Sunday 25 April 2010

Subjecting kids to weirdos undermines standards of decency

No, that's not from a blog written by an opinionated nutcase, one of the many small-minded bigots ranting about The Jew, or the Purity of the White Race, or the International Communist Conspiracy... it's from a mainstream newspaper. To wit, the Washington Times.

Titled an "editorial", it repeats almost verbatim the talking-points of the TVC, the Traditional Values Coalition, one of the many recognised professional hate-groups like the Aryan Nation or the Ku Klux Klan.

I left a few choice comments. How could I not, when an editorial states quite openly:

Discrimination is necessary


Especially when they're talking not about discrimination as evaluation, but discrimination as persecution.

Here's the KKK TVC-written article in a highly influential Washington publication this "editorial"'s content was lifted from:
Lafferty: Employment Bill Threatens Easy House Schedule
Not quite verbatim - the editor re-phrased it - but the same talking-points.

The news magazine that published it has since stated that they weren't aware that the TVC was listed as a Hate Group - that they'd just done the equivalent of publishing as fact a press release by the American Nazi Party - also on the Hate Group list.

And a rebuttal, in the same tone, in the same magazine:
Weiss: ENDA Offers Jobs Protection

This is what the TVC says about the definition of "sexual orientation" in ENDA. From their own website:
In the next few weeks, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and their homosexual and transgender allies will attempt to ram through the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

What you may not know is that ENDA normalizes and provides special federal protection for 30+ bizarre sexual orientations listed by the American Psychiatric Association – the so-called “Dirty 30.” These 30+ fetishes include behaviors that are felonies or misdemeanors in most states.

ENDA’s “Dirty 30” includes such bizarre criminal acts as incest, pedophilia, prostitution, beastiality, and cross-dressing. If we don’t act today, Obama and Pelosi will normalize these disorders by federal law on April 21!
Just to make absolutely certain that Ms Lafferty is deeply involved in, and even obsessed by, such matters, here's what she says amongst friends at Liberty University:
Lafferty: What are those "isms" and "philias"? You can be aroused by stumps of amputees. And we brought that up during the hate crimes thing because what if you have an employee working at the VA and someone has just come back from Iraq and they have this orientation. You can't fire them. What about the family that's upset that they've been aroused by their family member? It's disgusting. And it's tragic for the victim.

Um, men that want to rub their bodies up and down women. That's on the list, that might become a protected class.

Fecal matter. Their involvement with fecal matter. Or urine. Transvestism. The list goes on, I'm not naming all of them. Children. Animals. And so we really need to draw a line in the sand.
Yes, she's actually saying that passage of ENDA will cause amputee veterans to be molested.

This is what the Act actually says:
(9) SEXUAL ORIENTATION- The term `sexual orientation' means homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.
That's what makes them a "hate group". They lie, quite blatantly and deliberately, to try to vilify a particular part of society. They spew lies and distortions so rapidly that one can't keep up - expose one and five more take its place.

But maybe they are merely ignorant. Maybe just lazy. Maybe they haven't read the bill, they're just mistaken. Except.. there's also a link from that article in their website, to another article, also on their website. Which states, in part:
ENDA describes “sexual orientation” as homosexuality, bisexuality and heterosexuality...
It's not ignorance. It's malicious and deliberate lying. It's what they do, and trust that if they just repeat the lies loudly enough an often enough, even mainstream newspapers will publish their lies, as they're so often too busy to check them. Or, as with the Washington Times, omitting the more bizarre claims so as to seem more credible.

8 comments:

adepta said...

Hi Zoe. Since you don't live in the US, you may not be aware of this, but the Washington Times (unlike the Washington Post) is not a mainstream newspaper. It is a far-right-wing newspaper run by the cult of "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon, commonly known as the Moonies. See the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Times):

"The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and has been subsidized by the Unification Church community. The Times is known for its conservative stance on social and political issues."

svelte_brunette said...

Zoe wrote:

"It's not ignorance. It's malicious and deliberate lying. It's what they do, and trust that if they just repeat the lies loudly enough an often enough, even mainstream newspapers will publish their lies, as they're so often too busy to check them."

And why shouldn't this work again? After all, it's how we ended up in Iraq. The only people who did their homework and found out what was going on and that there really wasn't any reason to believe Saddam had WMD, were poo-pooed as irrelevant and unpatriotic. The rest of the media played along with the white house.

Have a nice day,

Cynthia

break said...

adepta speaks words of wisdom. strongly suggest reading the wiki article.

Stace said...

Hmm... OK it's Sunday morning, and I'm having a morning after the night before having gone to a friends house for dinner and drinking a little too much wine :)

But...

Um, men that want to rub their bodies up and down women. That's on the list, that might become a protected class.

I kind of thought that's what good god fearing hetrosexual men wanted from life?

Stace

Randy said...

Although the WT has never had a large circulation it has been the most influential publication promoting right wing, theocratic, homophobic politics in the nation the 25 years. It has been hand delivered to every politician in the capitol since it was created. It was the number first paper Reagan and Bush 1 read everyday. Moon created it in 1982 back when there was no Fox, no Rush and no internet. Moon through his paper and front organization has guided conservatism for decades. It is one of the primary reasons the right today is so unhinged from reality. It is widely quoted not just in the USA but around the world with few knowing it is a propaganda organ of the UC designed to mold American society.

If you are interested in knowing why Sun Myung Moon created the paper and how it has served as both as an intelligence gathering operation and recruiting front for the Moon organization, watch this video.

sumptos devil s advocate said...

Wasn't Moon the guy who was crowned the "Prince of Peace" in a Congressional office building by a group of Congressman? Seriously, that is just weird.

Zimbel said...

I largely concur with adepta; the Washington Times (until recently) was strongly funded by a specific religious group (the Unification Church) that had religious right-wing leanings. It was published specifically to influence U.S. opinion (as the leadership of the Unification Church is not from the U.S.) Think of it as a religious-based Fox News-type organization from the 1980s - but bent towards specific religious interests, instead of specific corporate interests.

That being said, its funding by the Unification Church was apparently cut late last year. I guess we'll find out if it can survive without that source of funding.

Perhaps they'll discover journalism.

Perhaps they'll slowly dissolve into a minor web site.

Perhaps they'll file for Chapter 7 (bankruptcy).

Should it be the later, I'm afraid that I'll dance on their (figurative) grave. This is hardly their first problematic editorial.

@sumptos devil s advocate
I think you have the details slightly wrong. He was apparently given an "international crown of peace award" - by his own organization: At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head.

break said...

splendid. from the Washington Post (the mainstream paper) today -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002043_pf.html

the Washington Times (the moonie non-mainstream one) is for sale, and has quite bizarre problems with snakes:

"The finances are so tight that the newspaper hasn't paid some of its bills or tended to basic maintenance issues -- such as hiring an exterminator to deal with mice and snakes sneaking into the building on New York Avenue in Northeast.

"The feeling everyone feels is that it's a totally rudderless ship," said Julia Duin, the paper's longtime religion reporter. "Nobody knows who's running it. Is it the board of directors? We don't know. There was a three-foot-long black snake in the main conference room the other day. We have snakes in the newsroom -- the real live variety, at least. One of the security people gallantly removed it."

quite biblical. perhaps there is something to this religion thing after all..