Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Exodus wants to silence parody

Update: A good time to remember, would you want your daughter to marry one?

The Advocate:

The American Civil Liberties Union is defending a heterosexual blogger who received a cease-and-desist letter from Exodus International after he parodied the group’s “ex-gay reparative therapy” billboards on his Web site.

The Exodus billboards, which Santa Rosa, Calif., blogger Justin Watt viewed online, read, “Gay? Unhappy? http://www.exodus.to.” Watt responded by posting “Straight? Unhappy? http://www.gay.com” on his site, Justinsomnia.org. Though denounced by major medical groups like the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, Exodus’s reparative therapy attempts to turn gay people straight.

“The moment I saw the billboards last September, I was deeply offended. The inspiration for the parody I created came to me instantly. How would straight people feel if their very being, their sense of self, was being so overtly disparaged?” asked Watt. “[Exodus’s] response was to try to intimidate me into taking the image down. It’s troubling that an organization as big as Exodus would go to such great lengths to silence its critics.”

Justin tells the tale on his blog.

Thanks Chelsea!

UPDATE: Exodus backs down.

Marketing uploads, lawyers take down

Lost Remote says some nets have their wires crossed:

NBC and CBS are two of the companies that we know have sent nastygrams to YouTube over copyrighted video, and I’m sure there are many more. YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley says in some cases, the same company is both uploading video and ordering YouTube to take it down. “There’s been a few examples of marketing departments uploading content directly to the site, while on the other side of the company their attorney is demanding we remove this content,” Hurley said. Classic. Meanwhile, YouTube is pursuing parnerships with traditional media companies, and it’s only a matter of time (in my opinion) until they’re acquired. Did you know YouTube has twice the traffic of Yahoo! Video and more than three times that of Google Video and AOL Video? Wow!

Via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing.

Wonkette loves Hillary

Hillarywath: Republicans criminalize Jesus!

God do we love this woman. Let’s just skip the whole “election” thing and make her president right now. Here is Hillary’s latest pronouncement:

Surrounded by a multicultural coalition of New York immigration advocates, Clinton blasted the House bill [on immigration] as “mean-spirited” and said it flew in the face of Republicans’ stated support for faith and values.

“It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures,” Clinton said, “because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.”

Ralph Reed’s a drag

A new poll says he’s hurting Sonny Purdue:

On Monday, pollster Matt Towery raised Republican blood pressure with the news that President Bush’s approval ratings in Georgia had dropped significantly.

And that Gov. Sonny Perdue was no longer the shoo-in many thought he would be this November.

On Tuesday, the head of Internet political news service Insider Advantage cut loose another set of worrisome numbers for the state’s Republicans: Ralph Reed, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, at this point represents an 8-point drag on a Perdue-Reed ticket.

For you geeks, the margin of error is 4 percent, and dates of the survey were March 14-17.

Via Josh Marshall.

Glad to see Lafave charges dismissed

Three years of house arrest followed by seven years of probation and international notoriety is punishment enough for me. I don’t consider it a “mild rebuke;” I do see the double standard:

Comedian Jay Leno has joked about the case regularly, usually with a punchline like: “Where were these teachers when I was in school?”

As commentators have repeatedly noted, it is hard to imagine a comedian making similar comments if the case involved a male teacher and a young female student.

But the double standard I will refer you back to again is the one between Lafave and Matthew R. Limon:

Matthew R. Limon...after spending four 5 1/2 years in jail for a consensual sex act - also with a 14 year old boy though not his student and only four years his junior - and after having his case reviewed by the Kansas Supreme Court which concluded that the state can’t punish underage sex more harshly if it involves gay people, TODAY GOES TO COURT TO ANSWER NEW CHARGES FOR THE SAME INCIDENT.

Lafave’s ex-husband is saying she would have gotten jail time if she were a man. Maybe so. It’s a hook the press seems to love. But if she were gay or lesbian they’d throw her in jail and toss away the key.

I promised to follow that case and have found nothing, nothing at all, in the news since. Clearly, a mildly retarded gay boy is least attractive of all.

I remind you that I would more apprpriately scale our reaction to all sex offenders; and generally I do not believe in Retributive Justice - the thinking man’s vengeance - preferring instead Restorative Justice.

Most especially I reject the scarlet lifelong electronic ankle bracelet and again quote this significant passage from “Pariah:”

Even before Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex was published in 2002, a massive campaign by fundamentalist Christian groups, including Concerned Women for America, attacked the publisher, the University of Minnesota Press. While the book was published, the Press created a new process for reviewing its books before publication. Levine spoke publicly about how she was humiliated time and again in public. She said the manuscript for her book had been turned down by many publishers, treated as if it were “radioactive.” Among other insights, Levine wrote that “obsession with pedophiles stems for the reluctance to confront incest and the rampant sexualization of children” in American culture. “Adults project the eroticized desire outwards, creating a monster to hate, hunt down and destroy.” Of the outcry against her book she added, “What happened to me is a perfect example of the hysteria my book is about.”

Sick monsters should be hung is an all too easy formulation in these cases; every sick monster is somebody’s son.