Happy Halloween: God hates you.

As way of preface I want to mention something that happened to me three years ago. I was pulling into a parking space at a restaurant. In the space next to me was another SUV with a mother and her young son: perhaps 8. They were getting out of the car and going into the restaurant about the same time I was.

As the boy and mother walked past the mother made some sarcastic sounding remark that she seemed to think was funny about her son. "Doesn't he have a cute purse?" I saw the boy was carrying a purse. My impression was that it was his mother's purse and he was carrying into the restaurant for her. Perhaps not, I couldn't tell and wasn't very concerned.

The mother seemed determined to drag me into her game and turned to me and said: "So what do you think about him carrying a purse?" Now, I operate on the assumption that if you don't want a truthful answer don't ask me a question. I will say precisely what I believe if asked.

In this case I was a bit peeved with the mother who I thought was being cruel. So I responded, with a firm look: "I think it's no one's business but his own and if that is what he wants to do then he has the right to do it." That was not the response she expected and she seemed surprised and then said: "Well, I guess you're right." She was then smart enough to shut up and move on before I had a chance to tell her that mothers shouldn't bully kids either—not even their own.

That brings me to the case of a blogging mother who goes by the nom de blog of Nerdy Apple Bottom. She is 35 years old and has three kids and is married to a police detective. And this Halloween her 5 year old son, nicknamed Boo, said that for Halloween he wanted to dress up as Daphne from the cartoon Scooby Doo. She was alright with that, after all, it is Halloween.

But Boo attended a preschool run by a local church and that seems to be where the problem was. She noted that Boo was getting nervous that some people might make fun of him. She asked: "Seriously, who would make fund of a child in a costume?" I've seem some awful costumes on kids and have never stooped to ridiculing them. Kids are off limits for that sort of treatment, in my books, completely off limits.

The kids showed up at school in costume and had a small party and then reverted to their street clothes for the rest of the day. When "Nerdy" and Boo went into the school some of the good Christian mothers descended like hungry vultures spotting a carcass. In my experience I can only say: "How Christian of them." And mean it.

The kids were fine, only their mothers lacked the maturity required to deal with it. Nerdy describes the situation:

Two mothers went wide-eyed and made faces as if they smelled decomp. And I realize that my son is seeing the same thing I am. So I say, “Doesn’t he look great?” And Mom A says in disgust, “Did he ask to be that?!” I say that he sure did as Halloween is the time of year that you can be whatever it is that you want to be. They continue with their nosy, probing questions as to how that was an option and didn’t I try to talk him out of it. Mom B mostly just stood there in shock and dismay.

And then Mom C approaches. She had been in the main room, saw us walk in, and followed us down the hall to let me know her thoughts. And they were that I should never have ‘allowed’ this and thank God it wasn’t next year when he was in Kindergarten since I would have had to put my foot down and ‘forbidden’ it. To which I calmly replied that I would do no such thing and couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. She continued on and on about how mean children could be and how he would be ridiculed.

My response to that: The only people that seem to have a problem with it is their mothers.

Nerdy had an appropriate response—well verbal response, perhaps the most appropriate would have been decking the stupid woman but the kids were watching.

But here’s the point, it is none of your damn business.

If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to ‘make’ him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.

Now remember these Christian mothers were doing this in front of the boy. They were basically bullying a 5-year-old over his choice of Halloween costumes, and trying to do the same to this mother. Nerdy wrote: "IT IS NOT OK TO BULLY. Even if you wrap it up in a bow and call it 'concern.' Those women were trying to bully me. And my son. MY son."

To argue that children could be mean, in this case, was absurd. It was the Christian mothers who were being mean, but they worship someone who promises to torture the vast majority of humanity for eternity. Can children be mean? Yes, but where do these mothers think the kids learn to act that way? Perhaps from the cruel example set by their own mothers.

Nerdy said that she has no idea if her son will be gay or not but made it clear that she will love him just the same either way. Her job, she says, is not to stifle the man he will become but make sure he is a good person. Of course, if dressing in drag at Halloween would make people gay then apparently there are more gay men around than the world will ever realize.

Most the comments left at the blog were supportive of Nerdy and praising her for her mothering skills. But a few self-described Christians just "had" to preach their gospel of intolerance. Kelly wanted Nerdy to know: "The Bible condemns homosexuality and cross-dressing VERY clearly and I can expect that from the world, but not from Christians. The reasons why Christians are against homosexuality is NOT because we 'hate' homosexuals, but quite the opposite." Sure, dear, I believe that, sort of the way the Nazis loved the Jews to death. Of course Kelly doesn't have to torment people, she has an imaginary friend who will do it for her: "I believe in hell and know it is a place of eternal torment. The Bible is clear on that and what takes you there." Apparently dressing up as Daphne for Halloween is a good enough reason for Jehovah to torture someone for eternity. Wow!

Others accused Nerdy of "whoring out" her son. One said: "This is such an attention whore move." Another offered the detailed argument of: "You're an idiot." I had more that I wanted to mention, especially a particularly silly comment from one "babybooty." But the blog doesn't seem to show all the comments in any particular order. The comment was there and I was starting to take notes when the power went out. When it came back I returned to the site and have spent 30 minutes looking for that silly comment to finish this piece and can't find it.

UPDATE: After writing this I was shocked to see exactly how people have responded. People have accused this mother of child abuse, of all things, because she stood up for her son when some stupid adults were upset with his Halloween costume. CNN brought on some clinical psychologist, Jeff Gardere, who went as far as to say that "the worst nightmare" of any parent is to "fathom that their child may be gay." The worst nightmare! Shit. Is he kidding? I suspect his mother was worried her son might turn out to be an asswipe. If she was, it was with good reason.



He may be trying to be supportive but his comment that this is the worst nightmare of a parent is absurd.

Some busybody "child" advocacy group in the UK voiced an opinion saying that the blog post was a "troubling and disturbing precedent." They claim the mother has an adult agenda and is imposing it on her kid.

Get some perspective. The mother posted on her blog which was read by very few people, mostly friends. She shares her life with those friends via the blog. This one posting went viral but we have no evidence she intended for that to happen. In fact she was quite surprised by it.

People have argued that boy will be humiliated in years to come by it. Well, I have a photo of me as a child in an ROTC uniform because the school I attended had an ROTC program--they even taught us how to shoot at the school's firing range. I hate that photo.

Many, like this psychologist, seem to think the mother "outed" her young son. Absurd. She said: "My son is gay. Or he's not." She was responding to the hysteria that dressing this way will turn him gay—something people actually said to her in the comments section of her blog.

And while I like Steve Forbes as a person, and he was always pleasant with me, a commentator at his magazine's website is just off the wall. The Forbes blogger, Caroline Howard, calls this "Bad Mommy Blogging." She distorts what Nerdy wrote and claims "she convinced her son to don a costume he wasn't comfortable wearing."

Actually the boy became worried that some kids might ridicule him and she told him that she didn't think they would do that over a Halloween costume. She was actually right. The kids were fine with it but the mothers were the vultures. Howard seems to be of the opinion that blogging about one's children invades their privacy and is off limits and that there was a political agenda at work here. Odd they never say that when the Republican "family" candidate drags his kids out to the podium to display them before the public. Nerdy didn't drag her kid into the spotlight, she didn't expect the spotlight to be turned on at all.

As for those political candidates using their kids, one such politician that I knew dragged her whole family in for a photo for a campaign brochure that was mailed around the country. She gave me a copy of it and I had to chuckle. Apparently no one noticed that her teenage son was sitting with the family with his middle finger displaying his own view about the whole thing.

Thank god for bigots.

In the last couple of days I have come to appreciate the bigots. Take the brain-dead fundamentalist from Arkansas who was vice president of the local school board and yet who posted a message about gay kids killing themselves by saying he would be happy if they all killed themselves.

That message was so raw and so ugly that it worked up a lot of people.

I come out of a fundamentalist background myself. I know precisely how ugly, cruel, intolerant and vicious those sweet, smiling Christians can be when given half a chance. I know first hand how small-minded they are and how prone they are to believe the most absurd and ridiculous thing about anyone that they despise.

The school I attended was associated with what was then the largest fundamentalist church in America. I don't mean denomination when I say church. I mean this one single church was literally the largest church in the world when it came to attendance. I am thrilled to say it is a shadow of its former self these days.

I graduated from their high school and moved on to the seminary. I look back on it and shake my head in wonder. How could I possibly have endured such morons for so long? But I did.

The schools were dominated by Right-wing extremists, often of some very ugly tendencies. The John Birch Society was considered fairly middle-of-the-road by these people even when the JBS started indulging in crazy Illuminati/CFR/Bilderberger nonsense. The far-Right author of None Dare Call It Treason, John Stormer, taught classes I attended, at least briefly. This sort of conspiratorial nonsense was taught as fact.

In addition the church itself had dozens of members who were active in the Klan. The school pushed Bircher theories. I got such theories directly from the leaders of the school and the principal was a key influence in forming the Moral Majority. I also heard him make some pretty racist comments in class about the inability of blacks to learn. He said reasoning was beyond them and that only memorization worked.

With top officials pushing the Birch Society I got involved in the organization. And while the JBS had a public profile of pretending to shun anti-Semites and other such bigots they didn't try very hard.

I was a young kid and these people were feeding me literature about how the Jews were the real conspirators and trying to take over the world. Yes, they actually believed in Jewish conspiracies. From within the Birch Society I was introduced to every extreme theory on the Far Right that you could possible find, at least at the time.

With the church and the school pushing similar ideas, I naively thought I had to accept them as true. So I did. All of it seemed to make a sort of consistent sense to me. Based on the false premises I got from the school, the JBS made sense. Based on what they taught about conspiracies the anti-Semites seemed to make sense. The racism seemed to make sense. And then they all would refer to the Bible for their proof.

I went to the summer youth camp that the Birch Society was organizing. I meet the top Birch officials and writers there. I ended up a youth leader in the American Party, an offshot of the bigoted campaign of George Wallace. I attended their conferences as well. Deeper and deeper it seemed to go. The loony consistency of all of it seemed to make sense.

And then one day something happened and I woke up. It was really pretty simple. I saw the real face of this movement and it terrified me. I saw what hate looked like when it was behind closed doors and allowed free reign.

Someone I knew from church invited me to a private meeting held inside a large garage at some one's house. I remember walking up this long driveway to the garage where there were around 50 chairs set up theater style. We sat down and the owner of the home welcomed us and then introduced the speaker. I honestly don't remember his name, it isn't important. It didn't matter who he was. What mattered was what he said and what he did.

From this door to the house come a group of men in full uniform, brown shirts, dark heavy black boots almost up to the knee, armbands emblazoned with swastikas, arms held out in the all-familiar "Heil Hitler" salute. The head of this clownish, in a Stephen King kind of way, band of Nazis stood at a podium. The uniformed would-be thugs he brought with placed themselves in a circle around the audience, as if they were watching us all very carefully.

This man then launched into a tirade about "niggers" and "kikes" and that come the revolution they all would be rounded up, tortured and killed. He gave a long, gruesome description of how those massive tree grinding machines could be used. The Jews, he said, could be tossed into them one person at a time and obliterated into a heap of bloody, fleshy pulp in a matter of seconds. He laughed about it. He found the entire depiction amusing and inspiring.

He did his best imitation of the Fuhrer, sputtering and spitting and hollering at the top of his voice his message of undying hatred. For years all this Right-wing bullshit had been fed to me, but it was all ideas and concepts. This hateful man made those ideas and concepts flesh and blood. He personified all that was wrong with what I had been taught. All the careful wording that used to placate the sensibilities of the media were forgotten that day. He said precisely what he meant and what he intended to do if ever given the chance.

I might have been just a teenager but this experience shook me up. It was so ugly, so inhuman. It started me wondering. I began questioning everything I had been taught, without exception.

I left that church, though not Christianity yet. I moved on to another, smaller church albeit one that was still fundamentalist. I was not yet ready to give that up. I started reading more widely and researching. I took all the conspiracy literature I was given and studied it, and all the books that were footnoted, and then read those books and their footnotes. I went through conspiratorial literature that went back two centuries. And the more I read the more clear it was to me how much nonsense it all was.

My new church disagreed with my old church on some key points. Yet each claimed to be following the infallible word of God. The more I studied the more I was unsure of any of this as well. And eventually I came to dismiss all theology and all deities as wishful thinking.

I was still in the seminary but having doubts. One day a kind and gentle Christian introduced himself and I was so thrilled that the semester was starting off with a new friend. Instead he merely wanted to know my name because he determined that my hair was about 1/3 of an inch too long. His feigned friendliness was a front in order to get my name so he could turn me in and get me in trouble with the school authorities.

At this time along came Anita Bryant with her very ugly anti-gay campaign. It reminded me of what I saw in that garage that day, the same kind of scapegoating. Instead of Jews in the cross hairs Anita was going after faggot and queers who "can't reproduce, so they recruit -- your children." Anita would speak but it was that jackbooted thug that I saw in my mind. Sure she smiled more and didn't want have them killed, just cured, or put back in the closet where they belong.

I wrote a letter to my local paper and signed my own name, opposing Anita and speaking out against her campaign. And from there the last ties I had with fundamentalism came crashing down. All these Right-wing types who saw me as their golden boy, as the teenager who understood their ideas, were furious. I listened to tirades from former friends calling radio shows to denounce me for criticizing Sister Anita. I packed my bags and left. I took a job writing and was soon spending a day with Anita and reporting on it. I went to a Moral Majority/Anita Bryant meeting called to demand that homosexuality be made a felony in the state. Jerry Falwell and Anita were the headliners. I reported on how I witnessed these "Christians" having their kids march around with signs calling for the murder of gay people. But hey, they didn't suggest tree grinding machines.

I may have forgotten the name of the jackbooted Nazi who spit out such hate and venom, but I will never forget the incident and tone and mental stench from the hatred. It started me on a journey, one that I continue every day. From that moment on, no belief I held was sacred, they still aren't. I continually reconsider and change views or modify them, and often reconfirm them as well. I also have moved more in a direction where I see the utter evil of hatred and of wielding power over others.

I don't know what would have happened had I never experience that jolting experience of seeing hate so perfectly illustrated in front of me. I like to think I would have evolved anyway, but I can't be sure. Yes, such things are ugly and horrible to consider but they do have their uses.

When Clint McCance went on Facebook and said he hoped all gay kids would kill themselves his venom was so disgusting that he lite a firestorm. Good for him. I'm glad he did it. In a sense he serves to others the function that Nazi wannabe served for me.

People want to think that the beliefs they hold about other groups or classes of people—gays, Jews, Mexicans, "illegal immigrants," or whoever is the target of the day—are reasonable and "moderate." Few extremists actually think they are extreme. Now and then someone takes their premises and follows them to the logical conclusion. And when that happens the moderates are shocked and horrified. They don't want to excuse it, but they aren't sure how to condemn it either. It causes them great discomfort because, for the first time, they see precisely where their beliefs are leading them.

That Nazi thug scared me because he was taking the beliefs I had been spoon fed by the church and school and moved them in a logical progression consistent with the premises held. He forced me to ask myself whether this was what I really wanted. And I didn't. I didn't want any of this. The images that day horrified me so much that I was terrified that if I said anything they might do some of these things to me. I only wanted to get out of there.

I did get out of there. And eventually I got out of the entire fundamentalist mindset. I became an atheist because I felt the entire god concept didn't make any sense. I abandoned the authoritarians of the Right and became a libertarian. The more I saw hatred the more I became concerned about oppression and people being harmed by the collectivist mob mentality of bigotry.

Clint McCance is a nobody whose ugly hate got him attention he wished hadn't have happened. Fred Phelps is a tyrannical minister filled with hate who abused everyone in his life, in one way or another. Yet his "God hates fags," and "God hates Jews" protest rally massive protests from every community he visits.

These bigots force people to see the logical results of bigoted premises. And that forces people to decided whether or not to cling to those premises, or to change them. We have seen huge shifts in public attention on issues relating to the state-sanctioned oppression of gay people. And one reason for this is because people like McCance and Phelps wake people up. They force them to see where the premises they hold are leading.

When it becomes clear that these premises are so ugly and so cruel, people begin abandoning them. I may not believe in a literal god but I can thank this mythical being for the existence of these bigots. These bigots are changing minds, just not in the direction they intend. Clint McCance got people in Arkansas thinking. He so shocked them that few would publicly defend him. After all, the man said he wished school kids would kill themselves, and he did so based on what he says the Bible teaches.

Today bigotry is weaker in Arkansas as a result. Just as the horrors of communism in practice discredited communism in theory, the horrors of bigotry in practice discredits the theories on which they are based. That also means that McCance made fundamentalism a little less appealing to some of its adherents. Like I did, some of them have now begun their journey away from hate because McCance made hate so real to them. And that is a good thing.

At least he had the sense to resign.

I am pleased to report that the Arkansas school board member who said he wished all gay kids would kill themselves, Clint McCance, has resigned from the school board.

He says he regrets the remarks. I'm sorry but I have to wonder if he is sorry he said it, or sorry that there was such a response to it. Those are not the same thing.

This man said he would disown his own children if one of them were gay. Wow! What sort of message does he think that sent to his own children?

He says: "The words I used were unfortunate but they can't be taken back." No, they can't. But they were not unfortunate. This was not just an "unfortunate" incident. He chose to say what he said, what is unfortunate, for him, is that he is paying the price. His political career is over.

I am glad he resigned and glad he apologized for the incredibly cruel things he said.

But I am haunted by the words of McCance that he would disown his own children. Such things happen in fundamentalist homes more than most people realize.

In his day the so-called "faith healer" Oral Roberts was well-known for holding the typical anti-gay view. His oldest son and heir apparent was Ronald Roberts. He was considered a highly intelligent man with the perfect family himself. But then Ronnie divorced and admitted he was gay. A few months later, facing nothing but rejection from his fundamentalist family and friends, Ronnie Roberts killed himself.

Ronnie's nephew, and Oral's grandson, Randy Roberts Potts, wrote about his mother's eyes would light up every time she spoke about Ronnie, her brother. Randy says that his want he wanted from his mother when she spoke about him but says that "her eyes don't ling up anymore, and haven't in years—for the last five, at least."

His mother wants little to do with Randy as well. Randy, like his uncle, had married and had a perfect family. And like his uncle he knew he was lying. He too was gay. Apparently the Roberts' family learned nothing from Ronnie's suicide. Randy is now alienated from his own family, living in Dallas and raising his children.

I hope Mr. McCance realizes how easily this can come to his own doorstep. He says he loves his two children, yet he said if one of them were gay he would "run them off."

Anti-gay bigotry is in a unique class of itself. A racist who hates blacks will not suddenly discover his own child is black. But the anti-gay bigot could wake up and find they have a gay child. It has happened time and time again. The adult disparaging gays could be insulting their own children in an incredibly cruel way without ever knowing it.

Photo: Clint McCance

Jihad in Arkansas

Jihad is an attitude, one that says that others actually deserve to die because they violate your own religious fantasies. I have argued that the fundmentalist Christians are basically compelled to cruelty and hatred based on their view of the Bible.

Let us move to that cultural cesspool known as Arkansas where self-proclaimed "Christian" Clint McCance sits on the Midland, Arkansas school board.

First, allow me to remind you of the events that lie behind this astoundingly reprehensible actions by Mr. McCance.

As this blog, and thousands of others, has reported there was a tragic series of young teens killing themselves because they were being harassed and bullied for being gay. The faces in this blog are some of those kids. Please keep them in mind as you read about what Mr. McCance did. Keep in mind that McCance is one of the elected officials in Midland, AR, whose job is to run the school system that incarcerates thousands of students on a daily basis. His job is to "educate" these children.


After the series of suicides there was a national outcry against the bullying and some groups promoted an awareness campaign where students would wear purple on one day to bring attention to these tragedies. Mr. McCance responded to the campaign by saying that he wanted gay kids to kill themselves. I am not making this up. He posted the following on his Facebook page and keep in mind that the "queers" he mentions are young kids. The spelling is his own, indicating one doesn't have to be intelligent to run a school, at least not government schools.

"Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed thereselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE."

This self-identified Christian then responded to someone who protested his wording and his monstrous sentiments.

"No because being a fag doesn't give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then dont tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. I dont care how people decide to live their lives. They dont bother me if they keep it to thereselves. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die. If you arent against it, you might as well be for it."

"I would disown my kids they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off. Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone."

So how has the Midland School Board responded so far. First they removed the names of their board members. Then they disabled their email system to prevent outsiders from using their site to send them emails. McCance has not retracted his comments nor apologized for them.

What kind of moral compass is operating when a school official wish gay students would kill themselves? McCance says his three passions are "god, family and fishing." I can't speak for any god, nor will I pretend to, I will that to theologians, they are so good at faking that they speak for the divine. I can, however, say something about family. And this invoking "family" to justify hating other people's children is as anti-family as one can get. Like it or not gay kids are not found in cabbage patches. They grow up in families. They have brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. And all of them grieve and mourn when their gay loved one dies. "Family" is not a code word for hate, no matter how much fundamentalists pretend it is. Families are cemented together by love and any family that can't say that is not really a family, just a collection of people accidentally related by blood.

In this blogpost I wrote about "telling kids they are worthy of death." I noted how religious messages, especially coming from the fundamentalist sects, are quite openly sending out messages that gay people should die. And they are sending that message to their own children. Even if they never have gay children themselves, which is not something they manage to avoid all the time, they are still sending that message to other children. We should also remember that they are sending this message to kids who then bully and harass other kids precisely because they are gay. These messages give succor to the bullies and help justify their actions. These "godly" messages tell the bullies and bigots that jihad against gay people is divinely sanctioned.

Angle pulls out the racist card

This is the very ugly, very racist tirade of Sharron Angle the so-called Tea Party candidate in Nevada. Any libertarian who is still defending this disgusting movement has either not been paying attention or is brain dead. The Tea Party is anti-liberty. They are bigoted against immigrants and gays and are actually worse on social liberty than your normal Republican. Surveys show that the Tea Party is mainly the most reactionary element of the Republican Party.

Angle, who is also a staunch anti-gay bigot, of course, claims that "waves" of Mexicans are coming to America. Actually immigration flows are way down because these people came looking for jobs and when jobs dry up they go back. But in Angle's fevered, bigoted, little brain these people are not coming to America for work but for the explicit purpose of "joining violent gangs, forcing families to live in fear."

Is this true? Are millions of Mexicans flocking to America to join gangs? For answer I turned to the National Gang Threat Assessment published by the FBI and various police agencies who deal with gangs.


The first problem with Angle's slander against Mexicans is that millions of them can't be joining gangs. The NGTA report indicates that the total number of gang members in the US, of all races and nationalities tops out at 1 million. And of these over 100,000 are in prison. So Angle's estimate of illegal immigrants in gangs exceeds the total number of all gang members in the country

So Angle's main claim is impossible. Another problem is indicated when we look at which regions of the country report gang activity. In the Southwest, where most illegals come into the country, 63% of law enforcement report gang activity. This is lower than the Southeast region, or the Bible-belt where 68% report gang activity. The national average is 58% so the region with the most Mexicans is barely above the average. For instance the region include Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming came in at 58%, yet this is not a region known for having large numbers of illegal immigrants.

We should also look at what fueled the rise in gang numbers in the US, and it wasn't immigration, legal or otherwise. It is the war on drugs that creates massive profit opportunities for gangs to deal in drugs. The report notes:

During the 1980s, gangs that engaged in drug
trafficking in major cities began to expand their
drug distribution networks into suburban communities
influenced by local gangs. The larger
gangs controlled drug distribution in city drug
markets; they were motivated to move into adjoining
communities to generate additional income
by capitalizing on burgeoning powder cocaine and
crack cocaine abuse. Large urban gangs generated
millions of dollars from trafficking illicit drugs in
urban and suburban areas; this income enabled the
gangs to recruit new members and to force smaller
local gangs to either disband or align with them,
thereby increasing their dominance. To enhance
profits from drug trafficking and other crimes, large
urban gangs also deployed members to locate new
drug markets throughout the country, including in
suburban and rural communities. As various gangs
attempted to expand nationally, they often were
met with initial resistance by local gangs. This resistance
resulted in an increased number of homicides
and drive-by shootings in suburban communities.

Gangs expanded in the US during the last few decades for the same reason that the Mob expanded during Prohibition. Government stupidity pushes up the profits in offering an illegal substance that are desired, rightly or wrongly, by a large percentage of Americans. The profits are artificially high because the drugs are illegal. Given the violent nature of the drug warriors themselves it makes sense that over time more and more of the distribution of drugs will be handled by individuals who are just as violent, if not more so, than the police agents who enforce this law.

Gang members who do migrate illegally to the US do so to take advantage of the drug trade or because they work with the drug cartels who have been created by the prohibition of drugs. But there is no evidence that a significant number of undocumented workers in the country are here for gang activities. Drug prohibition is the main source of gang income. According to NGTA: "Gangs earn the profits essential to maintaining their criminal operations and the lifestyles of their members primarily through drug distribution." However, the crack down on the border has pushed many gangs into the people smuggling business. As usual prohibition fuels criminal enterprises.

Since millions of illegal immigrants are NOT fueling gangs how many are involved? Here is an estimate based on the NTGA estimates of the major gangs with Hispanic members, not all of whom would be illegal:

18th Street Gang: 24,o00 to 40,000 members who are assumed illegals.
Almight Latin King: Has 20,000 to 35,000 members but is open to "individuals of any nationality." No mention of significant illegal immigrant membership.
Florencia 13: about 3,000 not all of whom are illegal.
Fresno Bulldogs: 5,000 to 6,000 not all of whom are illegal.
Sureños and Norteños: No membership figures but these are gang members from other gangs that are numbered. These are members of other gangs imprisoned and working in the prisons. So these figures are included in other figures.
Tango Blast: Formed by Hispanic men in prison as protection against other gangs such as the Aryan Brotherhood.
Barrio Azteca: around 2,000 many illegals not all.
Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos: around 1,000.
Mexikanemi: around 2,000 members.
Mexican Mafia: about 200 members.
Neta: Hispanic but mainly Puerto Rican not Mexican.

That is a list of the major gangs that are listed in the report which have Hispanic memberships of any significance mentioned. Their totals are around 90,000 or so and not all of them are illegal.
Many were actually born in the United States.

The gangs in America certainly are growing and as long as the drug warriors have their way these gangs will get bigger and bigger and more and more violent. Violent drug warriors encourage increasing violent drug dealers. The war on drugs won't stifle the demand for drugs and as long as demand remains high the drug war will offer massive profits to anyone willing to take on the cops. And who is willing to take on the cops: violent gangs.

Add into this mix the new profits being offered because of the border crackdown and the federal government is literally handing millions in artificially high profits to the gangs. Now, will Angle do anything to help encourage "legal" immigration or to end the war on drugs? No, just the opposite. It is Angle and people like her who are creating the very conditions that fuel the gangs.

Collective rights, petty debates and real pain.

Because many libertarians came to their philosophy from the Right they often bring with them a style of discussion that betrays their roots. While philosophically their position may be correct the way in which they express themselves conveys meanings they do not intend and alienate the people whom they are hoping to address.

Libertarians believe in individual rights. I have no problem with that. Rights do reside entirely in the individual. There is no such thing as collective rights, just the rights of the individual. So it would seem logical for a libertarian to shun terms like “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” or “minority rights,” etc.

We should be clear that people use the term “rights” in two different ways, and without clarifying which one is using can lead to unnecessary confusion. When a libertarian says that someone has “rights” they are referring to the ideal situation, not to the actual situation. It is to the libertarian vision of individual rights that they are referring.

This causes an immediate problem as others may be using the term to describe the actual legal state of rights, not the ideal state of rights. Yes, gay people have precisely the same rights as straight people in the ideal sense of the term. In the actual sense of the term they do not.

Two men, each identical in every important sense of the word, who attempt to join the military may be treated entirely differently if one of those men is gay and the other is not. There is an inequality of legal rights, even if in the ideal sense of the word the two men should have precisely the same rights. Similarly two couples will be treated very differently when it comes to marriage rights if one couple is gay and the other is straight. Legally the rights of gay people in America today are not co-equal to the legal rights enjoyed by their heterosexual siblings.

Often when the term “gay rights” is used it is a term meant to address the inequality of rights that exist, not the ideal sense of rights. It is an attempt to move the actual rights enjoyed by gay people to an equal plain with the rights enjoyed by straight people. The term “gay rights” is often used by someone who has no intention of creating a system of unequal rights. It is not a “special” right that is being sought but precisely the same rights that have been denied gay people by law. Similarly the term “women’s rights” is not generally meant to be a situation where women have different, or superior rights, but precisely the same rights as men. This does not mean that some people use the terms to disguise a campaign for unequal rights, but most people who use these terms do not mean that at all. More often than not their opponents are actually the advocates of unequal rights before the law, individuals who wish to reserve special privileges to a class, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Consider the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Jennifer Roback Morse. They fight for a system of marriage rights that excludes one class of people—gay couples. They want legal privileges reserved to another specific class of people alone. Yet opponents of equality of rights argue that it is the gay couples that are seeking “special” rights, when in truth they are attempting to eradicate special rights in favor of equality of rights.

There is also another aspect of “rights” which libertarians simply tend to forget, or never realized. While it is true that a person does not have rights because he is a member of a specific group it is true that individuals frequently have their rights violated precisely because he is a member of a specific group.

A woman who is gay may ideally have precisely the same rights as any other adult, but she may be denied some of those rights because she is gay. Taxation may violate rights on a relatively equal basis. A general sales tax hurts everyone regardless of what group he may be a member of while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell disqualifies individuals on the basis of a collective trait, not an individual one.

Racists attack blacks, or Jews, or foreigners, not on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of some collective trait. Ayn Rand described racism as the “lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.” Rand is correct this is what racism does.

Modern prejudices or bigotries basically argue that an individual is not judged by his individual characteristics but simply because he is a member of some larger collective. Instead of judging on the basis of the content of their character the stigmatized individual is judged on the basis of his membership in some collective. Thus a woman may be deemed of lesser value because she is a woman, a black man may be treated like a criminal because he is black, and a gay man may be attacked physically or verbally simply because he is gay.

The bigot ignores all the aspects of the individual and instead focus on some shared collective trait. “All Muslims are... All homosexuals do... The problem with Jews is...” They don’t need to evaluate the individual because they assume the collective trait dominates. Thus all homosexual men are disqualified from the military, not because of any trait of the individual, but because of their group status. A Jew may be attacked, not because he or she has done anything wring, but just because they are Jew.

When individuals are attacked because of their group membership they will quite naturally and reasonable focus on how members of their group are being singled out for attacks. While the terms “gay rights” or “minority rights” or “woman’s rights” are not philosophical precise they are a reasonable response to the attacks these people suffer because they are members of groups. They are not singled out for attack on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of a shared collective trait, usually one of no significance.

But, consider how libertarians respond to this understandable reaction by members of oppressed classes. The libertarian will often tend to ignore the fact that such people are being attacked for their membership in some larger collective. Instead of recognizing what is being conveyed they will attack the use of the collective rights terminology. So they will launch a high-sounding dismissal of the concept of “gay rights” while ignoring the way gay people are denied their rights due to the shared trait of their sexual orientation.

They are technically correct but they have defeated their own purpose. They are ignoring the real troubling issue at stake to concentrate on a less significant detail. By launching into a discourse on how rights are not collective traits they are not informing their listener about the nature of individual rights. They may mean to do that but they are not doing that. They are actually sending the message that they don’t care that the rights of certain people are being denied because of some collective trait. And that makes them sound like conservatives who are often the most vocal collectivists when it comes to denying equality of rights before the law.

The libertarian sentiment should naturally side with those who suffer oppression in a state or culture because of collective traits. Libertarians, who tend to be individualists, ought to be on the side of individuals who are being singled out because of collective, insignificant traits.

Libertarians ought to weigh the two sins being committed. On the one hand the victim uses a term that is imprecise and seems to convey that rights reside in collectives. On the other hand what they are addressing is how they are being harmed by a hate that singles them out collectively not individually. Of these two the violation of individual rights is surely far more severe than a loose use of a term.

The first reaction of the libertarian should be to acknowledge that an individual is having their rights violated due to a collectivist concept regarding who they are. First address the issues of the oppression and collectivist hate. Before you begin lecturing someone about loose terms address the real, significant violation of rights that these victims are attempting to convey. Don’t major on minors.

When I hear the terms “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” I see what people are attempting to convey, not a philosophical debate. Turning it into a philosophical debate ignores the pain and oppression that these people have experienced at the hands of bigots. That is what I would expect from conservatives, not from libertarians. Focus first on the main issues, defend the rights of the individual which are being violated, make an ally and a friend, and they worry about terminology. Put the intent of the phrase ahead of the literal interpretation and give the philosophy lecture after you are established your credibility.

It Gets Better

Ft. Worth city council member Joel Burns speaks about the harassment he experienced as a teen and reaches out to gay teens who are contemplating suicide because of attacks they may suffer. I've seen many such videos and this is the only one I felt I had to share.

A very inconvenient question.

First, a short video with an important message. After that, a very inconvenient question.



Nothing disturbs me more than the attacks on the young people of this country. I have found the "sex offender" laws being applied to young people absurd, creating life-long victims of the sex hysteria by branding kids as sex offenders for what used to be rightfully seen as fairly normal activity. And the recent spate of suicides of gay youth, as a result of constant bullying, has been particularly disturbing. I certainly have been a vocal opponent of the loathsome Right-wing anti-gay agenda being pushed by the Republicans and the knuckle-dragging Christian fundamentalists.

But here is a thought that will disturb many of my friends on the Left, who agree with my sentiments.

Let us imagine the same scenario that is taking place today but let us pretend it is taking place during the administration of a Republican president.

There is a push to repeal DADT, but the Republican President refuses to give it any support. He drags the process out in ways meant to delay the repeal in the hopes it will shore us his crumbling approval ratings. Similarly this Republican President is a public opponent of marriage equality for gay people. If pressed, this Republican will say that gay people are welcomed citizens of the country and should be respected, but in practice, on the two main issues effecting gay people, his actions put him clearly in the camp of those who denigrate and insult gay people.

During this period, under this fantasy Republican, a spat of suicides of gay teens takes place. Many people start recognizing how politics is helping send a message to gay youth that they simply aren't as good as their fellow citizens. Hell, even the Republican president is telling them they are not yet worth to serve in the military, if that is their desire, and that they certainly should not have their relationship recognized on equal terms with that of their heterosexual siblings.

Let us literally imagine a scenario where instead of Obama in the White House, we have someone like Hillbilly Huckabee instead. But Hillbilly Huck otherwise takes the same stances as the current president.

Many on the Left, have made the same point that I have: that the message of inequality that is preached from fundamentalist pulpits, and from the political podiums of this country, enable the bullies and encourages them, while simultaneously sending the message to gay youth that they simply aren't as worthy as other kids.

So, here is the question: if a Republican president were acting this way, during a similar disturbing crisis of suicides among gay youth, would the Left be more vocal in condemning the presidents role as enabler-in-chief than they are now, with Obama as president?

Telling kids they are worthy of death.

I want to remind my readers of something I wrote the other day, and then offer evidence that has now surfaced to substantiate my assumptions. In regards to the spate of young gay teens, and pre-teens even, who have killed themselves, due to anti-gay bullying, I wrote:

When individuals join these sects they rarely think long term. They may imagine have children, always the perfect children that everyone expects. What they get instead are little human beings who are far from perfect and certainly individuals who fall well short of what fundamentalism expects. Few of these parents consciously consider that they may end up being the parent of a gay boy or a lesbian. Those who consider it due to circumstance tend to repress it and consciously refuse to think about it. The mother of the one victim seems to fit that pattern. The most she admitted was that her son was "different" and that he knew he was.

If the family is involved with this church, and it would appear they are since they chose it for the funeral, did they even consider the role that church might have played in the suicide of their son?

Here is a boy dealing with his own sexual orientation, but who could well have listened to sermons describing gay people as moral monster out to destroy the world. No doubt this church actively opposed equality of marriage rights for gay people. This boy would have sat in the pews listening to the people, that he was told spoke for God, telling him that he is evil, that he is immoral, that is doomed to hell, that he is, as the Bible says, "worthy of death."

The boy in question told people he was gay. But, as I noted, his mother evaded that issue in statements she made. The most she could say in public was that he "was different." (UPDATE: This evening I saw the first comment from the mother acknowledging that her son was gay.) This boy has been buried and his funeral has been held. It was the grandparents who spoke out about the boy being gay, not the mother and certainly not the fundamentalist church where his funeral was held.

The pastor of the church told the media that the service was "going to be on (boy's name) and his life, not on the bullying, and not on the homosexuality." Notice the disconnect. It is "the homosexuality" not the boy's homosexuality. Notice as well that they pastor simply can't admit the boy is dead because he was gay and bullied because of it. Considering that the boy being gay was the very reason he was pushed into suicide, how can that be evaded when it was part of the boy's life? But, this is a fundamentalist church, and what could they say that wouldn't sound cruel and vicious? Of course, they want to avoid the issue; they preached doctrines that gay people are evil and don't deserve equality of rights. The boy had to know this.

Fundamentalist Christianity can play a duo role in the suicides and bullying. One is that it gives support to the anti-gay attitudes that inspire the bullies to beat up gay kids. But equally important is that it teaches gay kids to hate themselves and to see themselves as "worthy of death," as the Bible says of gay men in particular.

Without the remarks from the grandparents this second role of religion wouldn't be so obvious. According to a media report both grandparents "insist their grandson knew from an early age that he was gay." Fundamentalists tend to hate that, they insist that isn't true. They argue that young kids can't know they are gay even though millions of gay adults tell stories to the contrary. Yes, kids can know they are attracted to the same-sex before puberty, just as they can know they are attracted to the opposite sex before puberty. Sexual orientation is not something that happens at puberty, it is set long before that, probably in the womb.

Fundamentalists can not accept that; they say being gay is a sin, and sin is choosing to do evil. So they insist homosexuality must be a choice, and it is one that people make when they hit puberty and begin to have stronger sexual desires. Gays choose to "rebel against God." Any other theory makes their deity a divine version of Hitler engaged in some sort sexual version of ethnic cleansing. If gay people are born gay, and don't choose to be gay, then condemning them for being gay is like damning people for their eye color. Precisely! And studies show that most people who accept that sexual orientation is NOT a choice support equality of rights, while those who think it is conscious sinning, or a choice, oppose equality of rights.

This boy, unlike the other victims of the spate of bullying we have seen, was steeped in a fundamentalist culture. And that clearly played a role in his choose to end his young life. His grandmother said: "He wasn't happy with his orientation. He read the Bible a lot. This was not the way he wanted to live his life but that's what he was dealt with."

Why was he unhappy? Well, reading the Bible a lot, could be one reason. I can assure you that gay kids raised in fundamentalist churches know every anti-gay verse in the Bible. They have heard those voices preached from the pulpit repeatedly. It has to haunt them that the God they worship allegedly said that men who have sex with men "are worthy of death."

This boy was reading a "holy" book that told him he worthy of death. And he was constantly harassed for being gay by other kids, who would hear similar things about gays from the culture around them. His grandmother said he "started getting teased by the fourth and fifth grade," that kids would call him a queer and harass him for it. She said, "He spent a lot of his life frightened."

The day this boy hanged himself he was attacked in park by a group of kids.

Fundamentalism is not the only source of anti-gay bigotry, but in the civilized world, it is the dominant force for such attitudes. The very reason the Republican Party can not accept that principles of rights apply to gay people is because the party is dominated by fundamentalist Christians. These Bible-bigots are "their base."

In my previous post I argued that fundamentalism played a specific role in this boy's views of his own life. I based this on years of experience and knowing he was associated with a fundamentalist church. But it was the comments of his grandparents, which I only discovered yesterday, that confirmed my theory. This boy was a victim of bullying, for sure. But he was also a victim of the religion that he was taught. He was a victim of a Bible that told him he was "worthy of death." He was a victim of a church that puts it's anti-gay attitudes right in it's articles of faith and publishes it on the Internet.

Many years ago, as part of my research for an article I was writing, someone gave me a photocopy of a handwritten suicide letter. This letter was left by a young man who also read the Bible constantly and who was unhappy with his sexual orientation, because he thought God condemned him for it. Like the boy to whom I have been referring, this young man was also involved with a fundamentalist Baptist church. And he explained precisely why he had to take his own life, in order to avoid the "sin" of being gay. Allow me to reprint the entire suicide note he left:

"TO: Those left with the question, why did he do it?

"I loved life and all that it had to offer to me each day.

"I loved my job and my clients. "I loved my friends and thank God for each one of them.

"I loved my little house and would not have wanted to live anywhere else.

"All this looks like the perfect life. Yet, I must not let this shadow the problem that I have in my life. At one time, not to long ago, that was all that really mattered in my life. What pleased me and how it affected me. Now that I have turned my life over to the Lord and the changes came one by one, the above statements mean much more to me. I am pleased that I can say those statements with all the truth and honesty that is within me.

"However, to make this short, I must confess that there were things in my life that I could not gain control, no matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed.

"It is this constant failure that has made me make the decision to terminate my life here on earth. I do this with the complete understanding that life is not mine to take. I know that it is against the teachings of our Creator. No man is without sin, this I realize. I will cleanse myself of all sin as taught to me by His word. Yet, I must face my Lord with the sin of murder. I believe that Jesus died and paid the price for that sin too. I know that I shall have everlasting life with Him by departing this world now, no matter how much I love it, my friends, my family. If I remain it could possibly allow the devil the opportunity to lead me away from the Lord. I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple.

"I am not asking you to sanction my actions. That is not the purpose of my writing this at all. It is for the express purpose of allowing each one who will read this to know how I weighed things in my own mind. I don't want you to think that, 'I alone,' should have been the perfect person, without sin. That would be ridiculous! It is the continuing lack of strength and/or obedience and/or will power to cast aside certain sins. To continually go before God and ask forgiveness and make promises you know you can't keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.

"Please know that I am extremely happy to be going to the Lord. He knows my heart and knows how much I love life and and all that it has to offer. But, He knows that I love Him more. That is why I believe that I will be with Him in Paradise. "I regret if I bring sorrow to those that are left behind. If you get your hearts in tune with the word of God you will be as happy about my 'transfer' as I am. I also hope that this answers sufficiently the question, why?

"May God Have Mercy On My Soul."
"A Brother & A Friend."

The young boy who killed himself did not leave a note. He said nothing. He just went home and hanged himself. He ended the bullying, he ended the torment that others inflicted on himself and he ended the torment he inflicted on himself with his constant Bible reading and his own self-hatred for being gay, something as natural to him as his eye color or skin color.

The only thing he left behind was the life he saved. His heart was transplanted into the body of a young boy in Los Angeles, giving that boy a life that nature was ready to deny him.

NOTE: I have not said names as I have no wish to inflict more trauma on the family of this boy. I admit his identity is easy to discover. The lesson that others should learn from this story, however, is important. It is too late for this boy's family to learn the lesson of the evil, anti-life nature of fundamentalism, so I have no wish to contribute to their misery. But the role of fundamentalism in these tragedies should not be avoided.

Photos: All these photos show fundamentalist Christians exhibiting their obsessive hatred for gay people. Please note that none of these photos are of the crazed Fred Phelps cult, these are so-called "mainstream" fundamentalists. These are the type of Christians that the boy in this story would hear at church.

The other victims of the bully.

Above is a news report with Asher Brown's parents. Asher's parent, his family, his friends, were also all victims of the bullying that was going on because Asher was gay.

The school continues to claim that no one reported the bullying to them and that they are blameless. Rot! Here is a video of a girl from Asher's class talking about what happened at school. She tells of the incident where one kid kicked Asher down the stairs. She also recounts listening to students in her school saying: "It's about time he killed himself." Yet, even as she laments what happened she can't ever bring herself to say he was being attacked for being gay. She merely mentions his religion.



There is something that I wish to say, but I hesitate. I hesitate because I don't wish to cause any more pain to those suffering due to the series of untimely deaths. But I wish to speak about the role of specific religious beliefs and how they encourage both the bullying and the suicides.

In one recent case, and I won't name names, the mother of the dead boy seemed to be denying her son was gay. She was very reticent about the issue and avoided it like the plague. Numerous kids from her son's school admitted that the boy had been harassed for being gay. Many of these kids seemed to know the boy was gay, but the mother said nothing about it. Where other parents of victims were enfuriated and spoke out publicly about the bullying, she was silent and said nothing, asking merely for her privacy—which is her right.

I wondered what was happening in the dynamics of that family. Then I learned that they made the funeral arrangements through a fundamentalist, anti-gay church. This church openly says it is anti-gay in its statement of faith. In between all the doctrines about supernatural claims and such they say they oppose "all forms of sexual immorality" including "homosexuality." Given the vicious anti-gay denomination that this church is part of, I am confident that the boy in question heard many anti-gay remarks from his own church, perhaps from his own family. Perhaps this is why the mother says she doesn't want anyone looking for who is to blame for the bullying.

This is a touchy area but it has to be said that many of these kids are not just bullied at school for being gay. But they can't get support from their own families either because of the religious doctrines that these people stupidly adopted. I had a dear, close friend who was gay and who killed himself shortly after graduating high school. I remember having to make the decision NOT to go to the funeral because it was being held in a fundamentlist church, where I knew there was a good chance the minister wouild make remarks that I would not tolerate. Instead of going, and risking making a scene by calling out such remarks when they were made, I stayed home and mourned.

Of late I have been contemplating the negative role that religion has on children. Now not all religions are equally bad, of course. The fundamentalists, in any major religion, are usually the worst of the lot. So it is with Christians as well.

When individuals join these sects they rarely think long term. They may imagine have children, always the perfect children that everyone expects. What they get instead are little human beings who are far from perfect and certainly individuals who fall well shor tof what fundamentalism expects. Few of these parents consciously consider that they may end up being the parent of a gay boy or a lesbian. Those who consider it due to circumstance tend to repress it and consciously refuse to think about it. The mother of the one victim seems to fit that pattern. The most she admitted was that her son was "different" and that he knew he was.

If the family is involved with this church, and it would appear they are since they chose it for the funeral, did they even consider the role that church might have played in the suicide of their son?

Here is a boy dealing with his own sexual orientation but who could well have listened to sermons describing gay people as moral monster out to destroy the world. No doubt this church actively opposed equality of marriage rights for gay people. This boy would have sat in the pews listening to the people that he was told spoke for God, telling him that he is evil, that he is immoral, that is doomed to hell, that he is, as the Bible says, "worthy of death."

Could he come home and talk about the trauma of his bullying? Probably not. If he couldn't tell his mother he was gay, though the whole school semed to know it, how could he tell her he was being bullied for being gay? He might love her deeply, and all indications are that he did, but could he bring himself to tell her the truth when he knew the truth would disappoint her so deeply. It is easier to repress and hide the facts than to risk losing the love of his mother. And if his mother expressed views similar to those of their church he would always have doubts as to whether or not she could love him if she knew the truth.

Over and over fundamentalist Christians have had to face the truth of having gay children. And more often than not they have proven that religion turned them in shitty parents. Fundamentalist parents routinely reject their gay children. Kids who have told their parents they were gay have been kicked out of their homes. Fundamentalist parents have thrown their children out, knowing full well that it may force their son, or daughter, to live on the streets, to prostitute themselves in the hope of being able to eat, or to eat garbage from trash cans. Prominent fundamentalists have done this to their children. Kids who were gay have had their college tuition confiscated by their parents to punish them for their sin.

Put yourself in the place of these gay kids. At school they are picked on for being gay. In church they hear that they are evil and worthy of death. At homes their parents spit out the words queer or faggots, implying that there is nothing worse in the world than a gay person. Everywhere they look their is only rejection.

Other kids at school hear the same things and repeat them to this gay kid. Maybe they physically assault them. Most the gay people I know were assaulted in school, one time or another, because they were gay. They can't tell their fundamentalist parents because they fear rejection from them. They can't talk to their homophobic minister who has regularly consigned them to hell fire for eternity. Is it any wonder that so many of these kids decide they would rather die?

I'm an atheist, I think religion is inherently irrational, a fantasy that people use so as not to face the difficult task of thinking. But some religions are more toxic than others. It is one thing when adults choose to join a irrational, bigoted, hateful sect. But routinely they bring children into the world and inflict that religion on those children, often with very tragic circumstances. Religion is part of the problem. It is not the entire problem and admittedly some atheists can be bigots as well. But surveys show that the religious tend to be more prejudiced than the non-religious and fundamentalits tend to be the most hateful of all. If you simply can't give up the illusion of a supreme being then at least pick a sect that isn't likely to impose self-hatred upon your children.

The Rat Comes Out of His Hole.

Andrew Shirvell, the anti-gay bigot who is obsessed with a gay college student and spends his spare time harassing the boy, has come out of his hole. Last night CNN's Anderson Cooper reported on Shirvell's obsession and interviewed Shirvell. Here is the clip of that encounter.


This blog covered this story two weeks ago, but I've noticed CNN is often slow on stories like this. Cooper's take is sufficient but a bit short on details, in order to give Shirvell time to try to defend himself. For more information on exactly how obsessive and hateful Shirvell has been read our original story.

Remember Shirvell is a fundamentalist Catholic. He's more Catholic than the Pope. But, like the Pope, he is obsessed with attacking gay people. So far, unlike the Pope, he hasn't tried to blame the Catholic-priest-child-abuse epidemic on gay people. But Shirvell's obsession goes back for years. Sort of like the anti-gay attacks of people like George Recker, Bishop Long, and Ted Haggard. I wonder who is lifting Shirvell's luggage?

In one article from 2005 Shirvell was attacking the New York Pizza Depot in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The pizzaria offended Shirvell because it had a rainbow flag sticker on display. Shirvell says the flag is offensive because it represent radical homosexuals. He claimed that the pizzeria told him that the gay community "forced" them to display it after some altercation. He said they "had to put up the rainbow flag decal in order to appease the homosexuals." But the man Shirvell claimed told him this denies they ever had that conversation and said it simply wasn't true. Apparently Shirvell has been lying about gay people for some years now. The difference today is that is obsession is focues entirely on one young man who has done nothing to Shirvell.

Personally I suspect Shirvell would rather bed the young man but two things stand in his way: 1) his own fantatical Catholicism; and 2) the young man probably doesn't go dumpster diving for his sexual partners.

Given that two teenage boys killed themselves in the last few days I want to personally call out Andrew Shirvell for contributing to the sort of hatred that encourages anti-gay bullies in the schools. Shirvell and his ilk encourage hatred and teach it to children. Those children, like Shirvell, then turn their attention to some victim and inflict misery on them without stop, as Shirvell is trying to do with this college student. Because of this anti-gay bullying two teens, who were alive only days ago, are now dead.

Another dead kid, thanks to hate.

Asher Brown, left, was just 13-years-old. A few days ago he took a pistol to his head and killed himself. He was the unrelenting victim of anti-gay bullies. He attended Hamilton Middles School, in Cypress, Texas, just outside of Houston.

When Asher's step-father, David Truong, returned home from work he found the boy. "I thought he was laying there reading a book or something. My son put a gun to his head because he couldn't take what he was hearing and the constant teasing." Shortly after the boy's mother, Amy, returned home to find the police and discover that her boy was dead.

Fox News reports: "The Truongs say over this past summer, Brown [Asher] confided in them that he was gay. The paper says: "Facebook is now full of condolences for the 13-year-old student. An outpouring of love from his peers over his death. Love he obviously did not feel in life."

Asher, according to Houston Chronicle, regularly "had been called names and endured harassment from other students." Because of this he "stuck with a small group of friends who suffered similar harassment from other students."

Reports say that boys grabbed Asher in gym class and forced him to pretend that he was having sex with them. In an incident that took place the day before his death, Asher was walking down the stairs at school when a boy purposely tripped him. Asher fell down the stairs to the next landing. His books were scattered on the landing. The other boy then came down and kicked the books down the next flight of stairs. He did the same to Asher as well.

Kelli Durham, a spokeswoman for the school district, simultaneously claimed that this incident was investigated but also claimed the school had no idea the boy was being bullied. The Chronicle reports: "Durham said that incident was investigated, but turned up no witnesses or video footage to corroborate the couple's claims." Elsewhere, the same article reports she said, "no students, school employees or the boy's parents ever reported that he was being bullied." So, if no one reported the bullying then exactly how were they able to "investigate" an incident they didn't know about?

Amy Truong couldn't believe the claims: "That's absolutely inaccurate—it's completely false. I did not hallucinate phone calls to counselors and assistant principals. We have no reason to make this up... It's like they're calling us liars." The Chronicle reported that students and parents left messages at the Fox News site stating "that the boy had been bullied by classmates for several years and claimed Cy-Fair ISD [Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District] does nothing to stop such harassment."

The boy's mother said: "It has to stop. I don't want any other family to have to go make funeral arrangements like I did for my son. He wasn't supposed to die at 13."

Yes, it has to stop. But it won't. At least it won't until every anti-gay bigot out there knows that their view are "not okay." I am not saying ban their speech, I am saying we have to condemn it. I don't give a flying-fuck if you think that you are channeling Jehovah, Jesus or Allah, when you express your hatred for gay people. You can take your holy book and shove it, for all I care. Kids are dying, damn it. Can't you get it through your thick skull that your religion is teaching your kids to hate other kids. And that those other kids go home and kill themselves.

In just the last few weeks I had to report on Seth Walsh, (left) 14, of Tehachapi, CA, who hanged himself from a tree in his family's yard. Seth was harassed for being gay. UPDATE: Sadly I must report that Seth died yesterday. Billy Lucas, (left) 15, of Greensburg, Indiana, went into the family's barn, to be with his horse. It was there he hanged himself. He was bullied and attacked for supposedly being gay. Justin Aaberg (right), 15, of Anoka, Minnesota, was gay, he was bullied, and he too, is now dead because of it. Three other students in his school district, according to various sources, recently killed themselves as well, because of anti-gay harassment.

Yet, during the mourning period for Justin the Catholic Church mailed out over 1 million anti-gay DVDs to their members, to fight gay couples being give equality of rights. As if that corrupt, vile institution has any moral standing any more. When priests rape kids they cover it up, when two adults of the same gender love one another however, they are deeply offended.

An example of the sort of hatred that gay teens face comes from Justin's own school district. Two teachers Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson "are accused of repeatedly harassing one of their students because they thought he was gay." Yes, I said they were teachers.

Jaheem Herrera (left) didn't even make it to his teens. He was eleven years old! The student from Dunaire Elementary School in DeKalb, Georgia went home and took a belt and hanged himself in his closet. His mother said: "He used to say Mom they keep telling me this... this gay word, this gay, gay, gay. I'm tired of hearing it, they're telling me the same thing over and over." Jaheem's mother, like many of the other parents of dead children, said she reported the bullying to the school but they refused to do anything about it. Instead it "just got worse and worse and worse." The morning of his death he didn't want to go to school again. When he came home that afternoon he gave his report card to his mother—it was good—and went upstairs. His younger sister discovered him, she grabbed her brother and tried to lift him up to prevent the belt from strangling him, while screaming for help. It was too late. School officials tried to claim that when other students were bullying the boy as "gay" that what they really meant was that he was "happy."

Carl Walker-Hoover (right), was in sixth grade. He too was just 11-years-old. He was relentlessly attacked by other kids for being gay. His mother, like most the other parents referred to here, reported the attacks to the school, New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, MA. He also hanged himself when he couldn't take it any longer. The Boston Globe editorialized that "an act so desperate by one so young is a clear reminder of how schools can become torture chambers for students perceived as different."

Below is a memorial video that was produced to honor Justin Aaberg, The music you will hear is a recording of Justin playing the cello. While it was created for Justin, I don't think those who created it will mind if it acts as a memorial for all these kids, victims of the anti-gay prejudices that are pushed by the Religious Right and the Republican Party. Never, never, never, let one of these bastards ever get away with the fraudulent claim that they are "doing it for the kids." They are doing it to the kids. Never forget that.