This is our state motto and, believe it or not, Iowa has a pretty solid track record of living up to it. We removed racial barriers in relation to marriage a hundred years before the Supreme Court removed such barriers nationwide. We moved to end segregation in education eighty-five years prior to the Court’s ruling on Brown v. the Board of Education. The University of Iowa was the first public university to admit men and women equally starting in 1847 and Tinker v. Des Moines would affirm a student’s right to political protest in public schools in 1969.

And on April 3RD, 2009 Iowa would become the third state in the United States to allow same-sex marriage.

Fast forward to next Monday. A hate-speech spewing group of people will be visiting our state to protest the production of The Laramie Project by the University of Northern Iowa. The play, which consists of interviews and observations conducted in the wake of the 1998 murder of Matthew Sheppard, with and of his community, is often used as a teaching tool to promote acceptance and prevent prejudice. Ironically enough, the group is actually mentioned in the play.

I, however, refuse to write the name of the organization.

Over the last couple weeks I have seen multiple people across social networks mentioning counter-protests of the hate group. I have received event invitations to participate in counters. I have read more and more criticisms of the group and I have seen acceptance and open-mindedness on the raise.

And while I forever support your right to protest and while I’m impressed and happy to see our state live up to an ever-more progressive stance, I can’t help but question what a counter-protest will accomplish.

This group feeds on media attention. They depend on it to continue existing. They crawl from location to location in hopes of local media exposure. They shout horrific obscenities and taunt those around them. They pray someone will harass or physically attack one of their members — they rely on the civil suit money to continue promoting their agenda.

I would advise another solution. Attend the play if you can. Support the art community.

And ignore the hate group.

Don’t give them any attention. Don’t waste your time thinking about witty signs or shirt designs. Don’t give them another thought.

Or show up and turn your back to the group. Don’t make a huge spectacle of the night. These people are petty. They are a distraction and their only goal is to take away from what the night’s focus should be on, which is equality and social tolerance.

In the past large communities have banded together in counter-protest and driven members of the organization away with just the power of their voices. You can find cases of this yourself because they are well-documented on the web — on youtube, blogs, and wikipedia. And that’s just what the group wants. More exposure. Even if you win, you lose.

Everyone loses until these people are long forgotten.

It’s just a thought…

More information about UNI’s production of The Laramie Project, including ticket prices, can be found here.

Sammy, a local feline of Alabama, was forced out of the post office after failing to pay for his taxes.  Seriously Sammy, get a job you lazy bum.

It’s incredibly sad that Proposition 8 passed in California. It’s incredibly sad that gay marriage is even an issue in our country. It’s incredibly sad that we as a nation have come so far and yet are still so far behind.

I’m not overly religious, but you know what they say – knowledge is power. So I’ve tried to gain at least a basic theological understanding. I’ve tried to see the conservative stance on this issue, but I just must be blind on the specific subject.

Here’s the deal. If you’re going to take the bible at face value and entirely literal, does it not read “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”?

It is not love to force the Bible down someone’s throat.
It is not love to turn your back on someone because they’re pregnant out of wedlock.
It is not love to deny someone’s sexuality if they are gay.

It is hate. Hate is anger. Anger is fear. What have you got to fear?

Keep an open mind.

Fortunately, for this nation and possibly the world, we elected Barack Obama the 44TH President of the United States this past Tuesday, not only renewing what it means to be an American in our nation but the world’s view of America. Unfortunately, what may be one of Obama’s first major struggles to deal with before even taking office on January 20TH, or at the very least the most personal may end up being the rights of protesters.

The Westboro Baptist Church, a small congregation comprised mostly of family members based in Topeka, Kansas, is the same church, led by Fred Phelps, that sends protesters to the funerals of veterans of the Iraq war. Their message of hate is spread, however disgustingly, legally through the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Despite enjoying this freedom, they run sites like www.godhatesamerica.com and condemn homosexuality, Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Jews and anyone they believe to support those groups.

Now, according to a recent press release from the church, they are planning on protesting the funeral of President-elect Obama’s grandmother. Claiming her influence on Obama led to his support of abortion and same-sex marriage.

Abortion rates, by the way, have decreased during democratic administrations according to records kept since the Roe v. Wade case.

So now we’ll have to see how the Obama family and friends deal with this tough time in their lives. Suggestions through out social web networks have urge for counter-demonstrators to be present, not unlike the Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcycle group that attends the funerals of veterans and other service workers upon invitation to physically shield funerals from the Westboro Church. After the tragedies of September 11TH, a counter-protester stood outside the church in Kansas. He held a sign simply stating “Not Today Fred”.

Eighty-six others joined him in the days to follow.

I was blind-sided. It came out of no where.

I didn’t know a person could stoop so low.

Yesterday, because my ideas fall in line with Barack Obama…

A conservative said I was a socialist.

A conservative threw arguments at me that I had only heard thrown specifically at Obama. Certainly not an every day citizen.

It was as if by expressing liberal views I was automatically a member of the Obama campaign…

And you know what?

That’s fine with me.

Obama ’08. Get out and vote.

Not that Democrats are awesome at dutifully “following God” (not that they necessarily should), but I tend to hold the “moral majority”, the “Religious Right” to a higher standard being that they claim to represent God. However, as an independent voter, I’m free to believe God wasn’t just pulling my chain when he said things like “the only religion I’m [God] interested in is to look after orphans and widows” (James 1:27) or “What you do to the least of these you do unto me”.

Quite honestly, were it not for the abortion issue (I’m personally against it but I respect people of differing opinions–especially since I don’t have a uterus) I would honestly find it very difficult to justify voting Republican at all.

In my examination of politics and the Christian faith, I feel comfortable concluding that the summation of excuses conservatives use against things like well-fare (sp?), war, gay rights, drug policies, immigration, etc seem to be rooted in hate and the justifications they provide are often “practical”. By this I mean that it is impractical to give money to 90% of homeless people when only 10% really put it to good use (I’m just using arbitrary numbers). Or that it’s more practical to “use force to make people behave peacefully” (note the irony) than it is to genuinely reach out and have patience (heaven forbid we turn the other cheek or anything crazy like that) with our enemies.

I find this to conflict with the Christian faith which states that God was born in a barn, spent a good chunk of his life being homeless, talking/living/eating with the crazies and the rejects of society, and hanging on a Roman cross like a criminal out of crazy, compassionate love for mankind. I would think it would be within the power of an Almighty God to come to earth as a powerful king with powerful armies and force the world to believe in Him, but that wasn’t what he did. In fact, Jesus rejected this method explicitly during the temptation in the desert.

Basically, all of this is to say that I feel the “godless liberals” do what Jesus would do a lot better than the Religious Right. But I think we all know bad things happen when Christianity becomes “popular” [cough]Crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, war, etc[cough].

Just some thoughts.

I seem to have picked an apt title for my Daily Beast column, or blog, or whatever it’s called: “What Fresh Hell.” My last posting (if that’s what it’s called) in which I endorsed Obama, has brought about a very heaping helping of fresh hell. In fact, I think it could accurately be called a tsunami.

The mail (as we used to call it in pre-cyber times) at the Beast has been running I’d say at about 7-to-1 in favor. This would seem to indicate that you (the Beast reader) are largely pro-Obama.

As for the mail flooding into National Review Online—that’s been running about, oh, 700-to-1 against. In fact, the only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.

I had gone out of my way in my Beast endorsement to say that I was not doing it in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column, because of the experience of my colleague, the lovely Kathleen Parker. Kathleen had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen’s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didn’t want to put NR in an awkward position.

Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it’s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions “cretinous.” One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have “betrayed”—the b-word has been much used in all this—my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, “Cancel my subscription,” I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR “Notes and Asides”: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.

Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.

My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1969, Pup wrote a widely-remarked upon column saying that it was time America had a black president. (I hasten to aver here that I did not endorse Senator Obama because he is black. Surely voting for someone on that basis is as racist as not voting for him for the same reason.)

My point, simply, is that William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much. My father was also unpredictable, which tends to keep things fresh and lively and on-their-feet. He came out for legalization of drugs once he decided that the war on drugs was largely counterproductive. Hardly a conservative position. Finally, and hardly least, he was fun. God, he was fun. He liked to mix it up.

So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

Thanks, anyway, for the memories, and here’s to happier days and with any luck, a bit less fresh hell.

- Christopher Buckley’s blog

Ah, where to start? Let’s start with the positive. Well, it’s a guilt trip – but one you should actually take to heart. Check out this clip featuring Jonah Hill, Forest Whitaker, Dustin Hoffman, Sarah Silverman taking her bra off and more.

Don’t Vote?

And of course I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to expose McCain. Sure, I think it’s important to get registered and vote regardless of your candidate preference, but it’s obvious I’m an Obama supporter so here’s a video of McCain lying like a stubborn ass.

McCain Interview with Des Moines Register