March 1, 2014

Why Are Conservatives So Freaked Out by Gays?

The push in Arizona to legalize discrimination didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a response to the imaginary belief in the “homosexual agenda” of “total domination.”

Some on the right are really freaked out by gays. In fact, some don’t even want to do business with them. You really need to have some serious issues with gay people to say “no” to their money in this challenging economy.

Why is fear mongering against the LGBT community part of the conservative platform? True, Arizona governor Jan Brewer just vetoed a bill that would’ve in essence legally sanctioned discrimination against members of the gay community, but still 13 other states are or have recently considered similar laws.

People like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Tucker Carlson all publicly support the proposed Arizona law, with Carlson calling it necessary to prevent “fascism.” Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips even said that without this law, Christians could be forced to bake wedding cakes in the shape of a giant penis.

Then there are the influential conservative “Christian” groups who have long demonized gays, such as Bryan Fischer at the American Family Association (AFA) who said the “homosexual agenda” is “the greatest immediate threat to every freedom and right that is enshrined in the First Amendment.” Even the Republican Party’s 2012 platform made it seem like the end of days were approaching with their description of gay marriage as “an assault on the foundations of our society.” [http://www.gop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012GOPPlatform.pdf]

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/01/why-are-conservatives-so-freaked-out-by-gays.html

March 1, 2014

Charles Koch says he’s trying “to save the country”

In a rare interview, the influential right-wing donor says his goal is to fight cronyism and promote cooperation

ELIAS ISQUITH

Like the rest of his family, Charles Koch isn’t one to frequently sit down for an interview. But in an interview with the Wichita Business Journal, the conservative billionaire magnate spoke at length about his life in the world of business and touched upon the philosophy that guides he and his brothers’ prolific political donations.

When asked by the interviewer why the Kochs continue to be so involved in politics, despite the backlash from the left as well as those who decry the influence of the hyper-wealthy on America’s political system, Koch answered in somewhat messianic terms, arguing that if the Kochs don’t work to “save the country,” nobody will.

“It’s like [former professional golfer] Lee Trevino used to say,” said Koch, “somebody asked him how are you winning all these golf tournaments, and he said, ‘Well, somebody has got to win them and it might as well be me.’” He continued, saying, “That’s the way I am on this. There doesn’t seem to be any other large company trying to do this so it might as well be us. Somebody has got to work to save the country and preserve a system of opportunity.”

Koch then went on an extended riff decrying the influence of “cronyism” in the American economy:

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http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/charles_koch_says_hes_trying_to_save_the_country/

March 1, 2014

'McConnell's Solyndra': Tea Party Attacks Mitch For Clean Energy Loan Bid

SAHIL KAPUR – FEBRUARY 28, 2014, 11:46 AM EST

A conservative group pushing to oust Mitch McConnell is bashing the Senate Republican leader over his past support for federally-backed clean energy loans in Kentucky.

"Mitch McConnell's Solyndra Double-Standard," blared the latest attack from FreedomWorks, which is supporting McConnell's conservative challenger, Matt Bevin, in the GOP primary.

The tea party group dug up a 2011 article in the New York Times which reported that McConnell sought to steer clean-energy projects to Kentucky, making two personal appeals to the Obama administration in 2009 seeking up to $235 million in government loans for a Kentucky plant to build electric vehicles.

"I hope you will realize the importance of such job creation to Kentucky," McConnell reportedly wrote to erstwhile Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a July 2009 memo, on behalf of an application from Zap Motor Manufacturing in Franklin, Ky. The Times also reported that McConnell backed the project after the company hired a Kentucky lobbyist who was a contributor to the Republican leader's campaigns.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/mcconnells-solyndra-freedomworks

March 1, 2014

Anti-LGBT activist Scott Lively: Gays cause divorce and will legalize pedophilia in five years

By David Ferguson
Friday, February 28, 2014 13:48 EST

Far-right anti-LGBT pastor Scott Lively was a guest on Niall Boylan’s Dublin, Ireland-based talk show on Thursday. Right Wing Watch reported that the two sparred about the passage of Uganda’s controversial new anti-LGBT law.

Lively contended that LGBT people are responsible for the high divorce rate among heterosexual couples. He went on to say that if LGBT people have their way, pedophilia will be legal in the U.S. within five years.

“You’re accusing the gay community of destroying family values,” said Boylan. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“I am,” Lively replied, saying that LGBT influence comes out of “the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxism,” a right-wing conspiracy theory that Marxist communists in Frankfurt Germany planned an all-out cultural war, subverting conservative Western values through the arts and culture.

“Marxism has always been about destroying civilization so that they can rebuild on the ashes their socialist, utopian society,” said Lively.

These cultural Marxist LGBT people, he said, have made it their first aim to “break down the nuclear family” and “take their model of sexual anarchy into the mainstream.”

In the 1960s, he said, “the gay model of sexual anarchy was introduced and the heterosexuals adopted the gay model. That’s what’s going on.”

The proper Christian model for a home, he said, is a man and a woman married to each other and raising children. The husband, he said, is the head of the house. The relationship between spouses is one of “master and servant, not president and vice president.”

LGBT people, he continued, are going to use the legalization of same-sex marriage will “open the door to lots of other deviant sexual conduct,” including “polygamy, polyamory, incest, pederasty, even pedophilia.”

Boylan cut in, “You’re not suggesting that if we vote yes for same-sex marriage that in 20 years’ time the world will become so liberal that we will allow people to have sex and marry twelve-year-olds.

“It won’t be twenty years, it will be five years,” said Lively.

Lively is one of the country’s most vicious and strident anti-LGBT activists. His book, The Pink Swastika, alleges that homosexuals were the inventors of Nazism and that the Nazi atrocities of World War Two were the fault of gays and lesbians.

He was integral to the passage of Uganda’s draconian anti-LGBT law that punishes homosexual behavior with life imprisonment. The law originally called for the death penalty. Lively also helped Russian legislators draft their law outlawing “gay propaganda,” i.e., the depiction of LGBT relationships in anything other than a negative light.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/28/anti-lgbt-activist-scott-lively-gays-cause-divorce-and-will-legalize-pedophilia-in-five-years/

Full article posted with permission.

February 28, 2014

Arizona Not Done! Bill Would Allow Judges To Discriminate Against Gays

Source: TPM

DYLAN SCOTT – FEBRUARY 28, 2014, 1:40 PM EST

Another Arizona anti-gay bill that had largely flown under the radar could be coming up for a vote in the state House, the Arizona Republic reported Friday. The bill would allow judges and other public officials to decline to perform same-sex marriages based on their religious beliefs.

According to the legislature's website, the bill was introduced on Jan. 28. The House Government Committee approved it with a "do pass" recommendation on Feb. 4, and the House Rules Committee cleared it on Feb. 18.

The Republic reported that the legislation was "awaiting debate" in front of the full House.

The proposed bill language says that: "the government may not require a minister to solemnize a marriage that is inconsistent with the minister's sincerely held religious beliefs."

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/arizona-hb-2481-anti-gay-bill

February 28, 2014

Gay marriage fight pits Texas AG vs. gay friend

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WACO, Texas (AP) — When Greg Abbott was paralyzed by a fallen tree in 1984, Mark Phariss flew 500 miles to his friend’s bedside. They were law school pals who swapped stories over dinner, job leads and airport rides, and they still exchange Christmas cards today.

Their friendship is now at an extraordinary junction: Phariss, who is gay, filed the Texas lawsuit that a federal judge used this week to strike down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, which Abbott, Texas’ attorney general, has vowed to defend all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Both chalk it up as a remarkable coincidence. Abbott, a Republican who is running for Texas governor, said Friday he still considers Pharris a friend, even though they’ve lost touch in the past decade.

Phariss, who never told Abbott he was gay, echoed the sentiment — even as Abbott works to uphold what Phariss considers to be discrimination. “If I was only friends with the people I agreed with, particularly in Texas, I wouldn’t have many friends,” Pharris told The Associated Press.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/gay_marriage_fight_pits_texas_ag_vs_gay_friend/

February 28, 2014

Jailed White Supremacist Now Doing All He Can To Leave The Small Town He Tried To Take Over

CATHERINE THOMPSON – FEBRUARY 28, 2014, 2:08 PM EST

The white supremacist jailed on charges of terrorizing the residents of Leith, N.D. almost walked out of court as a free man on Thursday.

Craig Cobb pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor menacing charges and one felony in a deal that got him a one-year suspended sentence and four years of supervised probation, the Bismarck Tribune reported.

But he wasn't allowed to leave jail as expected because District Judge David Reich deferred that sentence, according to the Tribune. Reich ordered an investigation into the terrorizing incident in Leith and into the hate crimes charge that Cobb fled in Canada and it could take up for a month for him to receive a report.

Cobb has said he plans to leave North Dakota for good whenever he resolves his legal issues. But the Tribune points out that's not possible until another state agrees to supervise his probation.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/craig_cobb_pleads_guilty_wants_to_leave_north_dakota

February 28, 2014

Ukraine's deposed leader blames the US for ‘gangster coup’ in defiant presser

By Julian Pecquet

Ukraine's deposed leader vowed to return to power and blamed the U.S. and other Western powers for a “gangster coup” during his first press conference since fleeing to Russia.

“The disturbances and victims are the consequences of the political crisis, the result of the irresponsible policies of the West, which encouraged the [opposition movement] Maidan,” Viktor Yanukovych said during a defiant press conference Friday in Rostov-on-Don, 40 miles from the border with Ukraine.

Yanukovych fled the country when the Ukrainian parliament voted to depose him last weekend after a crackdown on protesters left dozens of people dead. He vowed to return to Ukraine “as soon as the safety of myself and my family can be guaranteed.”

“Nobody overthrew me,” he said in Russian, according to the BBC. “I was forced to leave Ukraine under a threat to my life. And to the lives of my loved ones.”

The Obama administration has sided squarely with the protesters, granting the new temporary government an emergency $1 billion loan this week to shore up the former Soviet country's dismal finances. Russia has denounced the recent developments but said it would not interfere, despite military maneuvers on the border with Ukraine and pro-Russian protests in its strategic Crimean region.



Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/europe/199546-yanukovych-blames-us-for-gangster-coup#ixzz2uevGt5iv

February 28, 2014

Arizona legislators shelve gay bill

Source: The Hill

February 28, 2014, 05:01 pm

By Mike Lillis

Legislators in Arizona appear to be giving up the fight for vetoed legislation that would allow businesses to refuse service to gay people on religious grounds.

Although a number of Republicans, conservative groups and religious rights advocates have said the bill is needed to protect constitutionally guaranteed rights, the GOP-led legislature is ready to move on to other issues, according to the state senator who sponsored the contentious proposal.

"I doubt we will try again this year," Sen. Steven B. Yarbrough (R) said Friday in a short email. "We have a lot of other legislation to try to get home and there will be the inevitable changes manifested by election year."

The news won't be welcomed by the conservative pundits and advocacy groups that had urged the bill's passage. Many of those voices, outraged at Gov. Jan Brewer's (R) veto, were likely hopeful that the Republican-led legislature would try again this year.



Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/199600-arizona-legislators-shelve-gay-bill

February 28, 2014

Illinois Woman Charged With Vandalizing 20 Churches, Mosques

Source: TPM

ERIC LACH – FEBRUARY 28, 2014, 5:21 PM EST

An Illinois woman is facing felony charges for allegedly vandalizing 20 houses of worship, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Meghan Heinze, 22, allegedly used red spray paint to deface religious institutions in a number of towns including Gurnee, Waukegan and Libertyville since Feb. 14. According to the Tribune, those institutions included several churches and at least one mosque.

Heinze reportedly confessed to police that she spray-painted words, upside-down crosses and smiley faces. Investigators found text messages suggesting that Heinze was trying to get access to a gun, and her mother told police that Heinze had become obsessed with "with Nazis and serial killer videos," the Tribune reported.

Heinze appeared in court Friday, and faces charges including criminal defacement to property at a place of worship and criminal damage to property. After the hearing, Heinze's mother approached a prosecutor, and told him that, "I apologize for my daughter’s actions, even though she is an adult … She has no priors, not even a traffic ticket. She’s not in her right mind."

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/illinois-vandalism