Gold Star Awards. August, 2011

MADE IT! lol

This was a weird month. I started it with only a handful of reserve sites left for the HoF - nothing I was really excited about, just some sites I keep in my back pocket in case I run out of ideas.  Well... I ran out of ideas!  Then about six or seven different sites, blogs, web comics, etc... All came to my attention at once and I'm set with enough Golds and Silvers to carry me though the end of the year!  The only question was who to put into which month. LOL.  That's of particular importance this month, since the year is 1966 and the lone inductee is...


The Ted Williams GOLD STAR #38: Potholer54

I don't know how I managed to have missed this channel for so long.  I got linked to it recently via a comment on MMFA, and the minute I started watching I was HOOKED.  Complex Science about Climate Change, the Creation of the Earth and the Universe, the beginning of life on this planet, Human Evolution, and other things, all boiled down to perfectly digestible short documentaries that even the most brain-dead Right Winger can understand.  And beyond the fact that they are FASCINATING in and of themselves, they represent a solid argument that no Right-Wing True-Believer can deny or debunk, especially since he often specifically addresses the very talking points and urban myths that those on the Right try to use to discredit the Science they can't accept.  Very well done, and a FANTASTIC resource for arguing with Conservatives.  I HIGHLY recommend subscribing.

Also... I want to thank everyone who's read and commented on Utopia.  If you haven't checked it out yet, please take a look. I'd love to hear what you have to say, even if it's only to tell me that it's an incoherent mess! But please feel free to leave comments there, here or email me at niceguy9418@usa.com. (That goes for anything, anytime, BTW, not just that!)  I'm not always on top of every comment and email, but I do try to reply as soon and as often as possible.  And thanks again to ALL of you, for all of your participation in this conversation over the past two years. (It will be two years, officially, in just one more week - 9/7/11.)

Jesus Christ, What the hell is wrong with your followers?

OK, I'll admit that I'm incredibly late in coming to this one.  Over a year in fact.  But I came accross this article while looking for something unrelated.  And actually the article I found originally was not the HuffPo piece,  but I can't find the one I read originally and the HuffPo piece has all of the same quotations, so it will suffice.

Plus the headline was a bit more succinct: Religious Right Goes Nuts Over Transgender Appointee Amanda Simpson


(Though, to "go" nuts suggests that you were SANE at some point. Hmmmm...)

You gotta love the Right's all-American reasoning here:

"Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?" asked Peter LaBarbera, president of the anti-gay group Americans for Truth. "How far does this politics of gay and transgender activism go? Clearly this is an administration that is pandering to the gay lobby."

 
Right.  Because... it's not like we living in a representative democracy, where all people are equal in the eyes of the law, and everyone should have a voice, right?  Also... I love anti-(some group) groups who act like their all for protecting our rights.  (Our right to live in a world full of Jesus-freaks like them, I guess.)
 
But they go on...
 

Matt Barber, associate dean at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, said the appointment "boggles the mind" and said that while African-Americans might deserve special treatment, transgender people don't.


"This isn't like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong," he said. "This is about political correctness."

OK, first of all, Liberty University teaches young-earth creationism as if it were a legitimate, evidence-based, scientific theory.  So care more about what my dog leaves in the back yard than I do about the opinion of their associate dean.

All the same, it's nice to see that he's at least (finally) willing to admit that discrimination against blacks is and was WRONG.  Even though the Republican's model of "diversity" is more akin to "tokenism," it's nice to at least hear him make the concession.  All the same, you've got to love how, in the same breath, he can then go one to completely justify (or at least attempt to) discrimination against homosexuals and transpeople.  (I mean, it's not like they were BORN GAY, right?)

*sigh*

One step forward, two steps back.  That's what passes for "progress" on the Right. 

And there was this from another one of my favorite hate-groups:

"Simpson's nomination was forwarded through to President Obama by a gay activist group, making it appear that this appointment of a male-to-female 'transgender' activist to a high level Commerce Department position to be payback to his far-left base for their political support," a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family said in statement.

(Those are James Dobson's fuck-wads.)

You gotta love how allowing discrimination, and actively discriminating against homosexuals and the transgendered by the politicians that these bigots support is somehow just par for the course, but allowing them to have a voice, to participate in our democracy and to treat them equal under the law is somehow "pandering."

Hey fuck-wads: You did this to yourself.  If you didn't PANDER to the anti-gay agenda, maybe you'd have gotten some of the gay vote!  Did you ever think of that?  Why is it PANDERING to the gays, but not to the Christians who want to continue their policy of discrimination?  (A policy admitted to, by the very fact that Ms. Simpson is, in fact,  the first TG's federal appointee!)

Because, hey: It's not like it's a FREE COUNTRY or anything, right?

And fine.  I suppose you could find a bible verse or two to support that.  You might find something anti-gay there.  But do know what my favorites are?

Does, "Judge not, lest ye be judge yourself," ring a bell?

Or, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"

And then there was something about a rich-man passing through the eye of a needle, or something like that. Not really relevant to THIS issue, but it does make me wonder how the Religious Rights gets so wrapped up in MONEY.

In any case, do you know where you will NOT find these bible versus or any others?

In the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States.

Those radical, liberal and (obviously) extremely gay documents that this country was founded on.