I love this guy. He’s got my vote.

“Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa today that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients. [...] The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease. ?You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,? the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. ?On the contrary, it increases the problem.?”

First of all, Mr Benedict, if you read papers other than “Vatican Today” and “Playnun”, you would know abstinence doesn’t work. Ask the victims of priests-sexual abusers, Mr Benedict. Ask thousands of pregnant American teenagers. Ask Bristol and Trigg Palin. Ask raped children in Africa, whose rapists believed that they would get cured from AIDS if they raped a virgin. How did abstinence work for them? Did it help much? How does abstinence work for the priests, the special children of God, so special that they leave the church to pursue relationships or just abuse others sexually, luring them with a promise of eternal happiness and scaring them with the threat of damnation?

Second of all, you forgot to explain to us HOW exactly do condoms increase the problem of HIV spread. We will gladly listen to your scientific explanation. You may wish to use the figures. Like, the numbers of AIDS victims who used condoms versus the ones that haven’t.

Third of all, oooh yes, well of course monogamy helps to avoid STDs. It’s just that not everyone is lucky enough to meet their ideal partner at the first go, wait with sexual initiation till the day they get married, then get married and discover they hit the sack regularly and with much luck forever after. Some discover they are incompatible sexually. Some fall out of love. Some fall victims to abusive spouses. Some aren’t even lucky enough to be straight. And, dear Benedict, I understand you have no faintest clue, but sex is actually a vital part of life of more or less anyone who isn’t a pope (or David McDonald, and David got quite enough shagging before he became a saint).

Fourth, it is truly scary that you find it a good idea to abuse your position of power to misinform people who are in lethal danger. When an infected man tells his non-infected partner not to use condoms — against doctors’ orders — “because pope said so”, you will be responsible for the partner’s illness. Benedict. I am not going to say anything silly like “I hope you can live with the guilty conscience”, because I don’t think conscience is a requisite to become a pope. I just think that you’re far, far, far removed from actual human beings. Far enough to forget that some of them are just going to hear the bit about “pope saying condoms spread AIDS” and not the bit about monogamy. How many people will that one little speech kill? Fifty thousand? Ten thousand? Even if it’s just one, Benedict, I hope your boss, that beardy God bloke, will take you upstairs to report on it as soon as possible. And when that happens, I will thank Him.

Harvey Fierstein via Joe.My.God.:

“A couple of boys were calling my best friend a faggot one unhappy day at summer camp. Courses of action seemed slim to my adolescent mind. I could stand up for Jack branding myself a fag as well and insuring myself a miserable summer, or I could join in with the name callers, lose my closest friend, but assure my standing with the majority. I sacrificed my friend on the altar of popularity. I don?t think I need to tell you that political expediency was a terrific short-term solution but a long-term nightmare. My summer concluded uneventfully but none of those boys became my friend or did me any favors. And forty years later I still feel the loss of Jack along with a piece of my self respect that I can never win back. Mine was an act of cowardice and betrayal.

“It seems Obama is now maneuvering through the summer camp of his political adolescence and is about to make the same bad choice as I. He can call the placing of a hate monger like Rick Warren on the world dais political healing or inclusiveness or any other nicety he?d like, but I call it pandering to the lowest instinct of the worst kind of politics.

“President Elect Obama, your victory was made possible in no small part to the votes and wallets of the gay and lesbian community along with our supporters. Turning your back on us does not make you more mainstream American. It just makes you a coward.” – Harvey Fierstein, writing on Facebook.

Time Writer: Obama Is a ?Very Rational Sounding Sort of Bigot? Against Gay Americans (via my boss)
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=246723

There is an article in today’s “Gazeta Wyborcza” — leading Polish daily paper, viewed by most as left-wing/liberal — about the “gays fighting against Obama”. Written by Marcin Bosacki, it contains all elements of the semi-civilised right-wing speech I got used to: careful choice of words to depreciate the “gays” (lesbians, as always happens in Polish press, barely get a mention); the gays, also known as “they”, “boom” and “accuse”; anyone who in any way supported Prop 8 is their “mortal enemy”, and in the eyes of “most members of the gay environments” Warren has “committed an unforgivable crime” by “supporting the introduction in the California constitution the definition of marriage as an union between a man and a woman”. The article does not mention that Prop 8 has taken away an existing right, nor that the loving pastor’s way of supporting was comparing gay marriage to incest and pedophilia (the quote is mentioned in a different paragraph, which also informs us that Warren has many gay friends with whom he wouldn’t be seen dead in public — which sounds strangely similar to “I am not racist, my best friend is beige”). Andrew Sullivan “has loudly publicised his own gay wedding” — because heterosexual couples make sure nobody finds out about theirs. And so on.

LGTB, or “they” are unhappy because “in their opinion there is no space for compromise”. What kind of compromise is there to be made? Either you think non-heterosexual people are fully human, or you don’t. Either you believe a gay or lesbian couple should have the right to get married, or you don’t. Where’s the space for compromise? The “civil unions” aren’t a compromise. As handy as they can be, as much as they are a step into the right direction, they are yet another way to underline that LGBT people are less human; no, you can’t get married you stinky little queers, that one not for you, but here, here, have a civil union, go get civilly unionised and shut up about your rights for fuck’s sake, naah you don’t have to thank us, just don’t publicise it like that awful, awful man Andrew Sullivan (probably not one of Rick Warren’s gay friends) did. Would it not be racist if there was a Prop 21 taking away the right for interracial couples to marry? Would it not be racist if those couples were informed their love is equal to incest and pedophilia? Would it not be racist if they were told that, if they must, they can get certain rights as long as they don’t call themselves married? Would the supporter of such law get invited to speak during Obama’s inauguration? And remember, there was a time when the definition of marriage did not cover mixed race couples. I’m not writing science fiction here.

In the last words of his article, Bosacki writes, cynically: “After failing in California and on the same day in Florida and Arizona, gays go on comparing their fate to that of Negro slaves or even Jews during the Holocaust.” (No quotes there somehow, but I’m sure that’s just because the author ran out of space, there must be millions of “members of gay environments” comparing themselves to Jews during the holocaust.) “But, in fact, outside of making an uproar in the media, they can’t really hurt Obama politically. Their numbers are less than those of the members of Evangelical churches, whom Obama wants to reach via Warren. And even if their vote counted more, what would they do? Vote Sarah Palin four years from now?”

I don’t think that Darian, the author of Living Out Loud With Darian has read Bosacki’s article (which by the way sounds like something straight out of a right-wing competition of “Gazeta Wyborcza” — “Rzeczpospolita”) when he wrote this:

There comes a point when a person gets sick and tired of being sick and tired. When fighting for the same amount of respect, recognition, and access to equal protection under the law should not be a battle but a given.

When you can no longer deny the hostility directed at you from a group of people who look like you but are the first to disown you. Yet for the sake of “belonging” you continue to endure the torture hoping by some state of osmosis things will change.

There comes a point when you get sick and tired of having to explain your right to exist on this earth as you are.

[...] There comes a point when you get sick and tired of hoping that religion will catch up with science and when the word abomination is mentioned in a sentence it won’t be directed at you. Or when you hear the word spoken again you won’t buy into the lie that it defines you.

When your happiness doesn’t require the approval of family, society, or an ancient book that was once a source of hope for so many, but has now been turned into a weapon more dangerous than anything requiring a bullet.

There comes a point when you get sick and tired of your rights being put up for the popular vote and you get so angry that all you know to do is take to the streets by the thousands.

When you get sick and tired of explaining that a dog or a goat can’t sign a marriage license but another human being can.

[...] There comes a point when you get sick and tired of being marginalized and the second class citizenship you’ve become accustomed to is no longer sufficient.

When you expect your leaders to carry through with campaign promises to make this country a place where all men and women truly are equal regardless of race, class, sexual orientation, or gender identity instead of the same old empty rhetoric.

Yes there comes a point when you’ve had about all you can take and your body and mind becomes numb and you can’t feel anything.

The fact that Rick Warren will speak at Obama’s inauguration doesn’t actually have a meaning by itself. It’s not like Obama’s years in office are doomed because of that, or like the gay vote has suddenly turned to Republicans. What it does is give a very clear signal: The Change you Believed In is not for everyone. Yes, We Can, but the definition of “we” must now, post-election, get somewhat narrowed down. Thanks for your votes — but really, it’s not like you could have done anything else, I mean, Sarah Palin anyone?

Also, yes, I am aware that I am not American and that in the country I come from civil unions would have been a MAJOR step. But my belief in the change to come is right now a bit less than it was a few weeks ago — and supporters of John McCain and Sarah Palin just got a reason to celebrate; perhaps it will be same old, same old after all.