Did Pope Francis' Remarks of "Not Judging gay Priests" Really Change Anything?

Many media outlets are reporting how during Pope Francis’ airplane press conference as he returned to Rome from Brazil, Francis remarks "Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" . . . "You can't marginalize these people." and acting as if these comments somehow marked a turning point in the Church's anti-gay jihad.  Among those wetting themselves for joy are Andrew Sullivan (whom I have meet and with whom I frequently agree although I think he is delusional in his refusal to walk away from Catholicism), who stated:

What’s so striking to me is not what he said, but how he said it: the gentleness, the humor, the transparency. I find myself with tears in my eyes as I watch him. I’ve lived a long time to hear a Pope speak like that – with gentleness and openness, reasserting established dogma with sudden, sweeping exceptions that aren’t quite exceptions – except they sure sound like them.

What Francis is telling us, it seems to me, is that we should stop squabbling about these esoteric doctrines – while he assents to orthodoxy almost reflexively – and simply do good to others, which is the only thing that really matters. Stop obsessing in your mind and act in the world: help someone, love someone, forgive someone, meet someone.

I'm sorry Andrew, but I think PeterTatchell got it right because wishful thinking and wanting something does not necessarily make it true.  Here is how Tatchell reacted:

“Pope Francis has offered a change of tone in Vatican pronouncements on gay people but not a change in substance. The church’s hardline stance against gay equality and relationships remains intact. It opposes same-sex marriage. The Catechism condemns homosexual love using strident, inflammatory and homophobic language,” said Peter Tatchell, Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

“At best, his statement is a shift away from old-style vengeful condemnation and punishment towards a more conciliatory and merciful church. Although he preaches forgiveness, he still regards homosexuality as a sin for which people must repent. This is only marginal theological progress. 

Actions speak louder than words and until such times as (i) the Catechism is revised to stop referring to gays as disordered, (ii) the Church, the Knight of Columbus and other Catholic organizations cease opposing gay rights, including gay marriage,  (iii) gay priests and seminarians are not in theory being driven away because of their sexual orientation, and (iv) the Catholic Church's "ex-gay" ministry is shut down, I will not see Francis' remarks as meaning one damn thing.  Andrew Sullivan and others need to get a grip on themselves and stop deluding themselves.

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Ken Cuccinelli's Bizarre Obsession with Sodomy Continues

Supposedly GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, a/k/a "Kookinelli", was going to run a campaign that would down play his extremist position on social issues and focus instead on broad based economic issues that most Virginians are worried about.  Instead what does Kookinelli do?  He goes on a one man jihad to uphold Virginia's sodomy statute - which bars any type of sex acts other than heterosexual sex in the so-called missionary position - despite the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas a decade ago and a recent ruling by the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that reaffirmed that Virginia's sodomy statute is unconstitutional.  To date, Kookinelli has gone down in flames each step of the way in this quest and today he took his batshitery to a new level by asking the U. S. Supreme Court to stay the 4th Circuit ruling until that Court considers Kookinelli's appeal from the 4th Circuit.  

As a recent post on this blog indicates, if Kookinelli's real goal was to prosecute those guilty of sex crimes against minors as claimed, a statute already is on the books in Virginia that would allow him to do precisely that.  Thus, Kookinelli's only real goal can be that he wants to use the sodomy statute to harass gays and threaten them with felony charges rather than mere misdemeanors.  The Virginian Pilot looks at Kookinelli's latest proof that "he doth protest too much me thinks" on the issue of sodomy.  Here are highlights:

Virginia's attorney general is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a lower court's decision striking down the state's anti-sodomy law while the case is on appeal.

Chief Justice John Roberts has asked the other side for a response by next Monday.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared Virginia's law against oral and anal sex unconstitutional in March. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli appealed the panel's 2-1 ruling to the Supreme Court in June.

In the appeal, Cuccinelli claims a 2003 Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas anti-sodomy law applied only to sex acts between consenting adults, not those between an adult and a minor.

The problem for Kookinelli, of course is that as written, the sodomy statute makes ANYONE who has oral or anal sex guilty of a felony.  Even if they are a married heterosexual couple.  As Mother Jones has noted, as written, Virginia's statute would criminalize close to 90% of the population:

If Virginia's ban on "unnatural" sex acts applied nationwide, the Virginia law would make 90 percent of men and women in the United States between the age of 25 and 44 criminals. Here's a chart from the National Center on Health Statistics on sexual behavior in the US:

There seems to be no way of getting around the fact that Cuccinelli has a bizarre obsession with sodomy and to me it suggests that the man is (a) mentally ll and/or (b) a self-loathing closeted gay man.   If it is the latter, I wish someone would come forward and "out" him.

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More Bad News for Christianists/GOP - Support for Gay Marriage Growing

A new Gallup poll contains more bad news for the Christofascists and their puppets in the GOP: the percentage of Americans supporting full marriage equality has increased again.  Perhaps more significantly, 52% would make gay marriage nationwide.  The spittle will be flying in the offices of hate groups like The Family Foundation and in Ken Cuccinelli's campaign headquarters.  Here are some highlights:

If given the opportunity to vote on a law legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states, the slight majority of Americans, 52%, say they would cast their vote in favor, while 43% would vote against it.

Gallup used two separate approaches to measure public support for gay marriage this month, and they produced similar results: 52% would vote for a federal law legalizing same-sex marriages in all 50 states, and 54% think gay marriages should be recognized as valid, with the same rights as marriages between men and women. … [G]roups showing at least 60% support for legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide include Democrats, adults aged 18 to 34, those who rarely or never attend a church or other place of worship, moderates, Easterners, and Catholics.

By prostituting itself to hate and bigotry filled Christofascists, the GOP is committing a slow moving form of suicide.

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Monday Morning Male Beauty

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Survey: 4 in 5 in America Face Near Poverty, No Work

Wealth disparities in America now exceed those in Europe and even former banana republics.  And things seem to be getting only worse as more and more Americans live on the edge just a pay check away from financial ruin and ensuing poverty.  Yet, the GOP continues to seek to slash social programs and to cut taxes for the very wealthy.  The GOP agenda is the antithesis of what the "godly folk" of the GOP base ought to be pursuing if they really gave a damn about the Gospel message that they pretend to revere.  A new study reveals just how bad things have become.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the findings:

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy “poor.”

“I think it’s going to get worse,” said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn’t generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

“If you do try to go apply for a job, they’re not hiring people, and they’re not paying that much to even go to work,” she said. Children, she said, have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”

The gauge defines “economic insecurity” as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.

“It’s time that America comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position,” said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama’s election, while struggling whites do not.

“There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front,” Wilson said.

Sometimes termed “the invisible poor” by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America’s heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

Buchanan County in southwest Virginia is among the nation’s most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24 percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.

More than 90 percent of Buchanan County’s inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.

There is much more depressing news and the irony is that many of the poor whites stupidly support the GOP which is in reality their worse enemy.  Another irony is that Buchanan County, Virginia, is in the land of Bible beaters and open bigotry, yet residents wonder why no progressive business wants to locate there.  Who would want to move to a region filled with racists, homophobes and Neanderthals?  Bigotry and intolerance carries a high economic price.  Meanwhile, of course, the GOP blathers on and on about American exceptionalism.  

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Vladimir Putin’s War on Gays

I've commented a number of times on the all out war on gays being waged in Russia with the active support of dictator Vladimir Putin and the top levels of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.  Sadly, the governments of most nations in the world are doing little or nothing to condemn this anti-gay jihad which is part of a larger pattern of brutality and persecution in Russia.  The New York Times had a great editorial over the weekend condemning what is currently occurring in Russia.  Here are excerpts:

To the long list of Russians whom President Vladimir Putin is persecuting, add gay people and those who support gay rights. Along with political dissidents, journalists and billionaire businessmen, they are increasingly the focus of repellent laws and repressive practices that could send them, and anyone who dares defend them, to jail. 

For some time, antigay sentiment has been spreading in Russia’s conservative society, encouraged by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church. But Mr. Putin and his government have taken that to a new level by legitimizing the hatemongering in legislation. 

Earlier this month, he signed a law banning the adoption of Russian-born children to gay couples and to any couple or single parent living in any country where marriage equality exists. Last month, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing the police to arrest tourists and foreigners suspected of being gay or pro-gay and detain them for up to 14 days. He also signed a bill classifying “homosexual” propaganda as pornography with vague wording that could subject anyone arguing for tolerance or educating children about homosexuality to arrest and fines. 

There is no defense for such actions, which occur against a backdrop of growing violence against gays and could be seen as a license for even more violence. Russia is in danger of moving from pursuing the rule of law to the rule of hate. The new laws contravene Russian commitments to human rights and fundamental freedoms under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They also contradict the charter of the International Olympic Committee, which calls sport a “human right” and states that “every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind.” 

The United States, which has made great strides in accepting and protecting gay rights, has expressed concern about the new laws but needs to be more forceful. So does the International Olympic Committee, which too often fails to defend the Olympic ideals and should be leading a full-throated international campaign to insist that Russia repeal these laws. 

As noted before, in my view, the International Olympic Committee is worthless.  A bowl of Jell-o has more spine.  If the 2014 games go off in Russia, it will be reminiscent of the 1936 games in Berlin. 

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Cumulus Media To Drop Rush Limbaugh (and Sean Hannity)

One of the loudest voices for bigotry and racism on the airwaves is Rush Limbaugh.  Another force for hate and division is Sean Hannity.  Now, both have been dropped by Cumulus, the second-largest operator of radio stations in the country.  It will be interesting to see how Limbaugh, a loud mouthed jerk in my view who talks about protecting the "sanctity of marriage" while on his own fourth marriage, tries to spin this obvious set back.  Here are details from Politico:

In a major shakeup for the radio industry, Cumulus Media, the second-biggest broadcaster in the country, is planning to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its stations at the end of the year, an industry source told POLITICO on Sunday.

Cumulus has decided that it will not renew its contracts with either host, the source said, a move that would remove the two most highly rated conservative talk personalities from more than 40 Cumulus channels in major markets.

The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity's shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names.

Premiere, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday night, is expected to carry Limbaugh and Hannity on stations in many of the markets where they are currently signed with Cumulus, should the negotiations not go through. A spokesperson for Limbaugh was not immediately available for comment; Hannity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Back in May, a source close to Limbaugh told POLITICO that the host was considering ending his affiliation agreement with Cumulus because CEO Lew Dickey was blaming the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. On an earnings call two days later, Dickey reported a $2.4 million first-quarter decline in revenue related to talk programming, which he attributed, indirectly, to Limbaugh's remarks about Fluke. 

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