French court convicts three over homophobic tweets, in case hailed as a ‘significant victory’ by LGBT rights campaigners

Je suis… meh, nevermind.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from The Casa)

Michael A. Fiumara is a California lawyer and a Democrat LGBT activist. He made a very weird commercial. That’s all.

So, it’s OK for feminists to claim that all men are morally responsible for the rapes committed by a tiny number of men. It is also OK to claim that all white people have white privilege and all white people owe all black people reparations for slavery. But to suggest all Muslims should take a moral stand against terrorism is… according to those same people… racist.

SRSLY, how does that work?

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the primary concern of left-wing media was not that violent Mohammedans would commit more acts of violence against innocent people, but that “anti-Islamic” sentiment might increase and, even more terrible, right-wing political parties in Europe might benefit!

The New York Times @nytimes

The key danger the Times is worried about, it would seem, is that Europe might reverse course on its march to demographic and cultural oblivion.

When President Obama signed a federal “hate crimes” law in 2009, many people at the time were calling it The Matthew Shepard Act. There was just one problem: The murder of Matthew Shepard, while horrible and grotesque, wasn’t a hate crime (i.e., crime of bias). It had nothing to do with anti-gay bias until after the fact, when it suited many persons’ interests to make it seem like it did.

Matthew Shepard was a methamphetamine addict – and possibly a small-time meth dealer/courier – who was well-acquainted with his chief killer, Aaron McKinney. “Well-acquainted” meaning that McKinney and Shepard had done meth together more than once, had conducted business as small-time meth dealers/couriers, and yes, had occasionally even had sex with each other.

It’s probable that Shepard didn’t know the other convicted killer: McKinney’s then-recent acquaintance, Russell Henderson. But there’s evidence that Henderson wasn’t homophobic and, on the night of the killing, may have even taken a knock from McKinney as Henderson spoke up for Shepard (against McKinney’s raging, meth-fueled violence). Which, if true, would make Henderson’s *murder* conviction unjust. (He would still deserve a lesser conviction as an accessory.)

Shepard’s killing was most likely a criminal-style ‘debt collection’ by McKinney that went wrong because McKinney was a troubled and cruel person coming off of a multi-day meth binge. So, who fabricated the myth of a hate crime perpetrated on Shepard by two homophobic total strangers, and why? It was a combination of personal and political interests.

• McKinney’s higher-up meth connections wanted to remain hidden, and they would be able to kill McKinney (even in prison) if he squealed on them. Which meant: McKinney would desperately need to avoid naming them. Which meant: McKinney needed to hide his own meth dealings, and therefore, the true nature of his relationship with Shepard.
• As a short, little guy (135 lb) headed for prison in the late 1990s, McKinney also needed to hide his own bisexuality. Which, again, meant: hiding the nature of his relationship with Shepard.
• McKinney, his girlfriend and his lawyers all thought (at the time) that a “gay panic” defense, however unfaithful to reality, would be McKinney’s best shot at acquittal (or reduced charges).
• Certain friends of Shepard may have also wanted to distract people from their, and Shepard’s, meth use and dealings.
• Gay activist groups – ranging from GLAAD and HRC to what is now the Matthew Shepard Foundation – obviously gained benefits, both political and financial, from the myth.
• The media gained a big “story”.
• Once the public/media frenzy started over the (perceived) Shepard hate crime, Bill Clinton got involved in it – at least partly to try to blunt the impact of his Monica Lewinsky scandal. Shepard was attacked on 10/6/1998 and died on 10/12/1998 – roughly around the time Kenneth Starr released his reports and the House of Representatives opened its impeachment inquiry on Clinton.

All this, and more, is cited or documented in The Book of Matt, by Stephen Jiminez. It was published in 2013 and V the K posted on it. I had the book and recently, after talking with liberal friends who were still unaware of the revelations about Shepard, I finally read it.

Despite the horror of its subject, the book is a powerful work of investigative journalism. No such book can get everything right. But this one is readable, gripping, and honest about Jiminez’ own fears and doubts as he slowly comes to understand the falseness of the Shepard “hate crime” myth. The book weaves together a wealth of recollections and coherent detail from dozens of sources who knew Shepard or his dealings, including two of Shepard’s more important boyfriends. The book evaluates the credibility of its sources and, where that may be lacking, provides multiple sources for key claims. (more…)

This would definitely put a crimp in the yiffing: Chlorine gas sickens 19 at furries convention

Chlorine gas sickened several people and forced the evacuation of thousands of guests from a suburban Chicago hotel early Sunday, including many dressed in cartoonish animal costumes for an annual furries convention who were ushered across the street to a convention center hosting a dog show.

So, here’s what happened.

A Central California mayor’s remarks that bullying victims should toughen up and defend themselves has sparked anger among some city officials and gay rights advocates.

At a recent City Council meeting, Porterville Mayor Cameron Hamilton said he opposes bullying but thinks it is too often blamed for the world’s problems. Hamilton said some people need to “grow a pair.”

Of course, this didn’t sit well with the Party of Perpetual Grievance and Victimhood. And, naturally, the loudest whining came from the LGBT quarter.

Melissa McMurrey of Gay Porterville told KFSN-TV that she felt attacked by the mayor’s comments. She said bullies often target young gay people.

That’s where we are in Hyper-Feminized Obamerica… telling someone who feels bullied that they should stand up for themselves and be strong is considered an “attack.”

The very idea of teaching people to be strong and independent is anathema to the left. Victims are a key Democrat constituency, and children need to be indoctrinated from a young age not to be independent, but that the protective arms of the state will provide a ‘Safe Zone’ for them.

And, can we be honest about what the left’s obsession with “bullying” is really about? It’s about silencing opinions the left doesn’t want to hear. Just as Zero Tolerance policies have led to kids getting suspended and arrested for shooting finger guns or having a stray Tylenol tablet in their back-packs, Zero Tolerance bullying policies are intended to allow school officials (who tend to be hard-left fascist idiots) to shut down any speech or opinion that might hurt someone’s feelers by labeling it “bullying.”

This Weekend, feminists held one of their infamous “Slut Walks” in Chicago where they engaged in unhinged man-bashing while walking around dressed like trashy skanks… because that (along with demanding that other people pay for their contraception) is what Modern Feminism has been reduced to. (And of this the Feminists are very, very proud.)

As someone clever pointed out, it’s interesting that the Feminist chose Chicago for their “Smash the Patriarchy” message, because nowhere has the Patriarchy been more successfully smashed than in the inner cities. Households led by fathers have become exceedingly rare,  single women raise families without husbands, and very few people participate in capitalist enterprises; the inner cities have become Radical Feminist utopia.

How’s that working out for them?

Here we see a Palestinian barbarian hanging children in front of a house to prevent civilized Israelis from attacking it (probably because there are weapons inside).

Also, Hamas is on Twitter bragging about how many Jews they’ve killed.

If you side against Israel, you are siding with the Barbarians.

BTW: The Obama Regime is siding with the Barbarians, and has, once again, condemned Israel.

You know who else are pretty barbaric? Certain French tourists.

Progressives revel in their superior intellects, which they are assured are superior because within the eco-chamber of the left, everyone agrees with them. Global Warming is real. Republicans hate gays. Socialism works as long as European white people are in charge of it.

We have seen, by dint of the leftist commentators on this site, how this notion of left-wing intellectual superiority is laughable. Now, watch as Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist rips through the smug facade of leftist intellectual superiority like a starving jackal through a zebra carcass, including an entire section devoted to the unbelievably dim-witted Matt Yglesias, a man who has earned a good living parlaying his complete ignorance of every topic imaginable into a position as one of the left’s premier pundits and thought leaders.

Perhaps no living writer more fully embraces unabashed ignorance than Yglesias. I couldn’t begin to adequately catalogue the examples but interested readers might enjoy “Does Matthew Yglesias Ever Tire Of Being Embarrassingly Wrong About Everything?” and “Taming The Fury Of Rage: How Not To Write, Starring Slate’s Matt Yglesias.”

Identity politics can be fun when rival victim-privilege groups turn on each other.

A white professor is suing Alabama State University (ASU) over claims the historically black university discriminated against him and his partner based on their race and sexual orientation.

According to the lawsuit filed in federal court on June 11, Dr. John Garland is suing the ASU and eight current and former employees for racially discriminating against applicants for university positions and subsequently targeting him when he retaliated against those practices.

Garland, who is a member of the Choctaw Nation but is identified as white by colleagues, was hired by the university in August 2008 as an adjunct professor. In January 2009, Garland was rehired as an assistant professor for the Master of Rehabilitation Counseling Program in the Department of Rehabilitation Studies in the College of Health Sciences (COHS).

His white same-sex partner, Dr. Steven Chesbro, was hired at the university around that time. They legally married in Maryland in February 2013.

Hat Tip: Peter H

So, once again, the progressive left is pushing the idea of Reparations; the idea that people who never owned slaves should give large sums of money to people who never were slaves in order to compensate, allegedly, for injustices suffered by the ancestors of non-slaves that were committed by the ancestors of non-slaveowners. (And a great way for Democrats to tell low-information voters that there is a huge pile of money owed to them that greedy Republicans don’t want them to have.)

But if the point of this exercise is “justice,” shouldn’t the weight of justice fall more heavily on those with the closest ties and relationships to the perpetrators of injustice? Because there is clearly one group of people who are far more responsible for injustices committed against African-Americans than other groups of people.

Which of two political parties in the USA was founded for the explicit purpose of abolishing slavery; the Republican Party. Which party supported slavery and opposed the abolition thereof; the Democrat Party.

Which party was it that instituted the Jim Crow laws, and maintained the institution of Segregation well into the 20th Century; the Democrats. What was the party that forcibly integrated previously segregated schools in the South; the Republican Party.

A majority of which party supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act; the Republican Party. A majority of which party opposed it; the Democrat Party.

Clearly, Democrats are responsible for the vast majority of injustices committed against African-Americans. Pay up.

(more…)

Not exactly news, but whatever…

“I have always felt a strong and emotional connection to members of the LGBTQ community. It was actually a huge disappointment for me when I came of age and realized that I was sexually attracted to men. So when my sister came out, I thought, ‘Thank God, now someone in this family can truly represent my beliefs and passions.’”

[She's on an HBO program that unmarried left-wing women like.]

Let me ask you guys something. After the 2012 elections, did any of your left-wing friends offer any words of comfort or reconciliation? None of mine did, and a lot of them were spiking the ball and dancing in the Endzone. It would have been nice if even one liberal friend had said, “Hey, this must have been a tough loss for you guys, and your guy actually had some good points.”

It at least would have been something, a small act of reconciliation and understanding.

I was thinking about this in the context of Mozilla’s purge of Brendan Eich for being on the “wrong side” of the Gay Marriage war. After the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln tried to reconcile a country whose citizens had been literally killing each other over opposite opinions on a profound moral issue. Even after the end of Apartheid in South Africa, there were attempts made at “Truth and Reconciliation.” But instead of being content in their victory, and trying to reconcile with their opponents, the Gay Marriage Left seem determined to carry on the war, in a kind of ideological bloodlust.

But there seems to be no room for reconciliation on the Modern Left. Perhaps, this is a consequence of them painting their enemies as sub-human. They have convinced themselves that their opponents are racists, bigots, homophobes, anti-woman, anti-science… and that they owe those who don’t agree with them nothing. No dignity. No compassion.

And it isn’t just on the fringe; or rather, the fringe is indistinguishable from the mainstream left. Gay leftists demand that those who don’t agree with them lose their jobs and livelihoods. Academics in institutions of higher learning demand that those who disagree with them be jailed for their difference of opinion. The President of the United States, instead of reaching out “with malice toward none,” hurls childish insults at people who disagree with him on matters fiscal.

It used to be a mark of a civilized man to be gracious in victory, and to behave with decency toward his defeated opponent. But those values are gone, perhaps because graciousness and courtesy are values now associated only with dead white slaveowners. Or, perhaps because the left is morally void, and its ideological bloodlust can never be satisfied no matter how many scalps they collect.

Kevin Williamson spells it out.

A useful definition is this: “Feminism is the words ‘I Want!’ in the mouths of three or more women, provided they’re the right kind of women.” Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions — e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups. Or: (1) Women at Columbia are empowered by pornography but (2) women at Wellesley are victimized by a statue of a man sleepwalking in his Shenanigans. And then there is Fluke’s Law: (1) Women are responsible moral agents with full sexual and economic autonomy who (2) must be given an allowance, like children, when it comes to contraceptives.

Ace takes note of a lefty setzpinkler who thinks he’s figured out why Conservatives have been making fun of Obamacare spokesmodel PajamaBoy. It’s because Conservatives hate gays.

I had no idea that left-wing pundits had Professor Charles Xavier-level telepathic abilities and were able to read the minds of all Conservatives everywhere all the time!

Also, GLAAD is throwing a hissy-fit because one of the stars of Duck Dynasty expressed an opinion about gay people that hurt their feelers.

GLAAD has condemned “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson in the wake of inflammatory remarks about gay people.

On one level, I don’t get the mindset that says you can’t be happy if someone, somewhere doesn’t approve of your lifestyle. What’s the Big Deal if a guy on a cable TV show doesn’t like you? Obsession that someone, somewhere might disapprove of you seems like a cripplingly neurotic way to go through life. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the obsession secular leftists have with judging what “true Christians” should and should not believe.)

On another level, I understand it completely. Faux outrage generates publicity. Publicity generates donations. Donations ensure that Wilson Cruz can keep his cushy job as an outraged spokesperson for GLAAD and not have to get a real job in the miserable Obamaconomy. Such generosity is what earned Alec Baldwin a pass from GLAAD for his repeated use of anti-gay slurs.

Update: A&E caves to intolerant bigots.

(more…)

Chris Cheng, Season 4 winner of the History Channel’s “Top Shot” competition, came out as “gay for guns.”

One reason why I chose to come out publicly is that I’m a gay guy in a gun world. Hunters, sport shooting enthusiasts, and collectors are too often stereotyped as part of efforts to politicize guns as we witnessed last week on the anniversary of the horrific Newtown tragedy. Take it from someone who in a single package is not only gay, but Chinese, Japanese, California-born, a college graduate, a tech geek who worked on cool Google projects, a gun enthusiast and a passionate 2nd Amendment advocate. Our community is as diverse as anyone’s.

It’s good to be armed. That way you can defend yourself when a deranged leftist like Karl Pierson, Floyd Corkins, or Amy Bishop starts shooting at you.

(more…)

Karl Pierson, who would have become the latest school mass murderer – except that a good guy with a gun (and not Colorado’s Draconian gun laws) stopped him – disappointed the media by being a socialist left-winger whose hatred of Republicans was almost at MSNBC levels and not, as they had fervently hoped, a pro-Second Amendment Tea Party supporter.

Gabe Malor at AoSHQ has dissected the media’s pattern of desperately hoping a new shooter is a right wing nut job, and then losing interest in a story when they find out he’s on their team. There is nothing for me to add, so thorough is his dissection.

So, one detail of the story piqued my interest. Karl Pierson showed his love for murderous progressive leftism partly by wearing Soviet themed T-shirts to school and proclaiming himself a communist. Communism is a murderous and opporessive ideology that butchered somewhere north of 100,000,000 people in the 20th Century. Do you think the school would have let him wear T-shirts emblazoned with Swastikas and proclaim himself a Nazi? Why is one murderous ideology okay and the other forbidden? Are some murderous ideologies just “more equal” than others?

(more…)

Matthew Shepard was a gay 21 year old college student, who was beaten to death in a terrible hate crime because… homophobia.

Status: False.

Stephen Jiminez – not a right-wing Christian apologist, but a gay investigative journalist who values the truth above ‘The Narrative’ – has published a book: The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.

Shepard’s tragic and untimely demise may not have been fueled by his sexual orientation, but by drugs. For Shepard had likely agreed to trade methamphetamines for sex. And it killed him.

And for daring to undercut the narrative with inconvenient little things called “facts,” Jiminez has been vilified by those who profit from promoting a narrative of imaginary hate.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog recently accused Jimenez of serving as a lapdog of “right-wing pundits, radio hosts and bloggers.” In Washington, DC, gay activists pestered bookstores to cancel Jimenez’s appearances.

In a world with a properly functioning moral compass, Matt Shepard’s story would be a cautionary tale with the moral: “Don’t leave a bar with strangers to have sex and do drugs.”

But in the twisted world where only ‘The Narrative’ matters, Shepard was a complete innocent whose death is useful in villainizing people who had absolutely nothing to do with it.

If you know a lot of leftists, as I do, chances are you’ve encountered a link to this interview of Reza Aslan by Lauren Green at some point in the past two days or so.  They see the interview as an example of the evil of Fox News.  They claim it illustrates the bias of the network, and that it illustrates how “smart” the author is and how he “totally pwns the interviewer’s assumptions.”

I watched the interview, and I encourage you to do the same, but my main reaction to their claims about it is to think:  Excuse me?  Did we even watch the same interview?  I believe neither the interviewer nor the guest came off particularly well in this exchange.

Lauren Green comes across as someone who likely hasn’t read the book, but who has read many reviews of the book, and is trying to provoke a response from the author. Reza Aslan, though, comes across as the ultimate disingenuous academic who says, “I am just a historian, I have no agenda whatsoever.”  He keeps reiterating that he is an academic with a PhD, as though that is an adequate defense against bias.  Green could have done a more skillful job challenging his assumptions or his arguments; her questions only serve to make him defensive, and so the interview doesn’t appear to accomplish much for either party.

Nevertheless, I didn’t view the interview as a complete failure for Fox News.  Quite to the contrary, I thought it illustrated that there is more journalistic spirit alive at Fox News than at most of the mainstream press outlets who have interviewed the author or reported on the book.  Why do I say that?  Because, the other morning I had to endure this NPR interview with the same author of the same book, and I heard a lot of claims by Aslan about his book, and his beliefs, but no one challenged those claims or tried to interrogate Aslan’s motivations for writing the book that he wrote.  The NPR interview was so concerned with helping him make his points, that it could have just as easily come from the public relations office of his publisher.

Not surprisingly, the other day NPR’s website featured this story entitled “Reza Aslan Hearts NPR”: “Author and religious scholar Reza Aslan is one of those people who’s at NPR West so often that he blurs the line between guest and employee. We always joke with our regulars that they should have a punch card, and when it’s full, they get their own cubicle.”  Even less surprisingly, today NPR has this sympathetic story about the reaction on the left to the Fox News  interview.

When you compare NPR’s very sympathetic pieces helping Aslan promote both his book and his talking points, with Lauren Green’s somewhat awkward attempt to interrogate him, though, it’s pretty clear to me which “news” outlet is more interested in informing its viewers and letting them decide for themselves.   Green’s interview told us much more about Aslan than NPR’s pieces: it showed us something of his character, it introduced us to some of the controversies surrounding the book, and it raised the question of his worldview and its influence on his writing.

And as it turns out, there is a lot of reason for controversy, as Pamela Geller Robert Spencer points out in her his own detailed post about the controversy (hat tip: Pamela Geller).   Geller Spencer writes:

I don’t care about his scholarly credentials. Even if everything he had said about his degrees had been true, it would confer on his book no presumption of accuracy or truth. I am constantly assailed for lacking scholarly credentials, but as it happens, when it comes to writing about religion I have exactly the same credentials as Aslan, a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A. in Religious Studies. His other two degrees are in other fields.

But anyway, it doesn’t matter: there are plenty of fools with degrees, and plenty of geniuses without them. My work, and Aslan’s, stands or falls on its merits, not on the number of degrees we have. Aslan’s pulling rank on Lauren Green and starting to reel off (inaccurately) his degrees was a sign of insecurity: it implied that he didn’t think his book could stand on its merits, and had to be accepted because he had a lot of degrees. And indeed, his book doesn’t stand on its merits.

I encourage you to be sure to read Geller’s Spencer’s whole post.

To my mind, the reaction on the left tells us more about their fondness for credentials and their disdain for Fox News than anything else;  that the same people who view this interview as an instance of intolerable bias think nothing of the swill served up regularly by NPR and MSNBC should tell us all we need to know.

Recent-ish, and I found them worthwhile:

• Shelby Steele on The Decline of the Civil Rights Establishment. “The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power…based on the presumption that [blacks] are still…victimized…This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a ‘poetic truth.’ Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth…[listeners] say, ‘Yes, of course,’ lest we seem to be racist…this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth…One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family?” – Read the whole thing.

• A good piece from Cathy Young reviewing the depth of the Established media’s malpractice in this case, and one from Bill Whittle expressing his outrage over that malpractice.

• Now old, but: Video of the jury reading the Not Guilty verdict. (Just to see the moment. And sorry, but there is no honest way to force Zimmerman into a ‘white’ identity; by conventional standards, he seems clearly a Latino / person of color.)

BONUS (from Kurt in the comments): Bryan Preston critiques how Obama has cast his lot with the race-baiters. “In Florida, blacks benefit from ‘stand your ground’ laws more often than whites do…[and] the president went on to acknowledge that…’stand your ground’ was not invoked in Zimmerman’s defense, [but said] we should re-examine such laws anyway. Logically, why?”

UPDATE: Zimmerman helps people, despite the nasty death threats that Trayvon Martin supporters have inflicted not only on him, but even on strangers who (say) happen to have a phone number similar to his.