Here’s a fun video of homobigoted pastors rallying on Capitol Hill against hate crimes legislation on Wednesday. Lies upon lies.
Rusty Lee Thomas, who’s mentioned in an earlier post, is seen bleating this winner:
“Yes, I dare state that there is a direct connection between the sins and crimes of abortion and the sodomite agenda and the Islamic terrorism that threatens our nation.”
As expected, black pastor puppets are also prominently featured.
Rev. Johnny Hunter of the Life Education and Resource Network:
“Pastors not only have a right, but they have an obligation to state emphatically that according to scripture, a man or a woman should not perform a sex act with a person of the same sex…nor with a dog…nor with a snake…nor with a hamster or any other creature.”
***
Incidentally, the ACLU has a letter of support for the Kennedy-Smith hate crimes prevention amendment to the Defense Department authorization bill up on its site that should be sent along to these bible beaters.
In fact, we are pleased that Senators Kennedy and Smith and 42 other cosponsors included in the free-standing hate crimes bill–and in the Kennedy-Smith amendment, which has language that is identical to the text of the bill–has a new evidentiary section that will be the strongest protection against the misuse of a person?s free speech that Congress has enacted as part of the federal criminal code. No other section of the criminal code has an explicit provision prohibiting the use of a defendant?s speech or association unless it was specifically related to the violent crime. This extraordinary and unprecedented provision will ensure that the hate crimes legislation will not chill constitutionally protected speech or association.And on Thursday, 14 new co-sponsors were added:
On 07/12/2007, at the request of Mr. KENNEDY, the names of the Senator from Vermont (Mr. LEAHY), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. SPECTER), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. MENENDEZ), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. DODD), the Senator from Maine (Ms. COLLINS), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. BAYH), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. SALAZAR), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. KERRY), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. BINGAMAN), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. OBAMA), the Senator from New York (Mrs. CLINTON), the Senator from Maine (Ms. SNOWE), the Senator from Washington (Mrs. MURRAY) and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. REED) were added as cosponsors of amendment No. to H.R. 1585, DOD auth., that would add a new section 1070 on hate crimes (the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007).
29 Responses to “Hate crime fundie follies”
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What?!? But hamsters are teh Hot!
Yes, the bit about hamsters was also one of the first things I noticed. I literally can’t think of anything else to say about it (which is undoubtedly for the best).
Abortion leads to teh gay and terrorists!
…How!? Can someone clarify for me? That does no make sense to me in any way, shape, sense or form.
Didn’t know hetrosexual babies were more likely to come from women being forced to remain pregnant.
I never know partners of the same sex suddenly became a creature and less human. Who wouldha thunk. “POOF!” Wowza.
Nice to see the moderate Repubs, a dying breed who often don’t vote like they say when they still exist–come through–Smith, Specter, Snowe, Collins. Salazar is also usually pretty DINOish, so this is a pleasant surprise.
I’m not sure why some people are so insistent on calling hate crime laws “thought police.” Do they want to get rid of all premeditation statutes too?
Yes, absolutely, pastors have not merely a right but a duty to loudly and repeatedly condemn sex with snakes. When’s the last time your pastor delivered a forty minute sermon on the abomination of rattler-fucking, eh? Well, then, sounds like he or she is not a real pastor.
Ring, ring…
“Pastor Jones speaking”
“Pastor Jones, I need help, my marriage is in shambles, my child is in the hospital, I am losing my faith and need the help of my religious community to make it through these difficult times”
“I would like to take this opportunity to tell you not to place a snake in any of your orifices, however deliciously titilating the idea might seem to you”
“Thank you Pastor, I feel better now”
“Just doing my duty, Ma’am”
A duty, people. It’s a pastoral fucking duty! Ok?
I’ve read the text of that bill and see nothing in it that limits speech. Unless I missed something, the scope of this legislation includes only all forms of bodily injury. That said, I don’t see the problem with it – or at least not in the sense that it will curtain personal expression.
Do I dare ask him to prove it?
/…a snake?
According to Pamela, this makes it 57 cosponsors, which means that we need to find 10 more votes in the Senate to overrride the homophobe-in-chief’s veto, 290 in the House. I wish that Joan Jett and Kanye West would go to Washington to tell the real truth about S. 105, something that the bigots in the video is not even 1% interested in hearing.
The bigots in the video say that this bill would muzzle their voices…what I want them to do is think back to June 25 when the SCOTUS muzzled our voices and told us what we can and cannot do with our own taxpayer money. The homophobes need to give up their fight, because the fight for LGBT rights will be even louder and more people will join the pro-LGBT lobby.
Hamsters?Snakes?Ooooh….mah bwain hurts!
Some of these same people then went into the Senate Gallery, were they pitched a fit because the invocation that day was delivered by a Hindu . . .
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015328.php
“Rev. Johnny Hunter of the Life Education and Resource Network:
“Pastors not only have a right, but they have an obligation to state emphatically that according to scripture, a man or a woman should not perform a sex act with a person of the same sex…nor with a dog…nor with a snake…nor with a hamster or any other creature.â€?”
Do pastors have an obligation to pick and choose from the Book of God’s Love a few obscure passages which ratify their own human hatreds? God’s Inerrant Word does not preach bigotry, Rev Hunter does not have an obligation to preach those passages which prove that the Bible’s inspiration was, at a minimum, heard through human ears and has picked up human errors.
Three other points: he compares gay sex with beastiality. Does he think that animals have the same moral agency as adult humans that they can give informed consent?
Second, how many Bible passages accept slavery? Does he have the obligation to preach that he should have a master that Paul commands him to obey?
Did Jesus violate his obligation to preach against the Samaritans? Unless he has the canon of scritpure as understood by the Pharisees, he cannot deny that the Parable of the Good Samaritan was a violation as flagrant as he says ministers who do not hang homophobia like an albatross around the Bible’s neck are. If the Parable of the Good Samaritan only teaches against prejudice aginst Samaritans, is Jesus Christ for all time?
No, he means that homosexuals aren’t really people….we’re animals.
“exposing” this bigotry is a service pam. But around here all you are going to get is hoots, laughter and horrified agreement. Have we access to a better venue, can’t this sick shit be shown up for the harm and error it embodies to a wider audience? I see that the positives, i.e. the level of support from major political figures is growing.
I just googled the news for the hate crimes bill.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22hate+crimes%22+bill&btnG=Search+News
The only publication that could be considered MSM that makes the first page of hits is SFGATE All the rest are either GLBT papers [voices of the victims] or the rags put out by rabid christian hate mongers and neither of these is going to move the debate much on capital hill.
Don’t pastors have an obligation to tell the truth?
Three other points: he compares gay sex with beastiality. Does he think that animals have the same moral agency as adult humans that they can give informed consent?
Judge Moonbox, rightwing nuts seem to have a hard time understanding the very concept of consent, whether you’re talking about adults, kids, or animals.
@ Clytemnestra: pastors have an obligation to tell “God’s Truth”,not “The Truth”.The latter tends to get in the way of the former.
Actually, it is quite the opposite
Assuming you’re serious…
(Disclaimer: I don’t personally support what I am explaining.)
Note that he didn’t say that abortion leads to terrorism. What he said is that there is a direct connection.
You see, their loving God is at all times just waiting to smite and punish, or, failing that, is only willing to hold His hand of protection over the righteous. And not just the individually righteous, but the tribally righteous. In some constructions, it is God himself who will do the smiting, in others, it is God’s hand of protection that is all that is keeping Satan and all his minions from diving in and doing Nasty things.
Now, God being the loving fellow that He is, wants all his children to be with Him and protected by him, but being the (ludicrously) sensitive fellow that He is, cannot stand to be in the presence of anything other than complete moral perfection (the whole “this makes God vomit” and “this makes God weep” thing, and the reason that those who die in sin are sent to Hell for all eternity - they make the big Guy uncomfortable.)
So, since God wants everyone to hang with Him, and cannot allow that if they aren’t perfect, He causes (or allows) evil and hatred and suffering and terrorist attacks by the evil followers of False Godsâ„¢ so that people will see the error of their ways, confess their sins, repent, and come crawling back to His protection.
God’s apparent lack of aim, smiting the righteous along with the sinners, works for two reasons - first, since the sinners aren’t listening to God, he has to recruit their neighbors to make them see the error of their ways, and if necessary, forcibly recalibrate them. Secondly, “tolerating” sin in others, especially via structuring your society, laws, television programming, etc, is in itself a sin, and allowing the bad stuff to slop onto the righteous will motivate them to get out there and clean up society.
Since abortion and homosexuality are (currently) two of the absolutely worst things that anyone could ever do (so bad, apparently that even the writers of the Bible wouldn’t speak of them very much, I guess), allowing them to continue sets up America for getting smited big time. Cue the terrorists.
To make the whole thing just that much more slick, you get to add in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, where the farmer, realizing that pulling up all the weeds would also destroy the crop, let them grow, and threw them into the fire at the harvest time, any argument that points out that God isn’t smiting San Francisco, Pride Parades, or abortion clinics (or doctors) simply means that God, while not approving, is giving His people the opportunity to take action themselves.
So if a Bad Thing happens to a gay person, event, or organization, or an abortion supporter or organization, it is clear evidence that God disapproves, but if no Bad Things happen to them, it is also clear evidence that God disapproves, and finally, if a Bad Thing happens to someone or something else, even something apparently unrelated, it is proof that God disapproves of homosexuality and abortion, and is reminding people of that. Neat, huh?
And what is even more convenient, is that since this needs have no link whatsover to actual reality or real-world consequences, it can be conveniently applied to anything at all that you’ve decided that God disapproves of, and shifted to a new target when the boat sails on the old one (like women showing their ankles in public, or interracial marriage, or communists.)
The 9th commandment (8th if your Roman Catholic, or Lutheran)is:
“Thou shalt not bear false witness”
Um if you are not telling the truth about the ramifications of the hate crimes legislation, namely that you will still be able to spout hateful homobigoted rhetoric from your pulpits, since the hate crimes bill does not touch that . . . . well then you are lieing, i.e. not telling the truth, bearing false witness.
besides I was trying to be ironic
I have a comment that is still in moderation … but y’all I was trying to be ironic
Clytemnestra,
That’s Old Testament. Jesus freed them from Old Testament Law.
Fear of hypocrisy has never been weakness of fundamentalists. I am certain that they justify their statements by saying that they are only exaggerating to do good, or that the bill is a slippery slope, and this is what they predict will happen.
As I have pointed out before, on this issue, their own whining show them to be wrong. Religious belief is currently covered under existing hate crimes law. Yet, the poor Christians complain that they are persecuted by a secular world - how can this be? if thinking, speaking, against Christians is illegal?
Ultimately, these people are arguing that that violence Gays and Lesbians should be excusable, if not permitted entirely.
MAJeff
That depends on the time of the month, and where Mars is in relation to the Earth
… if that were truly, true, they wouldn’t have been so exercized when Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was ordered to remove the 10 Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building and then suspended for not removing them.
Seriously, these people don’t have a basement or garage to clean? Laundry? Grandkids to dandle and deglaze of snot? Hundreds of other things that actually improve their own and loved ones lives?
I realize that mindless persecution to no good end is (in their bellfries, anyway) worth the time. I’m just saying that the skills and persistence required to get out there persistently and be a pain in the ass to [fill in the hate of the week] means they have more than the minimal faculties to talk themselves out of being so dickish.
They talk as if this stuff takes up most of the bible. Imagine what assholes they’d be if gays were expressly prohibited from doing abortions on hamsters by commandment? Oh, I forgot … those, they ignore.
I’m sorry, was that “hamsters” or “Hamshers” one is not supposed to have making too nice with?
Killjoys, either way.
They always go there, associating homosexuality with man-on-dog santorum style talk.
I had no idea that once I have sex with a woman, my household of cats are going to go from fuzzy hairball hackers to salacious sex partners. Meow.
Peter, I was attempting exasperation. I understand the thought process, but it defies all logic. I understand logic isn’t the forte of religious sociopaths.
Rev. Johnny Hunter of the Life Education and Resource Network:
“Pastors not only have a right, but they have an obligation to state emphatically that according to scripture, a man or a woman should not perform a sex act with a person of the same sex…nor with a dog…nor with a snake…nor with a hamster or any other creature.�
“…Nor with a skink…nor with a feral cat…nor with a potbellied pig…nor with a cockatoo, sulphur-crested or umbrella…nor with an elephant…nor with a pheasant…nor with a wildebeest…nor yet with a gnu…”
where, exactly, in scripture, is the part about the hamsters?
did my children’s illustrated bible leave out some shameful things noah and his family were doing on their 40 days-and-nights cruise?
or is this another fundie letting his freudian slip show?
“And lo, did Noah then discover that he was but without any more room in his Ark, whence there were still the rodents left to be placed thereupon. After much deliberation, God was good and gaveth up to Noah but a vision of a remaining warm dark place wherein to place the rodents. But Noah, in his flawed humanity, did not see all that was the perfection of God’s plan, and did place the rodents in his own warm dark place. God did look, and he was not pleased in Noah, flinging his wrath in the form of painful bowels. God did then proclaim the placing of rodents in warm, dark places to be a sin, and to be punished through the flinging of feces”
It’s fairly canonical …
Here’s another comical video protesting the Hate Crimes Act (HR 1592):
It’s a street theater demonstration in front of the Capitol in which both Moses and a Teletubby is arrested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUBj51aLV1A
from the site…
Public Advocate demonstrates in Washington, DC, protesting the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act (H.R. 1592), which would grant special rights to homosexuals. This law would add sexual orientation to federal hate crimes statutes.