A blogger in the gay community known as Joe.My.God. had a video posted in which the video ends with a Confederate gay flag. I tracked down the website and the theme is that this person is a deep South liberal so he has a gay Confederate flag, or Confederate gay flag. It is a mix of the gay rainbow flag and the Confederate battle flag.
What is really ridiculous is that the flag has an equal sign at the center of the stars on the flag. The Confederacy isn't about equality, the Confederacy was about maintaining inequality. You can read some of the material at http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/ which documents this.
The video and the posting is at this URL:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/07/them-queers-is-hammering-me.html
Watch it to the end. Then visit the website of the producer at ashtonelijah.wordpress.com.
So I emailed Joe.My.God and pointed out that a gay Confederate flag tends to confirm the worst stereotypes of a white gay movement. At first Joe.My.God claimed that he didn't know who Ashton Elijah was and then with a follow up email he realized what he had posted. However, he didn't seem to care, and his emails are full of profanity. He doesn't seem to have any argument other than to curse.
Kevin Levine, a Civil War blogger, one time had a Confederate gay flag but decided to remove it after I had a discussion with him at his website.
You can read this discussion here:
http://cwmemory.com/2011/03/19/swiss-confederates-meet-green-day/
I will repost my comments here:
"The design of the gay flag is to represent the diversity of the gay community which comes from all the different facets of society, different religions, different classes, occupations, geographic origins, communities, and last and not least different races.
There is an on going concern in the gay community that there not be exclusion and that there be inclusion.
Finally, the gay community isn’t entirely in urban areas, but it does have urban communities and focal points in urban environments. In these urban environments the gay community shares cities with minority communities if not always adjancent, which frequently is the case. It is desired to have relationships of commity with other communities whose membership overlap with the gay community.
To superimpose a confederate battleflag design element over the flag is an affront to the very idea of the gay flag as a symbol of a multiracial community and a potential for antagonism with other groups.
I am not an official spokesperson for the gay community or any organization, I don’t think anyone is. However, I think my opinion as a gay person is fairly representative of the great majority of gay people who would find this Confederate gay flag offensive and injurious to the gay community by promoting division within it and potentially antagonistic to other communities. "
However, Joe.My.God. doesn't care at all about this. However, is he racist, perhaps in a banal way in that when he saw a Confederate gay flag he just didn't care. It seems however, that he is just a belligerent hot head that can't take any criticism either.
There are a lot of good LGBT blogs out there. Don't read his.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
An article about the homophobia of the Neo-Confederate movement published in the "Southern Voice."
I know this article is from 1994, but the homophobia of the neo-Confederate movement is largely unchanged and this portrayal could just as well apply to the neo-Confederate movement of today. Note, this is a quick Optical Character Recognition scan and I did catch some of the errors, but I am sure I missed some.
From the Southern Voice, March 31- April 6, 1994, of Atlanta, Georgia
Stars, Bars, and Homophobia:
How the battle to preserve Confederate heritage is fueling a political movement that takes aim at gays and lesbians
¬ by RICHARD SHUMATE
Throughout the South, the battle lines have ¬ been drawn again. But this time, the fight is not over land nor state's rights nor political hegemony. It is instead over songs and flags and symbols.
Many native white Southerners-gays and lesbians among them believe these Confederate symbols represent a noble chapter of valor and sacrifice that ought to be cherished and remembered. They bristle against the forces of political correctness that, as they see it, are trying to eradicate Southern heritage and the region's particular identity. They reject the idea that the Confederate battle flag and "Dixie" are racist statements. They no doubt cheer the efforts of groups fighting to preserve the Georgia state flag and the Virginia state song.
But what they may not realize is that some of the people who are leading the charge to preserve Confederate heritage, known collectively as the neo-Confederate movement, are often openly, and passionately, homophobic.
The movement, a coalition which includes such innocuous sounding groups as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Heritage Preservation Association and the Confederate Society of America, has ties to a number of strongly anti¬gay and Christian supremacist political leaders, including Pat Buchanan, Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson. And the political clout the movement has gained from the controversy over the public use of Confederate symbols-in Georgia in particular-is being used to rally support for political candidates strongly opposed to lesbian and gay rights.
Last year, two Republican state senators elected in special elections with neo-Confederate backing became part of a fundamentalist clique in the Georgia Senate that has pushed that body sharply: to the right. This year, the neo-Confederates plan to go after their public enemy number one-Gov. Zell Miller, who drew their ire when he pushed, unsuccessfully, for the elimination of the Confederate battle ensign from the state flag.
In essence, what is being billed as an effort to preserve heritage, for which there is a great deal of sentiment in the South, is instead turning into a political movement that is very unfriendly to gays Lesbians, couched in a conservative brand of Christianity. "I would say that what we're now starting to see is the development of a strategy to promote key parts of an ideology," says Walter Reeves of the Neighbors Network, an Atlanta based human rights group that monitors neo-Confederate activity. "I think they find this is an excellent way to mobilize a segment of white Southerners."
In the context used here, the term "neo-Confederate" is not meant to refer to white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Southern White Knights or the Nazi Party. In fact, the leaders of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and similar groups go out of their way to distance themselves from overt racism and hardline racists, dismissing Klansmen and their ilk as Southern white trash.
Instead, these are the gentlemen and ladies, reared on reverence for Southern heritage, fighting to keep alive the beliefs and traditions of centuries past. They insist that they abhor the misuse of the Confederate flag by white supremacists and argue that just because these symbols have been misappropriated doesn't mean they should be discarded.
But while neo-Confederates leaders labor long and hard ¬to veil any racist sentiments among their members (though in many cases, the veil wears pretty thin), disdain for gays and lesbians is, in contrast, often expressed openly and boldly. For proof of. that, one need look no further than neo-Confederate literature.
Take, for example, Southern Partisan, a magazine based in Columbia, S.C. that is one of the largest and most important organs of the neo-Confederate movement. On the masthead, as a "senior advisor," is Buchanan, the TV commentator and unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 who excoriated gays from the stage of the GOP convention. Buchanan is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the oldest and largest of the neo-Confederate groups. Though Southern Partisan is not an official publication of the Sons, the group is frequently mentioned in its pages.
In one of Southern Partisan's 1993 issues, Buchanan -provided a column slamming Bill Clinton, accusing him of supporting gay rights. His comments were mild compared with another writer named P .J.. Byrnes who provided a review of the March on Washington entitled "Armageddon-An Update.": Brynes, saying the news media sugarcoated its coverage of the largest human rights march in history, characterized the event instead as "the most obscene desecration of public property in the history of the nation."
He decried topless lesbians, intimated that female marchers expressed an interest in molesting Chelsea Clinton and said that on the Mall, "genitalia were almost as prominently displayed as midriffs." The March on Washington was, according to Byrnes, "the deliberate, in the face posturing of an obsessed mob, sick with confused lust, determined to infect the rest of the nation."
In this same issue, on the very next page, President Clinton was taken to task for his "don't ask, don't tell" compromise on the military ban. Though Clinton's proposal offered little difference from the ban already in place, SP's editors decried it as a radical departure that would allow people in the military who are "perverse and unnatural," "Of course, this is not to say that Americans are predisposed to persecute homosexuals," the editors went on to say. "The threshold to this problem is the door to what once was metaphorically called 'the closet.' In a world where moral standards are publicly upheld, the closet is a useful place indeed. Many sins reside there in peace, for no one is without fault. But today's militant homosexuals are no longer restrained by the unspoken rules of civility.'
Also in this same issue was an article praising U.S. Sen.. Jesse Helms of North Carolina for his characterization of Roberta Achtenberg as a "damn lesbian,' curing hearings to confirm her as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and a piece taking the University of South Carolina to task for offering a course last summer by a gay professor on the challenge to public education posed by the fundamentalist agenda.
The magazine also published an attack on hate crimes laws in general and a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding them in particular, and it reprinted part of Virginia's 18th Century criminal code that outlined the punishment for sodomy as castration for a man and, for a woman, having a half inch hole bored through her nose.
All in all, in that one issue of Southern Partisan, there were nine articles that were primarily anti¬gay/lesbian in nature. Gays took more hits in that issue than did Abraham Lincoln.
Another neo-Confederate publication, called Southern Heritage, is equally hostile to gays and lesbians. Though it is independent and not officially affiliated with any group, almost 60 percent of its readers are members of either the Sons of Confederate Veterans or the United Daughters of the Confederacy, according to a survey of its readers published in one of its issues.
Based in Merrifield, Va., the publication lists on its masthead as a contributor Charles Lunsford, an Inman Park resident who is the spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Georgia branch. Lunsford has been at the forefront of the fight to preserve the Confederate emblem on the state flag.
In one issue of Southern Heritage, a writer named Kay Moxley Black wrote an entire column decrying the use of the term "gay" to mean homosexual, asking rhetorically how "did a beautiful word like 'gay' become so debauched?" "Look how many of those words were good, pure, beautiful words before 'they' decided to change our culture," Moxley said.
John F. Cummings III, the editor-in-chief of Southern Heritage, writes a column in each issue that he routinely uses to blast gays and lesbians, referring to the United States as the "land of Rodham and Gomorrah" and decrying the fact that "flagrant homosexual expression is heralded as acceptable."
Then there are the letters to the editor expressions of the sentiments of the readers of these magazines that are often stridently anti-gay. One letter writer even advocated that Atlanta be burned a second time because "elements alien to the traditional values of the South (i.e. feminists, homosexuals, northern liberals) have descended on the city in force."
Advertisers in these publications include a number of mail-order merchandise firms that peddle anti-gay T-shirts and bumper stickers. One such sticker reads, "Roosevelt: A Chicken In Every Pot. Clinton: A Fag in Every Pup Tent." (Their history is a bit faulty here-it was Herbert Hoover, not FDR, who promised a chicken in every pot).
Of course, many people who feel a reverence for Confederate symbols are not members of these groups and do not subscribe to their narrow ideology. And not all of the people who belong to ¬ these groups necessarily share these anti-gay/lesbian viewpoints.
So these homophobic ramblings might just be dismissed as the expected rhetoric of a fringe group, except for two things. First, homophobia seems to be a strong, consistent central theme, not an isolated occurrence. And second, these groups have been able to tap into public sentiment in favor of retaining Confederate symbols to bolster their political power.
After Gov.. Miller proposed dropping the Confederate battle ensign from the state flag, polls showed that a majority of Georgians opposed the idea. Amidst the controversy, the Georgia division of Sons of Confederate Veterans-whose Atlanta branch, ironically, holds its meetings in Midtown at the Mason's hall on Ponce de Leon Avenue-began receiving applications from as many as 500 new members a month, according to a recent investigation into Confederate preservation groups by Atlanta Magazine writer R. Robin McDonald.
The Georgia Sons have more than 20,000 members, including a number of prominent political leaders. While many of those people do not publicly disclose their affiliation, Atlanta Magazine identified among their number Georgia state representatives J. Max Davis of Dunwoody and Keith Breedlove of Buford; former Waycross mayor John Knox, who is running against Miller for governor and U.S. Rep. John Linder, a Republican who represents DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in Congress.
During the recent legislative session, Davis was one of the cosponsors of a bill that would have repealed two Atlanta city ordinances setting up a domestic partnership registry and providing benefits to the partners of city employees. "He has been a longtime opponent of progressive legislation," said Larry Pellegrini, the Capitol lobbyist for GAPAC, Georgia's gay/lesbian political action committee.
Knox, who is anti-choice on the issue of abortion, made headlines in January when he called a press conference at the Capitol to ask Miller for force Georgia Public Television to pull Armistead Maupin's "Tales of, the City" from the airwaves. Though he hadn't seen the program, which chronicled life in 1970s San Francisco, Knox termed it "X-rated" television.
Last year, Perry McGuire and Bob Guhl, both Republicans, were elected to the Georgia Senate from suburban Atlanta districts, replacing moderate Democrats. Neo-Confederate groups were involved in those campaigns, according to Atlanta Magazine's report. While there is no way to tell what difference that support made in the election's outcome, both were hotly contested elections where the neo-Confederates may have made a difference.
"Both [McGuire and Guhl] allied themselves with the right wing ," said Pellegrini. "Both of them were beholden to the right wing in the election, and they acted like that once they got down [to the Capitol]."
The Senate had been closely divided among moderates and conservatives. This past session, right¬wing Republican conservatives were able to bring along enough conservative Democrats to swing the Senate to the right on abortion funding and some other issues.
Perhaps the most curious thing about the political involvement of the neo-Confederates-and evidence that they may be promoting ideology instead of preserving history-is their consistent support for Republican politicians. During the War Between The States, of course, Republicans were the enemy.
The big test of the power of the neo-Confederate groups will come in November, when Miller faces re-election. Were it not for the flag contretemps, he would probably be a shoo¬in for a second term. Now, according to Pellegrini and other political observers, "that's one flank on which he might be vulnerable."
And while Miller has been no champion of gay and lesbian issues, he has not been hostile to them in the way other candidates, particularly Knox, have been. Neighbors Network has sent servers to "save-the-flag" rallies, and they have talked to people in the crowd to get an idea of why they were there.
According to Reeves, most don't express racist or homophobic sentiments. Many say they are Civil War re-enactors, people who, as a hobby, put on costumes and participate in authentic reenactments of famous battles.
But these people have been drawn into the flag fight because they have bought into a post-Reconstruction view of the Confederacy as some romantic "Gone With The Wind" fantasy and can't understand why Confederate symbols need to be removed, according to Reeves. He says he has come across well educated, thoughtful people who have told him that they believe the Ku Klux Klan was formed to protect Southern rights during Reconstruction and only later became a terrorist group, when in fact evidence is overwhelming that the Klan was a terrorist group from its very inception.
"I find this prostitution of our history to serve this revisionist political agenda to be thoroughly disgusting," said Reeves, a native Georgian whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
Gay and lesbian groups have been involved in the effort to change the state flag- most recently during a demonstration at the Georgia Dome during the Super Bowl-but those who have been doing so have, in large part, been motivated by their dislike of racist baggage attached to Confederate symbols.
There are other gays and lesbians, however, who don't share that same dislike. One can occasionally see patrons in gay bars festooned in Confederate attire or a vehicle with a Stars and Bars sticker juxtaposed with a Rainbow Flag.
However, those lesbian and gay people who revere and display Confederate symbols face a different paradox, and they may not even be aware of it.
Though their motivation may be Southern pride, they are casting their lot with the neo-Confederate movement. And the vocal activists in that movement, if they had their druthers, would render all gays and lesbians second-class citizens-whether or not they revere the Cause.
From the Southern Voice, March 31- April 6, 1994, of Atlanta, Georgia
Stars, Bars, and Homophobia:
How the battle to preserve Confederate heritage is fueling a political movement that takes aim at gays and lesbians
¬ by RICHARD SHUMATE
Throughout the South, the battle lines have ¬ been drawn again. But this time, the fight is not over land nor state's rights nor political hegemony. It is instead over songs and flags and symbols.
Many native white Southerners-gays and lesbians among them believe these Confederate symbols represent a noble chapter of valor and sacrifice that ought to be cherished and remembered. They bristle against the forces of political correctness that, as they see it, are trying to eradicate Southern heritage and the region's particular identity. They reject the idea that the Confederate battle flag and "Dixie" are racist statements. They no doubt cheer the efforts of groups fighting to preserve the Georgia state flag and the Virginia state song.
But what they may not realize is that some of the people who are leading the charge to preserve Confederate heritage, known collectively as the neo-Confederate movement, are often openly, and passionately, homophobic.
The movement, a coalition which includes such innocuous sounding groups as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Heritage Preservation Association and the Confederate Society of America, has ties to a number of strongly anti¬gay and Christian supremacist political leaders, including Pat Buchanan, Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson. And the political clout the movement has gained from the controversy over the public use of Confederate symbols-in Georgia in particular-is being used to rally support for political candidates strongly opposed to lesbian and gay rights.
Last year, two Republican state senators elected in special elections with neo-Confederate backing became part of a fundamentalist clique in the Georgia Senate that has pushed that body sharply: to the right. This year, the neo-Confederates plan to go after their public enemy number one-Gov. Zell Miller, who drew their ire when he pushed, unsuccessfully, for the elimination of the Confederate battle ensign from the state flag.
In essence, what is being billed as an effort to preserve heritage, for which there is a great deal of sentiment in the South, is instead turning into a political movement that is very unfriendly to gays Lesbians, couched in a conservative brand of Christianity. "I would say that what we're now starting to see is the development of a strategy to promote key parts of an ideology," says Walter Reeves of the Neighbors Network, an Atlanta based human rights group that monitors neo-Confederate activity. "I think they find this is an excellent way to mobilize a segment of white Southerners."
In the context used here, the term "neo-Confederate" is not meant to refer to white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Southern White Knights or the Nazi Party. In fact, the leaders of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and similar groups go out of their way to distance themselves from overt racism and hardline racists, dismissing Klansmen and their ilk as Southern white trash.
Instead, these are the gentlemen and ladies, reared on reverence for Southern heritage, fighting to keep alive the beliefs and traditions of centuries past. They insist that they abhor the misuse of the Confederate flag by white supremacists and argue that just because these symbols have been misappropriated doesn't mean they should be discarded.
But while neo-Confederates leaders labor long and hard ¬to veil any racist sentiments among their members (though in many cases, the veil wears pretty thin), disdain for gays and lesbians is, in contrast, often expressed openly and boldly. For proof of. that, one need look no further than neo-Confederate literature.
Take, for example, Southern Partisan, a magazine based in Columbia, S.C. that is one of the largest and most important organs of the neo-Confederate movement. On the masthead, as a "senior advisor," is Buchanan, the TV commentator and unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 who excoriated gays from the stage of the GOP convention. Buchanan is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the oldest and largest of the neo-Confederate groups. Though Southern Partisan is not an official publication of the Sons, the group is frequently mentioned in its pages.
In one of Southern Partisan's 1993 issues, Buchanan -provided a column slamming Bill Clinton, accusing him of supporting gay rights. His comments were mild compared with another writer named P .J.. Byrnes who provided a review of the March on Washington entitled "Armageddon-An Update.": Brynes, saying the news media sugarcoated its coverage of the largest human rights march in history, characterized the event instead as "the most obscene desecration of public property in the history of the nation."
He decried topless lesbians, intimated that female marchers expressed an interest in molesting Chelsea Clinton and said that on the Mall, "genitalia were almost as prominently displayed as midriffs." The March on Washington was, according to Byrnes, "the deliberate, in the face posturing of an obsessed mob, sick with confused lust, determined to infect the rest of the nation."
In this same issue, on the very next page, President Clinton was taken to task for his "don't ask, don't tell" compromise on the military ban. Though Clinton's proposal offered little difference from the ban already in place, SP's editors decried it as a radical departure that would allow people in the military who are "perverse and unnatural," "Of course, this is not to say that Americans are predisposed to persecute homosexuals," the editors went on to say. "The threshold to this problem is the door to what once was metaphorically called 'the closet.' In a world where moral standards are publicly upheld, the closet is a useful place indeed. Many sins reside there in peace, for no one is without fault. But today's militant homosexuals are no longer restrained by the unspoken rules of civility.'
Also in this same issue was an article praising U.S. Sen.. Jesse Helms of North Carolina for his characterization of Roberta Achtenberg as a "damn lesbian,' curing hearings to confirm her as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and a piece taking the University of South Carolina to task for offering a course last summer by a gay professor on the challenge to public education posed by the fundamentalist agenda.
The magazine also published an attack on hate crimes laws in general and a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding them in particular, and it reprinted part of Virginia's 18th Century criminal code that outlined the punishment for sodomy as castration for a man and, for a woman, having a half inch hole bored through her nose.
All in all, in that one issue of Southern Partisan, there were nine articles that were primarily anti¬gay/lesbian in nature. Gays took more hits in that issue than did Abraham Lincoln.
Another neo-Confederate publication, called Southern Heritage, is equally hostile to gays and lesbians. Though it is independent and not officially affiliated with any group, almost 60 percent of its readers are members of either the Sons of Confederate Veterans or the United Daughters of the Confederacy, according to a survey of its readers published in one of its issues.
Based in Merrifield, Va., the publication lists on its masthead as a contributor Charles Lunsford, an Inman Park resident who is the spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Georgia branch. Lunsford has been at the forefront of the fight to preserve the Confederate emblem on the state flag.
In one issue of Southern Heritage, a writer named Kay Moxley Black wrote an entire column decrying the use of the term "gay" to mean homosexual, asking rhetorically how "did a beautiful word like 'gay' become so debauched?" "Look how many of those words were good, pure, beautiful words before 'they' decided to change our culture," Moxley said.
John F. Cummings III, the editor-in-chief of Southern Heritage, writes a column in each issue that he routinely uses to blast gays and lesbians, referring to the United States as the "land of Rodham and Gomorrah" and decrying the fact that "flagrant homosexual expression is heralded as acceptable."
Then there are the letters to the editor expressions of the sentiments of the readers of these magazines that are often stridently anti-gay. One letter writer even advocated that Atlanta be burned a second time because "elements alien to the traditional values of the South (i.e. feminists, homosexuals, northern liberals) have descended on the city in force."
Advertisers in these publications include a number of mail-order merchandise firms that peddle anti-gay T-shirts and bumper stickers. One such sticker reads, "Roosevelt: A Chicken In Every Pot. Clinton: A Fag in Every Pup Tent." (Their history is a bit faulty here-it was Herbert Hoover, not FDR, who promised a chicken in every pot).
Of course, many people who feel a reverence for Confederate symbols are not members of these groups and do not subscribe to their narrow ideology. And not all of the people who belong to ¬ these groups necessarily share these anti-gay/lesbian viewpoints.
So these homophobic ramblings might just be dismissed as the expected rhetoric of a fringe group, except for two things. First, homophobia seems to be a strong, consistent central theme, not an isolated occurrence. And second, these groups have been able to tap into public sentiment in favor of retaining Confederate symbols to bolster their political power.
After Gov.. Miller proposed dropping the Confederate battle ensign from the state flag, polls showed that a majority of Georgians opposed the idea. Amidst the controversy, the Georgia division of Sons of Confederate Veterans-whose Atlanta branch, ironically, holds its meetings in Midtown at the Mason's hall on Ponce de Leon Avenue-began receiving applications from as many as 500 new members a month, according to a recent investigation into Confederate preservation groups by Atlanta Magazine writer R. Robin McDonald.
The Georgia Sons have more than 20,000 members, including a number of prominent political leaders. While many of those people do not publicly disclose their affiliation, Atlanta Magazine identified among their number Georgia state representatives J. Max Davis of Dunwoody and Keith Breedlove of Buford; former Waycross mayor John Knox, who is running against Miller for governor and U.S. Rep. John Linder, a Republican who represents DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in Congress.
During the recent legislative session, Davis was one of the cosponsors of a bill that would have repealed two Atlanta city ordinances setting up a domestic partnership registry and providing benefits to the partners of city employees. "He has been a longtime opponent of progressive legislation," said Larry Pellegrini, the Capitol lobbyist for GAPAC, Georgia's gay/lesbian political action committee.
Knox, who is anti-choice on the issue of abortion, made headlines in January when he called a press conference at the Capitol to ask Miller for force Georgia Public Television to pull Armistead Maupin's "Tales of, the City" from the airwaves. Though he hadn't seen the program, which chronicled life in 1970s San Francisco, Knox termed it "X-rated" television.
Last year, Perry McGuire and Bob Guhl, both Republicans, were elected to the Georgia Senate from suburban Atlanta districts, replacing moderate Democrats. Neo-Confederate groups were involved in those campaigns, according to Atlanta Magazine's report. While there is no way to tell what difference that support made in the election's outcome, both were hotly contested elections where the neo-Confederates may have made a difference.
"Both [McGuire and Guhl] allied themselves with the right wing ," said Pellegrini. "Both of them were beholden to the right wing in the election, and they acted like that once they got down [to the Capitol]."
The Senate had been closely divided among moderates and conservatives. This past session, right¬wing Republican conservatives were able to bring along enough conservative Democrats to swing the Senate to the right on abortion funding and some other issues.
Perhaps the most curious thing about the political involvement of the neo-Confederates-and evidence that they may be promoting ideology instead of preserving history-is their consistent support for Republican politicians. During the War Between The States, of course, Republicans were the enemy.
The big test of the power of the neo-Confederate groups will come in November, when Miller faces re-election. Were it not for the flag contretemps, he would probably be a shoo¬in for a second term. Now, according to Pellegrini and other political observers, "that's one flank on which he might be vulnerable."
And while Miller has been no champion of gay and lesbian issues, he has not been hostile to them in the way other candidates, particularly Knox, have been. Neighbors Network has sent servers to "save-the-flag" rallies, and they have talked to people in the crowd to get an idea of why they were there.
According to Reeves, most don't express racist or homophobic sentiments. Many say they are Civil War re-enactors, people who, as a hobby, put on costumes and participate in authentic reenactments of famous battles.
But these people have been drawn into the flag fight because they have bought into a post-Reconstruction view of the Confederacy as some romantic "Gone With The Wind" fantasy and can't understand why Confederate symbols need to be removed, according to Reeves. He says he has come across well educated, thoughtful people who have told him that they believe the Ku Klux Klan was formed to protect Southern rights during Reconstruction and only later became a terrorist group, when in fact evidence is overwhelming that the Klan was a terrorist group from its very inception.
"I find this prostitution of our history to serve this revisionist political agenda to be thoroughly disgusting," said Reeves, a native Georgian whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
Gay and lesbian groups have been involved in the effort to change the state flag- most recently during a demonstration at the Georgia Dome during the Super Bowl-but those who have been doing so have, in large part, been motivated by their dislike of racist baggage attached to Confederate symbols.
There are other gays and lesbians, however, who don't share that same dislike. One can occasionally see patrons in gay bars festooned in Confederate attire or a vehicle with a Stars and Bars sticker juxtaposed with a Rainbow Flag.
However, those lesbian and gay people who revere and display Confederate symbols face a different paradox, and they may not even be aware of it.
Though their motivation may be Southern pride, they are casting their lot with the neo-Confederate movement. And the vocal activists in that movement, if they had their druthers, would render all gays and lesbians second-class citizens-whether or not they revere the Cause.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Anti-gay Anglican Conservatives and the Neo-Confederate movement.
I keep coming across prominent anti-gay Episcopalians in the neo-Confederate movement. Also, when the Sons of Confederate Veterans have their national conventions it is often Episcopal churches that host their Confederate religious services.
In one issue of the neo-Confederate Southern Partisan magazine, Vol. 24 No. 2, publication date Feb. 2005, nominal date March/April 2004, (Southern Partisan has a confusing system), there was a full page advertisement for the Anglican Church of Virginia and Anglican Seminary of Virginia.
In November 2003, I had published at a gay South African website the following article which had spellings changed to British ones. It documented how prominent anti-gay Episcopalians were also involved in the neo-Confederate church.
I think it would be a good idea for the LGBT movement to track the neo-Confederate involvement of the anti-gay Anglican movement. It would reveal their true bigoted face.
I don't know if the links still work. Some do, I know, but I don't if all of them do.
The November 2003 article published in South Africa follows.
African clergy and their racist American friends
by Ed Sebesta
November 2003: Recently in Dallas, where I live, the conservative and anti-gay Episcopalians met denouncing the election in New Hampshire of an openly gay bishop. This has meant press coverage and commentary in the local daily paper, the Dallas Morning News (DMN). I am not surprised they have met here; Dallas is notorious for its reactionary politics.
On the editorial page, Wednesday, 10/15/03, the DMN has a pro and con pair of columns on the question, "Has Anglican Church become too tolerant?" The "Yes" column is by William Murchison, who condemns the "tyranny of the 'tolerant,'" along with the election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire. The next day, Thursday, 10/16/03, the DMN has a guest column by Philip Jenkins on Pope John Paul II, where he explains that the pope, as a conservative, represents the non-Western Catholics who are a two-thirds majority of the church against the liberal Western Catholics. The DMN lists William Murchison as a Viewpoints contributor. Philip Jenkins is listed a "distinguished" professor of history and religion at Pennsylvania State University and an author of a new book
However, I know them both as something else. William Murchison is listed at the League of the South (LOS) website http://www.dixienet.org as a member of the board for the Texas division of the LOS, a Neo-Confederate (Confederates supported slavery – Ed.) organisation listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC is the leading organisation in the United States which tracks hate groups. William Murchison also writes a column for the Southern Partisan (SP), a notorious Neo-Confederate publication. Finally William Murchison writes for Chronicles magazine of the Rockford Institute http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org. Interestingly enough Philip Jenkins is a regular contributor to this racist magazine also. In advertising in the Southern Patriot, the official publication of the League of the South (LOS), Chronicles magazine declared that all of its editors were members of the LOS, encouraging all LOS members to subscribe.
Jamie Doward, had an article, "US Millionaire Bankrolls crusade against gay Anglican priests," October 12, 2003, The Observer, (Guardian, UK) as well as Alan Cooperman, "Conservatives Funding Opposition, Priest Says: Groups Insist Donors Don't Set Agenda," October 24, 2003, Washington Post, (US). The millionaire is Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., who funds the publication Chalcedon Report, out of California. This is the publication of the Chalcedon Institute http://www.chalcedon.edu. It was founded by R.J. Rushdooney, founder of the Christian Reconstructionist movement in the United States. He has recently died and it is run by his son. What is their perspective on America? One indication is the December 2000 issue of the Chalcedon Report with its cover theme of "The Civil War Revived: Secularism vs. the South" draped with a Confederate Battle flag. http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/2000dec/index.shtml. More significant is their republication of two books by R.J. Rushdooney, "This Independent Republic," and "The Nature of the American System." The books argue against the idea of equality and put forth the idea of the Civil War being essentially a theological war of a herectical North against an orthodox Christian South. "The Nature of the American System," has an entire chapter, "Alexander H. Stephens: Constitutionalism versus Centralism," in which he is praised as a great Constitutional thinker. Stephens was the Vice-President of the Confederacy. R.J. Rushdooney's books were critical in reviving Confederate Christian Nationalism in the United States.
Philip Jenkins has also gotten a fair amount of media attention in reviews of his new book, "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity," Oxford University Press. David Martin reviews this book in the June/July 2002 issue of First Things, the prominent intellectual journal of the religious right, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0206/reviews/martin.html. As Martin points out the main theme of Jenkins' book is that Christianity is becoming primarily composed of persons who are non-Westerners who have antipathy to the liberal views of the West. As an example, Martin states:
Perhaps the broadest public hint so far was provided by the 1998 Lambeth Conference (which in part stimulated Jenkins' book), where southern Christians used their numerical clout to promote opinions thoroughly unfashionable in the north.
Indeed it is in Chronicles magazine, August 1999, in Jenkins article, "That New Time Religion," that he gleefully appraises the meaning of Lambeth for fellow reactionaries:
… The 20th century was indeed characterized by an astonishing growth in the numbers and geopolitical spread of Christianity, which gained influence in Africa and Asia just as rapidly as it was losing ground in Europe and North America. Why, then, are we so blind to this historic achievement? Much of the answer seems to be that the religion currently burning its way across the globe is a traditional, enthusiastic king of Christianity, spiritually dynamic yet politically conservative, and, for many reasons, this is an anathema to Western elites. A West in spiritual decline confronts a wider world in the midst of religious revival, and neither understands nor likes what it sees.
The depth of the cultural schism was suggested last fall, when the world's Anglican bishops held one of their periodic get-togethers at Lambeth. The gathering made the news in a quite uncharacteristic way, as a public well accustomed to hearing the familiar denunciations of apartheid and colonialism was taken aback to hear a forthrightly traditional statement about the evils of homosexuality and the impossibility of reconciling homosexual conduct with Christian ministry. Western liberal churchmen of most denominations had waited for decades to hear the authentic voice of the liberated Third World, that radical prophetic voice which would challenge Western imperialism, and now that they heard it, that voice violated the most basic liberal principles. It was in fact very, very conservative.
To Jenkins the future belongs to a globally dominating homophobic Christianity. Jenkins writes again in Chronicles, December 2000, "Ethiopia Lifts Her Hands," in which he sees the non-Western world, in particular Africa, being the location of a traditional and pre-modern Christianity.
So it is not surprising that conservative anti-gay Episcopalians, a small minority in the United States, with declining influence, in 2003, seize on the idea of appealing to non-Western Anglican churches to expel the majority of the Episcopalians in America through the threats of dismembering the world wide communion of the Anglicans. No doubt other religious right groups are considering what strategic alliances might be to their advantage in their battles with liberal Christian groups.
Before these homophobic African religious leaders rush into alliances with these religious right reactionaries they might want to look a little closer at with whom they are allying themselves. It can't be said that every reactionary religious leader is an active Neo-Confederate, though Neo-Confederates are prominent in this movement and both Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been interviewed in the Southern Partisan. It can be said that these religious right groups are composed of people who are very dubious on civil rights, if not actively opposed to them and very willing to look the other way in regard to co-religionists who are opposed to civil rights. These religious leaders, at the least, are being used as African adornments to give a multiracial cast to often predominately white groups; at the worst they empower an anti-civil rights agenda in the United States.
The other thing that homophobic African religious leaders might consider is the agenda of these US religious right organisations in regards to Islam. Reading Chronicles magazine, you can see a world viewpoint organised around the idea that the future will be global violent conflict between Christians and Muslims. The cover title for one issue is "From Kosovo to the Alamo." (The Alamo is the place of a legendary battle in the secession of Texas from Mexico to preserve slavery.) Indeed, the First Things book review, mentioned earlier in this article points out that Jenkins second major theme in his book is the potential conflict between Islam and Christianity. African religious leaders might want to consider if they want to become proxies in an anti-Islamic campaign by religious right leaders in the United States. They might want to consider whether they want to be dragged into a world wide religious conflict. Muslims in nations where African religious leaders are connected to US religious right leaders will certainly have to question the sincerity of claims of wanting peaceful co-existence.
In one issue of the neo-Confederate Southern Partisan magazine, Vol. 24 No. 2, publication date Feb. 2005, nominal date March/April 2004, (Southern Partisan has a confusing system), there was a full page advertisement for the Anglican Church of Virginia and Anglican Seminary of Virginia.
In November 2003, I had published at a gay South African website the following article which had spellings changed to British ones. It documented how prominent anti-gay Episcopalians were also involved in the neo-Confederate church.
I think it would be a good idea for the LGBT movement to track the neo-Confederate involvement of the anti-gay Anglican movement. It would reveal their true bigoted face.
I don't know if the links still work. Some do, I know, but I don't if all of them do.
The November 2003 article published in South Africa follows.
African clergy and their racist American friends
by Ed Sebesta
November 2003: Recently in Dallas, where I live, the conservative and anti-gay Episcopalians met denouncing the election in New Hampshire of an openly gay bishop. This has meant press coverage and commentary in the local daily paper, the Dallas Morning News (DMN). I am not surprised they have met here; Dallas is notorious for its reactionary politics.
On the editorial page, Wednesday, 10/15/03, the DMN has a pro and con pair of columns on the question, "Has Anglican Church become too tolerant?" The "Yes" column is by William Murchison, who condemns the "tyranny of the 'tolerant,'" along with the election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire. The next day, Thursday, 10/16/03, the DMN has a guest column by Philip Jenkins on Pope John Paul II, where he explains that the pope, as a conservative, represents the non-Western Catholics who are a two-thirds majority of the church against the liberal Western Catholics. The DMN lists William Murchison as a Viewpoints contributor. Philip Jenkins is listed a "distinguished" professor of history and religion at Pennsylvania State University and an author of a new book
However, I know them both as something else. William Murchison is listed at the League of the South (LOS) website http://www.dixienet.org as a member of the board for the Texas division of the LOS, a Neo-Confederate (Confederates supported slavery – Ed.) organisation listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC is the leading organisation in the United States which tracks hate groups. William Murchison also writes a column for the Southern Partisan (SP), a notorious Neo-Confederate publication. Finally William Murchison writes for Chronicles magazine of the Rockford Institute http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org. Interestingly enough Philip Jenkins is a regular contributor to this racist magazine also. In advertising in the Southern Patriot, the official publication of the League of the South (LOS), Chronicles magazine declared that all of its editors were members of the LOS, encouraging all LOS members to subscribe.
Jamie Doward, had an article, "US Millionaire Bankrolls crusade against gay Anglican priests," October 12, 2003, The Observer, (Guardian, UK) as well as Alan Cooperman, "Conservatives Funding Opposition, Priest Says: Groups Insist Donors Don't Set Agenda," October 24, 2003, Washington Post, (US). The millionaire is Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., who funds the publication Chalcedon Report, out of California. This is the publication of the Chalcedon Institute http://www.chalcedon.edu. It was founded by R.J. Rushdooney, founder of the Christian Reconstructionist movement in the United States. He has recently died and it is run by his son. What is their perspective on America? One indication is the December 2000 issue of the Chalcedon Report with its cover theme of "The Civil War Revived: Secularism vs. the South" draped with a Confederate Battle flag. http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/2000dec/index.shtml. More significant is their republication of two books by R.J. Rushdooney, "This Independent Republic," and "The Nature of the American System." The books argue against the idea of equality and put forth the idea of the Civil War being essentially a theological war of a herectical North against an orthodox Christian South. "The Nature of the American System," has an entire chapter, "Alexander H. Stephens: Constitutionalism versus Centralism," in which he is praised as a great Constitutional thinker. Stephens was the Vice-President of the Confederacy. R.J. Rushdooney's books were critical in reviving Confederate Christian Nationalism in the United States.
Philip Jenkins has also gotten a fair amount of media attention in reviews of his new book, "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity," Oxford University Press. David Martin reviews this book in the June/July 2002 issue of First Things, the prominent intellectual journal of the religious right, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0206/reviews/martin.html. As Martin points out the main theme of Jenkins' book is that Christianity is becoming primarily composed of persons who are non-Westerners who have antipathy to the liberal views of the West. As an example, Martin states:
Perhaps the broadest public hint so far was provided by the 1998 Lambeth Conference (which in part stimulated Jenkins' book), where southern Christians used their numerical clout to promote opinions thoroughly unfashionable in the north.
Indeed it is in Chronicles magazine, August 1999, in Jenkins article, "That New Time Religion," that he gleefully appraises the meaning of Lambeth for fellow reactionaries:
… The 20th century was indeed characterized by an astonishing growth in the numbers and geopolitical spread of Christianity, which gained influence in Africa and Asia just as rapidly as it was losing ground in Europe and North America. Why, then, are we so blind to this historic achievement? Much of the answer seems to be that the religion currently burning its way across the globe is a traditional, enthusiastic king of Christianity, spiritually dynamic yet politically conservative, and, for many reasons, this is an anathema to Western elites. A West in spiritual decline confronts a wider world in the midst of religious revival, and neither understands nor likes what it sees.
The depth of the cultural schism was suggested last fall, when the world's Anglican bishops held one of their periodic get-togethers at Lambeth. The gathering made the news in a quite uncharacteristic way, as a public well accustomed to hearing the familiar denunciations of apartheid and colonialism was taken aback to hear a forthrightly traditional statement about the evils of homosexuality and the impossibility of reconciling homosexual conduct with Christian ministry. Western liberal churchmen of most denominations had waited for decades to hear the authentic voice of the liberated Third World, that radical prophetic voice which would challenge Western imperialism, and now that they heard it, that voice violated the most basic liberal principles. It was in fact very, very conservative.
To Jenkins the future belongs to a globally dominating homophobic Christianity. Jenkins writes again in Chronicles, December 2000, "Ethiopia Lifts Her Hands," in which he sees the non-Western world, in particular Africa, being the location of a traditional and pre-modern Christianity.
So it is not surprising that conservative anti-gay Episcopalians, a small minority in the United States, with declining influence, in 2003, seize on the idea of appealing to non-Western Anglican churches to expel the majority of the Episcopalians in America through the threats of dismembering the world wide communion of the Anglicans. No doubt other religious right groups are considering what strategic alliances might be to their advantage in their battles with liberal Christian groups.
Before these homophobic African religious leaders rush into alliances with these religious right reactionaries they might want to look a little closer at with whom they are allying themselves. It can't be said that every reactionary religious leader is an active Neo-Confederate, though Neo-Confederates are prominent in this movement and both Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been interviewed in the Southern Partisan. It can be said that these religious right groups are composed of people who are very dubious on civil rights, if not actively opposed to them and very willing to look the other way in regard to co-religionists who are opposed to civil rights. These religious leaders, at the least, are being used as African adornments to give a multiracial cast to often predominately white groups; at the worst they empower an anti-civil rights agenda in the United States.
The other thing that homophobic African religious leaders might consider is the agenda of these US religious right organisations in regards to Islam. Reading Chronicles magazine, you can see a world viewpoint organised around the idea that the future will be global violent conflict between Christians and Muslims. The cover title for one issue is "From Kosovo to the Alamo." (The Alamo is the place of a legendary battle in the secession of Texas from Mexico to preserve slavery.) Indeed, the First Things book review, mentioned earlier in this article points out that Jenkins second major theme in his book is the potential conflict between Islam and Christianity. African religious leaders might want to consider if they want to become proxies in an anti-Islamic campaign by religious right leaders in the United States. They might want to consider whether they want to be dragged into a world wide religious conflict. Muslims in nations where African religious leaders are connected to US religious right leaders will certainly have to question the sincerity of claims of wanting peaceful co-existence.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Confederate Clowns "The Gibsons"
I saw this on blog "Joe, My God." http://joemygod.blogspot.com/
Note the Confederate flag of these clowns.
Notice how the person on the right thinks he really clever.
Note the Confederate flag of these clowns.
Notice how the person on the right thinks he really clever.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
New Blog on Homophobia and Neo-Confederacy
The LGBT community doesn't realize how often leading homophobes have involvement in neo-Confederacy and neo-Confederates are involved with anti-LGBT movements.
So I have decided to start this blog to let the LGBT community know about this. In the past I have from time to time helped out individuals discredit homophobes by showing their involvement in neo-Confederacy. Nothing says lunacy to the public like neo-Confederacy.
For instance I supplied information to bloggers that resulted in this story.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/13356/tony-perkins-and-white-supremacy
The gay community doesn't know that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell interviewed with the Southern Partisan. Or that Phil Gramm and Dick Army did also. The actively anti-gay American Family Association had a leader interview in the Southern Partisan also.
Often when some homophobe is in the news the LGBT community doesn't realize that he is a neo-Confederate.
So I want to start supplying information at this blog. The information should be valuable to the LGBT community and also let people know that there is someone with this information.
To start with I would like to refer the LGBT community to an article at this link on the Confederate Christian nationalists. It turns out that the Christian Reconstructionists are largely neo-Confederate and a large segment of the neo-Confederate movement is Christian Reconstructionist. For those who are unfamiliar with the term Christian Reconstructionists, it is the people who want to transphorm society into biblical republics, that is theocratic states where their idea of Christianity is the law.
http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf
The article was published at the University of Toronto Press in the Canadian Review of American Studies. I have also provided the article on the side bar in the links section.
I will be providing more information.
My regular blog is: http://newtknight.blogspot.com/
So I have decided to start this blog to let the LGBT community know about this. In the past I have from time to time helped out individuals discredit homophobes by showing their involvement in neo-Confederacy. Nothing says lunacy to the public like neo-Confederacy.
For instance I supplied information to bloggers that resulted in this story.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/13356/tony-perkins-and-white-supremacy
The gay community doesn't know that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell interviewed with the Southern Partisan. Or that Phil Gramm and Dick Army did also. The actively anti-gay American Family Association had a leader interview in the Southern Partisan also.
Often when some homophobe is in the news the LGBT community doesn't realize that he is a neo-Confederate.
So I want to start supplying information at this blog. The information should be valuable to the LGBT community and also let people know that there is someone with this information.
To start with I would like to refer the LGBT community to an article at this link on the Confederate Christian nationalists. It turns out that the Christian Reconstructionists are largely neo-Confederate and a large segment of the neo-Confederate movement is Christian Reconstructionist. For those who are unfamiliar with the term Christian Reconstructionists, it is the people who want to transphorm society into biblical republics, that is theocratic states where their idea of Christianity is the law.
http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf
The article was published at the University of Toronto Press in the Canadian Review of American Studies. I have also provided the article on the side bar in the links section.
I will be providing more information.
My regular blog is: http://newtknight.blogspot.com/
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