Reflections From a Murky Pond

Carrie Prejean, currently Miss California, may have her title stripped from her by the Miss USA pageant administration.  She may also lose her position as first runner-up in the 2009 Miss USA pageant, which was held April 19. Both decisions may well be announced tomorrow (Monday, May 10, 2009).

If she is stripped of the title and position that she earned it won’t be because of the semi-nude photos of her that were released by those who are unfriendly towards her – though those photos will undoubtedly be used as the excuse and/or justification for her punishment.

Miss Prejean won’t lose her title over the fact that there are photos in which her tits – which the Miss USA pageant bought for her – weren’t covered by fabric.  If she is stripped of her Miss California title, it’ll be be because she wouldn’t say that she supported Gay Marriage.

Voicing beliefs that don’t match the queers’ agenda is grounds for insult and now punishment.

If having had nude or semi-nude photos of ones’ self in existance were a problem for contestants in the Miss USA pageant, then Miss Rhode Island, Alysha Castonguay, would have been censured as well. While serving as  a New England Patriots Cheerleader she posed semi-nude for Maxim magazine. The Miss USA pageant coordinators had no problems with these photos.

No, it won’t be Carrie Prejean’s unclothed breasts that cost her the Miss California title and that of first runner-up in the 2009 Miss USA pageant. It’ll be because she had the temerity to say when asked that she believed that marriage is between a man and woman as her Christian faith directs her to do.

~*~

NOTE: The Miss USA pageant does have perfectly legal grounds under their contract with Ms. Prejean to strip her of her titles. She did in fact violate her contract with them by not telling them of the semi-nude photos existence. Ms. Castonguay is said to have been upfront about the fact that she had been in at least one semi-nude photoset.

Of course Alysha Castonguay’s semi-nude photos were published in Maxim magazine for all the world to see, whereas Ms. Prejean’s semi-nude photos were made when she was beginning her modeling career at 17 and were merely part of her portfolio which would be sent to various agencies and clients.

But every thinking American knows that the only reason that she’s being persecuted is because she refused to set aside her faith for the sake of the queers’ agenda and the anti-American atrocity of political correctness.

Tags: Celebrities | Christianity | Christophobia | Ethics & Morality | Freedom | Gay Rights | Heterophobia | LGBT | Political Correctness | Prejean | Prejudice | Society

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Perez Hilton aka Mario Lavandeira is the latest thuggish agendist to try to (mis)use US Copyright Laws to silence criticism of his actions and agenda. The queer “media personality” is attempting to get an embarrassing video removed from YouTube, falsely claiming that it violates his copyright of the material.

The video that Perez is bothered by was produced by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a group that rather virulently opposes gay marriage. As part of the one-minute video is a three-second clip of Hilton calling Miss California Carrie Prejean a “dumb bitch.”

Perez Hilton: Queer Copyright Thug

NOTE: I’m not sure how long this video will remain online. YouTube has a long history of bending over for homosexuals, Islamists, and other related groups who dislike Free Speech when it’s contrary to their respective agendas, so this video could be pulled at any time. I’ll try to find other sources for it if that happens.

Laviendra’s attorneys have issued a DMCA takedown notice over a TV ad posted to YouTube. YouTube, of course complied – but the video is viral enough that they’ve been, so far, unable to remove all copies of it from the site.

I guess that, since Lavandeira has decided to reinvent himself as a queer rights “activist,” he thinks that he has gained some form of entitlement. That’s abhorrent and pathetic since Lavandeira’s greatest claim to fame or celebrity – well, the greatest claim that can or should be mentioned in polite company at least; he might have others – was posting photos of celebrities – without permission from the copyright owners.

Lavandiera, of course, defended himself against the lawsuits that resulted by claiming that his defacement of the images with sophomorically crude scribbling of penises, cocaine, and semen on the subjects’ faces rendered his conduct Fair Use.

Does, in what passes for Perez Hilton’s deranged mind – AIDS Dementia Complex? – scrawling a few comments and/or crude and insulting graphics on an image is fair use, but including 3 seconds of video in a 30-second ad is copyright infringement? Most likely not.

Lavandeira/ Hilton is just another queer – though worse and more disgusting than most – who is more than willing to use any means available to damage and hopefully silence those who don’t “bend over” for the queer agenda in America.

I’m no great fan of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), and they’ve in the past also over-utilized copyright laws against their detractors, but I certainly hope they use any and all means at their disposal to defeat and break Perez Hilton over this.

Tags: America | Christianity | DOMA | Freedom | Gay Rights | Heterophobia | Law | LGBT | Society | Thugs

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The LGBT community has been quite vocal and vitriolic recently. They’ve vehemently complained about California’s electorate passing Proposition 8, boycotting businesses who’s employees donated to the Prop 8 cause, and even going so far in a few cases as to assault people, and to attack and vandalize churches nationwide. The gays have ranted at President-elect Obama for his choice of Pastor Rick Warren, a proponent of traditional marriage and Prop 8, to perform the Invocation at Obama Inauguration. LGBT community has been particularly loud in their complaint that Obama has failed somehow to choose an openly queer person for his Cabinet.

Oscar and Grammy Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter, staunch Gay Rights activist, and openly lesbian Melissa Etheridge has been quite involved with the struggle of Gays v. California. She had previously went so far as to threaten to refuse to pay her California state income tax in response to Prop 8’s passage. Mrs. Etheridge has to some extent been the darling of the LGBT Community to date.

But Melissa Etheridge has seemingly strayed from the currently hyper-polarized agenda of the LGBT community. Unlike many other gays and lesbians she has failed to brand President-elect Obama as a homophobe and has even went so far as to invite Pastor Rick Warren into her home in order to talk with him about same-sex marriage and gay rights in general. Her opinions of Warren and her views on how gays should move forward in response to his selection to perform the Invocation may well be seen as heretical by her own people.

From the Huffignton Post of the unlikely all places:

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say “In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him.” They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn’t sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

— Melissa Etheridge
HuffPo, The Choice Is Ours Now

Melissa Etheridge is a brave woman. It takes great courage to speak reason and rational behavior in the face of anger, hate, and intolerance. One has to wonder what price she will be forced to pay for looking beyond indignation, what punishment, if any, the LGBT community will enact upon her for breaking ranks with them on this issue.

In the current wildly intolerant climate of the Gay Rights movement will Melissa Etheridge be labeled as some sort of “Gay Uncle Tom” for not unilaterally denouncing both Obama and Warren? Will Gays now boycott Etheridge’s music and ostracize her and her family?

Tags: Gay Rights | Intolerance | LGBT | Liberals | Politics | Prejudice | Society

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The American people, fueled by the Media’s heavy and biased coverage – have made a very big issue out of Obama selecting Pastor Rick Warren, who advocate for Proposition 8 to perform the Invocation at Obama’s January 20th Inauguration.  In the wake of California’s passage of Proposition 8, Homosexuals and their allies have done much to keep this topic in the forefront of our nation’s consciousness.  What has been largely ignored by the media, and therefor what resides outside the ken of much of America is that there are two (2) religious rites at an Inauguration – the Invocation and the Benediction.

I find it quite telling and quite sad that only the Invocation is considered newsworthy, and that only because of the controversy surrounding Obama’s selection of Pastor Warren to perform. Obama’s choice of the priest to deliver the Benediction should have gotten a lot more coverage than has so far.

President-elect Barack Obama has selected Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a stalwart of the civil rights movement and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to perform the Benediction at Obama’s Inauguration.

The 87-year-old retired pastor has been a stalwart of the civil rights movement. For over a half century Lowell as been in the front lines in the fight for racial equality.

In the 1950s – prior to much of the more publicized Civil Rights movements – Lowery headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places.

In 1957, Lowery, along with Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth, co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Civil Rights organization that propelled Dr. King to international prominence.

In 1959, Lowery’s property was seized in along with that of other civil rights leaders by the State of Alabama as part of a libel suit filed by the Montgomery, AL police department. It took four years and U.S. Supreme Court ruling to reverse the lower courts decision.

Rev. Lowery is a co-founder and former president of the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella organization for various civil rights groups.  As part of the Black Leadership Forum Lowery was among the first five African Americans to get arrested at the South African Embassy in Washington D.C. during the anti-apartheid demonstrations.

Reverend Lowery has repeatedly advocated for LGBT rights, considering them nothing more or less than normal civil rights, and supports same-sex marriage as one of those basic rights that all Americans are inherently owed.

Gods in their Heavens! Lowery led the Selma March at MLK’s direct request in March, 1965. Go look up “Bloody Sunday”!

It’s truly sickening that the MSM in its quest for ratings and its fervor to denounce Conservatives has willfully ignored Rev. Lowery’s selection to perform perform the Benediction at President-elect Obama’s Inauguration.

Edited – January 20, 2009: The full transcript of Lowery’s Benediction can be found here.

Tags: 2008 Elections | Blacks | Civil Rights | Gay Rights | LGBT | Media Bias | Obama | Politics | Prejudice | Religion

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 11:18 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

On November 4th, 2008. the voters in California voted in favor of Proposition 8 – by a reasonably slim 52.3% to 47.7% margin – which amended the California State Constitution to include verbiage that strictly defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

California State Constitution
SECTION 2. Article I. Sect ion 7.5

Thus Proposition 8 overruled the May 15, 2008 decision by the California Supreme Court that ruled that the previous Proposition 22 – which passed with 61.4% of the vote – violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. As a result Gay Marriage was once again forbidden in California.

As anyone with a brain would expect, the LGBT community and its supporters are very much up in arms over this development. There are holding protests across the whole nation and proceeding to move forward with litigation to have the constitutional amendment overruled. The LGBT community is outraged that the voters of California took their rights away twice!

One has to ask though what rights did the homosexual lose? The answer is not a single one under California law.  California recognizes both hetero- and homosexual Domestic Partnerships, which as of 2007 grant all of the same rights and responsibilities as marriages under CA state law (see California Family Code §297.5)

Registered domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.

California Family Code
SECTION 297(a)

The first thought that came to mind was that these Domestic Partnerships wouldn’t make the participants eligible for the same federal programs and protections granted to married couples. This is actually true, but is sadly irrelevant. The federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which President Bill Clinton signed into law on September 21, 1996 expressly states that the Federal Government may not treat same-sex relationships as marriages for any purpose, even if concluded or recognized by one of the states. Whether married or partnered, same-sex couples are denied federal recognition.

So it comes down to language and the weight that people place on the word “Marriage.” Homosexuals weren’t interested in their rights, which weren’t in jeopardy. The outrage caused by Prop 8 is seemingly based on the gay community’s need to have the California government say that they have the “right” to say that they’re married.

Essentially the LGBT community tried to legislate and litigate acceptance and got “slapped in the face” by homophobia. They also – I hope but do not conclude unwittingly – ran afoul of Christian churches who are experiencing an increased fear of government interference.

Someday people will hopefully learn that you cannot legislate or litigate aceeptance, only enforced tolerance and equality of measurable and substansive rights under the law of the land.  It won’t be today though or next week – or next year.

Tags: California | Defense of Marriage | Gay Rights | Homophobia | LGBT | Marriage | Politics | Religion | Society | The Constitution

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.