UPDATED

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hat’s ANSWER, the front for the despicable Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party, doing with a bunch of nice gays at a No on 8 group grumble in LA? That’s easy: Anything to further the revolution, comrades!

An article on ANSWER/LA’s Web site makes the group’s involvement clear:

At 6 p.m. on Saturday, thousands of people had already arrived at Sunset Junction for the protest and march, entirely blocking all of busy Sunset Blvd. Sunset Junction has great significance for the LGBT struggle. … Just minutes later, the rally kicked off, chaired by Carlos Alvarez and Peta Lindsay, youth organizers with the ANSWER Coalition. The first speakers were Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, the first same-sex couple to marry legally in California. Other speakers included community leaders, out lesbian candidate for California State Assembly, Lucilla Esguerra; National Lawyers Guild-LA leader Jim Lafferty; ANSWER Coordinator Preston Wood; General Hospital star Nancy Lee Grahn; West Hollywood mayor Jeffery Prang; and other same-sex couples and equal rights activists. (emphasis added)

And here’s what ANSWER’s gal had to say at the rally:

Rally co-chair Lindsay, a graduate of Howard University, said, “The right-wing is trying to keep our communities divided. We can’t let that happen. We all suffer discrimination and we must make common cause to struggle against the true enemy — wealthy institutions and outlets that spread bigotry. No one should be scapegoated. An injury to one is an injury to all!”

I wonder how Lindsay justifies his ranting against the right wing in the face of overwhelming support for Prop 8 from Dem black and Hispanic voters, and I’m sure, quite a lot of white Dems as well? Oh well, who cares? If you can raise up people against The Establishment in support of the glorious revolution, it’s all good.

ANSWER was formed just three days after 9/11 by by Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, which is staffed by members of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP).

Discover the Networks writes of the group:

ANSWER views the United States as a racist, imperialist, sexist, homophobic nation and the world’s chief violator of human rights — guilty of unspeakable atrocities, past and present, foreign and domestic.

ANSWER-organized rallies are all conducted in a similar fashion: Protestors gather at a mustering ground flanked by information and merchandise tables that are manned by a variety of leftist and communist organizations, which have paid ANSWER a fee for permission to distribute literature or sell their wares. An elevated stage is set up at the front of the rally site, complete with a massive sound system. After a musical prelude, a number of speeches are delivered — usually, over a dozen. Once this initial round of speeches is completed, the attendees march along a short route to the location of the final rally, where they encounter more literature and merchandise tables and are treated to another round of speeches. At both rally locations and along the course of the march, ANSWER volunteers raise funds by moving through the crowd with large buckets into which attendees deposit cash donations.

The speakers at ANSWER rallies are generally members of the political far left who oppose not only America’s role in the current war on terror, but also many additional aspects of the nation’s foreign and domestic policies.

ANSWER has seized onto anger in the gay community against Prop 8 and turned out crowds that they use for their greater, revolutionary purpose. I doubt if many of those who turned out for the demonstrations saw themselves as dupes in this sick, greater cause – but that’s what they are.

UPDATED

Now the LA Times is reporting:

Organizers are urging activists from around the country and Canada to converge on California and are hoping for tens of thousands of participants.

Organizers? You mean ANSWER’s Carlos Alvarez and Peta Lindsay?

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he most e-mailed article in today’s LA Times concerns a lousy bit of governance from California’s increasingly lousy governor:  Schwarzenegger tells backers of gay marriage: Don’t give up.  Putting his faith in the courts, not the people, Schwarzenegger told CNN:

“It’s unfortunate, obviously, but it’s not the end. I think that we will again maybe undo that, if the court is willing to do that, and then move forward from there and again lead in that area. …

“I learned that you should never ever give up. . . . They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done.”

Couldn’t the same be said of those of us who feel marriage needs to be protected from the onslaught of the gay agendists, that its 8,000-year history of securing the proper relationship between a man and a woman must not be nonchalantly disposed of in the name of a “feel good” whim?

Schwarzenegger’s comment will fuel a protest that’s smoldering throughout the state.  Jon Fleishman’s Flash Report today links to these stories:

• SF Chronicle: Gay-Marriage Backers Form Huge Protests
• Sacramento Bee: Thousands at Capitol rally back continuing fight against Prop. 8
• Oakland Tribune: Anti-Prop 8 demonstrators protest near Oakland Mormon temple
• San Jose Mercury: Proposition 8: Historic turning point, or just another battle in the culture wars?
• Stockton Record: Prop. 8 protests continue
• Modesto Bee: Anti-Prop. 8 protests hit Sacramento to Pasadena
• Ventura Star: Proposition 8 opponents protest outside church
• LA Daily News: More protests over Prop. 8 gay-marriage ban
• OC Register: Prop. 8 protests continue in O.C.
• San Diego Union-Tribune: Prop. 8 protesters target Mormon temple
• San Diego Union-Tribune: Gay marriage’s supporters rally across the state

What kind of governor urges continued civil disobedience after the people of his state – the “civil” they’re being disobedient to – have spoken overwhelmingly twice?

Gay marriage supporters’ record is worse than 0-20.  Twenty states have passed propositions limiting marriage to the union between a man and a woman; some, like California, have done so more than once.  Isn’t this sign enough to gays that they are damaging their chances with other political initiatives of importance to them by banging their heads against this wall?

Schwarzenegger would have been much wiser to encourage the gay community to revisit its priorities in light of Prop 8′s defeat.  If they want equal rights, and they should, they should forgo the marriage battle, which isn’t about rights but appearances, and pursue equitableness on the supposed (mythical?) 100 “rights” not extended to gays.  (I’ve asked commenters for this list, but none has provided it, so I think the list may well be hype. Almost certainly, it includes many privileges, like the privilege to adopt, which are not rights.)

Gays could sit down tomorrow with most conservative religious leaders and co-author a proposition that, exclusive of marriage, would protect gays from all sorts of slights and inequalities that are mostly the result of long-existing statutory language, not deliberate discrimination.  And the people of California would overwhelmingly pass such a proposition.  I would vote for it in a heartbeat, even though I voted for Prop 8.

Is there any rationality in the gay community, or have emotions overcome them, so that will they continue to fight, like Serbs against  Croats and Hutus against Tutsis?  There’s a better alternative, and Schwarzenegger should be supporting it, not a encouraging further gay rebellion against the will of the people.

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M

y blog-friend and designer of the new C-SM look Dale (Okie on the Lam) forwarded this video to me, which he produced for a big Prop 8 sponsor:

There is no reason to bring this sort of LGBT sexuality into the kindergarten classroom; it just shows the extremism of LGBT activists, and their unwillingness to conform with long-established societal norms – not about their sexuality, but about the inappropriateness of forcing sex onto children, whether physically, socially or emotionally.

The people who want kindergarteners to deal with “LGBT” are the same people who are behind the fight to defeat Prop 8.  Which side do you want to be on?

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My recent post on the Cal. sanctity of marriage proposition, Prop 8, Gay Marriage and the Spread of Islamofascism, generated a rather different comment:

Hi; May I interject a real life situation. I’d like to hear your guidance on this. My mother was given a drug to take to lessen the chance of miscarriage and promote healthy babies — that’s what the doctor told her. The drug is Diethylstilbestrol, or DES. In male fetuses, it feminizes the brains of one in five of us ‘DES sons’.

I finally came to terms with this, and realized my choice was transition or die. So, I’m now a male-to-female transsexual who’s had ‘the operation.’ I’ve changed all my legal paperwork and although I still have a male body with XY chromosomes, it has been retrofitted to approximate female anatomy, which is good because if I ever end up in an accident, there will be no ’surprise’ for the first responders.

I ‘pass’ very well, thank you. Only rarely do strangers figure out I was not born this way. Most people have to be told, by me, or, more often, by someone else who just has to ‘drop the bomb.’ All my paperwork has been changed.  Legally, I’m female.  But I have to find an OB/GYN who can check my prostate during my yearly pelvic exam (yearly mammograms don’t need that level of disclosure.)

So my question to you is — knowing what you know now about me, and assuming for the moment you get absolute power to label me and make determinations on where I can and can’t go —

-Do I marry a man? Or do I marry a woman?

-Which restroom and changing facility do you feel I, a male-to-female transsexual, should use when in public spaces?

-Am I immoral?

-Am I a paedophile?

-Am I tearing down western society in support of a deviant agenda?

-Am I selfish?

I eagerly await your responses; Hazumu Osaragi

Obviously, there’s a bit of a set-up happening here, since my post wasn’t about trans-sexual issues at all.  Nevertheless, I took some time to give Hazumu a thoughtful answer.  I’d be interested in your thoughts …

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ou know the old saying, “Gays and Islamofascists don’t mix.”  Funny, yes, but there really is a nexus:  If California’s Prop 8 fails and gay marriage remains the law of the land here, look for the Golden State to become the address of choice for America’s Islamofascist population.

Islamofascists, or Islamists as I prefer to call them, don’t want to be bothered with Judeo-Christian laws and traditions that get in the way of their living the Koran in their daily lives.  That means more than just not wanting any toilets around that face toward Mecca; it means being able to live out their misogynistic “right” to polygamous marriage.

Muslims, and particularly Islamists, have a way of using local laws – laws they dislike for not being Sharia – to their advantage.  For example, Mark Steyn writes about some welfare law wrangling that’s gone on in the UK:

You can’t (for the moment) marry multiple wives within the United Kingdom, but if you contract a polygamous marriage in a jurisdiction where polygamy is legal, such as certain, ahem, Muslim countries, your better halves (or better eighths?) are now recognized as eligible for British welfare payments. Thus, the concept of “each additional spouse” has been accepted both de facto and de jure.

And elsewhere in Europe:

Thousands of polygamous marriages like Hadi’s have sprung up throughout Italy as a byproduct of a fast-paced and voluminous immigration by Muslims to this Roman Catholic country.

Despite the obvious culture clash, Italian authorities largely turn a blind eye, leaving women in a murky semi-clandestine world with few rights and no recourse when things go especially badly, as they did in Hadi’s case. …

Italy is one of several European nations faced with the issue of polygamy. In Britain and Spain, where large Muslim communities have also settled, some officials favor recognizing polygamous marriage as a way to ensure the wives’ access to pensions, medical care and other state benefits.

Steyn details at length in America Alone how Islamists and their hard to find but supposedly still around somewhere more moderate Muslim brethren have used Europe’s open society and namby-pamby multiculturalism to exploit laws protecting gay rights to make inroads toward the legalization of polygamous marriage.  After all, if a man can marry a man, why can’t a man marry three women?

Charles Krauthammer explained the logic in a 2006 WaPo column, Pandora and Polygamy:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I’m not the one who put them there. Their argument does.

He concludes the piece with what I forsee as the rallying cry of CAIR as it begins to hurl petrodollars by the barrel at California legislators in the days that would follow the rejection of Prop 8:

[D]on’t tell me that we can make one radical change in the one-man, one-woman rule and not be open to the claim of others that their reformation be given equal respect.

Todd Zywicki, writing at Volokh, made a similar if more inscrutable point:

Here’s my thought–the definition of marriage as one man and one woman seems somewhat arbitrary, which is why it is difficult to justify. The primary justification I can see is a Hayekian one of prudential deference to tradition unless there is an extremely strong case for rejecting it. I would distinguish this from what I would understand as a Burkean objection, which I would read as tradition being prescriptive, rather than prudential. But whether this is an accurate distinction is probably a debate for a different day.

So the question is, if you get rid of the “man-woman” prong as largely arbitrary, why does this not lead to getting rid of the “one-one” prong as well? It seems like the new line is just as arbitrary as the old one.

Indeed.  And California is just the place for this to happen.

California has liberal courts and, with Massachusetts, the nation’s longest gay rights tradition.  It has a liberal legislature that is prone to writing state laws in the name of multiculturalism and inclusion.  One doesn’t have to be a gay rocket scientist to see that in the blink of an eye, gay marriage in California will lead to a very Sharia-like polygamous marriage in California.  And if that happens and you happen to be a jihad-hungry, woman-deriding Islamist living in Kansas or Kentucky, what state would you head for?

In a closing footnote, it’s interesting that you could take this argument entirely the other way: If Prop 8 passes, it will open the door to polygamous marriage. That’s a favorite red herring of  the No on 8 set, who argue that because the proposition calls for the enthroning in our state constitution of a definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman – instead of one man and one woman – it’s all just a Mormon conspiracy to turn California into Warren Jeffs‘ new hang-out.

Chilling. It looks like either way, the Islamists could win.

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H

ere’s the non-news of the day:  Hollywood celebs are plowing dough into the No on 8 campaign, happily supporting the concept that a tiny court of non-elected poobahs can willy-nilly strip away the will of the people.  (Prop 8, the second most important vote in America on Nov. 4, seeks a Cal. constitutional amendment limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman, after the Cal Supremes overturned a previous proposition.)

SacBee’s Capitol Alert reports that the tinsel/glitter set is engaged like a couple horny guys in a bathhouse:

Ron Burkle, the playboy billionaire, is hosting a No on 8 fundraiser tonight at his Bev Hills home, with musical guests Melissa Etheridge and Mary J. Bilge.  It’ll cost you $1,000 to get in the door, but Ron wants you to fork over $250,000 to become a No on 8 “champion.”

Last week Steve “It’s not my baby” Bing pledged $500,000 in matching funds.  If Steve-arino would just settle down into a nice gay marriage union, he wouldn’t have to worry about future paternity suits.

Recently wed to her girlfriend, Ellen DeGeneres has purchased $100,000 in air time, presumably to throw her good will at this bad cause.  Brad Pitt and Stephen Spielberg have also tossed about an hour’s salary, $100,000, into the pot.

I recommend the Yes on 8 forces immediately begin producing a TV spot highlighting all these people, their money, their skewered morality (in most cases), and their efforts to sway the vote.

Still, as of today, Prop 9 is enjoying a 9% lead in the polls.  And remember this:  California’s black population, which is strongly conservative on this issue, is expected to turn out in force for Obama.  Count on a strong majority of them to vote “yes” on 9.

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The SacBee’s Capitol Alert ran this little squib last night; I almost missed it in all the debate stuff:

The California Teachers Association reported donating $1 million to oppose Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, on Tuesday.

Can someone please explain to me the correlation between education and breaking the age-old, sacred, voter-supported definition of marriage in the name of homosexual activism? Anyone? Anyone?

CTA is mum about it on its Web site, but there is this posted in its media section:

CTA Urges Voters to Support Candidates Who Make Public Schools a Priority

Before voting find out how candidates stand on education issues
October 16, 2008

With Election Day around the corner – Monday is the last day to register to vote and voting by mail has already started – CTA has launched a statewide radio ad campaign urging voters to find out where candidates stand on education issues and then vote for candidates who make public education a priority and will fight for our students and schools.

“From the White House, to the state Legislature, to your local school board, the candidates you choose can help improve California public schools or set them behind,” says David A. Sanchez, president of the 340,000-member California Teachers Association, in the spot. “Find out where candidates stand on making public education a priority.”

What the heck, Sanchez?  Are we supposed to find out where they stand on gay marriage too?  Is that important to education?  After all, you’re spending your members money – money that is supposed to be spent to support efforts to pour an endless stream of money into the black hole that is public education in California improved public education – to defeat the will of the people of California and force gay marriage on us after we voted overwhelmingly against it.  So gay marriage must be good for education, right?  How is that, exactly?

What does CTA giving $1 million to No on 8 teach school children about civics, Sanchez?  It seems to me there is only lesson to be gained is this:  If you don’t like the will of the people, then screw the will of the people.  Is that what the CTA wants to teach kids today?  Is that what CTA has come to stand for?

Sanchez?  Sanchez?

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Global Warming Update

W

e haven’t been hearing much about global warming lately – economic reality vs. bogeyman theories, you know – so I thought it a good time to provide an update on just how the nasty warming of our planet is going:

Big snow flakes fell early Friday evening, turning Downtown Boise into a giant snow globe for people on their way home from work. The snow caught many people off guard, including this bicyclist heading down Idaho Street between 8th and 9th around 5:45 p.m. Across the Treasure Valley, tree branches heavy with wet, snow-covered leaves fell on power lines, causing scattered power outages.

This is the earliest measurable snowfall in Boise since recordkeeping began in 1898, according to the National Weather Service. At 10 p.m., the Weather Service said 1.7 inches of snow had fallen. The previous earliest recorded snowfall was Oct. 12, 1969, when a little more than an inch fell.

Pesky reality, dropping like thick, wet snow all over their lovely computer models.

Hat-tip: Jim

Continue Reading »

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t’s a mere pittance following the ACLU’s contribution of $1.2 million to the No-on-8 campaign to turn back the vote of the people and bring gay marriages of all sorts and sizes to California, but it’s another indication of the advertising blitz that opponents of gay marriage and fence-sitters will have to endure:

Actor Brad Pitt said today that he will donate $100,000 to beat the November ballot measure that would outlaw gay marriage.

The Los Angeles Times‘ celebrity reporter Tina Daunt has more details, including this gem: “Pitt’s donation marks the largest thus far to the anti-Prop. 8 campaign by an A-list celebrity.” (SacBee)

Proving that “A-list” and “F-grade” still go hand in hand, Pitt issued a statement:

“Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn’t harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8.”

Hmmm. Does that mean he no longer supports abortion?

I know of no one who supports 8 who doesn’t want gays to live the lives they want (as long as it doesn’t harm us by dragging public obscenity into our schools and neighborhoods), and doesn’t want them to live lives free of discrimination.  Go ahead, do all your stuff amongst yourselves, even if normal folks find it disgusting.  By all means, visit each other in hospitals and let each other execute wills, and get tax breaks, whatever.

Just don’t get married.  Get civil unioned.

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Putting The Freak In Eco-Freak

“I

‘m crying,” emailed Incredible Daughter #2, “because I’m laughing so hard.”I laughed too, but I also was more than a little troubled by the clip she attached to her email:

(If link is broken, click here)

This wailing and flailing over fallen trees is terrifically funny because they all seem so foolish, so out of whack with normal priorities and sensibilities, so ignorant of the cruel ways of nature.

But these people are the reality of the hardcore environmental movement, and watching them you look into the soul of the movement and discover how sick and extreme it really is.

So watch, laugh … and ponder. Continue Reading »

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