The Progressive Puppy

Anti-Gay Bullying Widespread in Minnesota Schools

When elected officials in ultraconservative states such as Minnesota and Tennessee pass archaic legislation that prohibits teachers and students from talking about gay issues they are opening the door to verbal bashing, ostracization, and even physical assaults - not to mention the inevitable suicides that some youngsters feel is the only way to deal with this ceaseless torment.  Regressive school districts believe - mistakenly, it goes without saying - that by refusing to talk about something it will simply disappear.  Their message to LGBT youth is crystal clear:  We'd appreciate it if you would all vanish from the face of earth.  Unless you conform to the norm, you have no place in our "family values" society.

Stepping up to the plate (since somebody has to), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) are demanding that Minnesota's largest school district immediately address the out-of-control bullying and harassment aimed at LGBT students.  They're telling these public schools to rectify the untenable situation or face legal consequences.  From SPLC:  In a letter to Anoka-Hennepin School Superintendent Dennis L. Carlson, the groups said they were prepared to file a federal lawsuit to uphold the constitutional rights of LGBT students unless the district took "prompt and meaningful action to remedy the current hostile environment."  The letter includes a demand that the district repeal a gag policy that prevents teachers from discussing issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.  "The gag policy serves no legitimate education-related purpose," wrote SPLC attorney Samuel Wolfe and NCLR attorney Shannon Minter. "Rather, as made abundantly clear in the District's own guidance about the policy, the gag policy singles out a vulnerable and disfavored minority – LGBT students – and prevents teachers and other district employees from supporting, or even protecting, those students within the classroom. The mandatory silence imposed by the policy leaves teachers without tools to handle LGBT bullying, and creates an atmosphere in which LGBT students are isolated and feel unprotected." 

The letter also states that by singling out LGBT students, the gag policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. "The policy imposes a stigma on LGBT students as pariahs, not fit to be mentioned within the school community, a message that comes across loud and clear both to LGBT students and their peers, and which has grave repercussions for the psychological and emotional development of LGBT students."  Wolfe added, "The gag policy is anything but neutral. It is rooted in homophobia and sustains a hostile environment harmful to all students. The district must repeal this dangerous policy."  An ongoing investigation by the SPLC and NCLR has found that a pervasive atmosphere of hostility in Anoka-Hennepin schools has had dire consequences for LGBT students. Since November 2009, at least four LGBT students in the district have died by suicide Many others have been pushed out of school or experienced emotional and psychological trauma as a result of constant bullying.

Did you ever notice that when a cat hides a sizable portion of its body inside a cardboard box, or in the cushions on a sofa, the cat thinks that it's suddenly invisible?  This is similar to the logic of school districts run by homophobes.

Tennessee, Forever the Hate State

Voters in Tennessee must live charmed lives and enjoy universal prosperity if their elected officials can squander time enacting laws to keep the state's LGBTQ citizens "in their place"  (a historically racist concept newly embraced by the country's religious fanatics).  After all, it's not as if literally tens of thousands of Tennesseans are impoverished, right?  Everything in the Volunteer State is hunky-dory if you're a wealthy white evangelical with good health insurance.  Never mind the low ranking of public schools there, or that unwed pregnancies and STDs among Tennessee teens are rampant, or that for many residents basic medical care is an impossible dream.  MyFoxMemphis reports:  First, it was a Senate Bill prohibiting teachers from teaching anything but heterosexuality before the ninth grade.  (You've heard this described as the "Don't Say Gay" law.)  Now, a bill has already been passed that does not allow homosexuality and gender identity from discrimination in cities and counties.  (The measure effectively overturns a decision by the Memphis City Council to treat all of its citizens fairly.)  From the Human Rights Campagn:  In an apparent attempt to score cheap political points, Tenn. Governor Bill Haslam has ignored the business community and signed into law a bill that wipes out county and city anti-discrimination laws, despite the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry reversing their earlier support and now opposing the bill. The measure – SB 632/HB 600 – passed the legislature last week and was designed to remove protections for LGBT Tennesseans by prohibiting cities and counties from enacting discrimination bans. Since there are no state protections for sexual orientation or gender identity, the Governor’s signature of this bill becomes a green light for anti-LGBT discrimination across the state.

There is a sinister undercurrent to Tennessee's recent torrent of anti-gay legislation that flies in the face of freedom and devalues the American experience.  As local economies circle the toilet, the "Christian values" crowd may come to regret the decisions of their mean-spirited lawmakers.

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Over at AmericaBlog, John Aravosis provides a comprehensive overview of which major corporations sat on their hands while the state's Chamber of Commerce colluded with conservative pols to sully Tennessee's image as a good place to conduct business.  These companies could have should have spoken out decisively against the GOP's hateful political posturing.  Most of them didn't.  They offered too little support for equality, much too late.

Minnesota - The Heroes Versus The Haters

Not unexpectedly, Minnesota's House of Representatives has decided to place an anti-gay marriage amendment on the statewide ballot in 2012. The 70-62 vote was preceded by hours of emotional testimony on both sides of the aisle. There were pleas for equality by progressives and religious pandering from conservatives - with one notable and impressive exception. Perhaps the most moving speech of the evening was delivered by Republican John Kriesel, a veteran of the Iraq War, who lost his legs in that bloody conflict. Kriesel told fellow lawmakers: "This amendment doesn't represent what I went to fight for. This doesn't represent that." (Here he gestured to gay advocates who were chanting outside the chamber.) "Hear that out there? That's the America I fought for, and I'm proud of it. A little bit earlier I had this passed around. It's a photo of a gentleman named Corporal Andrew Wilfahrt. He gave his life in Afghanistan on February 27th of this year. He hit an improvised explosive device while keeping us safe, protecting our freedoms, giving us the right to have this debate tonight. He was gay, he was gay. I don't know about you guys but I cannot look at this family, and look at this picture and say, Corporal, you were good enough to fight for your country and give your life but you were not good enough to marry the person you love.' I can't do that. I cannot do that." Kriesel was one of only four Republicans to vote against discrimination, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the GOP will routinely climb a tree in order to bash gay and lesbian couples. The following video is from UpTake:

The battle lines have been drawn. Good As You's Jeremy Hooper explores the partnering of NOM with Minnesota Family Council, an offshoot of the hate group American Family Association. MFC's website is not only rife with the usual anti-LGBT propaganda, it resorts to listing relishing in bizarre fetishes unrelatied to sexual orientation that would no doubt make Louisiana's diaper-wearing senator David Vitter blush.  The outrageous claims disingenuously touted by NOM and MFC all originate from discredited researcher Paul Cameron, a "scientist" so biased that he was kicked out of the American Psychological Association.  Writes Hooper:  This is this group's one and only direction for impressionable gays and their loved ones: Baseless snake oil that is shunned by the whole of credible science. Because, just to remind you: They see us as abnormal and disgusting. THEY ADMIT IT! This is not some fringe group devoid of press or a following. This is MInnesota's big time "family group," who just last week hosted both Newt Gingrich and Congresswoman Bachmann at a fancy shmancy fundraising dinner. This is LSO Minnesota's most prominent voice of "marriage protection" -- a voice that will take on new prominence now that the GOP-controlled state legislature has passed a marriage discrimination bill... As the state ponders attaching a historical pockmark to its reputation, the eye-opening pieces of the overreaching puzzle that we have laid out in this post deserve at least some of the attention, if not the lion's share.

The Bible-thumping homophobes in this country are growing older.  Like the dinosaurs, they'll eventually die out.  When that happens, the political landscape will be less cluttered with hatred and prejudice.  According to a recent poll by the Gallup organization, a majority of American voters now support same-sex marriage.  Fortunately, our younger citizens have not been hobbled with the irrational fear and religion-fueled bigotry of their elders.  There is reason for hope.

Animal Hoarder Allowed to Keep Three Cats

A pet hoarder in Willard was charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty when authorities discovered 86 cats (some reports say ninety) and several dogs that were living inside her modest home in rural Ohio. Incidents like this receive more main stream media coverage than they once did, which is a good thing for the innumerable pets that are raised (and often neglected) in squalid surroundings.  News outlets used to consider these situations beneath their notice - but, as is the case with puppy mills, public awareness has helped ease the miserable lives of stockpiled animals. Some will argue that the suffering caused by hoarders is as widespread and invidious as that tied to unregulated puppy breeding operations.  But psychologists say that people who collect inappropriate numbers of animals have lost the ability to gauge the consequences of their actions.  In the Ohio case, a municipal judge is allowing the elderly hoarder to retain ownership of three of the seized felines.

Annie Zelm reports for the Sandusky Register:  Ruth Barnett, 57, pleaded no contest to 10 counts of animal cruelty this week in Norwalk Municipal Court, where Judge John Ridge sentenced her to five years probation and a $250 fine. The judge also barred her from owning more than three animals, not including the three dogs registered to her brother at their Spring Street home. The animals must be spayed or neutered, and Barnett must allow humane officials to randomly inspect her home. She's also required to undergo counseling. Huron County humane investigator Kathleen Hampton recommended the stipulations to the Willard law director, but several humane society board members felt Barnett shouldn't be allowed to own any cats. Hampton said she believes Barnett will be less likely to sneak in strays if she's permitted to own just a few under careful supervision.

Below is a video from Norwalk Reflector.  (You will have to sit through a tiresome commercial before the clip actually begins.)  It's apparent from the scene that this hoarder is an extremely lonely person - which says something about the way our society often ignores the aged and infirm.  Ms. Barnett seems blithely oblivious to the fact that cohabiting with almost eight dozen kitties might not be the best idea - but by the time she starts whining her protestations of innocence and declaring that she's a "Christian woman," those of you who possess even the tenderest hearts may feel like banging your heads against the wall.  I know I did.

I was acquainted with an animal hoarder back when we resided on Bolivar Peninsula.  Her name was Amanda Mae Strickland-Hogg.  For the purpose of this story I'll call her Amanda Mae Strickland-Hogg.  (PMSH is a desperately private individual and even if you knew who she was you wouldn't necessarily know who she is.  Her public persona, that of a community-minded small business owner, rarely extended to sharing personal information with customers.  But I've always had a talent for wheedling secrets from friends and neighbors.  Call it a gift.  Or a curse.)

I haven't laid eyes on Amanda since Hurricane Ike leveled Galveston Island, Crystal Beach, Gilchrist and the surrounding Gulf Coast environs.  I do remember her with fondness, though.  Amanda operated a small DVD rental store near Port Bolivar, and over a period of several years we developed a friendship of sorts.  It wasn't until the aftermath of Hurricane Rita, which left her business in a shambles, that Amanda started oh-so-subtly alluding to her carnival of cats.  (Apparently, driving them to safe havens necessitated numerous drop-off points stretched over many miles.)  While regaling Art and I with tales of her kitties' playful antics, Amanda would mention this name or that name or another name, and after several months I started tallying up the different monikers she'd assigned to her "babies."  My best cat-stimation was fifteen to twenty felines. 

All this occurred more than a decade ago when the term "animal hoarder" was less familiar than it is nowadays.  As a youngster growing up in the East Texas Bible Belt, women like Amanda were referred to as "crazy cat ladies," or even more childishly, "Pussy Galore" (after Ian Fleming's notorious femme fatale).  Of course Amanda didn't think of herself in those terms, and I suspect she would have been horrified if someone had denounced her as an "animal hoarder."  I certainly never did.  But curiosity was eating me alive.

Unable to stand the suspense any longer, one day I leaned across the counter and bluntly asked the question that had weighed so heavily on my mind.  "Hon, now tell me honestly," I hummed like a finely-tuned motor, showering her with copious amounts of southern-fried gay charm.  "You know I'm not a judgemental person.  Exactly how many cats live in your house?"  Amanda glanced around the shop to see if anybody was listening and then gave me a sheepish grin.  She whispered, "thirty-five."  I didn't gasp or frown or wiggle my eyebrows.  I was serene as a statue of the Buddha, my expression totally impassive.  (Needless to say, I was thinking:  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  The cat litter alone...)  Then she swore me to secrecy.  We both knew that a local ordinance prohibited owning more than six companion animals.

Here's the thing about Amanda:  She never acquired the disheveled physical appearance and vacant gaze that defines some animal hoarders.  She was a divorced woman with no children - and I figure she spent a lot of her income on her pets' medical bills.  We took our critters to the same veterinarian, and the employees at Winnie Clinic were always anxious about housing a lion-sized portion of Amanda's menagerie whenever a major storm was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. (I was on chummy terms with the office manager. Oh how we gossiped.)  But I always suspected that Amanda's cats, all 36 of them, were loved and well cared for.  I really trusted and admired my veterinarian - who saw Maggie Moose through her TPLO surgery - and if she had suspected animal neglect by Amanda there would have been ructions.

And Now For The Real Sickness ...

Below is a news report about an evangelical idiot named Bill Tinker who was planning to destroy his pets before this weekend's much-ballyhooed "Judgment Day."  What's sickening about this story is that Sonoma County officials who rescued Tinker's animals are planning to return them to him once the "rapture date" has passed.  From WTSP:

I wish lawmakers in this country viewed companion animals as something more than disposable pieces of property.

Religious Zealot Bryan Fischer: 'Gays Are Nazis'

Right Wing Watch reports that there is "no more openly bigoted Religious Right leader active today than the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer."  This is true.  In red state America's ocean of homophobic hysterics, the soul-dead Fischer is Megaladon, a prehistoric shark that views all forward-moving creatures as prey.  Earlier this week he warned his Rapture Ready radio listeners that gays and lesbians would "do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany."  Here are the actual words of the former pastor:

"The homosexual agenda is just like Islam: there is no room for dissent, there is no room to leave, once you're in, you can't leave. Muslims won't let you leave, homosexuals won't let you leave - if you leave, they claim you're faking it, so there's no way out. There's no freedom of choice, there's no freedom of religion - if you have religious views about homosexual behavior, you are squashed. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. There is no room in their world dissent, there is no room in their world for disagreement, there is no room in their world for criticism. You criticize homosexual behavior, they tag you as a bigot and a homophobe and then they got to work to silence you just like the Roman Catholic Church did in the days of Galileo - it's no different; it's the Spanish Inquisition all over again. Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany."

Fischer became the object of ridicule last year when he declared that Hitler surrounded himself with gay storm troopers because "he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders."  Another anti-gay zealot, Pastor Scott Lively, had earlier authored a so-called "groundbreaking" book about "evil homosexuals" in Nazi Germany - the absurdly titled Pink Swastika - from which Fischer has apparently lifted his bizarre talking points.  (Both Fischer and Pastor Lively are among the United States' current crop of Biblical dominionists who endorse Uganda's barbarous and universally condemned "Kill The Gays" legislation.)

It's telling that these advocates of "traditional family values" and the Republican politicians who curry favor with them have adopted the very same toxic tactics that propagandist Joseph Goebbels used to smear "enemies of the state" during World War II-era Germany.  It is not surprising that the stratagems they attribute to their opponents mirror their own unconscionable behavior.  Fischer, it should be noted, doesn't merely fling his corrosive acid at sexual minorities; his frequent verbal assaults against Native Americans, African-Americans, Muslims, Jews, Asians, and Latinos have resulted in the AFA being designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law center.

Elie Wiesel famously wrote, "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

It's disheartening that the modern-day Republican Party - and a solid slice of the voting public - continues to encourage bigotry that's been tarted up as "Christian principles" by sociopaths such as Fischer and Lively.  You'd think even the most hateful homophobes would be appalled at the prospect of bearing witness this false and depraved.  But who on the Right is really concerned about breaking God's holy commandments when the spectre of same-sex marriage looms?  Members of the GOP's base sure as hell don't.  Anti-gay orgs that trade fearmongering for cash donations don't give a shit.  They will say or do just about anything, and demonize just about anybody, if it advances of their regressive ideology.

Newt Hearts Texas, the Land Where Time Stands Still

By now you've probably heard that GOP presidential primary candidate and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich has vowed to reshape America in order to make it "more resemble" Texas.   In an ultraconservative garbage heap of loathsome ideas, this is one of the worst - and I say that as a person who calls Texas my home.  While there are many appealing aspects to the Lone Star State, it is by no stretch of the imagination the freedom-ringing utopia upon which to model the rest of the nation.  For one thing, this place is a veritable crack pipe for religious fundamentalists whose most cherished desire is to see the country transformed into a theocratic totalitarian society.  After decades of sly Republican redistricting with an eye toward blunting minority influence at the ballot box, wingnuts have turned the political landscape into a luxury spa for evangelical hypocrites - and a dark alleyway for those of us who eschew red meat ideology.

When you parse the percentage of U.S. citizens without health insurance, as well as the percentage of kids without access to basic medical care, Texas ranks 50th in the entire nation.  The state also ranks lowest in the percentage of women receiving prenatal care.  Despite a steady regimen of abstinence-only education, Texas ranks fourth in teen pregnencies.  STDs among adolescents are skyrocketing.  (This is what happens when children are schooled in low-cal religious pablum instead of healthy facts.)  From Texas Politics:  We have already noted that Texas has some of the poorest counties and places in the United States. But it also has some of the wealthiest...   Texas is among the most unequal of states in the United States; its wealthy are wealthy on a nation-wide basis, while its poor live, by some standards, in the poorest places and counties in the entire country.

Texans can brag about one thing, though.  The Lone Star State ranks Numero Uno in the amount of carcinogens released into the atmosphere - more than twice the cancer causing agents swirling through the air of South Carolina, which comes in at Number 2.  Governor Rick Perry remains as popular with rural voters as he always was.  Men admire that famously chiseled jaw and his George W. Bush "stay the course" obstinancy - and of course Texas women like the fact that Perry's hair is so big it can be seen from the Space Station.

Herein lies a political anomaly.  It's been my experience that despite habitually voting Christianist zealots, misogynists, raving homophobes, and run-of-the-mill crooks into public office - again and again and again - the majority of Texas citizens are not as mean-spirited and petty as the lawmakers they select to represent them.  They are, however, stubborn.  And if voters ever get it into their collective heads that a particular candidate (or party) doesn't embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible - and all the dangerous baggage that entails - they will blindly cleave to the opponent of that person or party, no matter how corrupt and disreputable the "believer" is. 

Then there's our well-deserved reputation for a shoot-first-ask-questions-later mindset.  Each and every state which allows the death penalty inevitably executes suspects that are innocent of the crimes they've been charged with.  But you're unlikely to find state prosecutors who so gleefully kill people they know to be innocent as here in Texas.  "I made a mistake" and "I was wrong" are sentiments seldom expressed this side of the Rio Grande River, pardner.