A Biblical Failure.

The film, which courted Christian viewers and abandoned the gay subtext of the 1959 classic, could lose up to $100 million.

The film, which courted Christian viewers and abandoned the gay subtext of the 1959 classic, could lose up to $100 million.

Bye, Ben-Hur.

The film about betrayal in biblical times was an epic fail at the box office. Its opening weekend, it took in $11.2 million in domestic markets and $10.7 million in international ones, reports Variety, a dismal sum given to its production budget of over $100 million.

Ben-Hur ranked sixth at the box office, failing the cinematic chariot race to a top 5 position. It lost to films in their second and third weekend, including Suicide Squad ($20.9 million), Sausage Party ($15.5 million), and Pete’s Dragon ($11.3 million).

Prior to its release, Ben-Hurwas criticized by The Advocate and other outlets for not including the gay subtext present in the 1959 classic, a critical and commercial success that went on to win a slew of Oscars. In the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet, out screenwriter Gore Vidal revealed he had convinced the film’s director to incorporate this subtext in order to explain the tension between the film’s leads, a prince and a Roman soldier who betrays him.

Various excuses were offered as to why the gay subtext was not present in the story’s most recent iteration. At Ben-Hur‘s premiere, star Tony Kebbell (Messala, the soldier) said it wasn’t needed in the present day. In a conflicting report, screenwriter Keith Clarke claimed copyright law prevented him from incorporating it, as he could only adapt what was included in Lew Wallace’s 1880 book Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

As a result, the film placed more emphasis on the novel’s religious themes and fleshed out the character of Christ. It also marketed heavily to Christian audiences, holding special screenings and releasing promotional videos that featured reviews from religious leaders.

But not even Jesus could save Ben-Hur from bad reviews. The film currently has a score of 29 percent on the film aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Critics called it “an amateurish effort,” “something soulless and empty,” “a compete snore-fest,” “gutless,” and a “digitalized eyesore hobbled in every department by staggering incompetence.”

“The filmmakers of this stagnant remake display all the technical tools needed to achieve greatness, but they lack that most basic of functions: a reason why this story needs to be retold,” wrote the Washington City Paper.

Wow. Those reviews are beyond scathing, those are brutal. I thought the whole hype of “Christian, Christian, Christian Ben Hur with Added Jesus!” was sheer silliness, but it turns out the film was much worse than the standard Christian silly. Ouch.

Via The Advocate.

Trump’s Louisiana Donation: The Winner Is…

Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins Bil Browning

Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins.

Yes, that’s right, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a rabidly anti-queer religious extremist.

Donald Trump has reportedly donated $100,000 to help Louisiana residents affected by disastrous floods — but he’s put it in the hands of an anti-LGBT church whose interim pastor is Tony Perkins, head of the infamously homophobic Family Research Council.

I want to emphasize that reportedly, because supposedly, Trump has made donations before, but they have an interesting way of never showing up anywhere.

Trump visited the church, located in the Baton Rouge suburb of Greenwell Springs, and made other stops in the area at the invitation of Perkins. The church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which believes that being LGBT is a sin. The Greenwell Springs church’s website includes a “Statement on Marriage and Sexuality,” which reads in part:

We believe that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God.

It asks church employees and volunteers to “abide by and agree to” the statement and “conduct themselves accordingly.”

[…]

Perkins, as a Louisiana delegate to this year’s Republican National Convention, took credit for helping to create what even the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay conservative group, termed the most anti-LGBT platform in party history. It continues to oppose marriage equality, denounces the Obama administration’s call for transgender students’ access to gendered facilities of their choice, and contends that parents have a right to enroll their children in any kind of therapy. The last is a thinly veiled endorsement of “ex-gay” therapy, even though major medical groups condemn it as ineffective and harmful, and several states and cities have barred licensed professionals from subjecting minors to it.

The Advocate has the story.

Lesbian and Transgender Hillbillies are Coming to Get You.

A lesbian couple sitting in a sunny field (Shutterstock.com)

A lesbian couple sitting in a sunny field (Shutterstock.com)

Well, the right wing has found something new to froth about, there are LGBT people in rural areas! Really, who knew. After all, everyone knows all LGBT people are in urban areas, struggling to get their glitter just right or something. There couldn’t possibly be native rural or Southern LGBT people, and farming? Forget about it. Of course, the truth is that there are lots of LGBT people all over the place, and queer folk in rural areas, the South in particular, have more difficulties in getting together with other queer folk, and don’t have near the resources of other rural people, especially farmers. The 15th annual Nationwide LGBT Rural Summit was held at Drake University in Des Moines, IA on Aug. 18. That would be the fifteenth one, but of course, right wing asses seemed to just now find out about it, and are joyful in the hissiness on display over yet another sign that the sky, it be falling, as all us queers are the 5th column intent on destroying the good ol’ conservative heart of Amerikka. Oh yes.

The right-wing freakout over the summit began at conservative website The College Fix, which mocked the summit, complained that it was a waste of tax money and denied that LGBT people living in rural areas might face any special hurdles.

By August 16, the Washington Free Beacon picked up the story, wailing that the summit will enable “lesbian and transgender hillbillies how to get subsidies from the government.”

“The all-day summit will teach lesbian and transgender hillbillies how to get subsidies from the government like rural housing loans and ‘community facility grants.’ Bullying will also be discussed,” said the Beacon.

Then, none other than Rush Limbaugh picked up on the story.

“Have you heard the latest Democrat scam?” Limaugh asked on his program. “Have you heard about the Agriculture Department’s financial grants to lesbian farmers? You think I’m making this up? See, this is how they do it.”

“(W)hat the point of this is, folks, it’s not about lesbian farmers. What they’re trying to do is convince lesbians to become farmers,” he insisted.

“I’m like you; I never before in my life knew that lesbians wanted to be farmers. I never knew that lesbians wanted to get behind the horse and the plow and start burrowing. I never knew it. But apparently enough money can make make it happen, and the objective here is to attack — they’re already attacking suburbs, and that has been made perfectly clear by what happened in Milwaukee. And they’re going after every geographic region that is known to be largely conservative. They never stop, folks. They are constantly on the march,” said Limbaugh, whipping the story up into another Obama conspiracy.

World Net Daily joined in the panic and ousted Breitbart.com editor Ben Shapiro’s blog The Daily Wire called it “dumbest thing Feds have EVER Spent your tax dollars on.”

Lesbian farmers don’t exist, said the Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo.

“I mean, if I don’t know that the chocolate milk I’m drinking was originally obtained from a lesbian milking a cow, things could really breakdown [sic],” she wrote.

Oh yes, we are seriously contagious there, alt right folks, so perhaps you should all get out of the rural areas, and don’t eat or drink anything you haven’t produced yourself. It’s the only way to be certain. We’re coming for you, yes we are. Yep.

Via Raw Story and Media Matters.

Sunday Facepalm

(File Photo) The man's affidavit was not accepted by court due to his stated occupation Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images.

(File Photo) The man’s affidavit was not accepted by court due to his stated occupation Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images.

An Irish High Court judge has ruled a litigant could not describe his occupation as “Disciple of Jesus Christ” in a sworn statement.

The presiding judge, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys, criticised the litigant for attempting to challenge a decision by the Residential Tenancies Board to fix a market rate for his rent, describing the case as “frivolous, grandiose and vexatious”.

He upheld the decision by the Central Office of the High Court to refuse to accept the litigant’s affidavit as it did not comply with the rules of the court, reports the Irish Times.

The Tenancies Board had stated the man and another tenant were using such court actions as a “tactic to delay and frustrate proceedings”.

Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said: “The courts are not a playground in which litigants can amuse themselves at will.

“For the court to bask in self-congratulatory patience for quirky insouciance of applicants would be to play the role of a judicial free-rider.

“If such a mode of description were permitted, one could not stop the next deponent describing themselves in the opening of an affidavit as a ‘Guardian reader’ or the one after that as a ‘keen golfer’ and so on.”

Plus, we have Banana Jesus! Did this belong to Ray Comfort?

BananaJesus

There’s a slideshow at the link of various things people have found Jesus to be inexplicably occupying.

Via Independent.

‘Black Lives Matter’: They Should Be Ashamed of Themselves.

kkk-1471380951-6956Oh, the KKK. Gad, they are a whiny bunch of assholes. Seems they are planning to, um, attend a Black Lives Matter Rally on Long Island this Sunday. I’m just going to include the choicer whiny bits here, and boy, are there a lot of them. Click over for the full article, including rally organizer Vanessa Vascez-Corleone’s priceless response, which includes an open invitation, as it seems the Klan’s idea of attending is to lurk in a ‘secret place’.

The Ku Klux Klan, the oldest American hate group in existence, has a message for those organizing Black Lives Matter rallies on the East End: “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

And now the KKK, with its long history of murder and violence, plans to bring members to a Black Lives Matter rally scheduled for Sunday in Westhampton Beach, according to a man identifying himself as a high-ranking KKK member. That rally is slated to begin at noon at the traffic circle near Village Hall.

Speaking Tuesday with Patch, Gary Monker, who said he is the Exalted Cyclops, or chief officer, in New York of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, said many people have misconceptions about the organization.

“We’re the only organization right now standing up for whites, upholding the second amendment of the Constitution,” he said. “We are not a hate group. We are Christian and we’re trying to restore America back to what it used to be.”

This incredible litany of whine is rich with opportunities for mockery, so everyone, please, mock away, on every possible platform, and show these buffoons up for what they truly are: vile bigots crying crocodile tears over their inability to openly terrorize and murder at will. There’s plenty of material coming up.

[Read more…]

We Won’t Be Able to Pee Anywhere, Oh No!

Sandy Rios.

Sandy Rios.

Whip out those hankies and you’ll be able to catch crocodile tears!

Christian activists’ boycott of Target hasn’t exactly been a rousing success so far, as the company this week announced that it’s spending $20 million to expand its available restroom options while at the same time remaining inclusive toward transgender people.

Right Wing Watch notices that Christian activist Sandy Rios is so scared that the boycott of Target will be a flop that she fears she’ll never be able to use a public restroom again.

“If we do not keep the pressure on Target, this will quickly — we know how major corporations are, they are scared to death of anything that isn’t politically correct — this will spread like wildfire, we will not be able to go to the bathroom anywhere,” she told Breitbart’s Alex Marlow. “What’s at stake is all the other companies around this country that will just cave, they just will.”

Oh my, it would be nice if you could figure out that this is the way the rest of us already feel. We’ve been living fear of a public lav because of people like you, Ms. Rios. If you really want to settle this, just self ban yourselves from public lavs. Unfortunately, since Breitbart’s nastiest, slimiest, sleaziest, most unethical asshole, Stephen Bannon, has hired onto the Trump campaign, Breitbart is busy whipping this all up again, into a massive frenzy of bigotry and hate.

Full story here.

Trump Will Make Jesus Come Back.

Frank Amedia.

Frank Amedia.

Frank Amedia, a pastor who says he is serving in a volunteer capacity as Donald Trump’s “Christian policy” liaison, said last month that God told him last year that Trump would win the GOP nomination and that he believes Trump has been “raised up” to help pave the way for the Second Coming.

Amedia spoke with Steve Strang, the founder of the Pentecostal magazine Charisma, on Strang’s podcast on the day Donald Trump effectively won the Republican presidential nomination; the podcast was posted online last week.

[…]

“In this instance, it’s not because Donald Trump has heralded his faith or the name of God, but the Lord has put His favor upon him, and how amazing it is that the favor of God can overcome so many mistakes, so many bumbles, so many things that otherwise we would think would destroy somebody in business, destroy them in politics, destroy them in relationships. But yet it’s very evident it was the will of the Lord to do this and here we sit now.”

Amedia then told Strang that he believes there is “a skirmish going on” in the “heavenlies” right now that “is the beginnings of the preparation of the way of the coming of the Lord.”

As part of this preparation for the Second Coming, he said, a “breaker anointing” has taken place, giving Trump the power to break up “established norms” that have not served the “Kingdom of God.” (This is a reference to a passage in the Old Testament Book of Micah about the end of days.)

Breaking up the established norms. Hmm, okay, I think that can be translated as “only white, straight christians who are politically incorrect are okay, yessir!”

“And this breaker anointing is manifesting in so many different facets on earth today,” he said. “One of them is the political realm, one of them is right here in the United States, and I perceive that Donald Trump has been raised up with that breaker anointing to just begin to crush all of the strangleholds that have been placed upon this country. And, let’s face it, this country influences the world. And the positions that he’s taken, albeit in not quite the personality that you and I would walk out into, is accomplishing in establishing a lot of what were established norms and are established norms that haven’t been very effective at all on serving the principles of the Kingdom of God.”

Um, Frank, I hate to break this to you, but just up there ^, you were yakking about Jesus coming back, raining down destruction and all that; now you’re yakking about how Trump is gonna make this a god huggin’ power to be feared country again, dominating the world, and taking its rightful place as bestest country ever. I think you need to pick here. Hmmm. Jesus or power. Power or Jesus. Power…or what now?

Via Right Wing Watch.

A Match Made In Toxic Hell.

maxresdefault-478x257

Stephen K. Bannon.

Not long ago, Trump announced that he was bringing Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon aboard that thing he calls a campaign. This is not a good thing, given what an absolute festering sewer Breitbart is, and a good deal of the swirling shit can be credited to Bannon. So, now there’s going to be open catering to racists of all stripes.

If any more confirmation is needed of Donald Trump’s embrace of white nationalism, look no further than his selection of Stephen K. Bannon, the head honcho of Breitbart News, as his presidential campaign’s new chief executive.

With one hire Trump dispelled the fairytale he would act more presidential, while doubling down on his hate-powered campaign by allying with a toxic dump of racists, fabulists, and conspiracists posing as a news outlet. This move is perfectly aligned with Trump’s tin-foiled conspiracies that shot him to prominence beginning with blatantly fraudulent birtherism.

Just last October, a lengthy Bloomberg News profile of Bannon pronounced him “the most dangerous political operative in America.” The site’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, admiringly told the reporter that Bannon was the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” referring to the reviled Nazi propagandist.

As for Breitbart News, the Southern Poverty Law Center, commented that under Brannon’s tenure, the website has adopted the “key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right,’” including “Racist ideas,” “Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas.” (Though given the infestation of pop-up ads on Breitbart, it’s questionable if many readers make it past the panicky headlines into the ditch of festering slander and dissembling that follows.)

Trump has handed the keys of the Republican Party to Breitbart and the Alt-Right, the inevitable conclusion to decades of right-wing race-baiting and conspiracy-peddling.

Bannon’s trade is vicious slander, and he sits so far on the fringes even Glenn Beck blasted the Breitbart executive as “a horrible despicable human being.”

[…]

If racists have found a stepping stone to respectability in Breitbart, then Breitbart sees in Trump a vehicle to broaden its influence and fatten its wallet. Toward that end, its ethics are cheaper than a copy of Sarah Palin’s memoirs. Accusations dog the privately owned Breitbart that it pimped itself to Trump for an undisclosed sum of money.

It’s a match made in an outhouse. This is the path Trump took the moment he threw his hat in the ring by attacking Mexican immigrants as rapists, drug dealers, and criminals. Breitbart eagerly joined forces with Trump as have Stephen Bannon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Ailes, Ann Coulter, and every other grasping backstabber peddling hate.

Trump’s campaign is the Large Hadron Collider of white nationalism, smashing together the elemental prejudices of the right with terrifying energies and spawning new forms of bigotry. “Trump being Trump”means he is even likelier to lose the general election to Clinton.

But Trump and his white power posse will inevitably rise out of the ashes of defeat. They have a megaphone in Breitbart, a huge fundraising network, and millions of angry followers. The movement for white nationalism that Trump has consolidated can never be accommodated. It has to be destroyed.

Those final two sentences. Whether or not Trump loses, we still have a great deal to worry about. Now that white supremacy has had a resurgence, they’ll fight like hell against being pushed back to fringes once again. And if you think all those angry, toxic people were upset about having a Black president, how do you think they will feel about a woman?

Via Raw Story.

Flood of Sewer Fetuses Will Spread HIV!

Carol Everett (Photo: The Heidi Group).

Carol Everett (Photo: The Heidi Group).

In the not enough facepalm in the universe category, Texas legislature has designated 1.65 million dollars to a non-medical based, anti-abortion group, on the basis of aborted fetuses flooding the sewers, and somehow or another, causing the general water supply to be contaminated with STDs or HIV, because that’s just oh so realistic. Honestly, this is so goddamned embarrassing.

Carol Everett is the founder and CEO of The Heidi Group, an anti-abortion organization that gives women health “advice,” but is not a medical provider and can’t perform any health care services.

Earlier this month, Everett testified at a hearing at the Austin, Texas statehouse on a proposed requirement that women either bury or cremate the remains of an aborted fetus. According to The Austin Chronicle, Everett testified about her concerns of an impending public health disaster if fetuses were flushed down toilets. She argued that the general public could be afflicted with STDs or even HIV due to fetuses flooding the sewer systems.

“What if one day something horrible escaped into the sewer system?” she said, as the audience snickered.

Everett’s claims are scientifically impossible.

Just days later, the Texas legislature awarded The Heidi Group $1.65 million in taxpayer money for the organization’s “health care services.” Their organization doesn’t provide health care services.

While the group’s website advertises “Helping Texas Women,” further examination reveals their claims to have “programs” lists merely a phone number, the page that offers to help women with pregnancy/infant loss says “Page Coming Soon” and if a woman needs a pregnancy test they have a list of links to crisis pregnancy centers, that counsel women against abortion.

“The Heidi Group exists to ensure that all Texas women have access to quality health care by coordinating services in a statewide network of full-service medical providers,” the website says. It doesn’t explain how this is different from a Google search.

The grant comes out of funding that previously went to Planned Parenthood before Texas politicians kicked them out of the program in 2012.

In an interview with the Texas Observer, Everett admitted that she’ll be forking over a lot of the money to crisis pregnancy centers, which an investigation showed lie to women about the realities of their reproductive health. She assures the Observer that the taxpayer funds will not go to administrative costs at The Heidi Group or the organization’s rent, but it will go to nurses and doctors in rural Texas that urge women against abortions.

“My goal is to reach that little girl in a small county with no hope of having anybody explain her birth control options or have her blood pressure checked,” she said.

The local CVS pharmacy and Walmart often have machines where people can have their blood pressure taken for free. Crisis pregnancy centers in Texas have been caught counseling women to use abstinence only as a birth control method and refusing to dispense contraception.

Full Story Here.

Curing LGBT people from their affliction.

Pray-away-the-gay-800x430

Illinois, like many states, passed legislation called the Youth Mental Health Protection Act, to ban the practice of a “failed and discredited non-therapy that attempts to change the unchangeable,” as Equality Illinois put it.

But now five pastors have come together to sue based on religious freedom. They believe they should be exempt from the bill because of their religion and designation as a church and religious institution. Like many churches and religious businesses over the years, when they see a law they don’t like they claim First Amendment protections. This argument could be made with any law, however. There could be an argument that slavery and servitude not to mention abuse of one’s children and family could be sanctioned by The Bible, and thus laws outlawing it should be allowed in the church as part of a “religious freedom” exemption.

Pink News reports Pastor Steven Stultz of Nu-Church Apostolic Ministries of East Garfield is one of those seeking to use the torturous technique on LGBT people. Claiming, “In 1 Corinthians 6:9, the Apostle Paul writes to those who had overcome many sins including homosexuality, stating, ‘such were some of you’ but you were changed through God’s healing,” he said. “I have personally witnessed many people change their sexual orientation through counseling and know it is possible. The government is interfering into someone’s private decisions. This ban on counseling creates fear in the people most in need of comfort and support.”

The pastors’ attorney insists this is a ban on those who seek spiritual guidance at difficult times where they are questioning their sexual orientation.

“Each person should be free to receive Biblical and spiritual counseling from the pastor of their choice to help them orient their sexuality,” said John W Mauck from Mauck and Baker LLC.

Most recently, a Texas teen was forced into a “pray away the gay” boarding school after she tried to take her girlfriend to the prom. The litigation in her case is ongoing and the court documents have been sealed, but she was ultimately released, after trying to escape.

Pastors, go fuck yourselves, please. You aren’t offering comfort, aid, or help. You’re looking for governmental help in kidnapping, imprisoning, and torturing people. While that’s certainly biblical, it has no place among thinking, compassionate, rational people who are living in the 21st century.

Via Raw story.

That Is Pathetic.

nom

“That is pathetic.” I haven’t heard such a lovely sentence in quite a long time.

It’s been just over a year since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the US, and it turns out the fundraising buckets at homophobic anti-equality campaigns are looking a little empty.

National Organization for Marriage, the main US group opposing same-sex marriage, has launched a desperate plea for cash from its dwindling supporters.

And halfway through the campaign, it looks like it’s not going very well.

‘We’re now three weeks into our drive — the halfway point — and we have only received 256 contributions from our members. We’re only 17% toward our goal of receiving 1,500 membership contributions of at least $35,’ Brian Brown, the president of NOM, said in an email to the group’s supporters.

‘That is pathetic.

‘Unless this situation improves drastically right away, NOM will have little choice but to cut some of the critical programs we have underway and not pursue some of our most important work to protect you and other supporters of marriage from being targeted by LGBT extremists and their allies in government.’

NOM then lists all the horrific homophobic and transphobic things they would like to do if they only had the funds to get rid of that pesky ‘equality’ laws. He blames ‘LGBT extremists’.

That includes influencing Congress to pass a First Amendment Defense Act, which is similar to the ‘religious freedom’ law in Indiana that caused such outrage, and as well as fighting ‘President Obama’s dangerous gender “identity” agenda”.

‘I really don’t believe — I just can’t imagine the thought — that NOM’s members have quit fighting for the institution of marriage as a union between man and woman,’ Brown said.

‘And yet, only 256 of you have responded with an urgently needed membership contribution during this critical period.’

‘If NOM has to scale back, the fight for marriage and religious liberty is seriously weakened,’ he added.

It looks like NOM is finally dying, and that’s a very good thing. I suspect the reason for that though, is that conservatives are seeing an easier to attain road with all the current religious liberty laws, so it’s not like the fight is over in the least. That said, I couldn’t be happier to see the ugliness that is NOM wither away. It’s about time.

Via Gay Star News.

Sunday Facepalm: Jesus, Lady.

Rita Warren sets up her Jesus mannequin on the House side of the U.S. Capitol building on Thursday. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call).

Rita Warren sets up her Jesus mannequin on the House side of the U.S. Capitol building on Thursday. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call).

Capitol Hill’s staple religious activist known as “Jesus Lady” returned to her old stomping grounds Thursday, one month after she said she suffered a heart attack.

After hauling her signature life-size statue of the messiah, Rita Warren, a career protester in her late 80s, said she planned to air grievances to Capitol Police because they won’t let her drive onto the Hill’s plaza anymore.

A spokeswoman for Capitol Police said no meeting took place.

The new rule left her having to carry the cast figure from the barricade — a task made more arduous by her health problems.

Still, Warren vowed to press on in her divine fight to remind lawmakers of God. Warren is known for taking lawmakers to task from the East Front steps. She once challenged former Speaker John A. Boehner, via open letter, demanding the Ohio Republican once and for all address her plan to have actor Robert Powell recite the Sermon on the Mount scene from “Jesus of Nazareth” for lawmakers.

Her requests to meet with current Speaker Paul D. Ryan have so far been unanswered, she said.

Via Roll Call.