Category: LGBTQ

“Tenacious Unicorn,” Alpacas, Antifa, Geodesic Domes, and Guns. What’s Not to Love?

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Why Progressives Should Carry Guns*

Near Pueblo, Colorado there is an LGBTQ owned and operated ranch named, “Tenacious Unicorn,” and they have guns. 

I generally support restrictive laws on firearms, but I understand that the political battle over gun control is lost, or at least that it is lost until people who are members of oppressed minorities start packing heat, as shown by the highly restrictive gun control law signed into law by Ronald Reagan when black people started packing heat.

Also, if the right wing realizes they the people who they try to bully might be armed, maybe they will think twice before attempting to intimidate progressives.

It’s the Feel Good Story of the Day:

A year ago, transgender rancher Penny Logue found the dome. Fed up with a hostile landlord in the city and fearful for their safety amid record-high deaths in the transgender community nationwide, Logue and her business partner, Bonnie Nelson, sought refuge in the rural, open rangelands.

The geodesic dome perched on sprawling acreage in the remote Wet Mountain Valley on the eastern flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range, near the rural ranching hamlet of Westcliffe, Colorado. They were intrigued. “Domes are funky and cool and a bit against the status quo — and they help the planet,” Logue told me. So they bought it.

………

They bought the dome, and by March, with the pandemic raging and a divisive presidential election roiling, relocated to the valley and created the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, a community of gun-loving, transgender, anti-fascist alpaca ranchers. While they already knew the financial, physical, and emotional challenges of operating a successful ranch, they had no idea that the Wet Mountain Valley had become a cauldron of right-wing conservatism — home to militias, vigilantes, Three Percenters — anathema to the ranch’s gender-inclusive, anti-racist, ecological politics.

But rather than retreat, the unique LGBTQ+ community, around a dozen strong, asserted its right to exist. They armed up and began speaking out, quickly developing a local reputation that galvanized other local rural progressives. In the process, they’ve showed how queer communities can flourish. “We belong here,” Logue told me this past November. “Queers are reclaiming country spaces.”

Custer County, Colorado, where the newly formed Tenacious Unicorn Ranch is located, is named after George Armstrong Custer. It was founded in March 1877 — nine months after Custer’s defeat at The Battle of Little Bighorn — and its overwhelmingly white, rural and conservative population hovers at around 5,000. While Colorado as a whole has shifted left in recent years, Custer County has tacked right: In every presidential election since 2008, when John McCain carried the county by 63%, the percentage of Republican votes has steadily increased; Trump won with nearly 70% in 2020.

………

The ranch exists at a philosophical intersection that is immediately evident inside the dome, where a wall displays prized firearms — Bonnie’s sniper, a Springfield AR-15, two 12-gauge shotguns and a 22-rifle — and flags for The Iron Front, the anti-Nazi symbol used by 1930s paramilitary groups, which now symbolizes anti-fascism and intersectional Pride. Pride flags with colorful stripes — pink, rose, yellow, green, pewter, black, white — bedeck the wall, celebrating asexuality, agender identity, lesbianism and nonbinary gender identities.

Since Logue founded the ranch in 2018, its frontier libertarian ethos has attracted social justice activists and gun-rights advocates, all seeking sanctuary. “We’re a haven. We offer work, we offer shelter, we offer peace,” says Logue, gesturing toward the expansive open space surrounding us. “There are a lot of people who visit for upwards of a week and just enjoy their time away from society,” Nelson added.

………

Logue and her cohort seek to challenge the patriotic myths — about Manifest Destiny, liberty and freedom — that their Wet Mountain Valley neighbors double-down on in The Sentinel. “The American frontier or ‘the American West’ wasn’t conquered with rugged individualism,” she said. “It was conquered by communities sticking together. … Nobody did that by themselves.” Their social mission — akin to that of mutual-aid networks and similar to anti-fascist groups like The Redneck Revolt as well as leftist pro-gun groups like the John Brown Gun Club or the Socialist Rifle Association — stems from their political commitments. “It isn’t through harsh words and violence that you defeat fascism,” Logue told me. “It’s through building community, but only if you can stay alive long enough to do it. That means you have to be armed — because fascists are armed, always.”

This is something they’ve learned firsthand. “There are militias in the Wet Mountain Valley,” Logue said. “They’ve showed up armed and threatening.” That spurred the ranchers to arm up. “Moving here demanded gun ownership,” she continued. The ranchers watched from their front porch with a high-powered scope and sniper rifle — the Springfield AR-15 on the living room wall — staking out visitors loitering at the end of their driveway. The visits ceased. It’s rumored locally that militias unofficially “patrol” their surroundings to establish dominance. “In order to be treated as a human, you have to show you can defend yourself more than they can hurt you,” Logue said. “Then you can reach equality.”

I love this story so much.

*The song of the Battle of Maxton Field is about Lumbee Indians confronting the Klan near Maxton North Carolina. The Indians kicked some serious ass that day and the Grand Dragon ended up in jail as a result.

Quote of the Day

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He’s a Hateful, Bigoted Rich Prick, Always Has Been and Always Will Be

—Scott Lemieux on the fact that in high school, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson declared himself a member of the “Dan White” society while in high school.

Perhaps this is the story that @TuckerCarlson was trying to get ahead of. In his college yearbook, he listed himself as a member of the “Dan White Society.”

Dan White was the man who murdered Harvey Milk. pic.twitter.com/TYklyfC8tS

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) April 21, 2021

Roll Tape!

For those of you who are not up on the history, Dan White was a homophobic politician who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk, and then got a slap on the wrist because of Twinkies. (Not The Onion)

If you are inclined to think that he was “just” a collete school student at the time, understand that he spent much of his childhood in San Francisco, and knew exactly what he was saying.

Tucker Carlson is a complete f%$#ing tool.

And God Laughs

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Tony Perkins, conservative, bigot, and religious hypocrite, has said on numerous occasions that God sends natural disasters to punish us for not hating on the gay.

Guess whose home was just flooded in an act of God.

Using Mr. Perkin’s logic, it clearly means that he is closeted, because otherwise, his home would not have been flooded:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an organization labeled an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was left homeless by the destructive flooding that has ravaged southern Louisiana this week, killing 11 people and destroying an estimated 40,000 homes.

Perkins, who has claimed that God uses natural disasters such as hurricanes and flooding to punish people for sinning (in particular homosexuals and their supporters), had his own home destroyed by the Lord Almighty. The hate group leader says he was forced to escape his destroyed home by canoe, reports JMG.

Perkins called into his own radio show to talk about the disaster of “biblical proportions” that, according to Perkins, will force his family to live in a camper for the six months it will take to rebuild his home.

I don’t claim to be a pious man, or a spiritual man, or even a good man, so I can freely admit that this development amuses the hell out of me, particularly since this Elmer Gantry wannabe denies anthropogenic climate change, which was the proximate cause of the warming.

Least Surprising News out of the Republican National Convention

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It turns out that the RNC was a bonanza for male prostitutes:

It’s been a great week for gay escorts in Cleveland.

Male prostitutes contacted by The Post said business is booming and Republican National Convention attendees — most of them married — are clamoring for their services.

“Business has been way better. I’ve seen 10 clients so far,” one male escort said.

“Most of them were first-timers. You could tell they were nervous, but once they became more comfortable, they seemed to be having a good time.”

Another escort said he had already earned $1,600 since Monday — over six times the amount he usually makes.

………

One gigolo who charges $250 an hour said he’s been making about $800 per day since the convention kicked off — all from men visiting from Florida, Louisiana and Washington, DC.

“Usually I need to go out of town,” he said with a chuckle.

Most men paid to have sex, but one client requested to “do his business in the corner” while watching his wife in bed with the escort.

………

“The Republicans have a lot of delegates in the closet, let’s put it that way.”

Party of family values my ass.

H/t Joe.My.God.

NBA Does the Right Thing

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I’m rather shocked that the NBA is pulling the 2017 All Star Game from Charlotte because of North Carolina’s anti-gay law.

I don’t expect sports leagues to do the right thing, so I am pleasantly surprised:

The NBA announced Thursday it will move the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte due to North Carolina’s law that bars local governments from extending civil rights protections to gay and transgender people.

“The NBA has decided to relocate the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte with the hope of rescheduling for 2019,” the league said in a statement.

“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” as the law is commonly known.

Maybe If the FBI Spent More Time Pursuing Real Terrorists, and Less Time Manufacturing Them for High Profile Arrests………

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We don’t know everything now, but what we do know is that a gunman murdered 50 people at a gay bar in Tampa, Florida, and that he contemporaneously made ISIS claims:

A man who called 911 to proclaim allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, and who had been investigated in the past for possible terrorist ties, stormed a gay nightclub here Sunday morning, wielding an assault rifle and a pistol, and carried out the worst mass shooting in United States history, leaving 50 people dead and 53 wounded.

 The attacker, identified by law enforcement officials as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old who was born in New York, turned what had been a celebratory night of dancing to salsa and merengue music at the crowded Pulse nightclub into a panicked scene of unimaginable slaughter, the floors slicked with blood, the dead and the injured piled atop one another. Terrified people poured onto the darkened streets of the surrounding neighborhood, some carried wounded victims to safety, and police vehicles were pressed into service as makeshift ambulances to rush people to hospitals.

 Joel Figueroa and his friends “were dancing by the hip-hop area when I heard shots, bam, bam, bam,” he said, adding, “Everybody was screaming and running toward the front door.”

Of course, we have calls for effective gun control, but, as always, we can expect them to come to nothing.

Here is what we know so far:

  • He worked for G4S, a UK based private security firm which is big into (among other unsavory things) the private prison system.
  • He had previously been under investigation by the FBI.
  • He bought the guns used recently.
  • This is the largest mass shooting in US history.
  • The shooter was a big fan of the New York Police Department repeatedly posting selfies of himself in NYOPD gear.

I tend to think that gay bashing was at the core of the shooting, though in what is probably an unrelated event, an Indiana man drove to West Hollywood with a car full of bombs and guns to attack a gay pride parade:

Police in Santa Monica, California, arrested a man intent on attacking a nearby gay pride parade on Sunday, hours after a terrorist opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing at least 50 and wounding over 50 more people in the worst mass shooting attack in modern U.S. history.

 20-year-old James Wesley Howell was arrested in Santa Monica after assault rifles and chemicals capable of creating an explosive device were found in his vehicle early Sunday morning, police say. He reportedly admitted to officials that he was planning to “harm” the West Hollywood gay pride parade that was taking place about seven miles away later Sunday.

The most obvious point to made here is that the FBI has been too busy engaging in sting operations against people who constitute no meaningful threat to actually do their job on real threats:

The attack on a gay club in Orlando in which 50 people were killed and more than 50 wounded — now the largest mass shooting in U.S. history — demonstrates how potential threats are escaping the FBI’s vast counterterrorism dragnet.

While it’s unclear whether gunman Omar Mateen’s inspiration was hatred of gays, the Islamic State, or something else, attackers like him are the intended targets of the FBI’s post-9/11 prevention program. Federal law enforcement’s top priority today is to stop the attacker of tomorrow.

But Mateen’s mass shooting is an example of how dangerous men slip past the FBI’s watch while federal agents focus on targets of questionable capacity.

………

According to The Daily Beast, whose reporter quoted an unnamed “senior law enforcement source,” Mateen was a person of interest to the FBI in 2013 and again in 2014. The Intercept has been unable confirm independently from sources that Mateen had been under FBI investigation during those years.

If the FBI had in fact investigated Mateen, his capacity for violence would have been easily verified: He had a state firearms license.

With connections to homes in Martin and St. Lucie counties, Mateen would have fallen under the jurisdiction of the FBI’s Miami office, which has among the bureau’s most active and aggressive counterterrorism units.

The Miami FBI investigated the so-called Liberty City 7 in one of the earliest and most controversial post-9/11 counterterrorism stings, and prosecutors in Florida’s Southern District have prosecuted dozens on terrorism related charges in the last 15 years.

………

For more than a year ending in April — a time during which investigators will now be looking for any clues from Mateen that might have been missed — the FBI in Miami focused on a counterterrorism sting that targeted James Medina, a homeless man with mental problems.

………

According to the FBI’s affidavit, the informant, not Medina, came up with the idea of crediting the planned attack to the Islamic State.

“You can do all that,” Medina told the informant. “Yeah, we can print up or something and make it look like it’s ISIS here in America. Just like that.”
………

Does the FBI’s focus on men like Medina and Suarez — questionable targets of questionable mental fitness — prevent agents from identifying and investigating armed and dangerous men like the one behind what is now America’s worst mass shooting?

It’s a question the FBI, which has faced little congressional scrutiny over its counterterrorism program, has never been forced to answer.

The Orlando shooting isn’t the first case to raise this question. In 2011, when the FBI investigated Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, agents did not deem him a threat.

Instead, at about the same time, the Boston FBI started a nine-month sting operation against Rezwan Ferdaus, who had no weapons and no connections to international terrorists, and whose mental wellness had deteriorated so much that he was wearing adult diapers at the time of his arrest on terrorism charges.

I’ve not heard about a successful FBI counter-terrorism operation that did not involve them using informants to manufacture the a high profile arrest in a very long time.

It’s pretty clear that the FBI desperately needs some adult supervision.

What is Wrong with the Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party Succinctly Stated

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I am not at all surprised that it is a Brit who notes that aggressive identity politics has pushed economic justice out of the political spotlight.

I would argue that some political factions, most notably the Clinton political machine, have done so deliberately, because it allows them to check the “right” boxes while still aligning themselves with what Theodore Roosevelt called the “Malefactors of Wealth”.

People like Wal-Mart (Hillary was a member of its board for years) and Goldman Sachs (Hillary’s speeches, and they funded her son-in-law’s hedge fund) are Hillary’s peeps, because they all agree that focusing on identity politics, as opposed to the the increasingly ferocious war on the average American worker or the financialization of our economy, is a good thing:

The rise of identity politics means that the personal is commonly understood to be political. Being a radical today relates as much to who you are as to what you think. Class struggle, at one time the raison d’être of the socialist movement, has been usurped on the left by the personal grievances of women, gays and ethnic minorities.

 Identity politics was an understandable response to some of the injustices of the twentieth century. Despite the loftiness of much left-wing rhetoric, sexism, racism and homophobia have never successfully been eliminated from socialist politics for the simple reason that these movements reflect the societies in which they were conceived. It was often made apparent to women in particular that the priorities for leftists lay strictly within the class framework.

 It would be wrong to imply that today this dynamic has been turned on its head. One can still find sexism, racism and homophobia on the left as easily as one can find it in wider society. In an article for Slate about the US Democratic primaries, Michelle Goldberg wrote in late 2015 about a cultural phenomenon of so-called ‘Bernie Bros’ – male supporters of US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who ‘seem to believe that their class politics exempt them from taking sexism seriously’.

 ………

 Ultimately, though, the left should seek to move beyond identity politics for the simple reason that it is compatible with neo-liberal economics. Identity politics can co-exist with the corporate boss who makes more money in a week than his cleaner takes home in a year – as long as the chances of being the boss are assigned proportionally among different ethnic groups, sexualities and genders. Individual winners and losers remain as remote from each other as ever; they are simply sorted in direct proportion to their numbers in society. The ultimate aim of identity politics is to ‘tune up’ the elite rather than to abolish it.

 ………

 Class politics must certainly evolve with the times – at the very least it should take account of the legitimate grievances of people who feel marginalised for reasons other than their class. However, liberal identity politics is increasingly a zero-sum game in which white men must invariably lose out so that women, ethnic minorities and LGBT individuals can prosper. With no account for the impact of class, this will simply give rise to another injustice, or at the very least, compound an existing one.

(emphasis mine)

I think that the author, James Bloodworth, undersells the deliberate nature of this transformation.

When one looks at the professional class, doctors, lawyers, and (most significantly) college professors, the top 2-5%, this focus on identity politics benefits them.

While they have not benefited to the degree of the top 1% of 1%, they have benefited, and now it’s easier to for them to find inexpensive domestic help.

Snark of the Day

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I feel this may well be a turning point. It’s one thing to lose a 12-minute version of “Sherry Darling,” or the first-round of the 2072 NCAA Men’s Division I basketball tournament. But when the state legislature finds itself besieged by hundreds of angry, blue-balled, hairy-palmed, half-blind preachers, that’s when you’ll really see things move. Venceremos, my comrades!

—Charlier Pierce on XHamster blocking porn viewers from North Carolina from viewing their pr0n in response to the state’s anti-gay laws.

Heh.

Money Beats Talibaptists

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Following widespread outrage, and multiple companies said that they would pull out of Georgia, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has vetoed the “Hate the Gays” bill:

Under increasing pressure from major corporations that do business in Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal announced Monday he will veto a bill that critics say would have curtailed the rights of Georgia’s LGBT community.

House Bill 757 would have given faith-based organizations in Georgia the option to deny services and jobs to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Supporters said the measure was meant to protect religious freedom, while opponents have described it as “anti-LGBT” and “appalling.”

Speaking to reporters Monday morning, Deal, a Republican, said he didn’t think the bill was necessary.
“I do not think we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia, of which I and my family have been a part of for all of our lives,” he said.

He said he was not reacting to pressure from the faith-based community or responding to the business community, which warned Georgia could lose jobs if he signed the bill.

His decision, he said, was “about the character of our state and the character of our people. Georgia is a welcoming state. It is full of loving, kind and generous people. … I intend to do my part to keep it that way. For that reason I will veto House Bill 757.”

As Charlie Pierce says, “This is a dodge, of course. It’s about bigotry in the private sector, as we all know, and the veto is due to push-back from more powerful entities in the private sector. Isn’t capitalism grand? And here’s the real irony of it all: Deal is term-limited out, so he has no real f%$#s to give to anyone.”

Vatican Cans Nuncio Who Set Up the Pope

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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who set up a meeting between anti-gay (and non-Catholic) town clerk Kim Davis without informing the Pope of the context is being removed as the Vatican’s diplomatic representative to the United States:

The Vatican is replacing its controversial ambassador to the U.S., who arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and antigay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis last fall.

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò will leave the position of apostolic nuncio, the equivalent of an ambassador, and will be replaced by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, a French-born clergyman who is currently the nuncio to Mexico, Catholic magazine America reports, citing Sandro Magister, a blogger who covers the Vatican.

The Vatican is not expected to confirm the news until the Obama administration has agreed to the new nuncio’s appointment, the magazine notes, but it adds that “reliable sources” expect an official announcement before Easter, which falls on March 27 this year. Because of his experience in Mexico, Pierre may well emphasize immigration issues, The Washington Post reports

.………

During the pope’s visit to the U.S. last year, Viganò arranged for him to meet with Davis, the Rowan County clerk, who shut down all marriage operations in her office to avoid serving same-sex couples after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. After she was sued and disobeyed a federal judge’s order to resume marriage operations, she went to jail for contempt of court before agreeing that her office would serve all eligible couples.

There are any number of player in and around the Vatican who have been trying to Ratf%$# pope Francis, and this is a brush back pitch.

There are a lot of rocks to be turned over in the Vatican, and I really hope that the Pope is around long enough to clean house.

She Said What?!?!?!?!

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In an interview with Andrea Mitchell Hillary Clinton praised Nancy Reagan’s “Low key activism” on HIV/AIDS.

While I fully understand the desire not to diss the Nancy on the day of her funeral, this bit of “Can’t we all just get along,” historical revisionism is completely repulsive:

In an interview conducted at Nancy Reagan’s funeral today, Hillary Clinton recounted a version of history that didn’t happen, lauding the former first lady’s “low key advocacy” for the cause of HIV/AIDS awareness. “Low key” is one way of putting it. In fact, the Reagan White House is infamous for its lengthy, deadly silence on the epidemic.

 Clinton’s remarks came after an extended explanation of Nancy Reagan’s efforts to expand stem cell research after her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimers. Then, in a bizarre turn, Clinton began talking about AIDS in the 1980s, a topic anyone looking to remain civil and complimentary would go far out of their way to avoid at the funeral of Nancy Reagan:

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan, in particular, Mrs. Reagan, we started national conversation when before no one would talk about it, no one wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that really appreciated, with her very effective, low-key advocacy, but it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’”

It’s almost tempting to interpret this as withering, devastating sarcasm—the Reagans “started a national conversation about AIDS” in the same sense that George W. Bush “started a national conversation” about Iraq.

 In reality, the Reagans were infamously, disastrously silent on AIDS—as President, Ronald Reagan spoke more about UFOs than HIV, and didn’t even say the word in a public address until 1987, by which point it had killed tens of thousands of Americans. The virus was quite literally a joke inside the Reagan White House. Whatever “advocacy” of Nancy’s Clinton is dreaming up here must’ve been low-key to the point of non-existence—just last year it was reported that she ignored her Hollywood friend Rock Hudson’s pleas for help as he himself died from AIDS. It’s hard for one ugly episode to stand out among so many ugly aspects of the Reagan administration, but Nancy and Ronald’s deliberate silence on one of the defining public health crises of the era is surely near the top of any list. What Clinton is saying isn’t just untrue, but erases the deadly legacy of the Reagan era.

The most charitable way to describe the Reagan administration’s behavior on the AIDS crisis is as an atrocity.

Once this blew up, Clinton walked it back, but this comment is indefensible:

Hillary Clinton’s statement on her comments about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS: pic.twitter.com/RtIs0zpJfk

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 11, 2016

I can’t figure out whether this is a moment of mind-boggling stupidity, or if she was trying to pander to the right in the hope of picking up a few votes.

In either case, particularly when juxtaposed with her late to the game support of gay marriage, this is a major f%$# up.

For anyone interested in LGBT issues who is still on the fence, this is a push to Bernie Sanders.

My Bad, Frank was Gaslighted

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On Wednesday, I suggested that Pope Francis’s audience with anti-gay bigot Kim Davis was a natural byproduct of the historical imperatives of the Catholic Church, specifically with regard to their position on gay marriage.

It turns out that Charlie Pierce had this sussed out by Thursday, and ascribed this to this to the natural byproduct of over a millennia of no holds barred political machinations:

………Before we continue, let us stipulate a few things. First of all, let us stipulate that there are more than a few members of the Church’s permanent bureaucracy, both within the Clan Of The Red Beanie and without, who are not happy that this gentleman got elected Pope, and who are not happy with what he’s done and said since he was. Second, let us stipulate that many members of this group are loyal to both former pope Josef Ratzinger and, through him, to the memory (and to what they perceive as the legacy) of John Paul II who, for good and ill, had a much different idea of how to wield a papacy than Papa Francesco does. Third, let us stipulate that this opposition to the current pope has been active and vocal, to say nothing of paranoid. Finally, let us stipulate that, for over 2000 years, the Vatican has been a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratf%$#ing on a very high scale. (It also has been a hotbed of, well, hot beds, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.) So, if you’re one of these people, and you’re looking to ratf%$# the pope’s visit to the United States, and to his agenda in general, you’d be looking to put him in a box. So, how would you do that?

We are now seeing more and more signs that conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who set up these meetings, set up the pope:

Ever since it became public that Pope Francis met in Washington with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the questions have been swirling: Why did he meet with her, and was it meant as a political statement?

 As it turns out, the Vatican said on Friday, the pope did not mean to endorse Ms. Davis’s views. It also said he gave her no more than a typical brief greeting, despite what her lawyer described.

 Instead, the Vatican said that Francis gave only one “real audience”: to someone later identified as one of his former students, Yayo Grassi, a gay man in Washington who says he brought his partner of 19 years to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington for a reunion. They even shot video.

 The disclosure, after the Vatican’s unusual attempt to correct the impressions left by Francis’ meeting with Ms. Davis, added to days of speculation about whether Francis intended to send a message on the place of gays in the church, or conscientious objection, and whether his advisers had fully briefed him on Ms. Davis, or had their own agenda.

 The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

 “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

 ………

 The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

 “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

 ………

 Earlier on Friday, the Vatican said that Archbishop Viganò had arranged the pope’s meetings in Washington, including the one with Ms. Davis.

 The news of the meeting with Ms. Davis was disclosed late Tuesday night by Ms. Davis’s lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, at the same time it was reported on the website of Inside the Vatican, a conservative publication edited by an American who has covered the Vatican for years.

 ………

 Mr. Staver, for his part, said he had been briefly introduced to Archbishop Viganò in April, when he spoke at a large rally in Washington against same-sex marriage, before the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

So, we know that Viganò was present at an anti-gay marriage rally, and the Times has some background on Viganò:

………

 The archbishop, who was exiled to the United States in 2011 after losing a high-altitude Vatican power struggle that became public in an infamous leaks scandal, now finds himself at the center of another papal controversy. This time, the Vatican is suggesting that Archbishop Viganò is responsible for giving papal face time to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk whose refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has made her a heroine to social conservatives.

 ………

 Mr. Staver said a conservative deacon, Keith Fournier, introduced him to Archbishop Viganò back in April before speaking at a National Organization for Marriage rally on the Washington Mall in opposition to same-sex marriage. As Mr. Staver descended from the stage, Archbishop Viganò made a point to “thank me for my message,” the lawyer said.

 Archbishop Viganò, a cultural conservative born into a wealthy family in Varese, received the title of archbishop from John Paul II in 1992. He later joined the church’s diplomatic corps, which is one of the traditional sources of power in the Vatican, and in 2009 was installed by Pope Benedict XVI as secretary of the governorate of Vatican City State, a position not unlike the mayor of Vatican City.

(emphasis mine)

Even if Francis wanted to endorse Kim Davis’s repulsive views and actions, it is highly unlikely that he would have done so in private.

The evidence points to a Roger Stone style fat-f%$#ing orchestrated by Staver and Viganò.

It Appears that a Bear does Indeed Sh%$ in the Woods

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Because the Pope was just outed doing something amazingly Catholic, and I do not mean that as a complement:

Pope Francis met privately in Washington last week with Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who defied a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, adding a new element to an American tour that saw Francis attract huge crowds and articulate left-leaning positions on poverty, immigration, the environment and inequality.

Vatican officials initially would not confirm that the meeting occurred, finally doing so on Wednesday afternoon, while refusing to discuss any details.

Ms. Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., has been at the center of a nationwide controversy over whether government employees and private businesses have a legal right to refuse to serve same-sex couples. She spent five days in jail for disobeying a federal court order to issue the licenses.

On Tuesday night, her lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, said that Ms. Davis and her husband, Joe, were sneaked into the Vatican Embassy by car on Thursday afternoon. Francis gave her rosaries and told her to “stay strong,” the lawyer said. The couple met for about 15 minutes with the pope, who was accompanied by security guards, aides and photographers.

Notwithstanding the affection recently shown by progressive elements inside and outside of the Catholic Church, the Pope is, at the end of the day, Catholic, which means that he will continue to be antediluvian on issues like birth control and gay rights.

I am disappointed, but not surprised.

The Flies Return to the Sh%$

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By which I mean that homophobic bigot Kim Davis is officially changing her party affiliation to Republican.  Good riddance:

A county clerk in Kentucky who was briefly jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples said on Friday that she and her family have switched to the Republican Party because the Democrats no longer represented them.

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, 50, who has said her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian prevent her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, said they had changed parties last week. She was a long-time Democrat in eastern Kentucky.

“My husband and I had talked about it for quite a while and we came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party left us a long time ago, so why were we hanging on?” she told Reuters in an interview at a hotel in Washington, where she has traveled to be feted at a Family Research Council event later on Friday.

Not a surprise, really.

Since she is now making bank on being a bigot, she has to get that official American bigot membership card.

Clarence Thomas Is a Miserable Excuse for a Human Being

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First, in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, he suggested that racist impact of government policy might be a good thing, because ……… the NBA:

In a less headline grabbing decision today, the Supreme Court ruled that those affected by discriminatory housing decisions can sue even if they can’t prove the discrimination was intentional.

Civil rights groups were handed an unexpected victory when in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court endorsed the consideration of disparate impact to establish racial discrimination in housing cases under the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

The otherwise pro-business Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion but one of the other noteworthy opinions came from conservative Justice Thomas’ dissent, in which he wrote, “the fact that a practice has a disparate impact is not conclusive evidence that a practice is discriminatory.”

A well enough point, but it was the example he used to illustrate this point that proved most curious.

“Over 70 percent of National Basketball Association (NBA) players have been black,” Thomas pointed out, arguing that “racial imbalances do not always disfavor minorities.”

“If, for instance, white basketball players cannot bring disparate-impact suits— then we as a Court have constructed a scheme that parcels out legal privileges to individuals on the basis of skin color,” he continued.

Thomas went on to cite examples of minorities who “have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in particular nations” including “Jews in Poland” and “the Chinese in Malaysia” to argue that not all disproportional representation is bad.

Seriously?

Bigotry is OK because of the percentage of blacks in the NBA? Or the because of the relative prosperity of the Chinese in Malaysia?*

And then, in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case, he suggests that slavery did not cause any loss of dignity in its subjects:

Clarence Thomas slammed the majority that ruled in favor of marriage equality, saying the five U.S. Supreme Court justices had engaged in misguided efforts to advance dignity for same-sex couples.

Thomas – who wrote his own opinion, along with the court’s three other dissenters – argued that the Constitution contained no “dignity” clause.

………

“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” Thomas said. “Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

This is pure crap, and I say it as someone who is required to thank God on a yearly basis because of, “What he did for me when I went forth from Egypt,” on Passover.

Not only is this a failure as a human being, it is a miserable failure as a legal dissent.

Yale Law School needs to apologize to the nation.

*Which was largely a result of the British Empire using ethnically divisive policies in order to maintain control.

Fabulous Fabugasm!

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One Map Shows Every State in the US Where You Can Have a Same-Sex Marriage

The Supreme Court has declared gay marriage bans unconstitutional:

Putting itself back in the forefront of the gay rights revolution, the Supreme Court ruled by the narrowest margin on Friday that same-sex couples across the nation have an equal right to marry. The five-to-four decision was based firmly on the Constitution, and thus could be undone only by a formal amendment to the basic document, or a change of mind by a future Supreme Court. Neither is predictable.

Explicitly refusing to hold off deciding the issue to see how other parts of society may deal with the rising demand for gay acceptance and legitimacy, the Court declared that two clauses in the Fourteenth Amendment mean that a “fundamental right to marry” can no longer be denied because the partners are of the same sex. It did not create a new right, but opened a long-existing one to those partners.

The ruling was the most important victory in a cultural revolution that began almost exactly forty-six years ago, when patrons of a gay bar — the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village — fought back against a police raid. The events that began on the night of June 28, 1969, are widely known as the beginning of “gay pride” and an unapologetic campaign for equality.

The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges expressly overruled the Court’s only prior ruling directly on same-sex marriage — a one-line decision in the 1972 case of Baker v. Nelson, declaring that a claim to such marriage did not raise “a substantial question” for the Court to resolve.

As The Onion puts it, “Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito Suddenly Realize They Will Be Villains In Oscar-Winning Movie One Day“.

I think that you also need to read the last paragraph of the decision, which is really quite beautiful:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

Fabulous!

To my Facebook readers: click through for the slide show.

In the next few years, the right wing will have to find someone else to hate, I guess.