wildblood's Blog

Comment by wildblood on Saturday, 11th March 2006, 2:35pm

Ranting over! Does anyone fancy setting up a welovefags.com website??? The WBC /GHF website claims fags are usually violent. I was wondering if they've ever seen a fag / dyke being truly violent. I mean only the other day i was fuming over my limited shopping possibilties. I mean when a teapots cryi...
read moreng out for a cosy you'd think you'd be able to find one!

Apologies for random factor. I'm high on PVA, glitter and twisted bunnies. The things a girl has to for a Majestic wife
See at the (sea) front
kate xx

Comment by Kirstin on Tuesday, 14th March 2006, 3:51pm

You are right in pointing out that these extreme views are certainly not limited to the US, we don’t even have to look as far as Ian Paisley et al here in the UK, a couple of miles north around Westminster will do.

Also the use of the “God is punishing us for…” line is and unfortunately will alway...
read mores be popular with the religious right in all of the main religions. After all, the Tsunami disaster was used by Muslim extremist in Banda Aceh as “God’s revenge” for apparently not living to their strict interpretation of the Koran. The religious right in the US used the same theme explaining New Orleans had it coming with Kathrina devastating the city just a few days before the annual “Southern Decadence” festival.

I have to quote Goethe even if his view s perhaps a little oversimplified and so very non pc: "Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture."

The pattern is the same across the world, the religious right drives on being able to brainwash the uneducated (That its proclaimers are generally well-educated people is another story). So the logical step from here? Education, Education, Education? Not quite that simple, I know, but perhaps a good starting point?

As Kate’s rightly pointed out blogging, emailing them will be useful even though I know from own experience it’s very tiresome slough to have a meaningful discussion with any fanatic. So perhaps that’s not for everyone.

However what we can do is to be a bit more supportive of organizations that have made it their agenda to fight for our rights. The local turnout for the last two Stonewall Brighton Equality Walks was diabolical. This was not just to raise funds for them (a lot of people do so on a monthly basis anyway) but this was also to show our presence on the street. So please can I see more of you on April 30 this year? It’s a Sunday and the Monday is a Bank Holiday, and yes there might be Wild Fruit on in the evening but a little bit of fresh air and a minimum of £25 to raise for a good cause makes the partying in the evening even more worth while, no?

So that’s me done for today, good to see more blogs stipulating some serious discussions.

Comment by Kirstin on Tuesday, 14th March 2006, 3:52pm

PS: To the Realbrighton crew: I was relieved to discover that I had not knocked my head on Saturday night and woken up again 4 month later on July 11, even though judging by my antics it may have looked like it. But I am glad some of us have been to the future and back. Kate, did you get the lottery numbers?

Comment by KingK_F_UK on Tuesday, 14th March 2006, 6:20pm

July 11th is my birthday so thats just grand! maybe i'll bump my head today and wake up then... that would be sooo good! get over this horrible weather and roll on the summer (and my birthday! lol)

Comment by wildblood on Tuesday, 18th April 2006, 2:09pm

And so it continues!!
"Anti-gay church hounds military funerals

· US states pass laws to try to limit demonstrations
· Preacher damns soldiers defending 'fag nation'

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday April 18, 2006
The Guardian

New laws have been passed in the United States to counter the a...
read morectivities of a bizarre church that has been disrupting military funerals with anti-gay protests on the grounds that the soldiers died fighting for a land that tolerates homosexuality.
Since last year, the Westboro Baptist church, based in Topeka, Kansas, has been picketing funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, waving signs saying, "Thank God for Dead Soldiers", "Thank God for IEDs [improvised explosive devices - roadside bombs]", and "God Hates Cripple Soldiers", while yelling that dead US troops will rot in hell.

The church - which consists almost exclusively of Fred Phelps, a 76-year-old preacher, and 75 members of his extended family - is definitely not a peace movement. Rather, it celebrates the violent deaths of soldiers and marines who died, it says, defending a licentious nation.
Today, it is planning to picket the funeral of an army sergeant, Daniel Sesker, from Ogden, Iowa, who was killed by a roadside bomb on April 6, near Tikrit.

"Where in God's name did he get the idea that it was noble to fight in a fag army for a fag nation that's on the short path to eternal destruction?" asks the church's website, www.godhatesfags.com. "That's right: his parents, his family, his 'friends', his state and his country; they are to blame for the fact that Sesker is now in a million pieces, the appropriate punishment for their filthy manner of life."

Horrified at the church's activities, nine states have approved laws that impose restrictions on demonstrations at funerals and burials. More than 20 other states are considering similar legislation, and the US Congress will be asked to consider possible federal laws next month.

None of the new laws involves an outright ban on funeral protests, as that would clash with the constitution's first amendment, guaranteeing free speech. Instead, most stipulate that demonstrators must stay a certain distance from a funeral, and limit their protests to an hour before and an hour after the ceremony. Some laws prohibit the display of "any visual image that conveys fighting words".

Similar laws have been passed in the past to stop anti-abortion protests outside private homes or family planning clinics, and have survived supreme court challenges. The Westboro Baptist church says its constitutional rights are being trampled by the new laws, and claims it is thinking of ways to challenge them.

It claims to have conducted 25,000 pickets since its formation in 1991, almost all of them anti-gay. Mr Phelps first drew national attention when he protested at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998.

The church reckons its spends $250,000 (£140,000) a year on air fares and other protest expenses. The bills are paid by the family, which includes 10 lawyers among Mr Phelps's 13 children. Three of his offspring have broken ties with the family. One, his daughter Dortha, told the Knight Ridder news agency: "I felt like I was being controlled, and I didn't have any freedom."

Before the new laws were passed, several thousand bikers, many of them Vietnam veterans, formed a group calling itself the Patriot Guard Riders, to attend military funerals and form a cordon around the protesters to shield them from view of the mourners, and to drown out their shouts by revving their engines.

Mr Phelps seems to relish the fury he stirs. He likes to quote from the Gospel according to St Luke: "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the son of man's sake."