The Boy Scouts of America...Teaching Homophobia To Your Children

Denise Steele and her family.
FAMILY.

I was never a Boy Scout, but I was a Cub Scout. Oh, not because I liked camping or making knots, but because i looked cute in a kerchief and cap. I mean, who doesn't, right? But I am not fond of the Boy Scouts because of their homophobia, and now I have even more reason to find them reprehensible.

Denise Steele is a mom who has been part of her son's Boy Scout troop for the past six years. She began as a den mother for her son, Jackson, because no other parent would step up and take on being a Cub Scout troop leader.

No other parent.

And she was good, too. Jackson's troop excelled at everything, including accomplishing badges and winning the Blue and Gold Award all five years, one of the highest awards for Boy Scouts. Did she do it for the Scouts? No; she did it for her son, and those other boys, to make sure they had a good time, and because no other parent wanted the job.

No other parent.

But last June other parents did step up, and now Denise Steele’s chances to further bond with her son through scouting were dashed.

See, she was removed, removed, from her position after an assistant scoutmasters discovered that Denise Steele is a lesbian, and in a nineteen year domestic partnership with Jackie Funk. The couple lives in Potomac Falls with their two children, Jackson and Jaden, and Denise Steele’s nephew Will.

Still, Denise Steele’s homosexuality was never an issue in the past, with regards to leading her son’s Boy Scout troop. In fact, according to Denise's partner, Jackie, it may have actually opened some eyes to gay parents and gay parenting: “Some of the guys would come down and ask her advice. Being a woman, forget about the gay part, it didn’t matter. They respected her for her commitment and what she offered and how much she put into it. They respected her.”

As did the boys, all of whom stayed in Steel's troop the entire five years; except for two boys, who moved away. But that doesn't matter. it doesn't matter that she was the only parent to step up. it doesn't matter that her troop excelled. it doesn't matter that the boys loved her. What matters, according to Phil Holliday, the executive pastor at Christian Fellowship Church, and Esther Schaeffer, the charter organization representative, is "the rules".

When a chartered partner, like Christian Fellowship Church, agrees to sponsor a scouting unit, an annual charter agreement is signed. In that contract, they agree to provide a place for a meeting, select volunteer leaders and follow the policies and guidelines established by the Boy Scouts of America. Which doesn't allow homosexuals to be Scouts or leaders or involved in any way, even if they are the only way to keep a troop together.

The Boy Scouts of America organization says it believes that “open homosexuality is inconsistent with the values” and recommends that scout parents and sponsors share this belief.

Parents. Like all those parents who didn't step up when Denise Steele did. She even finished the year-long training to become an assistant scout leader in just three weeks because she wanted to do this for her sons. And she even went to the scoutmaster, Mike Tucker, and told him she was gay, and in a nearly twenty years, and he said it wasn't a problem.

Until this past June when Steele took her troop on a camping trip to Assateague Island. Since the trip lasted from a Saturday to a Monday, and Steele needed to work Monday, she asked Jackie Funk, her partner, to pick her up from the campsite.

After she left one asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmasters, Skip Inabinett, began asking questions about the woman who'd come to take Denise Steele to work.And after discovering that Denise and Jackie were a couple, asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster Skip Inabinett decided she should be removed as an assistant scoutmaster.

Asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster, Skip, Skippy, Skipper, Inabinett, sent an email to a close friend of Denise Steele's, whose son was also in the troop, saying, “If what you said about Denise Steele being an active sexual is true, do you feel comfortable talking with her about stepping down/resigning as an ASM … as her friend, this may be an opportunity for you to share with her about Christ’s love and the need to believe that as sinners we cannot get to heaven on our own and that we need a savior.”

The conversations centered around how Inabinett thought Steele’s lifestyle choice was a sin. In fact, asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster Skip Inabinett actually began speaking to Denise Steele about her, um, lifestyle choice, in what Jackie Funk described as an episode of bullying: "[T]his guy, who’s demonstrated very much a bullying behavior, if boys bullied other boys or girls bullied other girls to get what they wanted the way this guy has bullied her in today’s school system you’d probably get kicked out of school.”

And there is a chain of command that people follow in the Boy Scouts, but asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster Skip Inabinett went straight to the Boy Scouts of America with his complaint to get her removed as an assistant scoutmaster.

And it worked.

Denise Steele: “He didn’t go through those steps. He skipped over the scoutmaster, he skipped over the committee, he skipped over the district. He went straight to the highest level because that’s where he would get his answer. He went to the highest point to get me removed.”

And yet, Deron Smith, the director of public relations for the Boy Scouts of America, says Steele wasn’t removed from the national council , but that it may have been a troop decision.

How so? I mean, if asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster Skip Inabinett went all the way to the top, utterly ignoring the troop aspect of the process, then how is that possible that the troop, who apparently adored her, wanted her gone?

And now asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster Skip Inabinett is not talking. I mean, his work is done. The lesbian is gone.

I wonder if another parent will step up.
I wonder if another parent will work as hard as Denise Steele.
I wounder if the boys in that troop will learn from Denise Steele how to live ones life, or if they will get their example from asshatted busybody, assistant scoutmaster Skip Inabinett.
I wonder if the Boy Scouts will ever realize that being gay isn't a bad thing, or even a good thing, it's just a thing.

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Rick Perry: Homo..........Oh Yeah, Phobe

So, Texas Governor Rick "George W Bush Jr" Perry wants to be President Of These Here You-nited States, and has taken to pandering to the religious right with his vocal social conservatism.

But, rumored-to-be maybe a Friend of Dorothy, and rumored -to-be maybe Light In His Loafers, rumored-to-be maybe In Need Of His Own Show On Bravo, and definitely able to Deep Throat A Corn Dog, Perry has angered some of his Christian Conservative Zealots by flip-flopping on whether or not gay marriage should be legal.

Still, Ricky's legacy of antigay leadership is not a flip-flip, and his shows his true colors:



Perry has come down fiercely against gay marriage, both in Texas and nationally.
“Gay marriage is not fine with me,” Perry told Tony Perkins of the anti-gay Family Research Council last month. Contrary to his states’ rights rhetoric on issues like health care and education mandates, he is in favor of a federal amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. While serving as governor, he pushed for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Texas. After voters approved the amendment, he signed it symbolically at a Christian school, declaring that now gay marriage is “beyond the reach of activist judges.”


He supports a Texas law that criminalizes sodomy, even though it has been unconstitutional since 2003.
When asked for his views on the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling an anti-sodomy law unconstitutional, Perry responded with, “I think our law is appropriate that we have on the books.” He later blamed the decision on the Supreme Court’s “nine oligarchs in robes” in his second book, Fed Up! Texas lawmakers have introduced legislation to repeal the statute during three separate legislative sessions, and yet Perry has not supported any of them. In 2010, he even ran for re-election on a GOP platform explicitly supporting the criminalization of gay sex.


Perry criticized President Obama for signing hate-crimes legislation in 2010.
When running against U.S. Senator Kay Hutchinson in 2009, his campaign conducted a series of robocalls calling out Obama for “making homosexuality a protected class” by signing hate-crimes protections for the LGBT community into law. Instead, he is looking to hire Robert Black, one of his former staffers who is prone to hateful speech himself. Black made the papers in 1998 for likening the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay conservatives, to the Ku Klux Klan and characterizing the organization as “deviant.”


He is cultivating relationships with anti-gay hate groups.
As has been widely reported, the American Family Association–which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an “anti-gay hate group”–organized and funded in large measure Perry’s Aug. 6 prayer rally in Houston. The Response, which drew around 30,000 attendees, was also affiliated with pastors who described the gay movement as coming from the “pit of hell” and who blamed Hurricane Katrina on gays. He has also reportedly spoken with several members of the New Apostolic Reformation in a June closed-door meeting aimed at developing a counter-strategy to Obama in 2012. Rachel Maddow described anti-gay sentiment as “prominent in NAR preaching, where hurricanes, tornadoes, dead birds and the rise of the Nazis are all blamed on gays and lesbians.”


And if you don’t agree with him, Perry thinks you should live elsewhere.
When asked by a local NBC anchor for his response to the gay veterans protesting the new constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2005, Perry retorted, “Texans made a decision about marriage and if there’s a state that has more lenient views than Texas, then maybe that’s a better place for them to live.”


Is it me, or does that sound less presidential and more self-loathing closeted ALLEGEDLY homosexual?

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Me And AC: On The Same Page

So, this morning Carlos and I were discussing Michele Bachmann and her campaign and her refusal to answer any questions she doesn't like, but instead only says, "I'm running for the presidency of the United States....." And I said, "Oh, she's running all right. But she's not running for something, but away from answering questions about things she's said in the past."

Gay people suffer from a sexual identity disorder,
gay people are sexually dysfunctional.
Gay people live a life of bondage, of despair.
Gay people are of Satan.

She's not judging, mind you, when she calls us every foul thing that pops into her anti-gay head; things no doubt fed to her by her ambiguously heterosexual husband Marcussssssssss.

Still, after Carlos and I ranted and raged about the Missuses Bachmann, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Anderson Cooper, my husband in my head, had the exact same thoughts as I did.

Me and AC. Simpatico, dontcha know!

Seriously, Anyone Who Thinks This Asshat Is Presidential Material Is A F**king Loon

She cannot answer a question.
Or, when she does, she simply says, "I am running for the President of the United States."
She doesn't 'judge' but believes gay people are 'of Satan'.
Again, seriously, if you are thinking of voting for this delusional fucktard, then i would hazard a guess that you, too, are a delusional fucktard.
Just sayin'.

It's The Latest Thing.....

Remember back in the day when all the starlet wannabes, and has-been singers, and drug addicted wactresses, would flash their lady bits to the paparazzi?

I mean, it was the way to get yourself in the papers, dontcha know. A little peep of the vah-jay-jay and you were front page news.

Seriously. Once could be considered an accident, but as many times as I was subjected to looking at the girlie parts of Paris and Britney and Lindsay, I almost switched gears and became a gynecologist.

So, how do people get themselves a little free press these days? I mean, flashing your privates is sooooo 2007.

Faggot. That'll do it. Kobe did it. Others, too. And suddenly we were talking about them because they called someone a fag, or a fucking fag, or merely just mouthed the word gay, and then they got all the press. The apology press. the Oh I didn't mean it...I love gay people press.

I'm so over it. And yet here it goes again.

White Sox player Gordon Beckham wanted to send a little message to his BFF, Kansas City Royals' Chris Getz, when their two teams faced off against one another last week. So, what did he do? Send off a Tweet saying, Gonna beat you in the game next week? Maybe fire off an email, We're gonna crush
you guys in that game?Nope. Gordon Beckham decided the way to show his best friend how much he likes him was to scrawl a message in the dirt around the baseball diamond: "Getz Is Gay."

So..........funny.

Only now, Beckham is on the I'm Sorry Tour, saying, "Chris is one of my best friends. It was a joke. I didn’t know anybody could see [the dirt]. I didn’t mean anything, you know?"

Except to call his best friend gay as a means to deride him, and mock him. But then he goes on, and on, apologizing:  "I just want you to know that that’s not me. I don’t use slurs. I have a lot of gay friends. I didn’t mean it as anything ­— you know, like gay as in ... happy! Or, you know, an alliteration — ‘Getz is gay.'"

Hmmm. I don't use slurs.
But'cha did, Blanche, but'cha did.

Hmmmm, Gay, as in....happy.
Yeah, that makes sense. Why not just say Getz is happy, asshat?

But then he piles on more, using Getz is Gay as a form of an alliterative slur. Maybe Gordon Beckham ought to whip out the Thesaurus before his next dirt writing homophobia mood sets in.

And then we have Philadelphia Eagles DeSean Jackson, who, during an interview on the All Out Show, one of his fans, Troy in Tennessee, who called in to the show, and asked if Jackson "had his dick knocked in the dirt [indecipherable]," before the call ends.

Not so very nice, you know, but apparently, and I'm not up on the sports lingo, "knocking one's dick in the dirt" means knocking someone down or out. Okay, so I guess it makes sense, although I might just ask if you got knocked down, and leave your dick out of the call.

But DeSean wasn't real pleased with the call, and asked Troy, "What type of question is that? Say 'no homo', gay-ass. Faggot."

Hmmm, you got knocked down, and someone asks about it, so the appropriate response is to call someone a faggot.

Jackson has yet to begin his Apology Tour, and "Rude" Jude from the All Out Show, actually hopes Jackson won't apologize. he says Jackson was just bantering, you know, and that he's a "is a hood dude," and for "hood cats, the worst thing you can call someone is a bitch or a faggot. I don't think he's homophobic. He's joking."

Yeah, it's funny to call someone a faggot. It's funny to use that word to demean someone. And it's funny when someone decides that their sports heroes are right and faggots are just no good, and there is no need to have them around and you go out and maybe bash a couple of faggots.

It's all in a game, right?
I'm so sorry.

Being Gay Isn't A Choice, Being A Homophobic Moron, However, Is

Out there in Iowa, where they have marriage equality, and corn, as well as a group of conservative asshatted wingnuts who have come up with a pledge that they wants all Republican presidential candidates to sign.

It, naturally, opposes marriage equality, but also opposes Sharia law and bans pornography; pornography? What will the GOP do without their porn?

But the pledge also contains a passage declaring that homosexuality is a choice, rather than a biological trait. Yes.....it does.

And the first Repugnant Republican to step up and sign it? None other than Married-To-The-Ex-Gay, Michele Bachmann.

Now, we all know that Bachmann was born straight, and probably born stupid. But she chose to be a bigot, a homophobe, and she chose to marry a man who professes the ability to get rid of the gay.

Is this really the leader the Republicans want? I mean, that would be their choice, right?

Wisconsin Doesn't Like the Gays

Up there in Wisconsin, which is slowly turning into Wisconsizona, wingnut Governor Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution. He has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.

A law that allows people to visit their loved ones in the hospital is unconstitutional? Oh, not 'people,' but gay people.


Back in 2009, when Democrats controlled the Legislature, they changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some--not all--of the rights afforded married couples.

Like being able to visit your partner in the hospital, like you'd visit any family member. But Scott Walker doesn't think gay couples are a family. he thinks, along with the homophobic, bigoted, Wisconsin Family Action, that the registries violate a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

See, gay folks and gay families and gay couples don't deserve to be treated equally in Wisconsizona. At least while Scott Walker is governor, which, hopefully, won't be more than one term.

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A Lesson Not Learned

You'd think after Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for calling someone a 'faggot' that NBA players would learn to watch their mouths. Yeah, not so much.

It seems that during last night's broadcast of the Miami Heat/Chicago Bulls Eastern Conference Finals game, Bulls center Joakim Noah, pissy because he'd gotten benched, turned to a fan and seemed to shout, "Fuck you, faggot."

Get your checkbook ready, asshat.

Of course, people are saying this is different because Noah wasn't talking to, or about, an official, like Kobe had dine. Apparently, in the NBA, it's perfectly acceptable to call a fan a 'fucking faggot,' but don't do it to a ref. And the NBA "declined immediate comment."

After the game, Joakim Noah acknowledged "saying 'something'" to a fan: "I got caught up. I don't mean no disrespect to anybody."

Guess what, you overpaid moron? It is disrespectful. And guess what else, you homophobe? You did mean it, because you said it so easily and fluidly, like it's something you say all the time.

Sign the check, baby, for 100K.


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He Won't Run, And A Great Sigh Of Relief Was Heard Throughout The Land

Sorry. I know you all hate this
picture, but it shows the True
Huckster in all his glory.

Once considered a front runner for the GOP nomination for president, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has announced that he will not run for the office. And the scramble within the rest of the motley crew of GOP nominees begins.

Huckabee said, over the weekend: “All the factors say go, but my heart says no and that’s the decision I have made.” This, as I said on some other blogs, is Huckabee-speak for "I know I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning so I won't even try."

And yet, even while stating he wouldn't run, the Huckster talked about how he felt he could have won the nomination, and the office. He said his wife and children encouraged him to run. He said recent polls show that he could'a been a contendah. He said he could win voters outside the south. He said he could raise the money needed to run.

He could. He could. He could. He won't.

"I had come to believe I would be in the race," Huckabee said. "The external signs … point strongly toward running," he said. "But only when I was alone, in quiet and reflective moments, did I have not only clarity but an inexplicable inner peace."

I have inner peace, too, Mike, knowing I won't have to listen to your bigoted, anti-gay, holier-than-thou rhetoric for the next 18 months.

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