aaglaas's Blog

Another victory for those fighting bigotry and hatred!!  Surrounded by about 300 people — many of them gay and lesbian couples and their children — Governor Chris Gregoire on Monday signed legislation giving registered same-sex domestic partners all the rights and benefits that Washington now offers married couples.

The bill signing by Gregoire at Seattle's Montlake Community Center was a festive event, marking a significant milestone for the state's same-sex couples.

The legislation expands on previous domestic-partnership laws by adding such partnerships to all remaining areas of state law that now address only married couples.

The measure also extends coverage to unmarried heterosexual couples when one person is at least 62.

As of Monday, there were 5,395 registered domestic partners, representing every county in the state.

Charlene Strong, a Seattle woman who was instrumental in the initial push for changes in the law after her partner drowned in the flooded basement of their Madison Valley home, said while she is thrilled with the advancements, she's eager for the next step: reversal of DOMA, and full civil marriage within a few years.

"It is important for us to sit and talk to those who oppose us," Strong said. "We need them to hear us, to meet our families . They speak from a place of fear. We need them to speak from a place of understanding."

The law will take effect July 26.

Surrounded by about 300 people — many of them gay and lesbian couples and their children — Governor Chris Gregoire on Monday signed legislation giving registered same-sex domestic partners all the rights and benefits that Washington now offers married couples.

The bill signing by Gregoire at Seattle's Montlake Community Center was a festive event, marking a significant milestone for the state's same-sex couples.

The legislation expands on previous domestic-partnership laws by adding such partnerships to all remaining areas of state law that now address only married couples.

The measure also extends coverage to unmarried heterosexual couples when one person is at least 62.

As of Monday, there were 5,395 registered domestic partners, representing every county in the state.

Charlene Strong, a Seattle woman who was instrumental in the initial push for changes in the law after her partner drowned in the flooded basement of their Madison Valley home, said while she is thrilled with the advancements, she's eager for the next step: reversal of DOMA, and full civil marriage within a few years.

"It is important for us to sit and talk to those who oppose us," Strong said. "We need them to hear us, to meet our families . They speak from a place of fear. We need them to speak from a place of understanding."

The law will take effect July 26.

Since our nation is not a Christian theocracy with a high priest, this has no bearing on past, present, and upcoming legal battles for homosexuals to win their freedom and equality.  However, there are some here who can't quite understand that just as a Muslim American cannot force your wife to wear a full body covering because he believes it's a sin if she doesn't, you cannot use your beliefs of 'sin' on American citizens who do not agree with you.

I have never found anyone, in print or in person, who follows through on the argument that all the laws in the Bible should be observed. By this, I do not mean that people fail, from human weakness, to observe the commands in their own life. Rather, I refer to the universal practice of rejecting some laws while insisting on others. Those who argue that homosexual proof texts must, without question be obeyed, will, often in the same argument, wave away other legal texts.

Proof-texting is common, and done by all political persuasions. The conservatives are easiest to skewer. Leviticus 18:22 says "you shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination," and Leviticus 20:13 says "if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them."

Yet, almost no conservatives favor enforcing the punishment, why? Where in the Bible does it say the punishment is not applicable? Leviticus 18:19 says "You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness" and we all agree this is unimportant now, but where is the warrant for saying that verse 19 is irrelevant and verse 22 is God's holy word, tampered with at risk of condemnation?

Where are the literalists thundering about obeying God's holy word at the church's ignoring the 'clear word' on treatment for leprosy (Lev. 14) or shaving the edges of beards (Lev. 21:5)? One verse certainly implies that a fetus is not a person (Ex. 21:22, in imposing a reduced punishment for causing a miscarriage), yet it has not stopped those who oppose abortion.

Even more amazing is Proverbs 11:1: "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but an accurate weight is his delight." Why does the word "abomination" mean in Leviticus a situation on which your whole faith stands or falls, but when the same Hebrew word appears in Proverbs it is "politics" or "social action" and therefore to be waved away?

This is all the more significant as there are more verses in the Old Testament devoted to false weights than there are verses devoted to homosexuality.

Various figures in the Old Testament are allowed moral practices that would not be considered acceptable by those opposed to homosexuality: multiple wives, aggressive military campaigns, and slaves. Strangely, no one seems to think there is any problem with rejecting these practices, yet they are in the "law book" of scripture. Conservatives tend to advocate strict application of the rules on homosexuality, but do not tend to feel that way about 'economic' texts that command tithing (Deuteronomy 14:22) or the forgiveness of debts (Deuteronomy 15:1) Flogging when done by followers of Islam many consider to be primitive or ungodly, yet it is commanded for certain offenses by Deuteronomy 25:1-3.

Nor is their selective application limited to the Old Testament. What opponent of homosexuality considers Matthew 5:39

(" do not resist an evildoer") normative, either for personal conduct or for a nation's foreign policy?

Sodom, Gomorrah and Sodomites: The assertion is often made that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is primarily about homosexuality (as opposed to gang-rape or inhospitality which is what the story actually refers to).

We 'all know' that it is about homosexuality, except that the Bible doesn't seem to know this. When the story is referenced later in the Bible, the focus is not on homosexuality but uses the fate of the city as a warning of the ultimate punishment God can inflict.

Still more compelling is the point that if the attackers are homosexual, then the tactic of offering them a woman will not likely be effective. Yet, because Sodom, in modern usage, is considered a synonym for homosexuality, it is common to assume these verses condemn homosexuality.

Here are the literal meanings of some translated words:

Certain words about prohibited sexual behavior do not always literally mean what they are assumed to mean. Examples would include the words often translated as 'fornication' and 'Sodomite.' 'Fornication,' (ponhro,j,) then and now apparently means 'sexual immorality.' We tend to assume that 'sexual immorality' means what our society has traditionally condemned, but there is no explicit definition of this word in the Bible that would show it includes homosexuality.

The word translated (especially in older English Bible versions) as 'Sodomites' (avrsenokoi/tai, lit, 'soft man') is not a reference to Sodom at all. The underlying word likely refers to a specific type of homosexual behavior, perhaps regarding a cult male-prostitute (which were common in certain other religions at the time) who is penetrated by another male, but the word is not a Greek form for 'Sodom.'

If you had asked someone in Biblical times what a 'Sodomite' was, they simply would have said, -someone who lives in Sodom.

I am a progressive because progressives embrace the idea of a transparent and open government that is of, by, and for the people instead of a secretive and closed government run by the wealthy and powerful as was the case during the Republican administrations.

I am a progressive because we need an economy built from the bottom up, not the top down; an economy that is built on rising wages and an expanding and prosperous middle class, not one built on getting scraps trickling down from the rich and investor bubbles; an economy built on producing quality products, not one based on moving money around from one wealthy financial conglomerate to another.

I am a progressive because all of the great advances in American history came from the progressive movement, from people who believed in equality and democracy and justice and change fighting against the powers that be, and who fought and continue to fight against bigotry, intolerance and hatred. 

Here are the many achievements that Progressives (conservatives call us 'liberals', but we are proud of either name) have given our great nation:

-The American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence
-The Bill of Rights
-The abolition of slavery
-The national park system
-Consumer safety laws
-Breaking up the big corporate trusts
-Women's suffrage
-Social Security
-Minimum wage
-Unemployment and worker's compensation
-Rural electrification
-The GI Bill
-Child labor laws
-The weekend and eight-hour days
-Ending Jim Crow
-Medicare and Medicaid
-Head Start
-Legal Services
-Clean Water Act
-Clean Air Act
-The EPA
-The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
-Martin Luther King Day
-Labor Day
-Family and Medical Leave
-S-CHIP

All of these gains for the American people came about because progressives had the idea, organized for it, and passed it into law.  Conservatives were in favor of Jim Crow laws, were against women being able to vote, and have given America McCarthy-era witchhunts, Watergate, destabilized the Middle East by an unnecessary war in Iraq, and hastened in the ruination of our entire economy by their greed, unregulated policies, and endless tax cuts while ramping up spending.

If progressives could make all these things happen in our history, what can progressives do in our times if they think big and act boldly?

-Build an economy that is run almost entirely on wind, solar, and other clean renewable energy by the year 2020

-Create a health care system where every American has access to health care services, with their own choice of a high-quality doctor, whenever they need it, and where they and their doctor don't have to fight with insurance companies over the treatment they need.

-Create a full employment economy where everyone is paid a wage that will keep them and their families above the poverty line

-Create an educational system where anyone who wants to get a college degree is able to do so without going deeply into debt, and where every single K-12 public school succeeds at getting their students ready for life as productive citizens.

-Invest in a non-profit sector where citizens are empowered to build community organizations that make a difference in their lives.

-Guarantee that all American citizens, including homosexual citizens, are free and equal in their own country before we go invading other countries under the pretense of 'freedom'.

AMHERST, Mass.— 5 years later, the dire warnings from conservatives about civilization collapsing and heterosexual marriages being ruined have of course proven to be utterly false, as have all their hysteric and hateful claims about gay marriage.  As in every country that has legalized gay marriage years ago, life goes on as normal for everyone else. 

A recent study shows that there is a financial benefit to states as well as remaining true to our constitutional guarantees of equality for all American citizens.   The over 12,000 same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts since 2004 have added over $111 million into the state's economy.

The report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law says a typical same-sex couple spent about $7,400 on their wedding, with one in ten couples spending over $20,000.

A second study by the same group found that young, highly educated people in same-sex relationships were 2.5 times more likely to move to Massachusetts after 2004 than before gay marriage became legal.

M.V. Lee Badgett, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts and a study co-author, says the reports show that allowing gay couples to marry has helped many small businesses survive in tough economic times.

Sunday marks the five-year anniversary and milestone of Massachusetts recording its first same-sex marriage licenses.

The false 'Christians' of this world are exposed by their own evil..

Continuing violence motivated by hatred and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity, is an intimidating day-to-day reality for people across Europe and North America.  Conservatives don't realize how crystal-clear the fallacy of their argument is when they try to compare the murder of children or old people to homosexuals.... they don't preach violence and hatred towards children or old people... but they do preach it towards homosexuals.. that is the difference, and that is why the law is being passed. 

Conservatives typically try to derail hate-crimes legislation by comparing other murders to hate-crime murders, which is a typically ludicrous and feeble argument that is otherwise known as a 'red-herring'.   They'll say ridiculous things like: "How dare you devalue the lives of babies and old people being killed??!!! 

The murder of babies, children, old people or otherwise is because the person doing so is a murderer, not because they have been taught to hate babies or old people.  When a homosexual is murdered, it is usually because the person has been taught to hate and devalue the lives of homosexuals, and believe that they are worthy of death.  That's why it is called a 'hate-crime'. :-)

Although the full extent of the problem is not known because few governments collect and publish data on such incidents, violent hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity occur in many parts of Europe and North America. Incident reports provide a basis to establish that homophobic violence is both frequent and particularly brutal.

The few official statistics available show that bias motivated violence against LGBT persons is a significant portion of violent hate crimes overall and is characterized by levels of physical violence that in many cases exceed those of other forms of reported hate crime.  None of the official reports suggest that incidents are decreasing, but are instead increasing.

The victims of violence include openly gay individuals and commercial establishments, gay rights activists and organizations, transsexuals and transgender individuals, and those attending gay pride parades and other gay related public events. Those targeted in what is often called homophobic violence include people who describe themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (together, “LGBT”), as well as others who are victimized because they do not conform to stereotypes of gender identity, or are perceived to belong to the aforementioned groups.

In the United States, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) and more than thirty of its member organizations across the country released an annual report in May 2008, showing a 24 percent increase in incidents of violence against LGBT people in 2007, compared to 2006. They noted that 2007 also had the third-highest murder rate in the ten years that NCAVP has been compiling the report, with murders more than doubling from 10 in 2006 to 21 in 2007.

A number of cases were marked by particular brutality and lead to death:

On February 13, 2007, in Detroit, Michigan, 72-year-old Andrew Anthos was riding a bus home, and a stranger asked Anthos if he was gay, followed him off a bus, and beat him with a pipe. Anthos spent the next ten days in a coma, paralyzed from the neck down, before dying on February 23. Witnesses say the assailant, who has not been apprehended as of mid-July 2008, spewed antigay expletives in the process of attacking the senior citizen victim.

On March 14, 2007, in Wahneta, Florida, 25-year-old Ryan Keith Skipper was brutally murdered. Skipper’s body—with 20 stab wounds and a slit throat—was found on a dark, rural road in Wahneta less than 2 miles from his home. William David Brown, Jr., 20, and Joseph Eli Bearden, 21, were later indicted on robbery and first degree murder charges. Their trial, originally set for August 2008 was pushed to February 2009. The accused killers allegedly drove Ryan’s blood-soaked car around the county and bragged of killing him. According to a sheriff’s department affidavit, Ryan’s murder should be considered a hate crime since the men stated that Ryan was targeted because he was a “BLEEP.”

On February 12, 2008, in Oxnard, California, 15-year-old Lawrence King was shot twice in the head while sitting in his classroom at E.O. Green Junior High School. He was pronounced brain-dead the following afternoon and was subsequently taken off life support. According to his classmates, King was considered a social outcast and often wore makeup, jewelry and high heels to school, making him the subject of ridicule among other boys. Brandon McInerney, 14, was charged with the premeditated murder of King.

Although conservatives like to bury their heads in the sand over the amount of murders and attacks they create by their teachings of hatred towards homosexuals, the civilized world has moved on.  This is why current and upcoming legislation will no longer allow them to spread their message of violence, hatred, and the denial of basic human rights such as marriage towards LGBT American citizens.

President Obama announced today that he has nominated one of the nation’s leading Republican governors to serve as the U.S. ambassador to China, selecting Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman for the key diplomatic post.

Mr. Huntsman, who learned to speak Mandarin Chinese from his time as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, has accepted the nomination.

For Mr. Obama, whose advisers already have their eyes on his re-election in 2012, the selection of Mr. Huntsman is something of a political coup. At 49, he has emerged as one of the nation’s most visible Republican governors and was expected to at least consider seeking his party’s presidential nomination to run against Mr. Obama.

As the Republican Party forges through a period of necessary reinvention, Mr. Huntsman has been a leading voice for the direction of the party. He has been a political moderate on issues like immigration, gay rights and the environment, even though he has represented one of the most conservative states in the country.

An administration official familiar with the selection of Mr. Huntsman said that the president had been considering an array of Republicans for key ambassadorial posts, as a way to fulfill his pledge to make bipartisan appointments. The president already has two Republicans in his Cabinet.

-NYT

A 40,000-year-old figurine of a voluptuous woman carved from mammoth ivory and excavated from a cave in southwestern Germany is the oldest known example of three-dimensional or figurative representation of humans and sheds new light on the origins of art.

The intricately carved headless figure is at least 5,000 years older than previous examples and dates from shortly after the arrival of modern humans in Europe. It exhibits many of the characteristics of fertility, or Venus, figurines carved millenniums later.

The figurine "radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art," its discoverer, archaeologist Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tubingen in Germany, wrote in the journal Nature.

Experts are excited about the find because of what it tells us about early humans -- and about ourselves.

"The origin and evolution of figurative art, portable art, appear on most lists of what constitutes modern human behavior," said archaeologist Daniel Adler of the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the research.

"Any time you can push the clock back on some of these behaviors, we get a better understanding of why these were important and were developed, where they were developed . . . and the roles they played in the social glue that holds groups together," he said.

The figurine was excavated at Hohle Fels, a large cave in the Swabian Jura region about 14 miles southwest of the city of Ulm. The cave shows evidence of a long period of prehistoric occupation and is probably best known for three ivory carvings previously discovered by Conard: a horse's or bear's head; a water bird that may be in flight; and a half-human, half-lion figurine, all dating from about 30,000 to 31,000 years ago.

The new figurine was found in September in six pieces about 9 feet below the cave floor. Nearby were flint-knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, and remains of horses, reindeer, cave bears, mammoths and ibexes. Radiocarbon data indicate that the layer originated 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

The political party that supports violence and murder.. 

A new study out of Yale University confirms what liberals have long-known: Offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies even harder. In essence, schooling conservatives makes them even more stupid.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that proved that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made their misinformation worse.

A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered proof by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials that it did just the opposite. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; even after being shown the proof, 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation still believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives have such rigid views compared to liberals and cannot accept the truth when it goes against what they believe: Upon hearing a refutation no matter how detailed, rational, and true... conservatives usually "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation.

Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.

Conservatives as a group have put hatred and bigotry up on a pedestal as something to be admired, gleefully mock those who are oppressed, and attack those who are educated.   These un-American, and xenophobic people are a danger to American national security and to other American citizens, and soon their behavior will be criminalized as similar behavior in the past was criminalized under the civil rights acts of the 1960's.

The Washington Post reported on a study that found: "72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative ... The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative."

"What's most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field," said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and a co-author of the study. "There was no field we studied in which there were more conservatives than liberals or more Republicans than Democrats. It's a very homogenous environment, not just in the places you'd expect to be dominated by liberals."

The liberal label that a majority of the faculty members attached to themselves is reflected on a variety of issues. The professors and instructors surveyed are, strongly or somewhat, in favor of women's right to choose (84 percent); believe homosexuality is acceptable (67 percent); and want more environmental protection "even if it raises prices or costs jobs" (88 percent).

Conservatives by their very nature fear change, and have a very hard time dealing with or adapting to new situations or realities of the world that don't agree with their limited exposure to other ways of life. 

Naturally, conservatives claim this is a vast left-wing conspiracy rather than admit that as a group, they largely tend to be not the brightest bulb in the class. 

There's a more logical conclusion. A university faculty is home to people whose profession is thinking. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people who think, as opposed to a random sample of the general population.

From that point of view, we see that among people who think, 72% are liberal and 15% conservative. Among elite thinkers, the portion of liberals goes up to 87%.

Being able to clearly think leads to liberalism. Think about it. :-)

The Republican Party, once upon a time - a time within the life of most people reading this - included among its members such moderates and even liberals as Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Margaret Chase Smith, Clifford Case, Mark Hatfield (who co-sponsored with George McGovern an amendment to end the Viet Nam War), Lowell Weicker, Richard Schweiker, Kenneth Keating and John Chafee. Remarkable people all of them, well-worth looking up. 

Most of them now have been blocked out of the memory of today's Republicans.

There was a time when the Grand Old Party did, indeed, have grandness to it. When it was a party of mixed views, and moderates and liberals could be seen as actual Republicans, alongside the conservative party elders.

Today, only 21 percent of Americans consider themselves Republican. And so, today, there are zero Republicans in the House of Representatives from New England - where the ideals and values of our country were founded...  Gone.

And the Republican Party has long ago lost both the East and West coasts, and has started to lose the rest of the nation, as well. What has happened is that the Republican Party has become a party of the Bible Belt. Less a party, in fact, and more a little-tent, religious revival meeting.

By contrast, the Democratic Party ranges from conservative senators like Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Jim Webb - to Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer on the liberal wing. With moderates filling the chewy, nougat center. No one would confuse this group - which includes fiscally conservative "Blue Dog Democrats" - of being of a united mind. And the House is even far more mixed. While this often causes consternation within the party, it's also what ultimately gives it a wide exchange of ideas - and ideals.

Today, the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt cultivates a divisive, empty demagogue like Sarah Palin, for no reason other than she's conservative, religious, and can see Russia from the beach. Today, the party of Dwight Eisenhower holds Tea Parties and Pizza Parties, dresses up in colonial garb, defends torture, and bows to a radio host.

Today, the Republican Party has forgotten what the Republican Party was founded on, and in doing so, has redefined itself into the ground, as it drives its moderate and liberal members away. The base can deny this all it wants, and wrap itself in its own 'True Values', but that only confirms the reality.

A multi-denominational religious organization is buying airtime for a new radio ad targeting an energy conglomerate in five Southern states. The spot lowers the boom on Southern Company, the top energy company in the southeastern U.S., for its lobbying efforts opposing climate change legislation in the works on Capitol Hill. The ad will run in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Florida.

It is the latest effort by Burns Striders' American Values Network, which last week teamed up with a coalition of military leaders and religious Democrats, including Reps. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and Tom Perriello (D-Va.), in a radio ad blitz on Christian radio stations. The group is doing so based on the results of a new poll showing wide support for action on climate change among religious voters.

The new ad highlights the efforts of Congress and faith leaders on climate change legislation, but the background music turns ominous as the narrator turns to Southern Company, which has unleashed an army of lobbyists to fight the faith community and threaten lawmakers working to provide resources to American families and the least of these among us.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Southern Company has spent over $98 million on lobbying over the past ten years, including over $3.6 million so far in 2009.

The top recipients of Southern Company cash are Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga. ) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who received $85,600 and $80,015, respectively, according to the CRP.

Why is it that the men who are the most publicly outspoken in their virulent hatred of gays are usually evangelical and 'conservative' Republican leaders who end up being gay themselves?  The list of fallen 'Christian' televangelists, and 'conservative' politicians goes on and on. The answer of course is that a heterosexual male who is secure and comfortable with his own sexuality doesn't feel any threat over the sexuality of homosexuals anymore than he feels threatened by a female that he doesn't find attractive.  :-) 

"Outrage," a new documentary from filmmaker Kirby Dick, takes issue with the secret lives of closeted gay politicians -- especially conservative Republicans who outwardly oppose gay rights.

The film, which premiered two weeks ago at the Tribeca Film Festival, features tell-alls from men who have had relationships with various Republicans, including Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Bush strategist Ken Mehlman and former Senator Larry Craig.

According to Magnolia Pictures, "Outrage" is a "searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted Republican politicians with appalling gay rights voting records who actively campaign against the very LGBT community they covertly belong to."

In the documentary, Dick lambastes the mainstream media for not better investigating the politicians' "hypocrisy" and double lives. He told the New York Magazine that the film explores "the issues surrounding closeted politicians and their hypocrisy in voting anti-gay -- and how these people have harmed millions of Americans for many years."

"Outrage" premiered May 8 in five U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C.