Gay for God

thevessel.jpgSo, another week, another gay sex scandal in America… Schadenfreude levels are going through the roof with all this happening days before a critical midterm election. Latest culprit is Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals who yesterday was denying that he paid for sex with a male escort and bought drugs (yet he still resigned; er, okay…) but now seems to be fessing up, perhaps prompted by incriminating voicemails being passed to the press.

Pastor Ted claims to have the ear of the White House and has been very vocal in the past about the iniquities of gay sex. Here’s a random sample from the NAE website:

May 17, 2004

A Special Message From Pastor Ted Haggard, President

Today, homosexual couples are marrying in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The crisis concerning marriage is now a real and present danger to our society. Join with the National Association of Evangelicals for an important 90-minute Church Communication Network (CCN) broadcast this Sunday evening, May 23rd, 6:00-7:30 PM Mountain Daylight Time. Hear some of the nation’s leading experts on the crisis of homosexual marriage and its detrimental impact on America’s families — Dr. James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Bishop Wellington Boone and Tony Perkins — as they inform, educate, and call the Church to action.

Business-as-usual, in the world of the god-botherers, and there’s more of the same drivel here. But Pastor Ted has gone beyond mere preaching in the past, as this eye-popping Harper’s article reveals:

Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings.

Seems like the sinful gay men may have done some inviting of their own. Then there’s this:

He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—”Control.”

Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.”

This may be coincidence, but any reader of William Burroughs’ work will tell you that Burroughs patented the term “Control” as a name for abstract forces (human or otherwise) attempting to dominate the world. Burroughs’ work, of course, contains a lot of gay sex, often used as a means of combating that same Control.

The Harper’s article has a great description of Haggard’s World Prayer Center:

The angel’s pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Blackshear (above), a major figure in the evangelical-art world. Here in the World Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two nude, ample-breasted, white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch. But the vessel can’t handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and spills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what makes Blackshear’s work so compelling is precisely its unabashed eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then to turn that passion toward Jesus.

In fairness to the artist, I think that’s supposed to be annointing oil they’re pouring. Blackshear’s paintings are certainly preferable to the dreadful figurines on his site, the kind of things that give kitsch a bad name. His eroticism is of the unspecified variety that one sees in Frank Frazetta’s work and which was also present in the fascist sculptures that Arno Breker produced for the Nazis. Breker was gay but Hitler managed to overlook that inconvenience, just as the evangelicals probably overlook the ambiguous qualities in Blackshear’s paintings. As Kenneth Clark says in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, all nude art is erotic. Or maybe that’s just “Control” speaking through us lousy perverts?

To return to Pastor Ted, I’m curious now to see how the “gay is a lifestyle choice” contingent deal with this one. The wingnuts who deny a biological component to gay attraction are going to have to accept that their noble leader willingly entered into a sinful relationship rather than being driven there by even the slightest genetic impulse. In Colorado at the moment it seems that Control has the upper hand.

Update: latest news is that Pastor Ted bought crystal meth (an addictive compound very popular among gay men when used during sex) out of curiosity. More than once. At $100 a shot. That’s an expensive curiosity habit you have there, Ted. Oh and the escort gave him a massage but they didn’t have sex, no sir. The current Congressman for Colorado is the egregious Marilyn Musgrave, a woman who recently made Rolling Stone‘s list of “10 Worst Congressmen“, and “an evangelical Christian who married her Bible-camp sweetheart”. Marilyn is down on the gay in a big way:

Once in Congress, Musgrave introduced a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage — which she calls “the most important issue that we face today” — nearly a year before a Massachusetts court approved civil unions. “She doesn’t like the idea of one gay person,” says Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. “So obviously the idea of two of us hanging out makes her very unhappy.” For her opposition to gay marriage — as well as her push to legalize concealed weapons — Musgrave received an endorsement from the KKK in May.

I wonder what she has to say about Pastor Ted’s curiosities?

And there’s more from the party of gay hate, with the news that the Republican National Committee has accepted donations from the president of a gay porn distribution company, Marina Pacific Distributors. I think this is what’s called sending a confusing message to the voters. Coming next (as it were), President Bush is caught being fellated by a chimpanzee in the Oval Office. Maybe.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The election Google Bomb
Why doesn’t America believe in evolution?

Liberty 2006

liberty.jpg

“For a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.” Vice President Dick Cheney, October 24th, 2006.

“In the “war on terror”, the US administration has resorted to secret detention, enforced disappearance, prolonged incommunicado detention, indefinite detention without charge, arbitrary detention, and torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Amnesty International.

Today is the 120th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, that famous gift of the French to “the home of freedom”. One can only wonder what President Grover Cleveland would have made of the current White House incumbent when George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law recently, giving himself and future presidents the power to “indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions.” (Anthony D. Romero, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director).

Now that the United States has taken yet another step towards becoming the kind of country it used to profess to despise, I thought it was time that the Statue of Liberty received a makeover, something more suited to the Neo-Stalinist nation that Bush and co have been busy creating. The challenge for America in the near future, if the Democrats manage to take back the White House in 2008, will be to reverse the course the country has been set upon since 2001. At the moment I’m too cynical to believe that there’ll be any immediate reversal of these policies. Parties in opposition always complain loudly about the ravaging of constitutions then find the new laws they were complaining about have all sorts of conveniences for them once they gain power. Have the Democrats the courage to face down more “terrorist sympathiser” bullshit? Time will tell.

In the same series: Blood Money 1, Blood Money 2, War®.

Update: seems like I missed George’s latest wheeze, signing a new law relaxing the restrictions on the President declaring martial law. We’re constantly told these days it’s hysterical to mention creeping fascism (and I usually agree with George Orwell that the “f” word trips off the lips too easily). Any bets on when the time will be right?

NBC censors Dixie Chicks ad

More happy news from the Great Banana Republic Across the Water: the Dixie Chicks, who faced earlier censure and death threats for daring to criticise Generalissimo President Bush and the war in Iraq, have had their ad for movie Shut Up and Sing stopped by NBC who say they “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.” Cowards. Think Progress has the offending item so you can judge for yourself.

The election Google Bomb

What’s a Google Bomb? Wikipedia explains. The Daily Kos site has set out this week to Google Bomb vulnerable Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, hoping to get the numerous scandal stories associated with the GOP registering higher Google rankings than the candidates’ official sites. All that’s required is the placing of the list shown below (the code version is here) into a blank HTML document (or a blog or web signature) for the attached links to be registered by Google’s web crawlers and added to the page rankings. Not that I’d ever recommend anyone do such a terribly underhand thing, perish the thought.

Republican bloggers have been getting in a lather over this, complaining about “dirty tricks”. Er, pot, may I introduce you to the kettle? In a desperately degraded political landscape, populated by loudmouth bigots like Rush Limbaugh (who this week accused Michael J Fox of “faking” his Parkinson’s symptoms because he was supporting a Democrat candidate over their policy on stem cell research), tactics like this are now par for the course. Oh, and the mere act of posting the offending list while discussing it is enough to add it to Google’s ranking. Oops…

–AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
–AZ-01: Rick Renzi
–AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
–CA-04: John Doolittle
–CA-11: Richard Pombo
–CA-50: Brian Bilbray
–CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
–CO-05: Doug Lamborn
–CO-07: Rick O’Donnell
–CT-04: Christopher Shays
–FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
–FL-16: Joe Negron
–FL-22: Clay Shaw
–ID-01: Bill Sali
–IL-06: Peter Roskam
–IL-10: Mark Kirk
–IL-14: Dennis Hastert
–IN-02: Chris Chocola
–IN-08: John Hostettler
–IA-01: Mike Whalen
–KS-02: Jim Ryun
–KY-03: Anne Northup
–KY-04: Geoff Davis
–MD-Sen: Michael Steele
–MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
–MN-06: Michele Bachmann
–MO-Sen: Jim Talent
–MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
–NV-03: Jon Porter
–NH-02: Charlie Bass
–NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
–NM-01: Heather Wilson
–NY-03: Peter King
–NY-20: John Sweeney
–NY-26: Tom Reynolds
–NY-29: Randy Kuhl
–NC-08: Robin Hayes
–NC-11: Charles Taylor
–OH-01: Steve Chabot
–OH-02: Jean Schmidt
–OH-15: Deborah Pryce
–OH-18: Joy Padgett
–PA-04: Melissa Hart
–PA-07: Curt Weldon
–PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
–PA-10: Don Sherwood
–RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
–TN-Sen: Bob Corker
–VA-Sen: George Allen
–VA-10: Frank Wolf
–WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
–WA-08: Dave Reichert

So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh

bast008.jpgJUST IN TIME FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR — ARTHUR MAGAZINE LAUNCHES NEW ALBUM TO BENEFIT COUNTER-MILITARY RECRUITING CAMPAIGNS

“Let’s help give youth a balanced view of what military service REALLY means,” says Arthur editor Jay Babcock.

With wars raging across the Middle East and prospects for peace dimming, the youth of America have wised up and are starting to stay away from military recruiters in droves. Said recruiters have retaliated with aggressive—and often criminal—tactics.

An eye-opening study issued this August by the Government Accountability Office reported that “allegations and service-identified incidents of recruiter wrongdoing” increased almost 50 percent between 2004 and 2005. Criminal violations more than doubled over the same period of time. Increasingly common tactics used by the nation’s 20,000 military recruiters range from lying about the financial benefits of service to threatening high school students with arrest if they back out of an enlistment process already underway. Military recruiters have also been assisting recruits in the falsification of documents to cover up conditions like autism, mental illness and serious drug problems that would bar them from service if reported. [See below for more information.]

Musician Josephine Foster is joining forces with Bastet, the publishing imprint of Arthur magazine, to help give America’s kids and parents the tools they need to protect them from the depredations of the nation’s many unscrupulous military recruiters.

On Tuesday, August 29, Arthur magazine will release So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh, an 18-track, multi-artist compilation CD curated by Foster featuring exclusive contributions from some of the more outspoken members of the nation’s burgeoning psychedelic folk scene, including Devendra Banhart, Feathers, David Pajo and members of Espers and Spires That in the Sunset Rise. Musicians from earlier generations of the underground, such as Michael Hurley, Kath Bloom and Angels of Light, are also present.

All profits from sales of So Much Fire… will be distributed to specific counter-military recruitment and pacifist organizations and programs who effectively advise high school students and other Americans at risk of being taken advantage of by the military’s recruiters and omnipresent big-budget marketing campaigns.

“All of the musicians represented on So Much Fire… are American citizens,” said Josephine Foster. “Our voices join with many others across this land that freely question and openly oppose war. Hopefully we will raise a good sum of money to help fund the educational pacifist tasks these organizations do. They are dedicated to creating a positive counter to the rising tides of the war being waged. We hope to assist them in their efforts promoting peace and non-militarism in the United States.”

“I am deeply grateful to everyone involved in this gesture; from every musician, to Fred Tomaselli for use of his incredible painting as the cover art, to Jay Babcock and Laris Kreslins at Arthur magazine who so enthusiastically took up this idea and worked to realize it. In the end, all of the labor was donated, including the manufacturing.”

Said Arthur magazine editor Jay Babcock, “We are putting what little money we have where our mouth is. We hope that other people of conscience will do the same.”

The album’s title is taken from a line by the poet Apollinaire, who died from wounds he sustained while serving in World War I.

So Much Fire… is now available for order from Arthurmag.com and, starting August 29, from record stores across North America.

Track listing:

THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS – ‘Dragonfly’ (live)
FEATHERS – ‘Dust’
MICHAEL HURLEY – ‘A Little Bit of Love for You’
MEG BAIRD – ‘Western Red Lily (Nunavut Diamond Dream)’
ANDREW BAR – ‘Don’t Trust That Man’
GOATGIRL – ‘President Combed His Hair’
DEVENDRA BANHART – ‘I Know Some Souls’ (demo)
KATH BLOOM – ‘Baby Let It Come Down On Me’
CHARLIE NOTHING – ‘Fuck You and Your Stupid Wars’
DIANE CLUCK – ‘A Phoenix and Doves’
JOHN ALLINGHAM & ANN TILEY – ‘Big War’
JOSEPHINE FOSTER – ‘Would You Pave the Road?’
ANGELS OF LIGHT – ‘Destroyer’
RACHEL MASON – ‘The War Clerk’s Lament’
PAJO – ‘War Is Dead’
MVEE – ‘Powderfinger’
KATHLEEN BAIRD – ‘Prayer for Silence’
LAY ALL OVER IT – ‘A Place’

Read the GAO report, “Military Recruiting: DOD and Services Need Better
Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities” here.

High school students, their parents and friends can learn more about
their rights when confronted by recruiters here.