LGBTQ &c 25 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Surely …

Surely there is something missing in this custody decision story. Something about how the mother is also a practicing axe murderess, or how she feeds her children broken glass sandwiches,…

Surely there is something missing in this custody decision story. Something about how the mother is also a practicing axe murderess, or how she feeds her children broken glass sandwiches, or is secretly an al Qa’eda recruiter.

But, no, it appears not.

In awarding custody of three teen-agers to their father over their gay mother, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court on Friday wrote that homosexuality is “an inherent evil” and shouldn’t be tolerated.
The nine-judge panel ruled unanimously in favor of a Birmingham man and against his ex-wife, who now lives with her gay partner in southern California.
Chief Justice Roy Moore wrote that the mother’s relationship made her an unfit parent and that homosexuality is “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature.”

As FoxNews’ conservative commentator himself, Bill O’Reilly, wondered out loud, “What worries me here is Judge Moore’s comments, that if I were gay living in Alabama, I don’t think I could get a fair trial after that.”

(Via WMT)

That’s, um, an interesting, ah, theory

Was it greed? Was it a lack of business ethics? Was it lack of regulatory oversight, or lawmakers paying back their contributors, or just a sign of the crazy 90s…

Was it greed? Was it a lack of business ethics? Was it lack of regulatory oversight, or lawmakers paying back their contributors, or just a sign of the crazy 90s finally crashing to the ground?

No, the fall of Enron was because of … same-sex domestic partnership benefits.

Uh-huh. Right.

At least that’s the theory of Warren Smith, who runs a string of Christian newspapers across the southeast.

But, he says that a small minority of corporate — social engineers — often found in the human resources and public relations departments of our largest companies have played a part in creating a culture in Corporate America that encourages its leaders to make up the rules as they go along….
In his weekly editorial Smith says: “Nowhere is this attitude more in evidence than in the battle over same-sex domestic partnerships in large corporations. According to the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign, a near majority of the Fortune 500 companies now offer same-sex domestic partner benefits to employees. And — not incidentally — all of the “Big Five” accounting firms (including Arthur Andersen) now offer same-sex benefits.”
“Why is this significant? It is significant because every one of the Fortune 500, and every one of the “Big Five” accounting firms, do business in places where homosexual behaviour — sodomy — is illegal. In other words, these companies have corporate policies that condone — if not outright encourage — illegal behaviour.”

And that, Smith says, is what led to the downfall of Enron.

I’m glad we have that settled.

(Via Trance Gemini)

Yes, because that approach has been so moral and successful when applied to other groups

A leading Jewish rabbi in Israel has declared that all gays should be killed. Rabbi David Batzri told the Israeli Ma`ariv newspaper that homosexuals should be “put to death” according…

A leading Jewish rabbi in Israel has declared that all gays should be killed.

Rabbi David Batzri told the Israeli Ma`ariv newspaper that homosexuals should be “put to death” according to Jewish religious law.
Batzri added: “Homosexuals and lesbians are not only a sickness, they are an abomination which should be removed from every city in the country, also from those districts where they feel protected, like in Tel Aviv.”

Yeah, that will work. Perhaps you could build some camps for them.

Mercifully, the message has been met with outrage from various quarters (including other rabbis).

(Via JillMatrix)

Makes sense to me

The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed gay couples being allowed to adopt children. The policy focuses on gay partners where one member is already the legal guardian of children,…

The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed gay couples being allowed to adopt children. The policy focuses on gay partners where one member is already the legal guardian of children, but could be extended to gay partners adopting children together.

The AAP cites a large body of research showing no negative outcomes from such families, and notes quite a number of advantages to children in allowing such adoption. These include the ability to get insurance coverage from either partner, the ability of either partner to authorize medical care, and the added family stability that such arrangements would encourage.

“Denying legal parent status through adoption … prevents these children from enjoying the psychologic and legal security that comes from having two willing, capable and loving parents,” the policy says.

Similar positions are held by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychological Association.

Frankly, it’s about time. Only half the states allow such adoptions at present, while other states, such as Florida, ban any adoption by gays.

While, ideally, there might be some sort of undefined benefit from kids (of either gender) having role models of both genders, huge numbers of families are far from ideal in a variety of ways, yet nobody seriously proposes taking kids out of such settings except in the most extreme situations. Single parent families, families with hostile relationships within them, families where the parents are never around — those fall short of the ideal, too. But they’re all perfectly legal.

If a gay or lesbian couple is committed to each other and the non-parental partner wants to be included in guardianship of the kids involved, more power to him or her for wanting to step up to that responsibility.

(Of course, I also think gay marriage should be legal, so you can write me off as a cockeyed liberal commie heathen or something.)

Ah, all we right-thinking, virtuous, patriotic American people should have known!

Newsweek reports that law enforcement officials are “actively pursuing a theory that Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackings and the pilot of the first plane to…

Newsweek reports that law enforcement officials are “actively pursuing a theory that Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackings and the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, was a homosexual.”

The article asks, “So what?” and rightly so. After all, Mark Bingham, the rugby player who was evidently one of the leaders of the passenger revolt on Flight 93, was openly gay.

And yet, the desire to paint the enemy as gay seems to be quite strong. Two weeks ago, the Associated Press ran a photo of a Navy officer standing next to a bomb about to be dropped on Afghanistan on which somebody had scrawled HIGH JACK [sic] THIS, FAGS. That the photo got through the scrupulous military censors and that the AP chose to run the photo without commenting on the slur was yet another indicator of an impulse, unconscious as it might be, to paint homosexuals as villains in the national psyche. (Responding to angry complaints by gay groups, the Navy later apologized, as did the AP, saying it had made a ï¿½journalistic error.ï¿½) In frightening times there are always scapegoats, and gays are certainly an old standby.

The only even arguably legitimate purpose for this line of investigation (which is not officially confirmed, but heavily rumored) is to discredit the hijackers in the eyes of their sponsors and supporters. But even if this were the goal, an “official” verdict would hardly be more believed than a concerted rumor campaign. And even if this were the goal, I would feel as uncomfortable about using it as a “weapon” as, say, attempting to discredit him based on his being of African descent, or having a Jew in his family tree, or having voted for Ralph Nader.

Again, aren’t there more valuable and worthwhile “leads” to assign to investigators than this sort of dreck?

(Via Trance Gemini)

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Bomb

Inscribing taunting messages on bombs that imply that the targets are homosexual is not allowed. Kicking homosexuals out of the military, though, is still okay. Though we won’t do it…

Inscribing taunting messages on bombs that imply that the targets are homosexual is not allowed.

Kicking homosexuals out of the military, though, is still okay. Though we won’t do it during war time, because that would inconvenience us.

Oddness.

(Link via Xkot)