Were Disaffected Gays Part Of The Shellacking?

Gays "get" irony-- it doesn't pay to screw them over because they don't forget or take it lightly as a community

It's become a truism if not a cliche that the Roman Catholic Church is a sanctuary for mentally ill pedophiles driven by a desire for access to the minor children of the faithful. And one of the countries where the scandal has been greatest lately has been Belgium where the whole hierarchy of the Catholic Church was involved in an organized coverup of the systemic priestly rape of young boys for decades. Pope Ratzinger was furious last summer when the Belgian police treated a meeting of the princes and princesses of his Belgian subsidiary as though they were nothing but a gang of hoodlums, barging into a meeting unannounced, searching the joint after credible allegations were made that cases of sexual abuse had taken place there, confiscating mobile phones, seizing documents, interrogating lordly bishops who have come, over the centuries, to view themselves as above the laws that govern mere mortals.

Although we've been following the Belgian predator priest story closely it was Pam Spaulding who alerted me to the newest twist yesterday.

The head of the Catholic Church in Belgium has said that AIDS is "intrinsic justice" for homosexuality.

Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard also said that elderly priests found to have sexually abused children should not be punished.

His spokesman Juergen Mettepenningen resigned over his boss' remarks, AFP reports.

Discussing HIV-positive people, he said: "When you mistreat the environment it ends up mistreating us in turn. And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance.

"All I'm saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions," the archbishop said, saying of AIDS, "this epidemic is a sort of intrinsic justice." ... At a press conference, Mr Mettepenningen said of his former boss: "Monsignor Leonard at times acts like a motorist driving on the wrong side of a freeway who thinks all the other motorists are wrong."

Here in America the LGBT community suffered a serious setback this week at the elections. For although more gays and lesbians were elected to public office than ever before-- including David Cicilline Providence's Mayor who will now represent half of Rhode Island in Congress and Jim Gray, the new gay mayor of Lexington Kentucky-- the NY Times pointed out a very different perspective voters showed in Iowa Tuesday when the 3 Supreme Court judges who had ruled in favor of gay marriage equality were removed by angry, self-righteous bigots.

The outcome of the election was heralded both as a statewide repudiation of same-sex marriage and as a national demonstration that conservatives who have long complained about “legislators in robes” are able to effectively target and remove judges who issue unpopular decisions.

Leaders of the recall campaign said the results should be a warning to judges elsewhere.

“I think it will send a message across the country that the power resides with the people,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor who led the campaign. “It’s we the people, not we the courts.”

But critics of the campaign, including those who see the courts as a protector of minority rights, said the politicization of uncontested judicial elections represented a danger.

“What is so disturbing about this is that it really might cause judges in the future to be less willing to protect minorities out of fear that they might be voted out of office,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law. “Something like this really does chill other judges.”

...[T]he National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association, poured money into the removal campaign. Judges face no opponents in retention elections and simply need to win more yes votes than no votes to go on to another eight-year term. In Iowa, the three ousted justices did not raise campaign money, and they only made public appearances defending themselves toward the end of the election.

Each of the three justices-- Marsha K. Ternus, the chief justice; Michael J. Streit; and David L. Baker-- received about 45 percent of the vote, making this the first time members of the state’s high court had been rejected by voters. The 71 lower court judges on the ballot all easily won re-election.

The justices’ removal will have no effect on same-sex marriage, which will remain the law.

The judges declined requests for interviews but released a statement that decried what they called “an unprecedented attack by out-of-state special interest groups.” The statement defended the system for selecting judges but offered what a veiled warning about populist impulses to remake the judiciary: “Ultimately, however, the preservation of our state’s fair and impartial courts will require more than the integrity and fortitude of individual judges, it will require the steadfast support of the people.”

The defeat was a bitter disappointment to much of the legal community here, which rallied behind the justices, and it was viewed with particular concern in the gay community, which has found state courts more sympathetic than state legislatures.

Like the tip of a spear, gays seem to be leading the way on not being willing to take the bullshit from the country's ruling elites any longer-- at least not as it pertains to using them as scapegoats and sacrificing the LGBT community on the alter of conservative political dominance. As John Arovosis pointed out at AmericaBlog this week, there was a 15% drop in gay support for House Democrats from 2008 to 2010


And that's not because anyone likes the Republicans any better. In fact, it's worth remembering that of the 17 Democrats who joined the 158 Republicans to vote against including the LGBT community in the Hate Crimes bill on April 29, 2009, only 6 will be back in Congress in January: Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Mike McIntyre (NC), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), and Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), all of whom also voted against repealing DADT. Among those defeated at the polls Tuesday were homophobes and putative Democrats Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN), Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA), and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS).

The DC Democrats can prattle on as much as they like about their "biggest tent ever pitched," but gays aren't buying it, not if one of the stakes using in pitching it is hammered right up their yoo-know-whats. In fact, if you want to believe some of the polling (albeit suspect polling from an untrustworthy group of right-wing self-loathers) 31% of gays who voted, voted for Republicans on Tuesday, four points higher than in 2008. On the other hand, Michelangelo Signorile, a very trustworthy voice, asked his radio listeners yesterday and got an earful from gays who had nothing but bitterness towards Obama and the Big Tent, some of whom voted for violently homophobic Republicans out of pure spite.