Pope Tells Gay Man: God Made You That Way

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I'm sure my truckbuddies have already seen this story elsewhere, but I'm reprinting it for the record here in the BT. Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of sexual abuse by a Chilean priest, has reported that during a three-hour talk with Pope Francis last month, the Pope apologized to him in the name of the Church and told him:

Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.

This does not mean a change in official Catholic teaching, but coming from the head man's lips, it's pretty amazing.




Cruz, who lives and works in Philadelphia, spoke with CNN's Chris Cuomo this week:

Yankee Voters Love Trump

The Connecticut State Capitol

Last week, Alisyn Camerota of CNN's morning program New Day talked with a group of clean-cut, all-American Trump voters at the Connecticut statehouse.  This ties directly into my post last Tuesday, attempting to answer Frank's questions about "where did these people come from" - well, here is a nest of them in Frank's native state, and they are just what I said they were in my post: neither gruesome monsters nor raving lunatics, but ordinary, everyday Americans who are tragically, dangerously misguided and misinformed - and determined to stay that way.

More than that -- I want all you Yankee boys out there to listen closely to their remarks and remember these two vids next time you are tempted to bad-mouth all us Southerners as dumb, stupid rednecks.

Ignorance and blind faith, of course, have no fixed address, and are spread throughout North, South, East, and West, and all up and down the social scale.







This willfully blind faith in a political messiah is the exact equivalent of fanatical religious faith, it seems to me. But it gets even worse when the two are melded:  according to this utterly insipid guest on the Jim Bakker Show last week, Trump really, truly is "God's chosen one" and God Himself is going to curse you and your children if you don't support Trump -- no wonder so many "liberal" people hate the very name of Christianity now:




Problem is, as you fellas know if you've ever tried to talk with a Bible-thumper on your doorstep, it's nearly impossible to get someone to see what they don't want to see. The same principle applies to political fanaticism as to the religious kind.  People most often believe what they need to believe - reason and logic have nothing to do with it. That's why the nation is so polarized now, and I don't know how or when that will change.

This Week in Trumpocracy, 2/25/17

We are a month into the Trumpocracy, and make no mistake about it, my friends:  the celebrity-dictator Trump is just what he promised he would be, and it is the duty of every true liberty-loving patriot to resist the one-man rule that he wants to inflict upon our country, and resist that evil utterly, whether by great measures or small.  I am old and weary, tired of strife and effectively disabled, but I am doing what I can here by posting reports and news that may encourage some others to do more than I can.

We stand at one of the great turning points in American history, and who knows how we shall find our way out.  Perhaps the first and best thing we can all do is to see what is right before our eyes, speak the truth to our neighbors, and keep on speaking it.  Light a little candle in the darkness, if you can do no more, and keep it burning - we Americans will not go silent and unresisting into the night, will we?


1. Kudos to my trucklady friend June over at The Wounded Bird, who struck a blow for democracy way down in the bayous this week, and justly earned her 15 minutes of fame by breaking into a Senator's self-serving speech:

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2.  CNN's Jake Tapper on the "un-American" White House, which barred the nation's leading news media from a press conference yesterday:




3. Why some former Obama voters voted for Trump; notice that these folks-next-door have no fangs and horns, but are sadly misguided:




4. At CPAC this week, Trump's ghastly eminence gris Steve Bannon admitted that the goal of this administration is to "destroy the administrative state" - which your Head Trucker would translate as "destroy democracy" - in other words, replacing our system of government with the Will of Trump alone - is this not a blueprint for dictatorship?  Yes it is.  Also high treason. Daily Kos reports:

Atop Trump’s agenda, Bannon said, was the “deconstruction of the administrative state” — meaning a system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that the president and his advisers believe stymie economic growth and infringe upon one’s sovereignty.

“If you look at these Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction,” Bannon said. He posited that Trump’s announcement withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was “one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.”

The crippling or wholesale elimination of Federal agencies that ensure we receive such things as clean air, clean water, fair labor laws, fair housing standards, anti-discrimination laws, financial protections, food and drug safety, national education standards and the like, has been a goal of far-right “thinkers" for decades. Their rationale, propagated by corporate and industry-funded think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, has always been that that the existence of these “unelected" agencies represents a mortal threat to American “sovereignty and self-government." This is exactly the line Bannon was peddling at CPAC today. It is delusional, right-wing garbage.

5. A Republican state judge in Ohio wrote a blistering editorial for the Cincinnati paper, excerpt:

The leader of the band of Mad Hatters occupying the White House has already insulted allied world leaders, issued illegal and badly written orders, impugned a “so-called” judge appointed by his own party, and appointed the least-qualified cabinet ever. The first secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson. Trump appointed a big-oil executive with close ties to Russia. The first treasury secretary was Alexander Hamilton. Trump appointed a former Goldman Sachs exec who got rich foreclosing on homeowners. The national security advisor lasted 24 days.

And all that’s just at the time I write this. Who knows what happens next. Each new day is a new nightmare. We are still trying to digest one breathtaking assault on America when another is signed, issued, or Tweeted. All this amid constant lies. Constant. Lies.

I am a lifelong Republican. I voted for every Republican presidential candidate from 1968 to 2004. But I have watched what once was a sane, center-right party go off the rails, first to the extreme right, then to wherever Trump is, which is in another universe.

It’s tough, but we must end this dangerous presidency. Trump must be impeached and removed with all haste. But only Congress can initiate the process. . . .

Basic American values – free speech, the rule of law, separation of powers, even common decency – are unknown in this White House. We now have a president who has no concept of separation of powers, or why we have three branches of government. If he knew anything about the Constitution, he would know the framers envisioned just the situation we have now – a would-be dictator. They provided checks and balances – such as an independent judiciary to protect us from presidential tyranny. . . .

All the above bothers me and should appall all Americans. We must admit we have elected a president who has immediately proved himself to be a grifter, a pathological liar, a mean-spirited bully and dangerous to American values. This not-ready-for-prime-time show is too dangerous to continue. America is at stake.

6. Dan Rather, one of the elder statesmen of journalism, sounded the emergency alarm on his Facebook page:

The time for normalizing, dissembling, and explaining away Donald Trump has long since passed. The barring of respected journalistic outlets from the White House briefing is so far beyond the norms and traditions that have governed this republic for generations, that they must be seen as a real and present threat to our democracy. These are the dangers presidents are supposed to protect against, not create.

For all who excused Mr. Trump's rhetoric in the campaign as just talk, the reckoning has come. I hope it isn't true, but I fear Mr. Trump is nearing or perhaps already beyond any hope of redemption. And now the question is will enough pressure be turned to all those who enable his antics with their tacit encouragement. There has been a wall of unbending support from virtually every Republican in Congress, and even some Democrats. Among many people, this will be seen as anything approaching acceptable. And mind you, talk is cheap. No one needs to hear how you don't agree with the President. What are you going to do about it? Do you maintain that an Administration that seeks to subvert the protections of our Constitution is fit to rule unchecked? Or fit to rule at all?

This is an emergency that can no longer be placed solely at the feet of President Trump, or even the Trump Administration. This is a moment of judgement for everyone who willingly remains silent. It is gut check time, for those in a position of power, and for the nation.

7. Look into the crystal ball - is a military coup in our future? Patrick Granfield's Politico essay, "The Generals Guarding American Democracy," implies a hitherto unthinkable thought.

Bonus:  The New Yorker slyly captures the essence of the moment on its annual Eustace Tilley cover:

Capitol Hill or Closet Hill?

Washington, D.C., is gayer than San Francisco? Oh Mary, don't ask.

A CNN discussion of the new documentary Outrage, with filmmaker Kirby Dick, Charles Moran of Log Cabin Republicans, and radio talk show host Michaelangelo Signorile:

WTF: The Invisible Gays - again

On this historic day, when the whole queer community in this nation is protesting from shore to shore, all at the same time, in an unprecedented way, here is how two of the nation's biggest mainstream media web sites reported it. Screenshots taken by me about 2 p.m. CST today:

One small spot on the CNN page, which story contained a link to this other story in great big letters on the Time magazine site:

So. What is the subtext, the suggestion given by these two pieces? Two things, I think:

A) Teh gayz are a tiny, inconsequential bunch worth only a very brief mention, and

B) THEY'RE SCARY AS HELL, YOU COULD BE NEXT!

Hmmm. Seems to me we need to hold these MSM outlets accountable for fair and balanced coverage. I suspect that the Time-CNN combo is run by a bunch of Republican bigots; but that's just a guess, I don't know for sure.

Still, this is America, right? I know there are lots of other important news topics that need to be reported today, all around the country and the world. But dammit, our protests, our struggle, our civil rights, our families are bloody well important also.

I remember vividly watching the coverage of the civil rights struggle back in the 60's - the MSM always had a lot to say about those protests.

We need to demand better coverage, better reporting of our cause. As Olbermann put it so briefly and brilliantly in his equal marriage essay this week: "Just because this is the only world we have and the other guy counts too.” (Emphasis mine.)

The same goes for all mistreated groups, not just us; but this is our moment, our time, our demand for justice and equal rights. No one's going to hand it to us for free, guys.

Write some letters, post comments, make your voice heard by the MSM. Demand that national LGBT groups also turn up the heat. Remember this: it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.