MASSACHUSETTS: Christianists Attack Openly Gay Supreme Court Nominee

Openly gay Massachusetts Supreme Court nominee Barbara Lenk endured some Christianist assholery yesterday during her marathon seven hour confirmation hearing. Lenk is married to a woman and therefore placing her on the state's highest court will turn children gay. Or something.

During her confirmation hearing before the Governor’s Council, some critics testified that her marriage is part of a broader plan to give legitimacy to homosexuality in the public arena. “This will be a clarion call to all that want to indoctrinate our children into homosexuality,’’ testified Sally Naumann, who, like Lenk, lives in Carlisle. “How will we ever be able to say no to our children?" [snip] With her wife, lawyer Debra Krupp, and their two teenage daughters sitting behind her, Lenk was stone-faced during the criticism. Lenk vowed to be a judge who hews to the law and will not be what critics call an activist judge. She also balked when asked to list the cases she handled that dealt with gays or lesbians. “I don’t keep records that way,’’ she said. “I don’t regard these cases in any way of being homosexual or lesbian issues.’’

Tweet Of The Day - NOM

NOM has picked up on Sen. Ruben Diaz' claim of receiving death threats over a comment left on a Village Voice blog post. Because an anonymous internet comment is SO much worse than 20,000 screaming evangelicals waving signs that we will all burn in an eternal lake of fire.

NEW YORK: Sen. Ruben Diaz To Stage Massive Anti-Gay Marriage Rally

Arch homophobe Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) will once again work with anti-gay Hispanic evangelicals to stage a massive anti-marriage rally in New York City on May 15th. JMG reader Sabirjan provides us with a translation of this news story.

Radio Vision Cristiana, a New Jersey-based Spanish-language AM radio station that broadcasts religious programming, is planning a huge anti-gay march in New York City on May 15, 2011. It will be held in the Bronx (starting at noon the participants will march from 149th Street and Third avenue to 181st street in the Bronx). The radio station, as well as the main organizer of the event, State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr. are urging all Hispanics and especially evangelicals to oppose the possible legalization of same-sex marriages in New York State. Ruben Diaz is urging the participants "to paralyze all traffic in the Bronx" on that day. Organizers of the event expect up to 30,000 people to show up. A similar rally was held in 2009, it attracted about 20,000 people and took many city officials by surprise.

I attended the 2009 rally staged by Diaz and Radio Cristiana. The vast majority of the protesters arrived via church buses from outside New York City. In my video below, watch the crowd erupt in ecstatic song as their hero Diaz arrives.

Quote Of The Day - Marilyn Davenport

"Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people–mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it. You're not going to make a big deal about this are you? It's just an Internet joke." - Marilyn Davenport, Tea Party activist and Orange County GOP committee member, after being busted for having emailed the above image with the caption: "Now you know why there's no birth certificate."

PhoboQuotable - Randy Thomasson

"School administrators have frequently denied sponsoring, participating in, or allowing the 'Day of Silence,' but are nonetheless allowing students to be silent without consequences. Even some teachers will 'go silent,' writing pro-homosexuality messages on boards, and setting up classroom displays to teach impressionable children that aggressive homosexual activists are 'victims,' that more laws promoting their agenda are needed, when there are already numerous laws prohibiting physical harassment of students; and that homosexuality is natural and healthy, when it is actually unnatural and unhealthy.

"Parents who are hearing about 'Day of Silence' are appalled this immoral takeover is happening. They don't want their children subjected to in-your-face sexual indoctrination, so they're keeping their kids home. Because school districts are allowing this brainwashing during the entire school day, morally-sensitive parents are counter-protesting by removing both their child and the child's ADA funding on Friday." - Randy Thomasson of Save California, in a press release that includes links to NARTH.

Tweet Of The Day - Bret Easton Ellis

PhoboQuotable - Richard Land

"So a six-foot guy who shaves every day can come in wearing a dress, high heels, and earrings and tell his employer that he's really a woman and he wants to use the women's bathroom facilities, and there's nothing the employer can do to stop him if he wants to do business in Metro. Clearly the Metro Council members, a majority of them succumbed to the intense lobbying of a minority that wants special rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people." - Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's "ethics commission," responding to Nashville's decision not to do business with companies that discriminate against their LGBT employees.

RELATED: In 2008 Land named the "homosexual agenda" as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Donald Trump: I Sent Private Birther Investigators To Hawaii

TENNESSEE: Anti-Gay Housing Official Reprimanded And Censured

Last month I called attention to Vicki Barnes, the Tennessee housing official who wrote a letter to HUD denouncing their proposed federal plan to end housing discrimination against LGBT people. In the letter, Barnes compared gay people to murderers and drug dealers. Yesterday local NBC television reported that Barnes has been reprimanded and censured for her letter, but still has her job. All future correspondence out of Barnes' office must now be reviewed by her superiors. Not a complete win for us, but probably the best we could hope for.

(Tipped by JMG reader Chris)

Montana State GOP Rep Celebrates: Gays Can't Act Gay In Public In My State

Montana GOP state Rep. Bill Peterson claims that since the state legislature blocked a recent move to decriminalize homosexuality, there are happily still two laws which he can use to persecute gay people.

According to Peterson, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, there are at least two prosecutable offenses—felonies punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. One is the "recruitment" of non-gays. "Homosexuals can't go out into the heterosexual community and try to recruit people, or try to enlist them in homosexual acts," Peterson says. He provides an example: "'Here, young man, your hormones are raging. Let's go in this bedroom, and we'll engage in some homosexual acts. You'll find you like it.'"

Peterson hasn't actually seen this happen, he says, because "I don't associate with that group of people at all... I've associated with mainstream people all my life." The other offense, in Peterson's legal opinion, is the public display of homosexuality, since he believes the Supreme Court's decision only applies to private acts behind closed doors. Being gay in public, he says, is a wholly different matter: "In my mind, if they were engaging in acts in public that could be construed as homosexual, it would violate that statute. It has to be more than affection. It has to be overt homosexual acts of some kind or another... If kissing goes to that extent, yes. If it's more than that, yes."

The head of a local lawyers group clarifies: "The statute will not be enforced as written—ever. We take our marching orders not only from the legislature but from the courts in which we appear."

(Tipped by JMG reader Michael)

Cindy Jacobs: God Is Sending Natural Disasters Because Of The Repeal Of DADT

Not only did God kill all those birds in Arkansas because of the repeal of DADT, the earthquake in Japan and that tsunami? Totally because of gay soldiers in the U.S.

Washington "Moonie" Times Publishes Repulsive Anti-Trans Editorial

The Washington Times has published an editorial denouncing the attempt to allow transgender New York City residents the right to a birth certificate noting their correct gender. The piece refers to trans people as "just messed up" individuals who have "surgically mutilated" their bodies. And it goes from there.

It’s fair to ask where all of this is heading. Could Jocelyn Wildenstein - famously nicknamed “Catwoman” for the feline appearance she achieved through multiple plastic surgeries - decide after years of struggling with her identity that she is actually a cat? With the precedents set by these new policies, all she would need to do to secure her new cat identity is find a doctor to certify that she was undergoing “appropriate clinical treatment” to secure the right to demand that her official government documents be altered to reflect who she has become. She’s already had the surgeries. The old saying about giving an inch and losing a mile comes to mind. As Sam Berkley, born Samantha, complained in a press conference about the lawsuit, “I don’t feel comfortable with the government deciding whether I’m a man or not.” Strike “man” and replace with “human” or “sane” and there’s not much of a difference.

RELATED: A favorite publication for wingnuts like Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher, the Washington Times was founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman who have just met for the first time at a mass wedding consisting of thousands of people. Moon has called gay people "dung-eating dogs" who will be murdered by God. In the 80s, he served time in U.S. federal prison for fraud.