Meet Dick and Prick

Welcome to Texas. Allow me to introduce two of the most prominent members of our state government:

     

Governor DICK

Attorney General PRICK

 

These cruel, arrogant bigots with a long history of anti-gay activity are now persecuting transgender kids and their parents in Texas, threatening them with jail and fines for "child abuse" for supporting their child's medically supervised gender reassignment.  Read all about it in this post over at Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters:

ACLU, Lambda Legal steps in with lawsuit for family feeling the brunt of Texas investigation of trans children and their parents

A state district judge placed a temporary hold on the investigation of one family yesterday, which Prick is trying to get overturned.  Read more at the Texas Tribune, a non-profit investigative website:

Attorney General Ken Paxton appeals restraining order that blocked state agency from investigating trans teen’s family

Students at one state unversity held a protest of the anti-trans order today; I hope there will be more protests against this unconscionable and unconstitutional invasion of privacy statewide.  I can't believe any higher-level court, state or federal, will let it stand.  As I understand it, this persecution is not even based on a state law, just Prick's legal opinion, which is not legally binding.  I'd like to tell him where to stuff it.

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Blind Faith

A lone Penn State student confronts his peers in their mad fury to uphold their Leader against all reason and against all concept of justice:



Of course, as we in Texas know only too well, the Church of Football is the biggest religious outfit in the country, demanding total unquestioning allegiance from its tens of millions of followers, and is practically the state religion down here. Andrew Sullivan nails it:

Does anyone not see the extraordinary ironies and parallels here? Yes, this is a classic "father" figure, like a priest or bishop or Pope. The man is even called "Paterno". And what Paterno did is what the current Pontiff did when he was an archbishop in Munich, where he was told of a priest under his jurisdiction who had raped children. He didn't alert the police; he merely sent the rapist on to a psychiatrist and the man went on to rape many more children. And we might as well face it: college football is a kind of religion for many. Challenging the Pope of Penn State was unthinkable.

I regard the current actual Pope as an accessory to child-rape, as I do Paterno. But their paternal authority within religious institutions allowed them to carry on. And this is another thing one can say about this profoundly fucked-up culture of abuse: once condoned or treated lightly, the abuses often get worse and worse. I am not surprised that prescient Mark Madden is now hearing rumors that Sandusky was "pimping out young boys to rich donors." Pedophiles find each other.

All they need is for good people to look the other way. And a cult of authority that never challenges the father figure.

The actual grand jury report, with all its shocking details, is here. And there's this note in the Washington Blade today from a gay Penn State alum who is still involved with the campus LGBT center:

Surveying the faces of the Penn State scandal — Sandusky, Paterno, Spanier, coach Mike McQueary, athletic director Tim Curley, vice president Gary Schultz — all are straight men. This scandal isn’t about gay men; it’s about greed and a culture that prized money over doing the right thing. . . .

But the scandal raises deeper questions about our society. There’s been much indignation expressed about then-graduate assistant McQueary’s actions. He witnessed Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in the showers yet reportedly did nothing. Commentators and bloggers have insisted they would have intervened. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Last month, a two-year-old toddler was struck by two vans on a busy street in China. Eighteen pedestrians and cyclists passed by the child, who later died, before someone finally stopped to help.

That incident — and the Sandusky scandal — reminds me of a lecture I attended while at Penn State. My political science professor was talking about nationalism and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. It was a frigid February morning and just before class started, she walked to the back of the room and opened a window. As she spoke, the classroom grew colder and colder and students began donning coats and hats. As the professor talked about the circumstances under which societies turn to nationalism and xenophobia, student after student expressed their doubt and indignation — “That could never happen in the United States.” Finally, when the cold became too much even for the professor, she said, “How can you be sure you would stand up to the government and its weapons and tanks, when none of you even had the nerve to ask me to close the window?”

It’s a lesson that rings tragically relevant today. Were senior officials afraid to call police because they wanted to protect the lucrative revenue stream provided by the football team? Were custodial staff who reportedly witnessed Sandusky’s crimes deterred from reporting him out of fear for their jobs? It’s comforting to think we’d all have helped that 10-year-old boy, but an entire network of adults failed him. And so many others.

What I Say:  Unless you've been traveling with your eyes shut, once you pass the 50 mark, long observation makes a lot of things plain. And the truth is, people are not by default naturally wise, or kind, or just. The default, my friends, is ignorance, cruelty, and selfishness. The virtues require long training, and much practice.

The unexamined life is not worth living.  --Socrates.

So Exactly WHO Are the Child Molesters?

Above, a pamphlet from the infamous Save Our Children campaign in Dade County, Florida, in 1977, led by Anita Bryant:  the Big Lie that's been told and retold down to this very day by Christianists - who like to keep the real sexual abuse story hidden away, not talked about . . . oh no.  That would be too embarrassing for a lot of straight men.

With his usual excellent logic - and the plain, provable facts - Rob Tisinai exposes the vicious lies in this great video, with source references at the end. 



See also the very well documented report at Box Turtle Bulletin, "Are Gays a Threat to Our Children?"

Of course, being gay - or being any other minority, for that matter - doesn't make you an automatic saint, of course not.  But neither does it make you an automatic monster.  We are human beings just like our straight brothers and sisters - a mixture, just like them, of good and bad and indifferent.  No better, no worse:  human.  And now it's time for these lies to stop.

Send this on to someone you love who has never gotten these vile old myths about gay people completely out of their heads.

P.S. - Read Rob's touching story about growing up gay, and learning to hide it behind a "nice-guy" image, so he'd be liked - not hated.  I think many of us can relate to that one.