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Loading ...Gov. Palin’s secret (gay) code
There are over 1.5 million gay teenagers who are experiencing a slow motion nervous breakdown this evening – and many of these teenagers may be sitting in their parents’ homes tonight listening to the vice presidential nomination speech by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
What will be the message behind her choice of words and phrases this evening – genuine love, understanding and respect, or hostility, prejudice and misunderstanding?Will she fly the “family values” flag of the Religious Right? Will she stand on the shrill and divisive “gay marriage” foundation of James Dobson and Tony Perkins? And will she stand on Sean Hannity’s “traditional value” of allowing deep-seated hostility and prejudice toward gays and lesbians to be passed along to yet another generation?
But there is a much more important question as it relates to the gay or lesbian teenager who without friends or family is anticipating ending his or her life out of despair. For all those who seek an end to a national moral failing, the question for us is: Will we begin to question and therefore expose this horrible hypocrisy?
The gay teenager’s despair and emotional trauma is not because God created them without affection for the opposite sex – it’s because society says they should be rejected, condemned and deemed unworthy, inferior or immoral because of the way God created them.
For far too many years, groups like Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Perkins’ Family Research Council have used words and phrases that on the surface appear innocuous and somewhat meaningless, but upon basic scrutiny reveal hostility and prejudice toward gay and lesbian citizens.
Could there be a worse form of hypocrisy for Palin than doing harm in the name of religion – and particular the evangelical community which professes the Christian ideals of respect, love and understanding?
All of us – private citizens, public officials and the media – must do a better job as caretakers of the words and phrases that are used to communicate issues and positions related to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens.
We hope that Gov. Palin will choose not to use the anti-gay establishment’s code language. But if she does, we urge you to hold Gov. Palin accountable for her use of these words and phrases. It only takes but a few simple follow-up questions to expose the true intent behind these words and phrases – and please, take my word as a former anti-gay Christian Right voter, the intent is not love, understanding, compassion and respect.
The problem is in religion itself. The entire idea is just a long outdated method of explaining why things are as they are, and why everyone’s gotta be just-so.
We’re supposed to be a secular nation and yet the religious get their say in public life. Especially in the current Republican party which seems to have embraced religion as a method of scaring up votes.
Gay life will not get any better so long as outdated authoritarian religious ideas are used as the measurement of what ‘human’ or ‘American’ is.
Here in SC teens are beaten by their parents just for being gay or tossed out from their home and as I said before they do it in God’s name. Imagine having a VP encouraging these actions. In SC the suicide rate for gay teens is outrageous. I cannot believe that anyone Dem or repub would allow this to happen to our teens.
As I said on a different feed, and I emphasize again:
I just finished watching Palin’s speech. She is a shrill witch. McSame and his Bitch have opened the flood gates of criticism and I believe they gave everyone the right to throw the BULL$HIT at them now, without any censorship. She lied outright, threw disgusting insults at the competition and used all those Elephantine code words which are designed to make the Republicans rich, the rest poorer than ever, and limit the American rights to all but her own like-minded and “precious” cronies. Please deliver me from such holier-than-thou hypocrites who think they have the only viable moral standing in the universe. She will be nothing but an even more derisive and divisive person in these United States than currently exist in Washington, DC. She gave no solutions to our national and international problems, and slammed the Democrats without a leg for her to stand on. Shame on her. My mother warned me about self-serving mean-spirited people like her. She is taking on the media and news groups. I expect she will loose big time. I hope they go after her till she cries in front of a national audience, and then resigns on the spot and walks off.
Well, that was a fine bit of scare-mongering on your part. Though I won’t be voting for the Republican ticket, I’m sympathetic on at least one issue: People like you are slamming their VP candidate as POSSIBLY anti-gay. She MIGHT make a speech we don’t like. WHAT IF she causes another teen suicide? This kind of reporting is misleading. You’ve stacked the deck against her on these issues. I’m sure she’ll be able to alienate us all on her own. She doesn’t need your help – and we don’t need your scaremongering. Why didn’t you dig up her voting record on such issues? Where are the anti-gay statements she’s made in the past? Please, report the facts. Not the worst case scenario. Most of us can imagine that without your help. Shame on you for lowering your standards to those of our enemies.
Brandy Spears,
God does exist for me on some level. Not in the books, buildings or in concrete, tangible or material things that depend on direct human effort however inspired they are by some otherworldly sense but how we treat each other, not demanding, not controling, not in continual anger, not prideful and puffed up, in our sense of right and wrong, in having a direction and purpose for our lives, in striving to better and to improve our lives and selves in terms of the drive to learn and do things. Not in the end result or in what we are physically doing, but in whatever it is that aparks the inner drive and motivation. In what makes us unique and individual. In that spark, in that spirit, in that uniqueness. That which fuels the ability to get along but be a unique individual at the same time. That we are not automatons, or robots, programmed to think and to feel alike, those are miracles in themselves. That there are so many variations of color of eye, skin, hair, in height, weight, are pleasing and miraculous in themselves. God is in that which sparks the wonder and amazement at how things work that lead to us finding and creating new and different things.
God (or good) to me is spirit, essence, spark or in that which inspires quality or quantity of non-physical things in living, breathing humans which insp;res humans to create, to love, to wonder, to hope, in a drive to do and to get done, to strive, to improve, etc.
Some like myself find it helpful to meditate on this in terms of being in a place where I can be quiet, thankful, etc. and to able for a short while each week or for a little bit each day to put aside the din, noise and stress and demands of the everyday world to focus through prayer, meditation, calm, quiet and deep breathing on the ideals of inner peace, quiet, truth, beauty, harmony and fellowship with one’s fellow man, etc.
This is about cultivating one’s inner self, serenity, energy and drive to a certain extent, and learning to relate to one’s fellow humans in a calm and gentle way, loving humankind in general way, even if getting along with certain people is not always entirely possible or practical. That is what it’s about for me, not about being a saint, or being holy do-gooder (but in the practical context of my church where as a group we have the power of numbers to feed the hungry, clean a stream and do good things as a beneficial group effort through pooled effort and resources) or about some magical being who can win me lottery tickets, or send me flying through the sky on a magic carpet or any other unrealistic expectation.
Jamie lets be real here, never in a million years would someone like Dennis Kucinich get elected for POTUS. This is why the far left will keep losing elections, because they are way out of step with the rest of America. Obama is the best chance we have for progress to be made in equal rights for the GLBT community.
I have made up my mind to vote for Biden for VP and for NOONE FOR PRESIDENT, I find The Choices for Pres. to be very unpalatable. McCain of practically ZERO gay rights and Obama of limited time in the US Congress which I find quite scary in an US President. WILL OBAMA BE READY TO LEAD THE US IN A TRUE NATIONAL EMERGENCY ON AMERICAN SOIL…AS IN AN ACTUAL ATTACK ON USA…. OR A WIDESPREAD HURRICANE, DROUGHT, FAMINE, TOTAL COLLAPSE OF THE US ECONOMY….AND NEITHER OF THEM FOR GAY MARRIAGE. We blew our chance for national gay marriage and other gay rights by not voting enough for Kucinich who as Pres. would have championed these things for gay people throughout USA as well as being an environmental leader etc. We were blinded by the media glitz, glitter, hoople and glammor surrounding Obama and Hillary.
This Palin woman was said to have supported Alaska’s shameful antigay marriage state constitution, she is thought to have been (speculation maybe) to have been as the conservatives’ twisted new darling and new hope some kind of counterbalance against the appeal of Hillary as a female candidate for woman voters, being a Republican, she’d be like the Hillary of the right wing, warts and all.
Thank goodness I evolved and wasn’t “created” by Sarah Palin’s imaginary friend.
What else could we expect from the republicans? Sometimes I wonder if Karl Roves handbook is entitled “My Struggle”. BTW, that in German is Mein Kampf. Remember who wrote back about 1930?
And I’m reminded that in the late 1930’s, Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush, was director of a bank that helped finance Germany’s re-armament. Nice gang, these republicans.
I believe that God must weep for what is done in His Name by the republicans, and the super-hypocrits who support them.
Their agenda has nothing to do with morality at all. It has only to do with stealing the wealth of the middle class for the greedy super-rich. And Palin as a VP candidate, and her daughter, are perfect examples of the hypocrisy. And McCain, war hero notwithstanding, will just be a front for the kings of Greed.
thank you Randy. Finally someone besides me has said something about our overheated planet. Don’t forget the endangered wildlife we will be killing off now and in the future. How sad to see a tiger only in zoo’s, and then only because of breeding programs. See, breeders can be of some use after all. Kids,dying is forever. Don’t do it! If you are in danger of being picked on or beat up, tell someone at once. Hopefully there will be help for you. Try to avoidbputting yourself in danger. If it means your safety, maybe being so “openly” gay at the mooment is not worth it. Be yourself, but use your super intelligence over str8’s. Don’t let yourself be dragged down by their ignorance and redneck ways. If all else fails, give em a shit kicking they’ll never forget. But always be for peace. take care of yourselves and enjoy life. Bigots will always be around but we can still be the good guy’s and come out on top. p.s. Icare. My love tou all, Doug…..
Trace, I think you’re being too harsh on today’s gay and lesbian teens. While gay and lesbian adults have it better today than in the past, teens of all orientations remain primarily cared for by straights. So “we” aren’t raising them. Depending on where they live, the visibility of other gay and lesbian people may actually make growing up gay or lesbian harsher, not easier. While it would be nice if all gay and lesbian teens had the self-confidence and family support to brush it off, it’s just not realistic or humane to expect everyone to be able to. Rather than dump on teens, I think the original article is correct, and that we should do our part to make their world one that we ourselves would have liked to have grown up in. This also applies to the crushing debt and overheated planet we’ve left them. Aren’t we grand?
Yes, how much more can the poor teens take after hearing the Democratic nominee state that he believes they are second class citizens and not worthy of marriage.
Give me a break!
Many of us grew up on far less tolerant times than these. A teen these days actually see’s gay folk in every life. Many of us saw our first gay person on SOAP! And what was that character? A caricature that many of us could not compare ourselves with.
A gay and lesbian teen lives in a far more understanding and accepting world than any of us could imagine in our teens or even twenties. If we are raising our teens to be wimps and afraid to stand up, our advances are sure to stop or end.
I don’t care for Palin,too brash,redneck and narrow minded.She is against gay marriage,which Im all for.
Well, I appreciate the honesty and sincerity of your post. I’m sure most of us on here are well aware of the real intent of these phrases – but the young GLBT person may well not.