Asterisk

You’ve probably heard by now that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) admitted on Tuesday to an affair with an employee that resulted in a now-ten-year-old child. This revelation only comes after leaving politics when it can’t hurt his livelihood and after the employee retired earlier this year.

Oh, and after vetoing marriage equality laws in California twice. TWICE.

All day I’ve been trying to figure out how to best respond to this most recent Family Values Lying Sack Of Crap with an R behind his name who couldn’t keep his religious (Catholic, by the way) marriage vows but decided that thousands of Californians shouldn’t even have the right to make civil vows at all.

TWICE.

My first instinct was to swear a lot, but tonight I saw this picture on my facebook wall, and it does a better job than my ranting ever could.

Thank you, Courtney.

(But I do reserve the right to swear a lot at a later date.)

By now you’ve probably heard about (former) NOM Strategist Louis Marinelli‘s conversion to the side of equality. Here are two links in case you haven’t.

First, Jeremy Hooper of Good As You broke the story with a detailed post and interview:

While still not in full support of homosexuality on some levels (where he needs our help to correct misinformation), Louis is now [a] repudiating virtually all of the vitriol that he put on the public record; [b] is owning up to the major role that he’s played with NOM, including admitting that he was the impetus behind the whole summer tour; and [c] is coming out in full support of the civil marriage rights that gay people are seeking.

From there we go to Marinelli’s own blog:

Ironically, one of the last tour stops added to the itinerary was Atlanta and I bring this site up because it was in Atlanta that I can remember that I questioned what I was doing for the first time. The NOM showing in the heart of the Bible-belt was dismal and the hundreds of counter-protesters who showed up were nothing short of inspiring.

Even though I had been confronted by the counter-protesters throughout the marriage tour, the lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing.

It seems to me that what we have here is tangible proof of what LGBT leaders have been saying at least as far back as Harvey Milk.

We must destroy the myths once and for all. Shatter them. We must continue to speak out, and most importantly every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family, you must tell your relatives, you must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends, you must tell your neighbors, you must tell the people you work with, you must tell the people in the stores you shop in, and once they realize that we are indeed their children and that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do you will feel so much better.

Arisha Hatch, who led the Prop 8 Trial Tracker team that documented last summer’s bus tour, got to the heart of it in her post about Marinelli.

Out of all the people on the NOM Tour, I could never quite understand why Louis cared so much about the freedom to marry. I got why Brian Brown was there, even “understood” Maggie Gallagher’s motivations, but Louis’ attachment to the issue always seemed puzzling to me. In part because he’s agnostic, in part because he’s so young, figuring Louis out became sort of a daily obsession for me – a daily dialogue between the two of us – many times off-camera.

I can remember saying to him at one point, “I just don’t get it. I just don’t get you.”

Once he got to know LGBT people Louis didn’t get it either, and that’s what made him question the lies.

Never let yourself forget: Living our lives with integrity is the best tool we have in the struggle for civil rights.

Last year, Big Think did a special video series called Coming Out: Stories of Gay Identity. There are some wonderful stories in the series, led off by gay conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan‘s coming out to God and his parents. There’s some terrific insight here.

I really believe it is my moral responsibility as a Christian to tell the truth, because I do not believe that the truth can ever be in conflict with God. And I think a lot of people are afraid the truth is in conflict with God, and are unable to let go and let the truth of the world… I mean, as John Paul II put it, the one thing Jesus tells everybody he ever meets in the gospels, the most common thing that he ever says is, “Be not afraid.” And homophobia, whether internalized or externalized, is really fear; it’s not hatred, it’s fear. It’s fear of the truth about ourselves.

… All these things that are supposed to be contradictions within me and within many other people are not. They are actually just things we just don’t yet fully understand.

Big Think has plenty more from Andrew Sullivan. The rest of his wide-ranging interview is below.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you may have noticed that I don’t talk about being a Christian as much as I used to. That’s not an accident. There are several reasons I’ve been quiet on the issue, but the biggest is that I’m just so tired of being disappointed by Christians and most branches of the universal Church.

The problem was perfectly illustrated when author Anne Rice recently announced that she was leaving corporate Christianity. Here’s what she posted on her facebook page on July 28, 2010:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Certainly some Christians were charitable and understanding, even eager to confront the problem she pointed to. But those people were shouted down by the painfully predictable commentators who miss the point and change the subject. Here’s a quick sample of comments on two blogs that I have generally found to have thoughtful comments sections.

• “It is unlikely Anne Rice was ever truly a Christian.”
• “It seems to me that Anne Rice is immature in her faith. … She doesn’t have the personal discipleship to see the arguments from a deeply biblical perspective.”
• “She is simply young in faith and still lacking in coorperation (sic) with the gifts of the spirit.”
• “How quickly can the fickleness of our flesh be exposed on Facebook. … I can’t image the battle that is going on around this sister, or lost sheep.”
• “Anne’s own ‘return’ to faith some 10 years ago was only a return to the apostasy of the Catholic church – and that, at the same time, accompanied by a public renunciation of clear tenants of the true gospel.”
• “…she never really embraced the whole teaching of the Church, that she would experience profound conversion or leave altogether. Surely she has done much to harm the faith of many that are weak in spirit and prayer and faith in the gospel.”
• “Yes, Anne Rice should be loved … but Anne Rice’s actions in denouncing Christianity must certainly not be condoned.”

I could say a lot here, but I think I’ll just let this song speak for me.

First, a screencap taken early this morning. Then we’ll get into the WTF of it.

Brittney Hansen: We need this injustice to stop but the only way to do so is to put ALL gay people on an island with a weekly drop of food and supplies and let them all die off. We dont have to deal with them and they dont have to deal with us.

On Monday, Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper published a killer post concurring with me that Louis Marinelli III can reasonably be identified as an agent of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). To use Marinelli’s term, he is a “NOM Strategist,” and his rhetoric is wildly off-message for NOM.

Now that someone with a higher profile than mine has called Marinelli and NOM out on the connection, Marinelli’s been trying to hide what he’s been saying for the last few months since NOM aligned themselves with him. A few hours after the post went up, most of the group’s youtube videos, including the ones I embedded here in early May, joined the group’s twitter account on the scrap heap.

What was Marinelli trying to hide? I’ll let Jeremy tell you:

So once we had that confirmation that Mr. Marinelli is, in fact, in NOM’s inner circle, we started considering all of the eye-opening things that he had seen Marinelli tweet over the past few months. And frankly, we were shocked. Because in addition to the “gays have shorter life spans” one, there was a retweet that declared all gays to be single. There was the time that Mr. Marinelli said that Peter LaBarbera and his fringe “Americans For Truth” group merely “tell the truth about homosexuality.” There was the determination that marriage equality is “a mockery and a hijacking of the civil rights movement.” There were times when he flat-out called us an abomination, citing Leviticus. There was this one: “Deviance” describes actions or behaviours that violate cultural norms – homosexuality is far from a cultural norm. Therefore, it is deviant.” And this: “Homosexuality and gay marriage are wrong and harmful to society.” And this: “#iaintafraidtosay that there shouldn’t be any recognition of homosexual relationships because that is saying that homosexuality is OK.” There was this one, accompanied by a smile: “What they do is blantantly [sic] immoral. :)” There were times when Mr. Marinelli compared our unions to that which might exist between a sterile brother and sister. And other times when our very character was assaulted: “#nevertrust activists of the homosexual agenda – they are deceitful people who care only about themselves and not what’s best for society.” And so on and so on.

After Marinelli tried to erase evidence of that paragraph and more, he took to his group’s facebook page and made this request (link to the thread and a screencap from about 2:00 AM EST):

Protect Marriage: One Man, One Woman: No hate speech, no derogatory comments against homosexuals. Show your support for one man, one woman marriage. That’s what this page is about. If you’ve got something negative to say, bite your tongue. Just play nice, please.

A good suggestion, even if Marinelli was just trying to save face because people were connecting him with NOM. But as I showed you at the top of the post, it’s nigh impossible to rein people in after you’ve spent so much time and effort teaching them how to, you know, go nuts with hate speech and derogatory comments.

By the way, Marinelli’s been actively involved on the NOM facebook page since this message was posted, and that usually includes deleting posts that he considers off-message. And yet we have Brittney Hansen showing the world what she’s learned from NOM Strategist Louis Marinelli III.

Brittney Hansen: We need this injustice to stop but the only way to do so is to put ALL gay people on an island with a weekly drop of food and supplies and let them all die off. We dont have to deal with them and they dont have to deal with us.