Simple, isn’t it. Noted children’s book writer/illustrator Maurice Sendak asked why he liked children so much replied “They’re not racist and they don’t lie.”
Of course to the Heterofascists Maurice Sendak is a grave threat. Why? because he’s gay.
“SAN FRANCISCO — Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker has always been characterized as a conservative with libertarian leanings. But after he struck down California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban this week, he was accused by some of being something else entirely: a gay activist.
Rumors have circulated for months that Walker is gay, fueled by the blogosphere and a San Francisco Chronicle column that stated his sexual orientation was an “open secret” in legal and gay activism circles. “
Clutch those pearls like there’s no tomorrow, bitch!
“Walker himself hasn’t addressed the speculation, and he did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press on Thursday. Lawyers in the case, including those defending the ban, say the judge’s sexuality - gay or straight - was not an issue at trial and will not be a factor on appeal.”
Indeed. If the defense wanted Judge Walker to “recuse himself” they had their chance — and didn’t take it.
For obvious reasons.
“But that hasn’t stopped a public debate that exploded in the wake of the 66-year-old jurist’s Wednesday decision. Most of the criticism has come from opponents of same-sex marriage.
“Here we have an openly gay federal judge, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who, I promise you, would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution,” said Maggie Gallagher, chairwoman of The National Organization for Marriage, a group that helped fund the ban, known as Proposition 8.
In response, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee for gay candidates, launched an online petition accusing Gallagher’s group of “gay-baiting.”
But the debate raises the question: Why is sexuality different from other personal characteristics judges posses? Can a female judge rule on abortion issues? A black judge on civil rights?”
And how about all those Roman Catholics on the Supreme Court? Should they “recuse themselves” when the case reaches their docket in that they belong to a religion that while wildly supportive of wholesale child molestation abhors Teh Ghey.
“The evidence shows that, by every available metric, opposite-sex couples are not better than their same-sex counterparts; instead, as partners, parents and citizens, opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples are equal,” Walker wrote in his exacting, 136-page opinion.
“Gerard Bradley, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, published a Fox News column in the hours before Walker filed his opinion faulting the media for not forcing Walker to address his sexual orientation.
And Byran Fischer, issues director for the American Family Association, urged the group’s members to contact their congressional representatives about launching impeachment proceedings because Walker had not recused himself from a case in which “his own personal sexual proclivities utterly compromised his ability to make an impartial ruling.”
William G. Ross, an expert on judicial ethics and law professor at Samford University in Alabama, said that a judge’s sexual orientation has no more relevance to his or her ability to rule fairly on a case involving gay marriage than it would for a deeply religious judge or a judge who had been divorced multiple times.”
A lovely bitch-slap to Newt, no?
“Under the logic of the people challenging the judge’s fitness to rule on a case involving gay rights because he or she was gay, one would have to find a eunuch to serve on the case, because one could just as easily argue that a heterosexual judge couldn’t rule on it either,” Ross said.
Months before Walker struck down Proposition 8 as an unconstitutional violation of gay Americans’ civil rights, members of the team defending the ban in court had complained about what they perceived as judicial bias.
Over their vigorous objections, Walker pushed to have the proceedings televised live, a plan the U.S. Supreme Court quashed at the last minute. Then, he refused to excuse as a witness a Proposition 8 supporter who had compared gays to child molesters during the 2008 campaign. Lawyers for the two same-sex couples who sued to invalidate the ban had called him as a witness to try to prove the measure was fueled by anti-gay prejudice.”
And here he be!
As Dickens’ Mr. Grangrind said –
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!” The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely ware-house-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,-nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodat-ing grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,-all helped the emphasis. “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!” The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.”
And FACTS are precisely what Boies and Olson had on their side.
The defense? Not so much.
“Nevertheless, the defense does not plan to raise the specter of the judge’s sexual orientation as they appeal his ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Jim Campbell, a lawyer with the defense team.
“The bottom line is this case, from our perspective, is and always will be about the law and not about the judge who decides it,” Campbell said. “It’s just something that collectively as a legal team we have decided and going up, that’s what this case is. The appellate courts are going to focus on the law.”
Walker has ruled in at least two other cases involving gay rights issues during his two decades as a judge. In 1999, he rejected arguments from the parents of a San Leandro boy who claimed their religious rights were violated by pro-gay comments their son’s teacher had made in the classroom.
In the other case, he dismissed a free speech claim by two Oakland city employees whose managers had confiscated a bulletin board flier for a religious group that promoted “natural family, marriage and family values.” The city had “significant interests in restricting discriminatory speech about homosexuals,” Walker wrote in his 2005 ruling.
Until this week, though, Walker had come under more criticism for representing the U.S. Olympic Committee in a lawsuit against a gay ex-Olympian who had created the so-called Gay Olympics. Walker won, forcing the Gay Olympics to become the Gay Games. He also aggressively pursued legal fees by attaching a $97,000 lien to the home of the organization’s founder while he was dying of AIDS.
Gay activists cried foul, and his appointment to a federal judgeship was delayed for two years in the waning days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Civil rights groups also opposed Walker’s nomination because of his 15-year membership in the Olympic Club, an all-male athletic club that had only recently admitted its first black members. California’s senior senator at the time, Democrat Alan Cranston, used the club issue to question Walker’s fitness for the bench.”
Well to judge from Petrelis’ pic he’s certainly must have changed his mind about blacks. (Hubba-Hubba!)
“Observers usually describe him as a maverick who delights in keeping people guessing. They still are.
On the day of closing arguments in the gay marriage ban case, Walker said it was appropriate that the case was wrapping up in June.
“June, after all, is the month for … ” He let his deep voice trail off, and smiled at the predominantly gay courtroom. Many froze, wondering if he would refer to the month in which San Francisco celebrates gay pride like Mardi Gras. Would that be a nod to rumors he was gay?
Walker waited a beat longer, savoring the moment. The he settled the suspense.
“… weddings,” he said. “
Oh stop with the “rumors” Lisa. It’s 2010 It’s Neil Patrick Harris’ world. We just live in it.
And that’s why we’re going to get the last laugh, Maggie.
You don’t have to be Keith Olberman to find Pravda’s TV critic a steaming pile. And it’s no suprise that rather than even go so far as to fake an apology he’s elected to attack yet again.
None of this is in the least suprising. Consider the recent past.
“It took only a few hours after news circulated that entertainer and entrepreneur Merv Griffin had died (at 82, Sunday, in Los Angeles) for a drumbeat of wrath—yes, wrath—to begin on some of the Internet’s fringe Web sites, where Griffin was assailed by various contributors for allegedly having been a “closeted” homosexual who should have announced he was gay to the world—though at which stage of his career he should have made the declaration was not specified.
Perhaps when he was a big-band singer in the ’40s? Or a talk-show host from the ’60s through the ’80s? Perhaps when he emcee’d “Play Your Hunch” in the ’50s. It would have been career suicide at any rate, but some of the angry voices implied Griffin should have gone public with his sexuality anyway—whatever it may have been.
Griffin—just “Merv” to the world—was married early in his career and had one son. In later decades rumors did indeed circulate about Griffin allegedly throwing gay parties and being escorted by handsome young men. Two lawsuits from men claiming Griffin essentially jilted them were dismissed.
Whatever, the vehemence and fury in the attacks was disheartening. “A bloated pig like that should burn in hell,” wrote one anonymous assailant. Michelangelo Signorile, who runs a Web site called The Gist, wrote that Griffin could have helped prevent the AIDS epidemic if only he had spoken to his friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan about it, but that “it is highly unlikely” he ever did, preferring to remain “shockingly silent” even as “his own people were dying.”
No benefit of a doubt for poor old Merv.
There were lots of allegations, virtually no documentation, and a discomfortingly virulent tone to many of the entries (one writer referred to the late star as “Perv Griffin”), but others wrote to defend Griffin and to say that his sexuality was his own business. A few noted that for Griffin to have declared himself gay during the period of his greatest success would likely have ended it, times and attitudes being what they were.
The Internet is rife with rantings from what sometimes sound like members of a lynch mob. In this case, one might think that victims of persecution would feel a tad more reluctant to persecute someone else, especially a recently deceased man.
It would, of course, be just as wrong ever to think that a vocal malicious minority is representative of any race, political party or sexual persuasion.
Or so let us hope.”
Why should that be so uncomfortable to read? Why is it so difficult to write? Why are we still so jittery even about raising the issue in purportedly liberal-minded Hollywood in 2007? We can refer to it casually in conversation, but the mainstream media somehow remains trapped in the Dark Ages when it comes to labeling a person as gay.
Maybe that helps explain why Griffin, who died of prostate cancer Sunday at 82, stayed in the closet throughout his life. Perhaps he figured it was preferable to remain the object of gossip rather than live openly as “one of them.” But how tremendously sad it is that a man of Merv’s renown, of his gregarious nature and social dexterity, would feel compelled to endure such a stealthy double life even as the gay community’s clout, and its levels of acceptance and equality, rose steadily from the ashes of ignorance.
I’m not at all insinuating that Griffin had a responsibility to come out. That was up to him.
But what a powerful message Griffin might have sent had he squired his male companions around town rather than Eva Gabor, his longtime good friend and platonic public pal. Imagine the amount of good Merv could have done as a well-respected, hugely successful, beloved and uncloseted gay man in embodying a positive image.
As it was, I loved the guy, finding him charismatic and charming. And I had more than a passing acquaintance with him, having worked on “The Merv Griffin Show” as a talent coordinator/segment producer in 1985-86 as the show was winding down. Around the office, Merv’s being gay was understood but rarely discussed. We knew nothing of his relationships because he guarded his privacy fiercely, and we didn’t pry.”
Pretty mild I’d say. As it was I didn’t love the guy. He creeped me out in fact. Back in 198o when Tess won Best Director from the Los Angeles Film Cirtics Association, our awards ceremonies were taped for Merv’s show. It was a decidedly odd experience having dinner on a TV sound stage with Nastassja Kinski, Dustin Hoffman and Peter O’Toole — without the M.C. present. Merv didn’t appear until the moment the taping started and he vanished the nanosecond it was over. Throughout, however, we were waited upon by Merv’s Boys — an Izod-clad ahren of Muscle-twinks frssh off the steets of WeHo.
Does Tom Shales think anyone was fooled by this?
Or to put it another way does Tom Shales think no one has guessed he’s a self-loathing closet queen too?
“FORT A.P. HILL, Va. — Her crown glinting in the morning sun, Miss America was telling 45,000 Boy Scouts and their leaders the other day how thrilled she was to be here at the National Scout Jamboree, to be among “the most amazing young women …”
Whoops! The scouts, ever courteous and kind, could nonetheless barely stifle a collective groan. Some covered their faces in embarrassment. Miss America — Caressa Cameron, the former Miss Virginia — quickly recovered, apologized and explained that she usually speaks to groups of young women.
The slip was an inadvertent reminder of a host of issues, including whether to admit girls, that the Boy Scouts of America faces this year as it celebrates its 100th anniversary.
The organization, long an icon of wholesomeness in a simpler America, has seen its membership plunge by 42 percent since its peak year of 1973, when there were 4.8 million scouts. In the last decade alone, membership has dropped by more than 16 percent, to 2.8 million.
The declines reflect the difficulties of keeping up with changing times and shifting demographics, as well as of battling a perception that the organization is exclusionary because it bars gay people and atheists, not to mention girls under 13.
An even bigger challenge emerged this year as a jury ordered the Scouts to pay $18.5 million in damages to a man who had been abused by a scout leader as a boy. The trial focused renewed attention on the secret files that the Scouts’ national office in Texas has kept for more than 70 years of claims of sexual abuse by troop leaders and volunteers.”
Ahem!
“Jurors in Portland, Oregon, awarded a former Boy Scout $1.4 million after finding Tuesday that the organization was negligent in allowing a Scout leader who was a sex offender to have contact with him.
The three-week trial ended with Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge John A. Wittmayer polling the jurors, who confirmed they had found the negligence contributed to damage to the plaintiff as claimed.
The jury ruled that the plaintiff is also entitled to punitive damages. That’s to be determined beginning Tuesday in the trial’s second phase.
How the Scouts handled the case of the former Scout leader, Timur Dykes, was at the center of the explosive lawsuit.
Attorney Kelly Clark, who has been representing six men suing the Scouts, would not discuss the case until after the punitive phase. Before the trial, he alleged that when his clients were boys during the 1980s, the organization knew that at least one of them had been abused by Dykes.
He also alleged that though Dykes was removed as a Scout leader, he was allowed to stay on as a volunteer and the abuse continued. CNN was not able to reach Dykes.
Clark produced documents that he said were part of an archive of previously secret Boy Scout files that chronicled decades of abuse of boys.
The Scouts’ lawyers said the organization had not known about Dykes’ record nor had it known about an outstanding warrant at the time.
Once the Scouts did learn about it, the organization acted immediately and cooperated with police, the Scouts’ lawyers said.
A Boy Scouts spokesman has acknowledged the organization does have confidential files, but said they are made confidential in order to protect people who are ineligible to be Scout leaders but who may not have done anything illegal.
A Scouts spokesman said that, in recent years, the organization has taken extensive measures to keep abusers out.
In a written statement, the Scouts said the organization intends to appeal.
“We are gravely disappointed with the verdict,” it said. “We believe that the allegations made against our youth protection efforts are not valid.”
It added, “We are saddened by what happened to the plaintiff. The actions of the man who committed these crimes do not represent the values and ideals of the Boy Scouts of America.
“The safety of the young people currently in the Scouting program has never been in question during these legal proceedings. The case focused on a discussion about what society and the BSA knew about child abuse approximately three decades ago.
“This is a long-standing societal issue that every youth-serving organization must address Based on the standard of care of that time, the BSA believes it acted responsibly and that the evidence presented during the trial does not justify the verdict.”
Once the Scouts did learn about it, the organization acted immediately and cooperated with police, the Scouts’ lawyers said.
A Boy Scouts spokesman has acknowledged the organization does have confidential files, but said they are made confidential in order to protect people who are ineligible to be Scout leaders but who may not have done anything illegal.
A Scouts spokesman said that, in recent years, the organization has taken extensive measures to keep abusers out.
In a written statement, the Scouts said the organization intends to appeal.
“We are gravely disappointed with the verdict,” it said. “We believe that the allegations made against our youth protection efforts are not valid.”
It added, “We are saddened by what happened to the plaintiff. The actions of the man who committed these crimes do not represent the values and ideals of the Boy Scouts of America.
“The safety of the young people currently in the Scouting program has never been in question during these legal proceedings. The case focused on a discussion about what society and the BSA knew about child abuse approximately three decades ago.
“This is a long-standing societal issue that every youth-serving organization must address. Based on the standard of care of that time, the BSA believes it acted responsibly and that the evidence presented during the trial does not justify the verdict.”
You wish, Mormon trash!
“Now, as the organization tries to rebuild its image and its membership, it has been forced to make a priority of addressing that problem, with a plan that it calls “youth protection.”
Under Robert Mazzuca, who took the helm of the Scouts three years ago as chief executive, the group has taken several steps to try to reassure parents that their children are safe. These include hiring a full-time youth protection director, Michael Johnson, a former police detective who is an expert on child abuse investigation and prevention. “
Nothing beats a good male Role Model.
“Mr. Mazzuca said in an interview that scouting remained grounded in the core values of the Boy Scout Law (trustworthy, loyal, helpful) but that the organization needed better ways to communicate its relevance.”
Cause there’s no excuse for getting’ dry-gulched
“We have allowed ourselves to be defined by others for a long period of time, and it’s time for us to be in charge of our own definition,” he said.
“Anything 100 years old has earned the right to a little arthritis,” he said, but added that this organization had become “stodgy and bureaucratic.”
“We need to be more nimble,” he said. “Scouts still have a wonderful story to tell.”
The jamboree here is a testament to the many ways in which the Scouts have adapted. Spread across hundreds of acres of this dusty military base, the scout encampment still offers boys the chance to partake in the activities that their fathers and grandfathers enjoyed — fly-fishing, reading a compass, rustling up a meal. Many boys devote hours to the low-tech pursuit of swapping scout patches with the same fervor of Wall Street traders.
“But this is not your father’s jamboree. Among the sprawling areas here is a technology center with robotics and a tent where boys can have their mouths swiped to take a sample of their DNA. Some boys sport lime-green hair to match the T-shirts of their non-dress uniforms, and most wear loose-fitting knee-length shorts, some surfer-dude cool with bright swirls.”
A welcome change for THIS.
Hey, why not Go Galliano?
“Scouts also wear “smart bracelets” that allow them to go cashless as they buy soda and memorabilia. An inflatable mosque provides a place for Muslim scouts to worship.”
Does Newt Gingrich know about this?
“There are stations where scouts can recharge their cellphones as well as those offering free calls and time online. Despite these innovations, there has been less advancement on other fronts. The tens of thousands of scouts here were largely a homogenous group of white boys. A Scout study from a few years ago on “tapping into diverse markets” said that parents of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians had “no emotional connection to scouting.” A documentary to be broadcast in August on PBS explores this concept as it follows black and Hispanic scouts from Harlem.
Mr. Mazzuca is trying to change that, with the Scouts making a major push among Hispanics, the largest-growing ethnic group in the country. “We used to just translate our material into Spanish words,” he said, “not linking them to things that are meaningful to Hispanics.” He said that focus groups showed that Hispanics viewed the Boy Scouts as “elite and unattainable.” And in setting up pilot programs, he said, he had to overcome concern that some potential scouts might be from illegal immigrant families.”
Does Jan Brewer know about this?
In a pilot program in Fresno, Calif., Mr. Mazzuca said, the Scouts had doubled their Hispanic membership in nine weeks, though it is not clear yet how many will stay.
But the demographic group that seems to have drawn the most attention is young girls. When they turn 13 and have completed eighth grade, they can join the Boy Scouts’ Venturing program, where many of the leaders are women. But many are pushing for access for preteen girls.
Katrell Cooper, a 16-year-old venturer from Utah, who works at the BMX center here, turned up her nose at the Girl Scouts.
“I don’t want to sit around and make quilts and sell cookies,” she said after she expertly glided down a mountain-boarding course on which a few boys had tumbled. “I want to do stuff.”
Girls just wanna have fun.
The debate rages on scout Web sites over the perceived advantages and disadvantages of allowing younger girls. Would they be too much of a distraction? Or would their presence better prepare boys for the real world?
Several 15-year-old boys here said they would welcome girls into the Boy Scouts. “It would be more cool with them,” said Shane West from Jupiter, Fla. Why? “They’re girls.”
Rocky Spiker, from Utah, said girls would “keep us in line.” Ben Rosenbaum, also from Utah, said, “Women deserve the same stuff as men do.”
And vice versa.
“The boys were practicing at a shooting range, where their instructor, Kelli Walters, 18, from Pennsylvania, who is certified by the National Rifle Association and is part of the Venturing program, had longed to join the Boy Scouts, a family tradition. She was bored with Girl Scouts.”
I’m sure we all know the type.
“Mr. Mazzuca said he wanted the Scouts to stay true to the organization’s roots of helping boys, especially at younger ages, to become good men, but he was open to discussions.
For now, he is focused on the jamboree, which holds its centennial celebration Saturday. The anniversary will be marked across the country, including in Times Square, where a display will offer canoe rides in an artificial river on Broadway.
Then for the Scouts, it will be back to finding a way out of the woods.”
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