex, or religion, or color, or ...), is not a moral person.

Science, by contrast, has proved again and again its inherent morality. (And I include progressive religious people when I say "science.") Down through the ages, virtually every advance in the human condition has been through the hard work of scientists, not popes, priests, rabbis, or clerics. At just about every turn, scientists have met resistance, and even persecution, at the hands of the conservative religious zealots. In spite of this, scientists have pushed forward. They learned about human anatomy, discovered that microbes are responsible for disease, discovered evolution and how it is the foundation of our immune systems, invented thousands of drugs, and helped guide politicians to set sensible health policies.

The AMA's resolution is a breath of fresh air in the national debate about gay rights, and is yet another step forward by science, pushing back the dark immorality of the religious right.

When Gay Marriage Was a Christian Rite

It turns out the Roman Catholic church has, once again, ignored the historical evidence and censored history, in order to support its current homophobic and hypocritical stance on gay marriage. A family member forwarded this fascinating article to me:

When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite

The article describes how down through most of the history of the Roman Catholic Church, there were many instances of church-sanctioned homosexual marriages, including a marriage between two Roman saints, St Sergius and Saint Bacchus.

Contrary to the Church's revised version of history, the truth is that the Roman Catholic church has a long history of tolerance and even celebration of homosexual love and marriage. Records of same-sex marriages have been discovered throughout the Christian world, including in the records of the Vatican itself.

Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church, and Christian denominations in general, have a long history of revising the facts, and an amazing ability to get people to swallow their altered history as truth.

Tags: gay homosexual marriage catholic history christian christianity atheist atheism religion virus

Sarah Palin and gay marriage: Hypocrisy at its worst

I find few things more disgusting that political hypocrisy. I'd sooner vote for an honest politician whose views were diametrically opposed to mine, than to vote for a hypocrite who agrees with me. Sarah Palin doesn't fit either case – she's a hypocrite whose views are diametrically opposed to mine.

What has raised my ire today? Palin thinks we need a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This violates everything the Republican Party stands for.

The Republican Party has a long and consistent history of advocating small government, of keeping government out of our lives, of remembering that we are a federation of semi-sovereign states, each of which gets to largely control its own internal affairs.

Evangelicals like Sarah Palin go on and on about controlling government, keeping states rights alive, keeping government out of our lives, and keeping both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution. The Federal Government is only supposed to deal with national and international issues. Everything else is left to the states.

Yet, when it comes to injecting Christian morals into our lives, Sarah Palin is all too fast to abandon these principles. Instead of letting each state consider this issue, Palin wants to abandon her Republican principles (or perhaps she never had any principles to start with), and pass a Constitutional amendment that would make her conservative Evangelical views the law of the land.

Senator McCain, by contrast, is an honest Republican. Although I strongly disagree with his position on gay marriage (he's against it), I admire his principles: He believes this is a state issue, not a federal issue. Unlike Palin, he won't abandon his long-held principles about the role of the federal government, just to achieve some short-term goal.

And isn't it ironic that Palin, and not John McCain, is the one drawing everyone's attention, including mine. You don't see Senator Biden out there stealing all the attention from Senator Obama. I think that's a sad indication that McCain's campaign is in trouble.