There’s a fantastic new—at least I think it’s pretty new—sub-reddit section that’s a catchall for some of the more idiotic conspiracy theories out there. Titled ‘Conspiratards,’ for the most part, the forum consists of postings debunking the willy-nilly fever dream dot-connecting of Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, the 9-11 truthers, birthers, LaRouchites, Tea partiers, Ron Paul fanboys and David Icke. If you are so inclined, it’s a fucking laugh riot.

As you might imagine it’s also one of the most vicious and biting forums on all of reddit—which is really saying something—and many true believers have a vendetta against the forum’s very existence. There’s a disclaimer on the sidebar that directs readers to the “Controversial” tab:

Special Note: Conspiratards hate free speech and religiously down-mod good submissions here, so be sure to check out the “controversial” submissions that they don’t want you to see!

When you talk about conspiracy theories, there are, of course, REAL conspiracies and crimes—things which can be proven in a court of law and that actually happened historically (Watergate and the Iran Contra scandal come immediately to mind) and then there’s the utter lunatic bullshit that Alex Jones propagates on his radio show, the Montauk Project book series and Brice Taylor, the self-proclaimed mind-controlled sex slave of Bob Hope, the CIA and Henry Kissinger). When you get down to the “lizard people” level, I’m not sure what value these empty mental calories provide as a part of one’s intellectual diet, but from a sociological viewpoint, it’s fascinating to gawk at the loopy things that some people are willing to believe, absent any proof other than a sweaty, obnoxious fat guy shouting that it’s all a big government cover-up (A pic of Alex Jones looking suitably barking mad is the Conspiratards’ mascot).

I’ve watched as the conspiracy theory subculture degenerated from serious, yet unorthodox, inquiry and investigative journalism (the high point was the late 80s, early 90s when zine culture still flourished) to the mentally unstable jabberwocky of Jones, the Fox News reichwing propaganda machine and the smirking, immature fratboy fascists at Breitbart we have today. It’s gone from fascinating to pathetic and there’s a world of distance between the likes of a great, non-conformist mind such as Mae Brussell or her disciple Dave Emory, and a bi-polar paranoid numbskull like Alex Jones.

Because of the popularity of Disinformation, which launched in 1996 when the Internet was still a new thing to most people, I was often asked to comment on conspiracy theories on television shows and newscasts from all over the world. Out of “nowhere” these “theories” appeared to be gaining a level of acceptability in the culture, and this seemed to alarm traditional journalists and so they would have someone like me—or Jonathan Vankin, author of Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, still the definitive book on conspiracy theorists) explain it for their listeners, viewers or readers. Both Jonathan and myself were bemused onlookers, not true believers in any way, so we tended to be the “go to” guys for that stuff back then.

I was always asked these two questions, or some variation thereof: “Have you ever investigated a conspiracy theory that you were skeptical of, only to find that you ultimately came to believe it?” (“No,” is the very short answer) and they also always wanted to know how the general public would be able to tell shit from shinola in this brave new Internet era…

This was the trickier question to answer, but to a large extent, I’d give the same answer today as I did fifteen years ago: “If it sounds like something they already believe, and it’s presented with a certain level of slickness, be it a professional TV graphics package, or good web design, then a certain segment of the population probably will believe it—fervently—and there’s not a lot that can done about it.”

I’ve had TV hosts gasp when I said that, but I wasn’t trying to imply—certainly not—that Lyndon LaRouche’s website would be on equal footing with The New York Times, but I was on the record several times back then predicting that “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” as defined by Richard Hofstadter in his famous 1964 essay of the same title, would become very popular in the coming decade as a form of entertainment.

It’s not about the John Birch Society-type ideas, or those of Glenn Beck’s idol, W. Cleon Skousen, per se—they’ve been languishing in the background for 50-60 years—but the slicker presentation of these kinds of ideas in a wide-open, low barrier to entry mediaverse that is seeing them flourish and gain traction in a way that never could have been imagined when Hofstadter wrote his essay. Today what used to be the fringe is the mainstream.

Consider the right wing “bubble” that the Mitt Romney campaign and the GOP were accused of living in during the 2012 election. If Breitbart.com looked like Free Republic, it’s doubtful that it would carry the same weight in the minds of conservatives as the freaking New York Times, if you take the point, but to many on the right, it DOES have the same value, a fact that came out repeatedly in the election post-mortems. Breitbart? WTF?

Then there’s Fox News. Imagine how threadbare that network would appear without the slick motion graphics and the blonde newscasters? It would frankly look just like the Alex Jones podcast without the Fox-y ladies and professional art directors. Ever noticed how few live reports Fox does? Local newscasts get out of the studio more often than Fox does and many times, they’re using the same feeds as CNN, perhaps even licensing these feeds from their competitor. It looks like a news network and has all of the trappings and outer appearance of one, but is it really news that Fox offers its elderly viewers in between all of the Gold Bond powder and MedicAlert commercials?

In any case, my perception of the Conspiratards sub-reddit forum is that it represents (by its explicitly mocking name and irreverent attitude) a really, really interesting new development in conspiracy theory culture. Not merely a “get your head out of your ass, dude” place to vent, it’s actually a place where even the folks who troll it will inevitably get a dose of counter reality that will bounce off the back of their heads like a basketball of logic.

I can understand why people are Glenn Beck fans or Alex Jones diehards, but it doesn’t mean I have any respect for how their tiny minds process and evaluate information sources. Conspiratards on reddit looks to promote a modern—and necessary—form of media literacy, no more, no less. The educational system might be failing us, but take heart that we can still teach each other something.
 

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Recall that supposed Creationist “science quiz” that was going around on reddit and Facebook last month? The one that most people branded as a fake because it just seemed too stupid to be real?

Well, it turns out that it IS true… no, not the literal belief in Noah’s Ark part, but this “science quiz” WAS actually given to 4th graders in the Blueridge Christian Academy of Greenville, South Carolina, as the urban legend detectives at Snopes.com found out. The actual father of the child whose test was on reddit wrote in to quiet the naysayers asserting that the quiz did indeed belong to his 10-year-old daughter, and offering as proof a shot of the backside of the quiz:

I didn’t know that this was being taught to her until we heard a radio commercial together about the Discover the Dinosaurs exhibit was coming to the TD Convention Center [in Greenville, South Carolina].

The Commercial starts out, “After 65 million years, the dinosaurs have returned ...” She commented immediately that it was only four thousand years ago.  When I corrected her, she snapped back, “Were you there?”

I have since taught my daughter differently, but I am sure she is confused now and plan to make sure she understands that teachers are people too and can be factually wrong.

The test showed up [at] home a day later to my disgust.

It’s a great school for Reading, Writing and Math.  She is ahead of most of her peers and also is taking Latin there. But I now know to be vigilant for the rest of the year about her science teachings.

She will not be attending the school next year.

Religion, an organized system of ignorance!

Read the rest at Snopes, including the back side of the test.

 
My god does this guy suck. He’s the pits! What VHS rock did the merry geniuses at Everything Is Terrible turn up to find this garden slug of comedy?

As one of the commenters quipped, “I didn’t know Carlos Mencia was white and had a mullet back in the 80s.”

This nameless goofball is apparently a big part of their latest found footage opus, Comic Relief Zero, made entirely out of the world’s worst stand-up comedy clips.

Comic Relief Zero will be getting a sneak preview at Chicago’s Up Comedy Club on May 16th at 8PM.
 

 
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind project has released the eye-popping results of a new poll aiming to gauge public attitudes and awareness level regarding gun issues.

The pollsters found that overall, 29% of Americans agreed with the statement, “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” Five percent were unsure about this.

Some Democrats (18%) said an armed revolt “might be necessary,” while 27% of independents and whopping 44%of Republicans agreed. The less educated someone was the more likely they were to agree with the statement.

PublicMind also found that 25% of voters believe they’re being lied to about the Sandy Hook massacre by people trying to manipulate the tragedy for political power. Another 11 % said they weren’t sure about it.

Read more about the survey here.

 
The nation’s crazy Christian uncle-in-chief, Pat Robertson took to the airwaves of the 700 Club yesterday to defend the ESPN contributor who said that Jason Collins was “walking in open rebellion to God” for coming out of the closet in a widely praised Sports Illustrated column earlier this week.

ESPN’s Chris Broussard shared his doubts that an NBA player could be both openly gay and a Christian:

“If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, whatever it maybe, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. So I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I don’t think the bible would characterize them as a Christian.”

Why, that’s mighty Christian of you, Chris!

Yesterday, Robertson declared his agreement with Broussard, who he described as “somebody who’s brave enough to say it”:

“Somehow we’ve said if it’s heterosexual fornication, it’s bad; if it’s homosexual fornication — that used to be called an abomination in the Bible — now it’s a protected civil right. And so somebody that says that that kind of conduct is sinful is now being pilloried in the press. He’s telling the truth! This is what the Bible says!”

Robertson went on to call out “these media types” critical of Broussard’s comments, saying that they had chosen “a lifestyle that takes them outside the protection of God.”

“You can’t tell them if they want to go to hell or heaven, that’s their business. But don’t tell somebody that he can’t speak specifically about what the Christian faith says about certain conduct. There isn’t anything bigoted about that.”

No, no, Of course not, Pat. Just keep talking, you’re doing the Lord’s work with each and every batshit crazy utterance that passes through your thin lips, really you are…
 

 

 
Via Raw Story

I fantasized about punching this guy in the face as I watched this.

“If a dirty old man in a park showed ten-year-old children the graphic images Planned Parenthood pedals as education, he would be arrested. Planned Parenthood shows this smut to children and is awarded with more taxpayer money and the ability to determine the efficacy of its sex indoctrination, so it can get even more taxpayer money. It is time to stop this madness!”

It must be really difficult for a certain type of conservative Republican to watch Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible without wistfully wondering if they were born in the wrong century. The timeless drama, still widely read in US high schools, is, of course, is a scathing commentary on McCarthyism and a peculiar strand of American political extremism, but this would be totally lost on today’s Tea party dum-dums who would simply be envious of all that witch burning people used to get up to in Salem, Massachusetts! Their modern day bluenose counterparts may have to miss out on all that fun “mob rule” stuff they got up to in the 17th century, but the mentality lives on.

Take for instance the new “report,” produced by the “American Life League” (ALL), a feverish, mentally-challenged clip that aims to expose “Sex Incorporated” –aka Planned Parenthood—the bad, very bad, very horribly terrible, terrible people who EDUMICATE our children ALL WRONG and turn them into PREGNANT SEX FIENDS, GAY HOMOSEXUALS or WORSE. Why wouldn’t the heathen, Marxist smart people working at The New York Times and The Washington Post take their good, clean Christian American money to run their ridiculous ad?

Of course the “American Life League” knew well in advance that the Times and Post were never going to publish the video on their website, but that wasn’t the point. The point was instead to be turned down so they could send out a press release saying boo-hoo, “we were censored” by “the Left” and spread the word that way (See how that works? Calvin Klein ads in the past have used the same modus operandi, it’s a time honored public relations tactic). Stir it up and give the reichwing blogs something to get worked into a tizzy over, then follow that up with a statement, decrying censorship from the mainstream media (being seen as a martyr is good business for conservative causes) and well, you just have to read it:

While most Americans associate Planned Parenthood with abortion, this organization is also in the business of promoting a deviate and dangerous sexual agenda that in the long run will benefit the abortion giant’s bottom line, while creating a destructive and broken society for the rest of us.

Planned Parenthood has proven that it is a sex business that self-perpetuates itself by first developing obscene sex education materials that promote indiscriminate and risky sexual behavior to our youth through America’s public schools, families and community organizations.

The second step kicks in once the organization has created an environment of sexual risk-taking behavior among youth. It then markets and promotes contraceptive products and programs that have proven to be ineffective in preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Once the ineffective contraceptives fail, Planned Parenthood completes the cycle selling abortions to the teens it has sucked into its deadly cyclone. Tax-paying Americans who work diligently to contribute to strengthening our country are unwittingly funding the absolutely pornographic and child sexual abuse agenda that Planned Parenthood pushes on our society.

Planned Parenthood is like a drug pusher, don’t cha see, don’t cha see getting America’s kids into SEX—masturbation is the gateway drug—just so these PERVERTS can distribute condoms with holes in them and birth control pills that are really only SweetTarts and collect all of those PHAT ABORTION FEES! Planned Parenthood wants to turn kids into sex addicts. That’s the REAL plan of Planned Parenthood! It’s so diabolical that Satan hisself must be personally running the organization…

ANYWAY… so now cue all of the concern trolls who will write in asking me “So then why do you keep writing about these assholes? Just ignore them (and Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Louie Gohmert, etc, etc) and they’ll go way.”

You really think so, do you?

Stuff like this should be out in the open and it should be covered by the mainstream and not so mainstream outlets like this one. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said.

Personally, I think this LOL stupid video, and the group of twits behind it, deserves to have mockery heaped upon them. Seriously, watch this (NSFW) and tell me if this made you think their message was perfectly reasonable or BARKING FUCKING MAD…

This insane video does not help their cause even one tiny little bit. It would convince no one of anything except that the folks behind it are a bunch of fucking idiots. That’s all that’s being achieved by ALL with this comedy, they’re hurting their own cause in the process of spreading the word about it.

I’m quite happy to oblige them in pursuit of these goals. Enjoy!
 

 
Via Wonkette and WorldNut Daily

 
About ten years ago, whoever was managing Alex Jones at the time would have DVDs of Jones’ shouty “documentaries” messengered over to me at the Disinformation office.

I was already well aware of Alex Jones and sight-unseen, I already knew that this was not going to be something that I was going to be interested in, and especially not interested in investing any money into (the idea was that we would have manufactured it and distributed it on DVD).

Aside from the fact that they were obviously the products of a ranting and raving unhinged paranoiac lunatic with access to someone who knew Final Cut Pro, Jones used footage that there was no way he could have gotten the rights to use.

They were these long, like, messy video collages of fact, conjecture, crappy pixelated news footage and the jumbled-up logic, red-faced, bulging vein exhortations Jones is famous for. I will admit to watching them on the treadmill but they were always binned immediately afterwards.

In the intervening years, Jones has become a household name in some of America’s more gullible households, mostly due to Glenn Beck disgracefully elevating his profile on Fox News. Beck ultimately decided to cut out the middleman and unashamedly ripped off Alex Jones’ shtick. Oh yeah, Beck stole his act lock, stock and fucking barrel, went to the bank with it and then kicked Jones to the curb to distance himself from his hot-headed, foaming at the mouth mentor (and lesser showman). Jones does have a legitimate gripe with Glenn Beck, if you ask me, but it is Beck who deserves the blame for mainstreaming a kook like Alex fucking Jones in the first place.

Of late, Mr. Jones has been his own worst enemy, making himself into a laughingstock, first with his infamously berserk Piers Morgan interview on CNN and then again with his “false flag” accusations about the Boston bombing.

Jones makes outrageous predictions constantly. Is he ever right?

Nathaniel Downes at Addicting Info thinks Alex Jones is a fraud. That might be more than a little unfair to Jones—I think he believes what he says, he’s just fucking nuts—but he’s amassed an impressive list of some of Alex Jones’ greatest misses from 2012:

Worldwide shortage of rare earth metals – Didn’t happen
Food supply disruptions hit western nations – Didn’t happen
Deadly superbug mutation goes wild – Didn’t happen
New evidence links vaccines and neurological disorders – The opposite happened
U.S. power grid suffers catastrophic failure – Didn’t happen
Satellite breakdown – Didn’t happen
GM crop contamination leads to crisis – Didn’t happen
Honeybee population collapse spreads to other species – Didn’t happen
Weather patterns become increasingly radicalized – Debatable
Nuclear power sees global resurgence – The Fukushima incident discredited this
Nuclear weapons unleashed in the Middle East – Didn’t happen
New exotic superfood from South America emerges in western markets – Didn’t happen
A high-tech, portable vitamin D sensor device is invented – Didn’t happen
U.S. debt gets downgraded while world investors slash purchases of U.S. debt instruments – The debt was downgraded, but investors still flock to it
U.S. nearly comes to military conflict with China over natural resources – Didn’t happen
Huge new scandal implicates major pharmaceutical company in scientific fraud – Nothing out of the ordinary here
China unleashes armies of corporate espionage hackers onto western nations – Some debate on this is ongoing
Medical imaging scandal unfolds as older patients begin to show serious health damage from radiation via mammograms, CT scans and more – Didn’t happen
Another 9/11 false flag incident – Didn’t happen
The world won’t end on December 21, 2012 – Hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day!
EPA pressured to regulate pharmaceuticals in the water supply – Can’t even contemplate this one without the brain hurting
Nursing home drugging scandal exposed – Didn’t happen
The psychiatric industry will declare more normal behaviors to be “disorders” – Didn’t happen
Vaccine industry goes crazy with new vaccines for all sorts of “diseases” – Didn’t happen
War on health freedom ramps up, targeting raw milk, homeopathy, herbs and supplements – Didn’t happen
The world becomes a far more dangerous place for honest citizens – So open-ended you cannot even evaluate
New attempts are made to destroy internet freedom – SOPA and PIPA have been discussed for awhile, so not a real argument
China’s boom will bust, sending ripples through global economy – Didn’t happen
Central and South America will drop the U.S. dollar as a currency – Didn’t happen
Local currencies emerge following the collapse of the dollar – As the dollar didn’t collapse, this didn’t happen
TSA suspends full body scanners after celeb photo scandal – No, was suspended due to dangerous exposure to radiation
Cell phone brain tumors start to appear in younger users – Didn’t happen
Medical industry claims to find cause of autism – Didn’t happen, although some hope has been raised
Terrorist strike on the U.S. water supply – Didn’t happen
Sperm count drops, infertility rates rise – Fertility is increasing, not decreasing, across the United States
“Stealth personal recorders” go mainstream – We call them Cell Phones, although Alex Jones is quick to claim that they cause cancer

Good times!
 

 
Rachel Maddow’s epic Alex Jones takedown from last night is quite amusing. She starts off all serious, but wait until the clips of feverishly ranting Alex Jone start. After that she riffs on him like the fool he is and annihilates him, but with her typical good-natured wryness. Jones is perfect fodder for her wit. Good stuff.
 

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Previously on Dangerous Minds
Alex Jones: DMT elves want the elites to kill us all!

 
Put yourself in the shoes of poor John Brennan, the newly installed CIA director as he is lobbed one batshit crazy question after another by GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. He’s trying very hard to be respectful, but it’s obviously very difficult to do that with such a self-important uninformed dingbat confronting him.

Bachmann’s first question, of course, was about Benghazi and it just goes downhill from there. At the end of the clip there is a full ten seconds of WTF looks exchanged as Brennan and his top men try to make sense of the Republican pol’s inane word salad.

It’s bust-a-gut-funny until you consider that she’s asking this question as a member of the House Intelligence Committee! Michele Bachmann could scarcely be considered “high functioning” let along intelligent!

Christian McCarthyite Bachmann will be attending the funeral of Margaret Thatcher in London this week. I simply can’t wait to hear what she will have to say about all of the anti-Thatcher protests. She’s probably going to be extra befuddled. I wonder if she’s ever been abroad before? She doesn’t act like it (Canada doesn’t count).
 

 
There’s another update in the story of Barronelle Stuztman, the florist in Washington state who is being sued by the state’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson in a consumer protection lawsuit for refusing to “participate in the marriage,” as she put it, of two gay men because of her “relationship with Jesus Christ.” Now the couple disrespected by the proprietor of Arlene’s Flowers, who would not sell them flowers for their wedding due to her belief that the Bible teaches “marriage is between a man and a woman” is fighting back. Via The Stranger:

Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed’s lawyers, working with the legal powerhouse at the ACLU of Washington, sent a letter today to Arlene’s Flowers owner Baronelle Stutzman saying she has two options: (1) She can vow to never again discriminate in her services for gay people, write an apology letter to be published in the Tri-City Herald, and contribute $5,000 to a local LGBT youth center, or (2) she can get sued for violating the Washington State Civil Rights Act.

That’s some offer.

This would be the second lawsuit against Stutzman, who was sued by the state yesterday in Benton County Superior Court for discrimination under the consumer protection act. And given Stutzman’s stubbornness thus far, these two cases may be on track to become the country’s biggest gay-rights-versus-religious-liberty battle to date.

Stutzman’s law firm, Gourly Bristol Hembree, responded to the AG on Monday with a letter promising “an immediate challenge in federal court” and contend that their client is entitled to act according to her religious convictions and that discrimination isn’t the issue. Furthermore, from what I can understand, they’re saying that the art of floral arrangement is an act of personal expression so that any demand or limitation on those expressive flower arrangements is a violation of Baronelle Stutzmans’s First Amendment rights to free speech.

Good luck with that floral arrangement defense, boys, you’ll be laughed out of the fucking courtroom for that one.

Naturally this will be portrayed in the conservative media as anti-religious bigotry, as opposed to the regular, straight-up bigotry bigotry that Barronelle Stutzman inflicted on the same-sex couple. As if bigotry becomes somehow okay when it’s justified by the words of desert-dwelling nomads in a supposedly magic book from 2000 years ago.

Yesterday on his on American Family Radio radio program Christian conservative whack-job Bryan Fischer described his belief that “homofascists” would force Christians to identify themselves in a manner similar to the Nazis making Jews wear a yellow Star of David during the Holocaust:

“I don’t know what the symbol would be, I’d have to think about that. [A cross? The vesica pisces? A sheep? Alfred E. Neuman? Just some thoughts] We’re getting to the point where these homofascists are going to force us to wear on our sleeves some kind of identifying marker so people will know who the racists and the homophobes and the bigots are, and can stay away from them.”

Irony deficient Fischer is, of course, conveniently forgetting that homosexuals were made to wear inverted pink triangles armbands and patches in Nazis concentration camps. But when has being an idiot ever stopped Bryan Fischer from flapping his lips? Never!

Read the full letter from Ingersoll and Freed’s attorneys, it’s a real doozy.
 

 
Via Joe.My.God.

Rising GOP star Dave Agema, neither a hater or bigot, just a good, clean-living, God-fearing conservative Republican

The humiliating self-immolation of Dr. Ben Carson apparently wasn’t enough, so the comedy gods must be demanding another GOP sacrifice. Dave Agema, the Republican National Committee member from Michigan—a small-minded dumbass whose anti-gay Facebook posting that suggested gays were responsible for “half the murders in large cities” (among other things, but Agema didn’t write it, he just posted it) made national news last week—isn’t going to go away quietly as he proved during a remarkably idiotic conservative talk radio interview.

Move over Louie Gohmert, you’ve got some brain-damaged competition in the “Male Michele Bachmann” sweepstakes!

Via Deadline Detroit:

“It’s not about hate, folks,” he says of warnings about purported physical and mental health risks of homosexuality. “What it is, is hey, if you’re in this lifestyle, if you really love somebody that’s in this lifestyle, you want to ask them and try to get them out because they’re not going to live as long. It’s going to hurt them emotionally and physically.

“That’s what it’s about. So it’s really more about caring than it is hate,” Agema adds during an outspoken, defiant conversation Monday with sympathetic hosts at WPIQ in Manistee in northern Michigan.

That talk-format station airs syndicated shows from Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Comfortable turf, in other words.

Comfortable turf for unhinged morons like Agema who don’t know when to quit and detestable Republican fuckwits, in other other words…

Agema, a Michigan state representative from 2007-12 first got himself noticed about a year ago, when the newly-minted RNC member made some very confused remarks about Muslims, terrorism and how Obama was a Muslim terrorist. Or something like that. Agema is so witless that he once agreed to appear with Koran-burning Yosemite Sam look-a-like Pastor Terry Jones before backing out.

A bigot? Where’s the proof? Ahahahahahahahah. This guy’s fucking funny!

The Republican National Committee-man had this to say during his time on air with WPIQ’s Morning Breakfast Show hosts, Davin Lawrence and Doug Sedenquist, a Republican activist:

School messages: “I don’t want my kids – my grandkids, I should say – taught in school that this is an alternate lifestyle, [that] you should accept it. I would rather have them taught, hey look, here’s what happens in this lifestyle. Here’s what’s going to happen to you physically. Here’s what’s going to happen to you emotionally. Instead we’re going to teach just the opposite..”

Personal experience: “I’ve been involved in this issue for years, way back when I worked for American Airlines this became an issue, because we had, you know obviously we had a lot of homosexuals in the flight attendant realm, and, uhh, we had issues.”

Social change: “Society in general has been tolerant of any behavior that doesn’t affect others in a general stance. But this does affect others. . . . When you look at this stuff, it’s just amazing what’s happening in our society, how fast it’s happened, I mean just 20 years ago, you wouldn’t think this would happen, or 25 years ago, and look where we are now—we’re just like they are in Europe. And some of those studies over there show the same thing: This is not a good thing for us, folks. And all I want to do is maintain our principles, and I want to stay on the conservative side, not on the liberal side.”

Critical response: “They’re trying to say you’re a bigot if you’re bringing it up and I think that’s what bothers me more than anything. I never heard such amount of name-calling, threats and bigotry on their part, calling me a bigot, for bringing up this information. I have never seen anything like it. . . . I’ve been threatened just by speaking out. And that’s the key, they are trying to shut anyone and everyone down from saying anything, that’s what they do. . . . What you get thrown back in your face is nothing but hate.”

Threat to churches: “The next thing I fear is they’ll come to your churches and say oh, you won’t marry same-sex couples? Well that’s interesting. This is a hate crime, you just lost your tax-exempt status. This is going to go from one step to the next, it’s part of the plan.”

Challenge to party: “I just wish our leadership would get behind this, and stand, have backbone, and stand for what our core principles are in the Republican Party.”

I have to agree with Agema on that last point. Don’t ever change GOP!

Don’t. You. Ever. Change.
 

 
H/T Wonkette