God bless Joe Sonka. God bless Joe Sonka because he works his tail off traversing Kentucky covering the various manifestations of right-wing lunacy in the commonwealth [If you haven’t checked out Joe’s blogosphere-famous coverage of the Creation Museum from earlier this year, do so].

I envy Joe because he has that ability to observe the multitude of nitwits that make up the Kentucky GOP with a humorous eye and a sly smirk. I, on the other hand, don’t suffer these fools so well, even from a thousand miles away. Yet Joe has the gift, through his writing, of putting the crazy nature of social conservatives in Kentucky in perspective.

For example, Joe has a frightening new report over at BlueGrassRoots (the article itself will be published in the Lexington-based W Weekly) about a recent meeting of the American Family Association of Kentucky.

I’m going to include some excerpts from Joe’s piece below, but the most important thing to remember is that both the Republican candidate for state attorney general, Rep. Stan Lee, and for state auditor, Linda Greenwell, were in attendance and fully engaged at this meeting.

You know how most of the world has been up-in-arms against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R?) over his years-long effort to promote the cause of holocaust denial? It’s craziness. Rational people know it. That didn’t stop the Iranians from organizing and hosting a Holocaust denial conference last year. Birds of a feather flock together, as even the U.S.’s very own former Klu Klux Klan member David Duke took part.

In the end, we will never eliminate crazy beliefs like Holocaust denial, racism, xenophobia, or homophobia, but we can marginalize them. Peer pressure does work, especially here in the United States. Americans, by and large, want to be perceived as successful, accepted, and mainstream. So, by framing these sorts of beliefs as radical, extreme, undesirable and out-of-the-mainstream, you necessitate that people who continue to cling to them make an overt choice for themselves: which is more important to them, their hatred of others or their own prosperity?

It’s objectively true that hatred is not rational; it is morally wrong. Yet some people will not make the rational choice on their own; they need a little cajoling along the way. That’s where societal pressure comes into play.

Keep that in mind as you read what Joe has to say below about this meeting. Think about how outrageous its content was, and how scary it is that two of the Republican candidates for statewide office embraced this message and those who propagate it.

In short, these people at the American Family Association of Kentucky are free to have their beliefs; it’s a free country. The rest of us, however, should expect that men and women who strive to attain the highest levels of elected office in our land would not associate with them, would shun them. Instead, they are embracing them, and on election day the people of Kentucky will shun Stan Lee and Linda Greenwell as punishment.

Raging Bigotry and the Dying of the Right

Did you know that Lexington is run by the “Homosexual Hegemony”? That “the gays” own the government and the media? And the only way to get access to this power is to have the dirty gay sex with them?

Yea, neither did I.

[…]

Roughly 50 people squeezed into the cafeteria. After the first speaker told us how he escaped the evils of today’s society when God told him to start his own line of athletic apparel, it was Kent Ostrander’s turn. Ostrander, the founder of the like-minded Family Foundation, was a key player in the push to amend KY’s Constitution so that gay marriage and civil unions are now outlawed.

He was sure to preface his points with “now, I’m not trying to vilify homosexuals”. For example, he would say this just before his inaccurate tangent on how gay sex is the cause of 75% of AIDS in the world. “These people bring this on themselves!”

He further chastised UK, saying that allowing partners to receive health insurance is to tolerate and “validify” these relationships. Again, he “wasn’t trying to vilify gays”, but the “predatory ideas of the radical homosexual agenda” will destroy our families and society. Ostrander ended his speech, nearly shouting, “Our God shall reign!”

Next, a sociology student presented her research project on why the black community in Lexington is faced with the problems of poverty, crime and drug abuse. Her conclusion, after repeatedly informing us that she was a “scientist”? Young blacks in Lexington are mired in this because of….. The Gays. You see, homosexuals own all of the power in the black community of Lexington, coining it the “Homosexual Hegemony”. Those gays force young blacks wanting access to that power to tolerate and become acclimated to the gay lifestyle. One acclimated to this immorality, they succumb to the evils of drug abuse, crime and dirty gay sex.

But these are just the crazy ramblings of some small fringe cult, right? Apparently, not. Linda Greenwell, Republican candidate for Auditor in next week’s election, was happily handing out campaign literature to the crowd. Ostrander pointed out state Sen. Stan Lee in the crowd, thanking him for all of his work to “support our cause in Frankfort”. Lee, the Republican candidate for Attorney General, took a bow and soaked in the applause.

Then, it was Frank Simon’s turn. He jumped right into the “culture war” routine, blasting the godless villains who have taken the commandments, literal creation science and prayer out of public schools. “We need to stop them and GOD will stop them!”

Simon started in with the gays, then paused, putting on a coy exterior of doubt. “Oh, I don’t want to get into this…” before deciding to share his shocking video with the crowd. The lights were dimmed, and he presented a video that he claimed was being shown in schools. It showed a series of families, in which a child introduced us to his/her two mothers or fathers. Each child explained how, despite their differences, they love and protect each other just like any other family does.

The visceral reaction from the crowd was palpable. Audible gasps. Loud cries of “no!!!”, “my God!!”, “how dare they!” It resembled the “2-minute hate” out of Orwell’s 1984, the crowd whipped up into frenzy at the traitorous Goldstein. “This is what we’re up against!” cried Simon.

“Sure, kids drank beer back in my day, but it wasn’t until the gays that they started smoking the dope! ….. We never used to have to lock our doors!”

They culprit was the ubiquitous “They”. “They” took over our government. “They” want gay sex taught to our children. “They control the media! You’re only going to find out about these votes in Frankfort after they happen. That’s no accident. They don’t want you to know about them!”

Such bigotry among fundamentalists has many forbearers. This used to be the argument against “race-mixing”, how the Bible warned against it and it would tear down the fabric of our society. Such bigots were swept to the margins of society after the civil rights movement, but there is always a new “they” to latch onto. And while fomenting hatred towards gays has proved quite successful for the Christian Right, they also know that the gig is up.

Shortly after this AFA meeting, UK had a “coming out week”, where gay and straight students could show solidarity and promote tolerance. At one event, state Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, our first openly gay representative, told the crowd, “When I went to UK, something like this was unheard of. We’ve progressed to the point where this is now possible.”

And that is why we see the vitriol of the Christian right. They know that their loss in the culture war is imminent. A recent poll showed that those under 30 have rejected this brand of bigotry in politics, supporting gay rights in overwhelming numbers. There is even a rift among evangelicals, as a recent NYT article found many churches abandoning the obsession with gays, moving towards the social justice aspect of Christianity.

Tuesday’s election would seem to validate this trend, as Republicans Ernie Fletcher and Stan Lee are expected to lose by nearly 20 points. But victory is not yet upon us, as KY politicians will still seek to capitalize on this homophobic demographic (Even Todd Hollenbach, Dem. candidate for Treasurer, refuses to renounce Simon’s endorsement).

But at least we now know that it will take more than simply using homophobia to get elected in KY.

Of course, if I was Mexican, I’d be sweating a bit.

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Oy! These Creationists just can’t get along. You’d think people who push brother-on-sister incest as a divinely sanctioned form of love and procreation could get on more peaceably with their brothers and sisters in the Creationist movement.

Andy Mead of the Lexington Herald-Leader has the story, which is an excellent bit of self-contained work:

Museum group sued by fellow creationists
MONEY AND ‘ACTING IN AN UNBIBLICAL FASHION’ AT THE ROOT

There is trouble in paradise, with a fight of biblical proportions raging between a Kentucky-based creationist group and the Australian group from which it sprang.

Three days after the Memorial Day opening of Answers in Genesis’ $27 million Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky, a group called Creation Ministries International filed suit in the Supreme Court of Queensland.

Among other things, the suit claims the Kentucky group stole subscribers for its Answers magazine by claiming that the Australians’ Creation magazine was “no longer available.”

The suit is the most public move in what has been a growing rift between groups that are spreading the same Garden of Eden creation message on opposite sides of the globe.

Both groups believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, that the earth and everything else was created in six days around 6,000 years ago.

But in the last several years, they have increasingly feuded about finances and power.

Now each is accusing the other of acting in an “unbiblical” fashion — a serious charge for people who believe that the Bible is God’s infallible word.

“All I’ll tell you is those allegations are totally preposterous and untrue,” Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, said in a brief interview last week. “The Bible tells you not to have a lawsuit against your brother, so you can see who’s obeying the Bible and who’s not.”

[…]

In 1994, Ham arrived in Northern Kentucky — chosen for its proximity to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and a sizable portion of the nation’s population — and started Answers in Genesis.

The name was adopted by the Australian organization, which later changed its name again to Creation Ministries International.

It is CMI that is suing AiG.

In Kentucky, Ham began planning for his Creation Museum. The first order of business: building a financial base.

He spoke at churches. He conducted seminars. He launched a popular Web site. He started a radio program that eventually would be carried on 860 stations across the country.

All this allowed him to create a mailing list of people who were willing to give money. When the museum opened, it was paid for. Mark Looy, another AiG leader, said the average contribution to the $27 million effort was a little more than $100.

[…]

Australia’s only national daily newspaper, The Australian, has picked up on a sordid part of the Briese report: It says that Ham has questioned the timing of Wieland’s second marriage — to a woman who once was Ham’s secretary — only two weeks after divorcing his first wife. And it says that Ham is collaborating with an Australian who was excommunicated from his Baptist church because he once accused Wieland’s wife of witchcraft and necrophilia.

“I think to some extent CMI is bringing that up just for the unseemly aspect of it,” Lippard said.

[…]

Wieland said he still hoped for Christian arbitration with Ham. But, he said, CMI was left with no choice but to sue.

“At the end of the day … there has to be right-doing,” he said. “Things can’t just be swept under the carpet.”

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Hey all you religious fundies, make sure and put one Eric Linden on your prayer lists at church this Father’s Day!

Eric, you’ll recall, was the young man who had a brief stint in a video as Adam — the original man — at Kentucky’s very own brand-spanking-new, world-class Creation Museum. It was only a brief stint because word got around — like, the entire world — that Eric had a penchant for the free-love lifestyle, and there were even pictures to go along.

Now, we at Ditch Mitch KY say good for Eric, but we’re not religious fundies and the fundies sure didn’t respond that way. No, indeed, they didn’t. Because if there’s one message you do not want your kids taking away from a museum display featuring a naked man and woman in a garden alone, it’s free love.

Also, you just know that Eric was the only “sinner” who contributed to anything in the Creation Museum, right? I’m sure no-one on the board of directors has ever been divorced or anything because he or she cheated on a spouse. Surely not. Oh, that’s right, but you can ask forgiveness for that sort of stuff, but carousing with trannies is just unpardonable.

So, in the end, Eric’s video was removed, the world is still laughing at the fundies, and Eric had his fifteen minutes of fame.

And I present to you: images of Eric Linden with transvestite.

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This letter to the editor was actually published in a Kentucky newspaper. I think its a pretty good representation of the kind of mindset and mental health that it takes to believe that Adam and Eve played fetch with dinosaurs 6,000 years ago while their kids were busy fucking.

Let me just summarize the wonderful pontification in the letter. The evolution “mythology” and science being taught in our schools is “dumbing down” our kids. This is being taught so the “Illuminati” and the Rockefeller family can control our kids. Oh, and they control the Federal Reserve and engage in occult activities, too. Also, her family loved the Creation Museum and the animatronic dinosaurs “concretely prove that God created the heavens and the earth”.

I really do hope that they chose to run this because it was funny, or they accidentally ran some wonderfully crafted snark.

(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

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Our very own and BlueGrassRoots veteran Joe Sonka’s excellent coverage of Kentucky’s crazy Creation Museum earned some pretty spectacular stats for both BGRoots and Ditch Mitch KY.

I mean, you gotta love people like Creationists, who can in one museum display justify the incest of biblical-era characters while attempting to undermine the legitimacy of same-sex marriage.

I think it’s really fitting that DMKY crossed the 100,000 unique visits on its three-month anniversary to the day. This site officially launched on March 12, 2007.

Joe tells me that BGRoots saw roughly 26,000 unique visits yesterday alone; DMKY had over 11,000. Here’s a pretty picture for you to look at:

Thanks, Creationists, for spending $27-million to help our little efforts here in Kentucky’s lefty blogosphere.

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Yep, people are curious about Kentucky’s world-class Creation Museum, but curious in a bad way. It’s like staring at a circus freak, really it is. And how do I know they’re curious? Check out DMKY’s traffic stats since we went wall-to-wall Creation Museum coverage:

PS: Make sure you check out Joe Sonka’s excellent display-by-display coverage at BlueGrassRoots.

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I went to the truly insane “Creation Museum” last Saturday and have my full report up on BlueGrassRoots.

I’m a big fan of dark, unintentional humor, and that’s exactly what I got in my visit. What’s certainly not funny is that I could definitely see certain “Christian Academies” across the State (that teach Creationism in their school) bringing their students here on field trips. To call that child abuse would be appropriate in my opinion.

It also reinforces many, many negative stereotypes about Kentucky.

Another relevant question is how do our representatives stand on the museum? Do they endorse its views? Would they take their children there? Is this an appropriate field trip for students?

I haven’t heard any politicians take on this yet, and I’d be interested to hear it.

Anyway, I leave you a picture of Pebbles Flintstone and her pet Velaciraptor, Dino.

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Like I said in a previous post, in Sunday school when I was growing up (and I come from a family that was and still is a if-the-doors-are-open-we’re-at church kinda family), we were taught that the origin of Cain and Abel’s wives was insignificant. I mean, if you’re going to believe that God can make the whole of Creation in six days, why be so terribly worried about where a few measly dames came from? Why is it such a stretch of the imagination — I mean, faith — that God could create them out of thin air as the circumstances warranted?

But that’s not good enough for the people at Kentucky’s brand-spanking-new, world-class Creation Museum. Why? Because they’re anticipating that same-sex marriage advocates will be perusing their Bibles to poke holes in scripturally based arguments against same-sex marriage.

If I were an opponent of this mind, I’d simply reply, “You know, they weren’t brother and sister,” but the Creationists desire greatly to have science on their side. Having God and faith isn’t good enough. They want the science, too.

My favorite part of this spiel below? The transition “…before jumping to conclusions.” Why not give the same tolerant pause to homosexuals? Sounds like a rather Christian perspective to me. Also, I’m puzzled by the phrase of “one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage)” because that equation was very malleable throughout the biblical era.

Here we go, and it’s a wild ride (image of sign provided below):

Where did Cain get his wife?

Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the lad of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch (Genesis 4:16-17).

The Bible teaches that Adam was “the first man” and that Eve was the “mother of all living” (1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 3:20). All humans are descendants of these two people.

Genesis 5:4 teaches that Adam and Eve had sons and daughters. So, originally, brothers had to marry sisters.

Before jumping to conclusions, realize that

1. All humans are related. So whenever someone gets married, they marry a relative.

2. One of the most honored men of the Bible, Abraham, was married to his half sister. It wasn’t until much later that God instructed the Israelites not to marry close relatives–a principle we follow today.

3. When close relatives marry today, there is an increased likelihood of deformities in the offspring, because of the mutations (mistakes) that have accumulated in the human race since Adam’s sin. The closer the relatives, the more likelihood such people will have similar mistakes. If these mutations are inherited in offspring from both parents, then there is an increased probability of major physiological problems.

4. The farther back in history one goes (back towards the Fall of Adam), the less of a problem mutations in the human population would be. At the time of Adam and Eve’s children, there would have been very few mutations in the human genome–thus close relatives could marry, and provided it was one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage), there was nothing wrong with close relatives marrying in early biblical history.

5. In present usage, the word incest includes both the marriage of close relatives and any sexual activity between close relatives who are not married. Sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage, whether between near relatives or not, has been wrong from the beginning. Marriage between close relatives, however, was not a problem in early biblical history.

6. Since God is the One who defined marriage in the first place, God’s Word is the only standard for defining proper marriage. People who do not accept the Bible as their absolute authority have no basis for condemning someone like Cain marrying his sister.

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I’ve had such a good time today browsing the photos of Kentucky’s world-class Creation Museum from a Flickr slide show. Click here to see it yourself.

Just how crazy are these Creationist nuts? You read this caption and you tell me:

This is friggin’ hilarious, people. The Creationists ANTICIPATE that same-sex marriage advocates will one day use the argument that, if Cain and Abel could marry their sisters, then what’s wrong with a man marrying a man?

So, what do the Creationists do? They preempt the argument in a rather strange way. If you don’t accept God and the Bible as your “absolute authority,” then you can’t comment on the incestuous relationship.

Growing up, I was always told that God created extra women for Cain and Abel to marry. We were taught in Sunday school that the reason we don’t read about these people is that they weren’t important. Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, and that little referenced younger brother Seth were important, but not the ones that came after. We were NEVER taught to swallow incest.

Here’s something to consider, though: the last time I checked, the United States doesn’t accept the Bible as its absolute authority.

I think the Supreme Court will likely NOT consult the Bible on this matter and it will not consider God and the Bible as the establishing authorities for marriage. Well, on second thought, it is a Bush court.

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