Heterosexuals don't go around announcing it or holding parades eh?

Sex is everywhere!

You know, it's funny, growing up (I was born in 1959) I remember a time when the majority of family friends, neighbors and work associates were married or living together. Divorce didn't start happening among those folks until I was in junior high. Even then it was a remarkable event. Of course things changed and by the time I reached my 20's divorce became quite common.

I think I could say outwardly anyway that my parents, my larger family and those that we knew either well or casually were all fairly settled people. Some of those people were same sex couples.

Well...at least I viewed them as couples. Something that came as a shock to my mother.

Following the death of one of our neighbors my mother in a shocked tone told me she had discovered that **** and James were not just sharing a house but were in fact....GAY! She was aghast! As were she assured me...many who knew them.

I laughed at her and asked if she had really just found this out. She told me she would have never allowed me to associate with them had she known. Now keep in mind these two great men were well liked by everyone, participated in community projects, were wonderful neighbors and were well thought of by even my very conservative parents.

She asked me then how long I had known. I told her I had always known. To me their affection, connection and mutual respect for each other shown through. It was impossible not to notice for me...just a child. It was natural although I knew they were very discrete.

Their relationship was in many ways much more committed, sane, reasonable and respectful than those of many of our associates and families marriages.

I always had known but I had the chance to talk to them about it once and it affected me to this day. When I was perhaps thirteen or fourteen I asked them one morning over juice and tea. With a child's curiosity I asked them why if they loved each other and lived together why did they have two bedrooms? (one of which I had long ago noticed wasn't used) After some sputtering and choking on tea the conversation started. It eventually ended when I concluded that they had nothing to hide. That they were wonderful, responsible, loving and good people. **** had a tear in his eye as he told me how he wished everyone had a heart and mind like mine.

I knew other committed gay couples through the course of my life. Some who lived openly and some who did not. They weren't going to parades they were just living their lives as many of us do or hope to do.

Me rambling...

Edit: I forgot the way this site edits text. I should have used Richard instead of his nickname.

Bull****

I saw something pretty funny the other day. Was it the senator from TN who previously said let GM go now attempting to rally support for GM?

Why did he want to let it sink? Why because the state has given foreign car makers huge tax breaks to locate there. Why did he rethink his position? Because TN will lose GM jobs if it does.

One would have to be pathologically simple minded to not see the wider implications of a failure of GM and or all domestic auto manufacturers. Even their competitors don't want to see them disappear. Suppliers, truckers, small parts manufacturers...the list goes on...will all go down with the ship affecting not just auto workers and American made vehicles.

Allowing this manufacturing base to disappear is nothing less than a national security issue. It will affect our ability to manufacture goods beyond autos.

The automakers were a major factor in our victory in WWII for instance. If we were pressed to manufacturer those sorts of products after GM, Ford and Chrysler were gone where or how would we do it?

Maybe our good friends the Japanese or Germans will do it for us?

Do you think, by the way, that once US competition is gone foreign manufacturers will make good, cheap cars? I doubt it...

Funny...point fingers at and vilify blue collar guys who actually work while blithely ignoring the real villains.

Well first for Kinsey. If I feel like it maybe more later.

Kinsey, Sex and Fraud pulls together a mountain of documentation that the image in Kinsey's mirror was a deliberate distortion. Here's a profile of Kinsey and team's male sample used to picture normal sexual behaviour in American men: 25% were prisoners or ex-cons; a further abnormal percentage were sex offenders (Kinsey had the histories of over 1400); many were recruited from sex lectures, where they had gone to get the answer to sex problems, some were obtained through paid contact men, including underworld figures and leaders of homosexual groups; the group was wholly unrepresentative in terms of marital status, church attendance and educational level. In addition, Kinsey had a minimum of 200 male prostitutes among his histories. That could have been, at the very least, 7% of the total (2,719) in his sample's occupational classes!1(pp618,622) Kinsey's readers and the media got a different explanation of what was happening. An advertising circular for this survey said it was conducted "with full regard for the latest refinements in public opinion polling methods" and Kinsey's own text presented it as "a carefully planned population survey."1(pp618,622) (There is not space to discuss the female sample, it, too, was wholly unconventional.)

Already we have a description of fraud (using the intention-to-deceive definition). But it gets worse. In a 1941 paper Kinsey told the readers of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology that attempts to determine the prevalence of homosexuality in society were compromised by the use of prison populations. His own study would avoid that pitfall and provide the first credible statistics on the subject! His article was submitted in November 1940. Several months before, according to biographer Christenson,9(p115) Kinsey had already begun to recruit what became a large prisoner group in his survey sample.

Kinsey's homosexuality statistics were clearly inflated Thus, epidemiologist David Forman, after a careful survey of a much more representative population, was forced to say in his 1989, British Medical Journal article that "frequently cited figures such as [Kinsey's] 10% of men being more or less exclusively homosexual cannot be regarded as applicable to the general population." Other surveys support this view (eg, Tom Smith's 1989 study for the National Opinion Research Center11). But today, in the United States, Kinsey's original figures have become ingrained givens. You will read in Time magazine (July 10, 1989, p. 56 [U.S. edition]), for example, that "about 25 million Americans are gay." It has become politically correct so to believe.

The Kinsey team's statistical manipulations of their homosexual data, when examined in some detail, can have had only one purpose: to achieve as high an apparent prevalence figure as possible. For example, the Kinsey tearn claimed that 37% of the male population had some homosexual experience "between adolescence, and old age."1(p650) What they omitted to point out was that 32% had occurred by age 16 and the full 37% by age 19 (see Table 139, p.624 of the Male Report). And the statistic they misleadingly represent as adult homosexuality was, in fact, principally homosexual play among heterosexual preadolescents and adolescents. Moreover, the Kinsey authors represent this activity, which may have occurred only once in adolescence, as occurring throughout adult life.

Other hallmarks of fraud abound in the Kinsey team's human sexuality research. Kinsey chose his research staff for their bias - his coauthor Pomeroy noted he was hired, in part, because of his freedom from the "taboos," "inhibitions" and "guilts" that his colleagues had (panel discussion, Eastern Regional Conference, Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, Philadelphia, April 17, 1983). A candidate for the research staff, Pomeroy also tells us, was rejected for believing "extramarital intercourse harmful to marriage, homosexuality abnormal, and animal contacts ludicrous."12 In the midst of his project Kinsey rejected valid criticism that his methods favoured overrepresentation of the sexually unconventional. When given expert advice to this effect, he simply ignored the expert(Abraham Maslow), refused to deal with him further and lied about the information in his published work.7(p181)

Sweeping generalizations characterise Kinsey's work. Important statements of fact, without supporting data (in some cases contrary to the data), are common. Another fraudulent act was Kinsey's deception of Indiana University authorities about his filming of human sexual activities.4(p174) And Kinsey coauthors Gebhard and Pomeroy compound their credibility problems by subsequently describing Kinsey's samples as "random" and a "cross section of the population" - patently false descriptions (Penthouse, December 1977, p. 118; Variations, 1977, p. 84). Other examples of deception, such as obfuscation of research methods and inaccurate claims of statistical validations, would take too long to describe and are, in any case, redundant, given what we know already.

Frivolity with facts was a Kinsey modus operandi, as exemplified by one long-standing Kinsey invention recently laid to rest by Fidelity (U.S. catholic magazine) editor Michael Jones: that the Vatican had one of the three biggest pornography collections in the world - the others being Kinsey's and the British Museum's (Fidelity, April 1989, p. 22). This myth is treated as fact throughout Pomeroy's biography of Kinsey.4

From this point on, the story content becomes somewhat sordid and a suspension of disbelief has to be practised to get to the end of our review. Kinsey and team provided a body of experimental evidence demonstrating that children are "orgasmic" and capable of sexual pleasure - not just affection - from infancy. Apart from fuelling the aspirations of the growing paedophile movement, this finding now is taught as "scientific" fact in academic sexology.

Creating an awareness of this knowledge also has become one of the principal educational goals of SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S. - a leading force in the field of sex education in the United States), according to SIECUS co-founder and former Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Calderone. Known as the "High Priestess" of sex education, Calderone wrote in a SIECUS publication in 1983 that children's sexual capacities should be "developed in the same way as the child's inborn human capacity to talk or to walk and that [the parents'] role should relate only to teaching the child the appropriateness of privacy, place, and person - in a word socialization" (SIECUS Report, May-July 1983, p. 9). In the same vein and a little more explicit - if the previous quote seemed a bit ambiguous - Calderone's SIECUS colleague Dr. Lester Kirkendall (emeritus professor in the Department of Family Life(yes family life) at Oregon State University) has written in a 1985 issue of the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy " that sex education programmes of the future will probe sexual expression across generational lines, particularly as our sense of guilt about these things diminishes.

Extending the Kinsey findings even further - to their logical long-term conclusion - James Ramey, visiting professor in a medical school psychiatry department, in an unusually candid piece in the May 1979 SIECUS Report, wrote, "We are in roughly the same position today with regard to incest as we were a hundred years ago with respect to our fear of masturbation" (p. 1). In a series of remarkable experiments, the Kinsey team provided the scientific base for these progressive developments.

Several hundred children, 2 months and older, were manually and orally masturbated by "partners" in "orgasm" experiments, in some cases over periods of 24 hours. The performance of at least 188 children was timed with a stopwatch (see tables). Particulars of physiological reactions, such as the presence of anal contractions, were carefully recorded. Kinsey has assured us that "technically trained" individuals were involved in this experimentation and that some of the children were followed over a period of years to make sure that true orgasms were occurring.1(p177) These data are unique in the scientific literature, but no satisfactory explanation has ever been given of how they were obtained.

Kinsey disingenuously has maintained that in the course of interviewing people about their sex lives he just happened to come across a technically trained few (who trained them?) with identical stopwatch measurements on hand from which to piece together the most remarkable and precise tables on infant and childhood sexual (orgasmic) response ever obtained. No other surveys before or since have been able to achieve this feat - for obvious reasons. Pressed by Fidelity's Michael Jones to explain the precise measurements in so many children (Fidelity, April 1989, p. 32), Kinsey associate Paul Gebhard naively replied, "One parent used a stopwatch"! (The implication is that some of the information came from parents!) Kinsey photographer C.A. Tripp, apparently oblivious to the enormity of what he was saying, told one of us (JGM) after a television show that the experiments did indeed take place (we have speculated the data may have been invention), that they were harmless, that the children enjoyed the activity and there was no need for parental consent!

Maybe the children benefited. Here are Kinsey and colleagues' descriptions of the orgasm-inducing experiments: 1(p161) "Extreme tension with violent convulsion"... "mouth distorted ....... tongue protruding" ... "eyes staring"... "violent cries, sometimes with an abundance of tears (especially among younger children)". . . "extreme trembling, collapse, loss of color, and sometimes fainting of subject" . . . "excruciating pain and may scream if movement is continued" . . . "will fight away from the partner." Use of the neutral term ‘partner’ is interesting in this context.

This is the only example in Western scientific literature where data from the sexual abuse of infants and children are used to substantiate currently taught theories of human development - in this case normal sexual development. A further remarkable fact is that data from these experiments were actually published as valid "science" shortly after the trial of 20 Third Reich doctors at Nuremberg for, in some cases, lesser degrees of human abuse. And the book in which these results were tabulated was hailed in the American media as a great work of science, sweeping away embedded myths and delusions. In the December 1947 Harper's, for example, the "methods goals and findings" were said to have been "checked and rechecked by outstanding investigators" (p. 490). Nota wordappeared anywhere about the illegality and abusiveness of the child sex experiments. The public, getting its information second hand from the press, believed a great scientific and cultural milestone had been passed. This was to be the enlightenment whereby society would be educated away from its burden of Judeo-Christian superstition. Regarding sex education, Kinsey wrote to a colleague: "I shall aim to distinguish the scientific data in this field from the moralistic claptrap which has invaded our schoolroom."9(p118)

The authors and editors of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud are calling for an investigation into the entire Kinsey research effort and the full scope of its effects. It would seem appropriate to gain access to original material (if it is not destroyed) to help understand even the motivation behind what has been done. In the case of the child sex studies, who were the children, who were the experimenters, who gave them their scientific training, who wrote the protocols (there is a remarkable consistency of method) and, most importantly, what happened to the children in later life? Many would now be in their 40s and 50s and should be privately evaluated for possible damage and treatment. A Lancet reviewer, looking at the evidence now assembled in Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, has concluded that it "demolishes the foundations of the two [Kinsey] reports" and leaves "his former co-workers some explaining to do"14 That would be a start. But even a passing concern for integrity in science would make an investigation and accounting of the Kinsey team's research obligatory. (It is noteworthy that Kinsey's co-workers remain silent.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Kinsey team's work, as is evident from the deliberate effort to manufacture statistics showing a high rate of homosexuality in the male population, was designed with certain goals in mind. Gershon Legman, former bibliographer of Kinsey's erotica collection at the Kinsey Institute, was dismissed as disgruntled when he wrote in The Horn Book that the Kinsey studies were "statistical hokum" designed to "disguise" his "propagandistic" purpose of respectabilizing homosexuality and certain sexual perversions."16 Legman added, "[Kinsey] did not hesitate to extrapolate his utterly inadequate and inconclusive samplings .. . to the whole population of the United States, not to say the world." It turns out Legman was correct. Stanford University historian Paul Robinson, in his 1976 book The Modernization of Sex observed that Kinsey's statistics were designed "to undermine the traditional sexual order."17 Especially threatened was the long-standing societal prohibition on adult-child sexual contact, which helps explain a common tie binding Kinsey's prime defenders.

In the current controversy, Kinsey's few apologists risk self exposure through the connection of their own agendas with the worst elements of Kinsey's. The first defender - in New York's Village Voice (December 11, 1990, pp., 39-41) - was Philip Nobile, a former editorial director of Forum magazine, who is noted for his 1977 article in the well-known science publication Penthouse (December 1977) on the subject of "positive incest." The following year, Nobile was featuring the views of a pro-incest physician in the San Francisco Chronicle (May 15, 1978, p. 21) with the commendation that "despite the utter amorality of her prescription, I believe she has an argument that should be heard. For she wants to save the children too." Nobile's review of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud was principally a personal attack on one of the authors.

Another true believer to surface is Vem Bullough, whose review of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud in the journal Free Inquiry (Spring 1991, pp. 50-1) artlessly mocks the writers for getting upset about Kinsey's findings on the harmlessness of adult-child sex. The Kinsey view is "probably true," says Bullough of the case of men with young girls, that "if penetration is excluded" the result of societal overreaction. Bullough has written in a foreword to Dutch paedophile Edward Brongersma's book Loving Boys: A Multidisciplinary Study of Sexual Relations Between Adult and Minor Males (Volume 1) that paedophilia is "a subject that too often has been ignored or subject to hysterical statements."18 He recently has been quoted in a NAMBLA Bulletin advertisement (March 1991) recommending the Dutch Journal of paedophilia. (NAMBLA is the acronym for the North American Man/Boy Love Association).

A fascinating review by former Kinsey Institute staffer Dr William Simon has just appeared in the February 1992 issue of Archives of Sexual Behaviour.19 For the first time ever (as far as we can determine) a Kinsey disciple agonizes about the ethical dilemma of using data from the illegal experiments described above. However, Simon will only admit that the experiments were "possibly abusive." He assumes, moreover, that data from children can illustrate normal sexual development, and expresses concern that we "must ... be alert to tendencies to overidentify with the subjects of our research." We're not making this up! Simon believes our allegations are politically motivated and ideologically driven paranoia. This reaction might have been expected. In 1970, Simon and former Kinsey Institute colleague John Gagnon authored a SIECUS Study Guide (No. 11) declaring that in cases of adult-child sexual contact "the scarring is more likely to come from various adult reactions to the event itself" (p. 23). Interestingly, it was John Gagnon who, knowing the prisoner and sex offender bias among Kinsey's male interviewees,20 misrepresented the sample problems in a 1989 Science article as too many people from groups such as college faculties and Parent Teachers Asssciations and too heavily drawn from the Mid- West!"

One would have expected some official reaction from the Kinsey Institute to the allegations in Kinsey, Sex and Fraud. The response has been silence and repeated refusal to debate the issue in public forums on the grounds that to do so would dignify the baseless charges. One clue to the sensitivity of these charges, however, has been the attempt by Kinsey Institute director Dr. June Reinisch to prevent public discussion of the book on radio talk shows. In the case of radio station WNDE, Indianapolis (Kinsey home turf, this was successfully achieved by implied threat of a law-suit. Another clue is Dr. Reinisch's response to National Institutes of Health scientist Walter Stewart's call (on the jacket of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud) for the scientific community to thoroughly and openly debate "disturbing questions" about the Kinsey research. (Stewart is well-known in the United States, and abroad, as perhaps the leading expert on science fraud. He was intimately involved in the Baltimore and Benveniste cases.) Reinisch wrote to the National Institutes of Health that "If such a scientist [Stewart] does exist and is on the staff of NIH, I thought you would like to know that he is making these kind of statements" (letter to Dr. Wyngaarden, November 8, 1990). We, like Stewart, interpret this as a crude attempt to discourage his interest.

A particularly benighted review of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud in the October 15, 1991 Canadian Medical Association Journal 22 considered the pointing out of the above (and other) facts about the Kinsey team and their research a "diatribe." However, we wish to thank this reviewer for incorrectly accusing one of us (in a letter exchange) of quoting Walter Stewart out of context.23 A response to the journal from Stewart calls for an investigation of the Kinsey research.24

Since the American media of the 1940s and 50s created Kinsey, how do their successors handle his fraud exposure? Columnist Patrick Buchanan, now running a presidential campaign, got the point right away and fearlessly ran a syndicated column titled "Sex, Lies and Dr. Kinsey" (New York Post, October 20,1990, p. 13) and radio talk shows tackled the subject head on, but print journalists have difficulty with this scandal. Unlike Britain, the "mainstream" press in the U.S. is liberal-left, and, of course, Kinsey has been a God in that group's pantheon. One of the greatest journalistic fears (and perhaps dangers) is to be too far out of politically correct orbit. Nationally respected columnist John Leo of U.S. News and World Report, recounted (in a conversation with JGM) a sticky situation in a previous life at Time magazine when he mocked the pro adult-child sex coterie of academics, including Mary Calderone (q.v.) (Time, April 14, 1982, p. 72). "A complaint came in," said Leo. "I believe Henry Grunwald [then editor-in-chief] made an apology behind my back." Leo said he thought hisjob was at risk. Now he is uncharacteristically silent about the shocking exposé of the related research his new publication thinks is a "cornerstone" of sexual knowledge. Print journalists might get on board when it's politically safer.

In the meantime, an awareness of the Kinsey research scandal is gradually spreading through the mainstream scientific (as opposed to sexology) community. An investigation of some kind may be inevitable.- in October 1991 a past president of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counsellors and Therapists wrote in the society's newsletter (Contemporary Sexuality, October 1991, p1): "Look how we've used the Kinsey data. We've used it for everything from assessing the stability of marriage to raising children to trying to understand human growth and development - not just sexual but also psychological growth and changes over time." And all this from a pathological model of human behaviour!
J. Gordon Muir, a contributing author and editor of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, is a pharmaceutical company executive and former research physician based at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
John H. Court, an editor of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, is Professor of Psychology, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Pasadena, California.
Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Gordon Muir, Lochinvar Inc, Suite 123, 1381, Kildane Farm Road, North Carolina 27511, USA.

I just saw some silliness regarding the Iowa ruling but it made me think...

Someone should really be asking these morals police types what grounds they have to judge.

How many who vilify gays or who decry them as immoral or who object to gay marriage as a threat to the sanctity of marriage have ever:

Had an affair?

Had premarital sex?

Viewed porn?

Viewed gay/lesbian porn?

Lusted in their hearts?

Verbally abused their spouse?

Masturbated?

Viewed fetish porn?

Employed an escort or prostitute?

Abused a child?

Lied to their spouse?

Physically abused their spouse?

Parented children outside a marriage?

Been married more than once?

Some of these I don't personally view as a threat to marriage and they are not all the same...I certainly don't think masturbating is the same as an affair but there are some who do think they are both threats to marriage.

I could go on...but I think I made my point...aren't all these things a much bigger threat to marriage than other people getting married?

Just wondering...

scttrbrain

Great post

Know your sources....

Look who's funding Judicial Watch

Conservative Judicial Watch has been in the news lately, but here’s the real question: Who is funding this controversial conservative organization? Who are they?

Judicial Watch, established in 1994, and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is comprised of “lawyers, investigators, and concerned citizens,” according to the organization. They bill themselves as a “watchdog” over our government.

They are heavily funded by the conservative Scaife Foundation which finances conservative think tanks including Media Research Center and the Heritage Foundation.

The Scaife Foundation was headed by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative who inherited his wealth from the Mellon industrial, oil, and banking fortune. He headed the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation. All of these organizations have bankrolled conservative causes.

In 2002, Judicial Watch received $1.1 million from the Carthage Foundation and $400,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. In 2001, the Scaife Foundation had given $1.35 million and Carthage $500,000.

Between 1997 and 2002, Judicial Watch received $7,069,500 in 19 grants, most of it from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, according to Source Watch.

Now here’s the interesting part.

The Scaife foundations, including those controlled by Scaife's sister, Cordelia May Scaife, provided some $1.4 million to Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) from 1986-2000. FAIR was founded by John Tanton, a Michigan activist with ties to hate groups.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights law firm that tracks hate groups nationwide, has listed FAIR as a hate group with ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group, founded in 1985 by Gordon Baum, an attorney and longtime white-power activist.

Judicial Watch has some explaining to do. Why are they accepting funding from foundations that bankroll hate groups?

Next time you see Judicial Watch on television, remember who funds them.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/09/19/tanton-fair-founder-racism/

My...time flies when you are disgusted by the human condition!

There's something called "fighting words"

from:http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fighting-words/

Fighting words are words intentionally directed toward another person which are so venomous and full of malice as to cause the hearer to suffer emotional distress or incite him/her to immediately retaliate physically. Fighting words are not an excuse or defense for a retaliatory assault and battery. However, if they are so threatening as to cause apprehension, they can form the basis for a lawsuit for assault, even though the words alone don't constitute an assault.

The utterance of fighting words is not protected by the free speech protections of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The words are often evaluated not only by the words themselves, but the context in which they are spoken. Courts generally impose a requirement that the speaker intended to cuase a breach of the peace or incite the hearer to violence.

The UN is treading on dangerous ground. This resolution seeks to make criticism of a religion fighting words it seems. What may seem to be logical criticism to some may be viewed as baseless and hateful speech to others.

I object to almost any legislation that criminalizes speech and expression.

Oh and before anyone starts composing a reply I realize there are fine distinctions in this area.

I also think it is important to realize that we have just as many thought, speech and expression Nazi's here in the North America as there are in Muslim countries. Post 9/11 anyone who criticized or questioned Bush was branded un-American. Canadians are so concerned with hate speech that they have virtually ignored their Constitution and have a commission that considers one accused of hate speech guilty until proven innocent.

It's time to put some sanity back in this conversation.

Oh..here's an interesting point to ponder. How many posts on this board might be considered hate speech?

I posted it as well...was it yesterday?

This issue will make for some interesting bedfellows eh?

Bet there are a few Christians here who wouldn't mind making criticizing Christians illegal.

At any rate...please do read this.

The Free World Bars Free Speech

By Jonathan Turley
Sunday, April 12, 2009; B03

For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam. Even the most seemingly minor infractions elicit draconian punishments. Late last year, two Afghan journalists were sentenced to prison for blasphemy because they translated the Koran into a Farsi dialect that Afghans can read. In Jordan, a poet was arrested for incorporating Koranic verses into his work. And last week, an Egyptian court banned a magazine for running a similar poem.

But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West. Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The "Free World," it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.

Among the new blasphemers is legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, who was convicted last June of "inciting religious hatred" for a letter she wrote in 2006 to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that Muslims were ruining France. It was her fourth criminal citation for expressing intolerant views of Muslims and homosexuals. Other Western countries, including Canada and Britain, are also cracking down on religious critics.

Emblematic of the assault is the effort to pass an international ban on religious defamation supported by United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. Brockmann is a suspended Roman Catholic priest who served as Nicaragua's foreign minister in the 1980s under the Sandinista regime, the socialist government that had a penchant for crushing civil liberties before it was tossed out of power in 1990. Since then, Brockmann has literally embraced such free-speech-loving figures as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he wrapped in a bear hug at the U.N. last year.

The U.N. resolution, which has been introduced for the past couple of years, is backed by countries such as Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive nations when it comes to the free exercise of religion. Blasphemers there are frequently executed. Most recently, the government arrested author Hamoud Bin Saleh simply for writing about his conversion to Christianity.

While it hasn't gone so far as to support the U.N. resolution, the West is prosecuting "religious hatred" cases under anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws. British citizens can be arrested and prosecuted under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which makes it a crime to "abuse" religion. In 2008, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for holding up a sign reading "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult" outside the organization's London headquarters. Earlier this year, the British police issued a public warning that insulting Scientology would now be treated as a crime.

No question, the subjects of such prosecutions are often anti-religious -- especially anti-Muslim -- and intolerant. Consider far-right Austrian legislator Susanne Winter. She recently denounced Mohammad as a pedophile for his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha, which was consummated when she was 9. Winter also suggested that Muslim men should commit bestiality rather than have sex with children. Under an Austrian law criminalizing "degradation of religious doctrines," the 51-year-old politician was sentenced in January to a fine of 24,000 euros ($31,000) and a three-month suspended prison term.

But it is the speech, not the speaker, that's at issue. As insulting and misinformed as views like Winter's may be, free speech is not limited to non-offensive subjects. The purpose of free speech is to be able to challenge widely held views.

Yet there is a stream of cases similar to Winter's coming out of various countries:

In May 2008, Dutch prosecutors arrested cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot for insulting Christians and Muslims with a cartoon that caricatured a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist as zombies who meet at an anti-gay rally and want to marry.

Last September, Italian prosecutors launched an investigation of comedian Sabina Guzzanti for joking about Pope Benedict VXI. "In 20 years, [he] will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons, and very active ones," she said at a rally.

In February, Rowan Laxton, an aide to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, was arrested for "inciting religious hatred" when, watching news reports of Israel's bombardment of Gaza while exercising at his gym, he allegedly shouted obscenities about Israelis and Jews at the television.

Also in February, Britain barred controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders from entry because of his film "Fitna," which describes the Koran as a "fascist" book and Islam as a violent religion. Wilders was declared a "threat to public policy, public security or public health."

And in India, authorities arrested the editor and publisher of the newspaper the Statesman for running an article by British journalist Johann Hari in which he wrote, "I don't respect the idea that we should follow a 'Prophet' who at the age of 53 had sex with a 9-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him." In India, it is a crime to "outrage religious feelings."

History has shown that once governments begin to police speech, they find ever more of it to combat. Countries such as Canada, England and France have prosecuted speakers and journalists for criticizing homosexuals and other groups. It's the ultimate irony: free speech curtailed for the sake of a pluralistic society.

Even countries that the United States has helped liberate have joined the assault on free speech, rejecting the core values of our First Amendment. Afghan journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh was sentenced to death under Sharia law last year just for downloading Internet material on the role of women in Islamic societies that authorities judged to be blasphemous. The provincial deputy attorney general, Hafizullah Khaliqyar, has been quoted as saying: "Journalists are supporting Kambakhsh. I will arrest any journalist trying to support him after this."

Not only does this trend threaten free speech, freedom of association and a free press, it even undermines free exercise of religion. Challenging the beliefs of other faiths can be part of that exercise. Countries such as Saudi Arabia don't prosecute blasphemers to protect the exercise of all religions but to protect one religion.

Religious orthodoxy has always lived in tension with free speech. Yet Western ideals are based on the premise that free speech contains its own protection: Good speech ultimately prevails over bad. There's no blasphemy among free nations, only orthodoxy and those who seek to challenge it.

After years of international scorn, the United States can claim the high ground by supporting the right of all to speak openly about religion. Otherwise, free speech in the West could die with hope of little more than a requiem Mass.

jturley@law.gwu.edu

Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University.

I have...just thought this might be interesting to some others.

I just read this and found it interesting.

Any thoughts?


Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates

Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal dumping and trawling

Monday, 5 January 2009

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labelling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century".

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?

j.hari@independent.co.uk

Interesting...

So, whatcha think folks? Is the country awash in evil?

Have the evangelicals "lost the culture wars"?

Are only church goers capable of being "good"?

In a farewell address to the staff of Focus on the Family, James Dobson conceded that evangelical conservatives had lost most of the recent so-called “culture war” battles. Attributing the right’s recent failures to the “internet” and the election of Bill Clinton, Dobson said, “Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost.” He added that the nation is now “absolutely awash in evil“:

The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. We fought all those battles and really it was a holding action. […]

[W]e made a lot of progress through the Eighties but then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right?

Steve Benen writes, “[W]hether Dobson and his cohorts give up now or not, his assessment about their lack of success is nevertheless accurate.”
From Think Progress

Churches have access to enormous financial resources that most individuals do not have.

So, when they become involved the even playing feild disappears. These are not just concerned citizens voicing their concerns.

In the prop 8 fiasco churches aired ads full of lies that insinuated things to come if gay marriage were legalized that were untrue as well.

One of the biggest lies? That if gay marriage was legalized churches would be forced to marry gays. The ads propagated this lie.

If churches want to engage in these sorts of campaigns they become political organizations. Political organizations that are tremendously powerful that do not have to tell the truth, reveal their sponsors or even have a dog in the fight. Big money came to CA from all over the country, lied, appealed to peoples fears based on lies and won.

It's despicable.

I have no issues with Christians, Muslims, Wicans...whomever participating in politics...but on an even playing field.

Gee but you have no trouble with people who attempt to inflict your churches views on the rest of us.

Either she failed or her vetting committee failed or she endorses his positions or if not endorses finds those publicly stated positions compatible with hers because she nominated him.

Right?

I mean...gosh...if she were a democrat who nominated an AG who said publicly on multiple occasions that Christians were deviants and acting unnaturally and that he felt it was okay for women to beat their husbands or children despite there being laws against it you would be going nuts I bet.

Your double standards are showing...but I expect no less from those that pick and choose...even in regards to the so called word of God.

Come now...are you really that simple?

Yes...everyone has the right to speak.

I don't want to pull these ads. People should however know the truth behind these ads.

If the positions expressed in these ads are the heartfelt sentiments of the writers and sponsors of these ads why are actors appearing in the ad?

Here's another question...who are the sponsors of these ads? Who is footing the bill and why aren't they showing their faces?

The CA doctor? Not a doctor but an actor...but...then that's right in line with the religious right wing fear mongers playbook right? Joe the plumber? Not a plumber haha

So, back to who is paying for these ads....

Are they Californians? Or are they hateful people from all over he country who are so scared of gay marriage they have to intrude on CA politics?

The prop 8 ads sponsored by big churches money hinted at things that were simply lies...like allowing gay marriage would force churches to perform them...and that my friend is wrong.

/sarcasm on

Isn't lying mentioned in the Bible somewhere?

Isn't there a little bit about judge not lest you be judged?

What about bearing false witness?

As usual these so called church and family people are busy picking and choosing...I do so hope there is a judgement day one day. I'll bring the popcorn and watch with interest.

His statements and affiliations are public record.

So, either Palin endorses those positions via her nomination of him as AG or she failed to exercise due diligence.

Not knowing the private details of another persons tax obligations and not discovering the public record are very different things.

So...at best let's say she likes some of his positions and not others but in forwarding this nomination she apparently failed to discover disturbing public statements made by him.

I really would expect that a governor who we were told was qualified to step into the presidency by the republican party would at the very least understand that she has a responsibility to the people of the state of Alaska to act with due diligence. Especially when selecting the states lead law enforcement official.

Tjis nomination is not something that was done in haste. At least I hope it wasn't but...

Have I always made the right decisions?

Nope

Sarah has an obligation to competently represent the people of Alaska. All the people...not just the neocons. the AG has the same responsibility and obligations.

One would reasonably expect that when making a decision like this she used due diligence and made a studied inquiry into all aspects of this candidates policies and positions.

These sorts of selections are not mistakes.

Mistakes are fleeting bad judgments.

Oh and if you would like to relate this to the tax issue it is important to acknowledge that the tax issues were discovered and publicly disclosed during the vetting process.