It Get's Better

Mission

The Trevor Project is determined to end suicide among LGBTQ youth by providing life-saving and life-affirming resources including our nationwide, 24/7 crisis intervention lifeline [1-866-488-7386], digital community and advocacy/educational programs that create a safe, supportive and positive environment for everyone.

Via The Trevor Project: "It Get's Better"

Sarah-pocalypse Now

All the Youtube and other clips of this have been sucked up, presumably due to copyright infringement.

Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough, but I couldn’t even find this clip on the Saturday Night Live website. (Sure, if you want to go wading through the entire episode, but what if you have ADD like me?).

Countdown’s Keith Olbermann seems to have the only remaining clip.

The Nation’s coverage of the Countdown clip includes this quote which sums up SNL’s excoriating Palin/2012 montage.

Saturday Night Live recently produced a fake film trailer of a movie called Palin 2012, an obvious parody of the doomsday film 2012. SNL's version captures what the world will be like if Sarah Palin is elected President (with Glenn Beck as her VP). On Countdown, Keith Olbermann sounds off on her apocalyptic political career, and what we can really expect in the future.

--Alana Levinson

Also, from the Countdown transcript:

OLBERMANN: The man who was effectively John McCain's campaign manager served it up like the proverbial softball. Steve Schmidt said months ago, if she were the Republican nominee, 2012 would be a, quote, "catastrophic election." Our number one story, Sister Sarah is denied permission to make a speech on a US Army base, but does manage to solicit political contributions while signing books there. "Saturday Night Live" decided to illustrate the motion picture possibilities of Mr. Schmidt's remark: Sarah-pocalypse now.

The "Going Rogue" tour bus rolling into Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Army regulations banning any politician from using politicians for political platforms. But a Fort Bragg spokesman says Palin falls into a gray area because she's, quote, not a political figure per se.

So instead the military offered her a compromise, no speeches, no posing for pictures, no personalized messages in books. But as the Associated Press reports, that did not stop the Palin camp from encouraging donations to her political action committee. Allowing Palin's father, Chuck Heath (ph), to call President Obama's handling of the military, quote, "scary. People used to be afraid of us and respect us. They're not afraid of us and don't respect us anymore."

I guess he's in touch with Kim Jong-il. The scary extending beyond the fort Bragg stop to the Mayan calendar's warning of Armageddon and the Hollywood CGI spectacle chronicling of civilization end. "SNL" pitched perfect.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#34118721

I'm feeling generous.

To all the LaBarberas, Barbers, Livelys, Hutchersons, Camerons, Griggs', Wildmons, Browns, Harps, Donnellys, Boissoins, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (please feel free to add to that list in the comments section), you've demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that you live to hate gay people.

Hating us is the lubricant to your mental machinery. Your soilent supremacy, if you will.

So to all ye who despise us with glee as you insist it's your religion that motivates you, this one's for you:



(Lyrics credit to sing365.com):

He used to be somebody's baby
Someone used to hold him close, and rock him gently
He used to be the light in someone's eyes
He used to matter, he used to matter
Someone cared if he lived or died
Someone held him in their arms - when he cried
And when he hurt, someone kept the world away
Someone loved him, someone loved him

He used to be somebody's baby
Someone used to hold him close, and rock him gently
He used to be the light in someone's eyes
He used to matter, he used to matter
He used to matter

That was then, that was so long ago
Long before they came and took his soul
Long before he bacame invisible
That was when, he wasn't human garbage then

He used to be somebody's baby
Someone used to hold him close, and rock him gently
He used to be the light in someone's eyes
He used to matter, he used to matter
He used to matter
He used to be somebody's baby

From the album "Gravity's Rainbow"
Written by: N. Giraldo & P. Giraldo

Christian Persecution Complex

I went looking for some insight after the recent spate of tantrums* thrown by these sore winners in response to Prop 8 backlash and found a piece from Salon from a couple of months ago, more relevant even today.

The right's two-pronged religion of rage and self-pity
Glenn Greenwald
Thursday Oct. 2, 2008 12:33 EDT

The Right in this country -- meaning the faction that followed George Bush for the last eight years -- long ago ceased being a movement of political ideas and is driven by two, and only two, extreme emotions: (1) intense, aggressive rage towards their revolving door of enemies, and (2) bottomless self-pity over how unfairly they're being treated. As their imminent defeat looks increasingly likely (potentially on a humiliating scale), these two impulses are in maximum overdrive, feeding off one another in endless self-perpetuation (the more they lose, the more victimized they feel, the more they rage against their enemies who oppress them, etc.).

The Right's rejection by the public can't possibly be due to anything they have done. It can only be due to some extremely vicious enemy that oppresses them uniquely and so very unfairly.

He also links to another complimentary article:

The strategic rationale for fashioning one’s group as victims is clear: the public sympathy gained from victimhood can mean the difference between political support and indifference or opposition. Victimology allows activists to rally the troops, to build solidarity by conceiving an existential threat from outside.

218 comments worth of analysis as well.

As one commenter put it:

And getting a massive defeat on November 4th will only confirm their persecuted status. And they will love their feeling of being persecuted for every minute of the next four years. For them, feeling persecuted is more important that victory.

So if they’re coming apart at the seams after having achieved victory over the ‘gay menace,’ one wonders what the rhetoric (or worse) would be like had they lost those ballot measures.

It is clear now that their ego-addictions will never be sated. The depth of dishonesty, hypocrisy, and just plain idiocy -- openly expressed -- is truly stunning. Legal recognition of their supremacy is clearly not enough for them, they won’t stop until they've established a constant stream of secular recognition for it too.

It’s starts to make sense then why they literally define themselves by their hatred of gays. They not only need a group to oppress, they need one that is guaranteed to fight back. Thereby justifying, or redefining their oppression as defensive, thus creating a constant loop of ego-gratification. Oppress, wait for backlash, claim victimhood, justify oppression. Rinse, and repeat.

And with “God” as their egos, their will then becomes “God’s will,” and opposition to them is opposition to “God.”

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

-Susan B. Anthony

In essence, their will is their religion. Deny them one, you deny them the other, and persecution complex ensues - circumventing any need for introspection or self-reflection, and ensuring that their own self-created delusions of grandeur remain safely hidden from conscious view.

And apparently (save for some of the leaders) they truly are that stupid. I just went through it with my mother the other day. I brought up how Palin didn't know what a VP does, I brought up Iraq and WMD’s. She wasn’t defending any principle or fact of any kind, the only thing she was defending was the ‘fact’ that she was right. Fortunately I was in rare form that day and was able to get through to her that it wasn’t what she believed that was at issue, it was why she believed it. (Though I’m sure we’ll be having that conversation again (and again and again and again…))

----
* Jack Black and Hollywood Stars Defame Christ and the Bible; Apology Demanded.
* NoMobVeto NYT ad
* The WND Pat Boone piece comparing Prop 8 protesters to the Mumbai terrorists, which has to be read to be believed.
* Responses to Lisa Miller's Newsweek essay
(and everything in between)

A couple of shorts. "Darwinism" / Dominitionsim

This first one is a short read, but a worthy one I think.

Creationists and ID proponents often make it a point to characterize anyone who believes in evolution as an atheist.

As this article points out, the attempt to label evolution as being anyting "Darwinistic," or more specifically "Darwinian" or "Darwinism." It's a code speak subtle attempt to portray that belief-in-evolution as being religious in nature - BUT IN THE ATTEMPT TO PORTRAY THAT RELIGION as being on par with the supposed "atheist religion" of science:

In the US, "Darwinism" is about political power. Evolution is not.

Dr. Kate correctly pointed out recently on the Thoughts From Kansas blog:

Creationists insist on calling [evolution] "Darwinism." If they can get enough people to think that science is a religion, then they can argue that their religion ought to get as much time in the science classroom as "our" religion does.

More information here, and especially here as to how evolution has already transcended so called "Darwinism.":

The test of time

Q: How do you answer the charge that evolution has never been tested?

Miller: Evolution is tested every day in the laboratory, and it's tested every day in the field. I can't think of a single scientific theory that has been more controversial than evolution, and when theories are controversial, people devise tests to see if they're right. Evolution has been tested continuously for almost 150 years and not a single observation, not a single experimental result, has ever emerged in 150 years that contradicts the general outlines of the theory of evolution.

Any theory that can stand up to 150 years of continuous testing is a pretty darn good theory. We use evolution to develop drugs. We use evolution to develop vaccines. We use evolution to manage wildlife. We use evolution to interpret our own genome. Every one of these uses of evolution is a test, because if the use turns out to be inadequate, we would then go back and question the very idea of evolution itself. But evolution has turned out to be such a powerful, productive, and hardworking theory that it's survived that test of time.

Just something to keep an eye out for in conversations. ~~~~~Also, an excellent article here by Mel Seesholtz (Jul 24, 2008) on dominionism. If you're unnfamiliar with the threat of dominionism, or need a refresher, it's a thorough read and replete with quotes and hyperlinks.

A couple of my favorites parts:

“Protect traditional marriage.” What does “protect” mean? If gay and lesbian couples marry, will heterosexual couples stop? If that were the case, then prohibiting same-sex marriage would “protect” heterosexual marriage. But that is not the case. Heterosexual couples still marry in Massachusetts and California. In fact, heterosexual marriage in those states has been totally unaffected by marriage equality. So one has to conclude that by “protect” Dominionists mean reserve a civil right to a civil institution for some people and deny it to others: the definition of discrimination.

And:

From Chris Hedges’ American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America: “Dominionism is a theocratic sect with its roots in a radical Calvinism. . . . It teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state. . . . America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan.

“Under Christian dominionism, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Labor unions, civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. . . .

“The death penalty is to be imposed not only for offenses such as rape, kidnapping and murder, but also for adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, astrology, incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, ‘unchastity before marriage.’ . . .

If interested, more info on dominionism here at Religious Tolerance.