Bloodthirsty Liberal

American gay people who are disappointed that President Obama has words, just words, on their behalf can take solace that words, just words, are all his administration has for gays around the world:

Russia’s leading gay activist said yesterday that he was disappointed that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with an outspoken foe of gay rights during her two-day visit and did not decry homophobia.

Clinton attended a statue unveiling of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they “can be described in no other way than as satanic.’’

Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and US gay activists have claimed him as a symbol of their movement.

…

Gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev said yesterday that he was disappointed Clinton did not discuss discrimination against gays.

“Russia is supposed to be a democracy and she said nothing,’’ he said.

Alexeyev had called on Clinton to denounce what he called entrenched and degrading homophobic attitudes in Russia.

I’m sure she’ll get right on that.

America is supposed to be a democracy, too, Nikolai, and how’s that working out for us?

Perhaps unfairly, we accused President Obama of forsaking gays and women the other day. He’s the one who wanted to join that stinking septic tank of the UN’s Human Rights Council and its anthropomorphized piles of fecal matter who sit on it—who now claim that calls to respect rights for those minorities (woman a minority?) run counter to their cultural values.

I say unfairly because we accused the president of legitimizing intolerance and repression in Africa and the Middle East.

We should have added Europe. We regret the error.

Getting jumped by six Moroccans after I left a gay bar in Rotterdam a few weeks ago brought home — with brutal clarity — my feeling that this Dutch port city is a nervous place on the verge of breakdown.

Having studied in two European countries, lived and worked in three, and visited about two dozen over a 20-year period, I usually feel extremely safe meandering around the “old countries” of our Western civilization. But there’s something rotten in Rot-town.

…

Rotterdam’s demographics make it the unofficial capital of Eurabia. Its population is half non-Western or of non-Western descent. Muslims make up close to 25 percent of its population. Unskilled, undereducated, and increasingly unemployed workers abound. And segregation — ubiquitous in all large European cities — is extremely acute here. Rotterdam’s ghettos would make Hitler smile.

…

Everyone here walks around with a hair trigger. On a recent Sunday, a Moroccan man and his girlfriend walked past a group — including myself — that was smoking outside a gay bar. One Dutch gay man was briefly in the way of the girlfriend. The Moroccan spat on him. A brawl ensued. I kept my distance. Some of us, and the Moroccan, ran around the corner. I heard awful screams.

An hour later, one of the gay men returned with a torn shirt and a stab wound.

…

This was, in fact, the bar where I was attacked a week later by about six Moroccan youths:

“Are you British?”

“No, American.”

“We hate America!”

“So?” One of the Moroccans pushed me. “Look man, I’m a Puerto Rican from New York.”

“You are American. We hate America, Bush. Are you gay?”

“None of your f***ing business.” I was then kicked and pushed to the floor. Kicked again.

Rotterdam, Malmo, the banlieues of Paris, pockets of many British cities: scenes like this are, as Yeats put it, “past, passing, or to come”.

I don’t see Muslims the same way Obama does. Or the UN. Or much of anything at all.

The nominal turn to the right in European elections, while feared by many Jews, is, to me, instead a reaction to the creeping Eurabianization of the continent. Jews may suffer collateral damage (as when do they not), but the real battle is between the progressive and permissive West and the very much not so Islamic culture.

But I wouldn’t worry. If you’re not gay, Jewish, female, or European, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. For now.

If this is what Obama was seeking to achieve by taking a seat on the Human Rights Council… mission accomplished:

During today’s session at the UN Human Rights Council, Cameroon and Saudi Arabia justified their repression of gays and women with the argument that human rights should be based on “morals” and “traditional values” rather than universal principles of individual rights.

During the discussion of the report on Cameroon’s rights record, the delegation spent a significant portion of its speech defending its rejection of the report’s recommendations to stop criminalizing homosexuality. It said that, in its view, legal measures against homosexuals were neither contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) nor to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It explained that there are “safeguard clauses that can be invoked based on moral features” in the UDHR and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Cameroon argued that, “As things stand in the culture of my country, homosexuality is not considered a value permitted by Cameroon’s society, and the legislature has enshrined the predominant social value.”

When time came to discuss the report on Saudi Arabia, it said that countries “must take into consideration particularities, stages of development, and evolution of societies” in reviewing its rights record. “This requires an understanding of each culture and the values and principles that guide it.” In rejecting various recommendations, including those asking it to put an end to its systemic discrimination against women, Saudi Arabia explained that these “might fail to achieve the goals to which they aspire due to misunderstanding of the values guiding each culture, or to inaccurate appraisal of the real situation.”

Algeria backed this claim, saying it “welcomes the fact that the delegation of Saudi Arabia” has put the recommendations “in line with their cultural and religious specificities, especially in regards to Islamic shari’a.”

Why the hell do they bother with a Human Rights Council if countries can opt out of any particular right they claim runs counter to their beliefs? So typical of the U-bloody-N.

Maybe Jake Tapper will ask Press Secretary Randy Quaid about it at a news conference.

This poor Palestinian should count his blessings:

A 30-year-old Palestinian man who has resided in Israel with his partner for the past seven years has filed a petition with the High Court of Justice asking to prevent his deportation to the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian and his partner claim deportation would put him at serious risk of being arrested and tortured at the hands of Palestinian security forces, as well as persecution by his extended family because of his sexual orientation and the fact that his partner is an Israeli.

…

The petition says the ministry’s decision “is extremely implausible as it has ignored the evidence regarding the imminent danger homosexuals face within the Palestinian territories because of their sexual tendencies”.

It must be pretty bad in the Palestinian territories if this guy wants to live in an Apartheid state and chronic human rights violator.

This just in:

The California Supreme Court has upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, but it also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed.

The decision Tuesday rejected an argument by gay rights activists that the ban revised the California constitution’s equal protection clause to such a dramatic degree that it first needed the Legislature’s approval.

The announcement of the decision caused outcry among a sea of demonstrators who had gathered in front of the San Francisco courthouse awaiting the ruling.

To repeat my stance: I support gay marriage, but I don’t condemn, dismiss, or threaten those who disagree. And I don’t like the anti-democratic ways supporters have resorted to in furthering their cause.

But I’m thinking over what Penn Jillette said on Glenn Beck the other night:

JILLETTE: What about social stuff? Do you think the government should have anything to do with marriage?

BECK: I think you should have the right to have your civil unions, et cetera. I don’t care what you do in your personal life. I don’t really care.

JILLETTE: I’m totally against straight marriage — even though I’m married. I don’t think heterosexual marriage is any of the government’s business. I think you make any contract you want, you know, if you want to marry several women, several men, you want to marry another man, another woman, anything — make a contract, make a civil union and get the government out of the business of who we have sex with.

His last point is false: it’s not about whom we have sex with. It’s about marriage—not the same thing. [Rim-shot] I’m not convinced the government (expressing the collective will of the people) has nothing to say about marriage.

Like our president, I know our country has not always been perfect. Sometimes, we listen to the wrong radio stations, elect the wrong presidents.

Some of us support gay marriage, others don’t. But I’d venture to say very few of us think that homosexuality is “Satanic”:

Riot police broke up several gay rights demonstrations in Moscow yesterday, hauling away scores of protesters hours before the capital hosted a major international pop music competition.

Activists had targeted Moscow, which was holding the finals of the Eurovision song contest, hoping to use the event’s global popularity to draw attention to their claims that Russia officially sanctions homophobia.

Led by a mayor who describes homosexuality as “satanic,” city officials had warned they would not tolerate marches or rallies supporting the rights of gays and lesbians.

…

Gay pride events “not only destroy moral foundations of our society, but also purposefully provoke disturbances that will threaten the lives and safety of Moscow residents and guests,” City Hall spokesman Sergei Tsoi was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying yesterday.

Police seized gay rights advocates as well as some members of religious and nationalist groups that staged counter-demonstrations. They also took away gay rights activists for talking to reporters, and ripped the bra and shirt off one female protester.

Even your reprobate host can resist the overwhelming urge to make an inappropriate remark.

On another controversial topic, abortion, we are also sharply divided (the majority now opposing it). But we are nowhere near as messed up as China when it comes to family planning:

Ten months and 25 days after he buried his only child, Luo Gang became a father again at a makeshift hospital cobbled out of aluminum trailers.

For weeks after his 11-year-old daughter was killed in last May’s massive earthquake here in Sichuan Province, his wife cried so uncontrollably that her family feared she might be having a breakdown.

“If you don’t have another baby, my sister will be grieving her whole life,” Luo said his brother-in-law advised him.

Luo said he was shocked by the tactlessness of the suggestion.

…

To say that survivors of the May 12, 2008, earthquake, which killed an estimated 70,000 people, are recovering would be premature, given that many are still living in tents and searching for the remains of loved ones.

But thousands of couples in their 30s and 40s, most of whom lost an only child, have decided they cannot wait.

The result is a bittersweet baby boom, the joy of each birth tempered by the rawness of recent loss.

“Chinese people are very practical,” said a maternity nurse at Mianzhu City Hospital. The nurse, who did not wish to be quoted by name, said that eight of the 70 mothers in the maternity ward had lost children in the earthquake.

…

Family-planning officials, who enforce the limits on family size, are encouraging couples who lost their only child to have another. The government is paying for fertility counseling, operations to reverse vasectomies, and tubal ligations, as well as removal of intrauterine devices, the most common form of birth control in China.

The motives are not purely humanitarian. The government needs to quell resentment over its unpopular limits on family size. Sichuan has long been a battleground over the policy, with the government strictly enforcing the one-child limit.

You lost your only child (allowed by law)? Go ahead, have another one.

Gee, thanks.

Practical: I guess so. I suppose that’s what you call it when your body and soul are wholly owned by the government.

Well, he does, doesn’t he?

Despite America’s decision this week to join the negotiations and extend an outretched hand to the U.N. planners of the Durban II conference on racism, their response so far to President Obama is continued intolerance, underscored today by their shooting down a provision on discrimination against gays, in a stormy debate.

The original proposal by Western states in the draft text (par. 69) was to condemn “all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on sexual orientation.” Not so controversial, one would think, for a conference ostensibly about discrimination and intolerance.

The Czech Republic on behalf of the E.U., with the support of New Zealand, the United States, Colombia, Chili on behalf of the South American states, the Netherlands, Argentina and a few others, took the floor in support.

In face of resistance from the U.N. majority, however, the United Kingdom proposed alternative wording: “Recognizes that experiences of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance are aggravated and intersect with discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation and gender identity, and condemns all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on these grounds.”

Still, the inclusion of the words “discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation” made the paragraph unadoptable and unacceptable for countries that reflect the majority of member states at the U.N. who oppose any form of gay rights: South Africa on behalf of the African Group, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Botswana, Iran, Algeria, and Syria.

South Africa on behalf of the African Group, a key organizer of the Durban II conference, said: “Sexual orientation and discrimination. . . we feel it goes beyond the framework of the (2001) Durban Declaration.”

So, if you don’t care that Obama has sold out the Jews, do you care that he’s sold out the gays?

Why are they lying down with these dogs? How do they walk away from this and say that they are shocked—shocked!—to learn there was such intolerance and hatred in a conference on tolerance and comity? When everyone told them not to go near the fetid, stinking swamp.

Side question: how do diplomats clean themselves at the end of a day in which they have to negotiate with people to write the following:

“Recognizes that experiences of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance are aggravated and intersect with discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation and gender identity, and condemns all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on these grounds.”

You water down a condemnation of bigotry to nothing but thin mush, and you still don’t get it passed. What do you use to cleanse yourself after that, Lava? Dial? Pure lye?

You know, this might be just the thing to sour people on Adolf Hitler:

A document discovered in Britain more than 60 years after it had been produced claims that Adolf Hitler, the late fuehrer of Nazi Germany, had horrible table manners and chronic intestinal gas.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday that the document, currently up for auction in Britain, says the Nazi dictator would bite his nails and twist his moustache incessantly during mealtimes, but that he truly believed that he was the “greatest military genius of all time,” as Josef Goebbels had written of him.

…

The final days of Hitler’s life are recorded in vast detail in the interview and his reported homosexual inclinations are mentioned, as well as his overt fondness for Rudolph Hess. He is also said to have fraternized with women in a manner characterized by “passive masochism”.

The Nazi official interviewed said he believes Hitler was crazy [no!], basing his opinion on at least 30 dinners the two shared.

…

He adds that Hitler “abstractedly bites his fingernails, he runs his index finger back and forth under his nose, and his table manners are little short of shocking.”

The document also states that Hitler “ate prodigious amounts of cake,” responsible for his digestive disorder.

I’m a pie man myself, and don’t really trust cake people. I think this justifies my suspicions.

But was Adolf gay? Only his hairdresser knows for sure. I doubt my gay friends, who are always eager to claim undercover queers as their own, will pass on adopting the Fairy Führer as on of their own.

“The rumors about his homosexuality and other abnormal obsessions were rumors and nothing more. If there was any such streak in him, it was a touch of passive masochism in his relationship with women.”

And “passive masochism”? What’s that? How does it differ from Brand X masochism? More to the point, how do you do it?

We may have gotten our butts kicked for Infidel Blogger of the Year (curse you Robert Spencer—may a bloated yak change the temperature of your jacuzzi! [h/t: Carnac]), but that doesn’t mean we’ve given up.

Some Muslims want to kill children:

Following are excerpts from a TV debate featuring Dr. Kamal al-Hilbawi, director of the London Center for the Study of Terrorism, and political analyst Dr. Nabil Yassin, which aired on BBC Arabic TV on October 17, 2008:

I condemn the targeting of any civilian, but incidentally, I believe that every Israeli civilian is a future soldier.

Interviewer: He is what?

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: A future soldier.

Interviewer: Even if he is two years old?

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: Even if he is a child. A child born in Israel is raised on the belief that [the Arabs] are like contemptible sheep, and that this is a land without a people, and they are a people without a land. They have very strange concepts. In elementary school, they pose the following math problem: “In your village, there are 100 Arabs. If you killed 40, how many Arabs would be left for you to kill?” This is taught in the Israeli curriculum. What would you say about that? Should a child studying this be considered a civilian? He is a future soldier.

I just love that coffee-spewing-excuse-me moment from the interviewer: “He is what?” Note “Dr.” Al-Hailbawi’s position: director of the London Center for the Study of Terrorism. I guess that’s one way of putting it—kind of like Hitler as head of a Holocaust Studies program: who would know better?

And speaking of Nazi extermination programs: homosexuals!

Following are excerpts from an interview with Kuwaiti Islamist Dr. Sa’d Al-’Inzi, which aired on Al-Rai TV on December 10, 2007:

…

Unfortunately, 85-90% of what happens in these parlors is homosexual. Very few are the people who adhere to the religious and legal requirements. The basic problem is the foreign workers. Most foreign workers who serve as masseurs are, unfortunately, either “third gender” or sexually perverse and morally deviant.
[…]

Most of these parlors are full of homosexuals. The people working there are also homosexuals, I’m sad to say.

…

The same goes for women. I don’t know if there are massage parlors for women…

Moderator: Yes, there are.

Dr. Sa’d Al-’Inzi: Then the catastrophe is even greater, because just like there is a “third gender,” there might be a “fourth gender” as well… Imagine that a woman gets undressed, and in walks a butch masseuse, who gets on with it – this might cause many moral problems.

…

Article 203 of the Penal Code says: “Whoever founds an establishment for iniquity or prostitution, or who assists in any way in its foundation or management, will be sentenced to life imprisonment, and if he does it again – he will be sentenced to death.” This is stated in the man-made law. Religious law supports this, because this constitutes “spreading corruption in the land.”

Moderator: True.

Dr. Sa’d Al-’Inzi: When a person commits an abominable act, like homosexuality, for example, or lesbianism, in the case of women’s parlors – this constitutes “spreading corruption in the land,” and should be punished by death.

[…]

Moderator: Other than life imprisonment and the death sentence, what can be done?

Dr. Sa’d Al-’Inzi: According to Islamic law, a homosexual should be thrown from a tall building.

Moderator: What would you do with them?

Dr. Sa’d Al-’Inzi: To be honest, death is too good for them. They should be gathered in a public place, where they would be flogged and tortured, so the truth about these people is made clear and they serve as a lesson to others, because they are an epidemic plaguing society.

So it is better to be a Jewish toddler than an Arab gay. I’d call that a starting point in the Middle East peace process.

I voted for McCain, unlike most of California.

But at least I think two people of the same sex who love each other should be allowed to marry—unlike most of California.

Who’s the bigot?

A proposed ban on same-sex marriage in California — widely seen as the most momentous of the 153 ballot measures at stake nationwide — remained undecided early Wednesday.

The proposed constitutional amendment would limit marriage to heterosexual couples, the first time such a vote has taken place in state where gay unions are legal.

…

With 84 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, the ban had 4,605,065 votes, or 52 percent, to 4,293,068 votes, or 48 percent, against.

More bad news for gay-marriage advocates elsewhere:

[S]imilar measures succeeded in Arizona and Florida, where voters approved constitutional amendments recognizing marriage as a union between one man and one woman, CNN projected.

In Arizona, where a similar measure failed in 2006, Proposition 102 passed with 56 percent. Florida voters approved the amendment by a 62-38 percent margin.

We’re “enlightened” enough to put a black man (okay, “bi-racial”) in the Lincoln bedroom (or wherever), but not enlightened enough to allow two men or two women in the matrimonial bed.

Okay, got it.