Secrets of the City

Let’s just be clear that this happened in 2004.
It’s still utter and supreme bullshit that the gutless Strib wouldn’t run the ad. You can fly a dead fetus over the city but you can’t show two men kissing?

I think it’s time to move to an Island. I’m sick to death of people.

It’s weird seeing stories like this after spending a weekend in San Francisco. What the hell are we, Minnesota?

“You can fly a dead fetus over the city but you can’t show two men kissing?”

You could fly a picture of two men kissing over the city, too. You just couldn’t pay the Star Tribune to do it.

I guess it’s just time to realize that we are a backass country town in flyover land. Nothing more nothing less.

So you can’t print something that’s inflammatory towards bigots?

I guess that means the strib won’t run any ads with african-americans kissing whites, or even anything depicting african-americans in a positive light because there are some racists around town who would be absolutely incensed by that!

And boy, I hope they don’t try to publish anything that depicts women as being capable of more than keeping the house clean, cooking and raising kids, because I’m pretty sure there’s some mysogynists out there who would take it the wrong way too!

Seriously, wtf.

I love Minneapolis!

Again, more reasons not to subscribe to the strib.

I hope Pride wins this one, and sacks the strib hard, because they need a good, hard kick in the nuts.

And people accuse the strib of having a liberal bias…. LOL

The guy with a screw loose is Jim Kelley from the Strib.

“After an extensive investigation by the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights, we prevailed…”

The MDCR delcined to rule because it was out of their jurisdiction. Who’s nehpew is he. The guy is a complete moron.

In the good old days, editors used controversy to sell papers. Now they run from it as fast as they can. The Strib, rather than pushing passed petty biases, succumbs to the worst, most backward impulses, becoming the paper equivalent of a granny out in Blaine. How about a little sophistication, for crying out loud! This city can handle it! Really!

This city can handle it! Really!

I agree. Bring on the kissing boys and kissing girls……I bet they would have published kissing girls!!!

The City Pages already has everyone kissing in the back.

Actually I think the strib must be aiming for grannies in Blaine as their target audience or something.

Also, the whole “we don’t have a liberal bias, really guys!” schtick has got to go. Between this, Kersten and a handful of other crap they’re pissing people on every side off, and not in the good way that sells papers.

As Stephen Colbert once said: “reality has a well known liberal bias.” The strib should stop trying to pander to people who live in some fantasyland and accept that reporting the news will inevitably piss off some republicans. How does that phrase go? Something about pleasing some percentages of people some percentages of the time?

My opinion: The paper belongs to the Star Tribune. They can run whatever ads they want. They made the decision to not run that ad. Guess what? That’s life. You can’t DEMAND your rights to free speech in the Star Tribune (or any other papers). You can’t DEMAND that a publisher publish your book and if they don’t declare that the publisher has denied you your rights to free speech. It doesn’t work that way. I personally don’t care if they ran the advertisement or not. But the Strib was under no obligation to do so.

And yes, the mainstream media (I’m calling it the dinosaur media from now on) has a liberal bias. A certain pundit said it best (I’m paraphrasing here): “There’s this perception of a disrupted civility compared to when we only had three channels. Things were really civil in the Soviet Union when they had only ONE channel. The so-called disruption of civility is conservatives actually being able to talk back through the radio, Fox News, the Internet Blogosphere…”

And to play pretend that the dinosaur media isn’t biased is completely false. To illustrate, the New York Times has chosen its official candidate of choice as a Democrat for the past 50-or-so years. Even when Ronald Reagan won practically every electoral vote! That right there is enough to support the thesis. Which just goes to show how incredibly out of touch they also are (and isn’t that quite ironic for that industry)?

Even when Ronald Reagan won practically every electoral vote!

Poor Fritz.

i agree with the Strib and Toring… The Strib had has agreed to sponsor the event but they have no reason that they HAVE to run an add that may or may not be offensive to their reader base. I don’t think that they are bad for not doing this and with an issue that is as controversial as this one I don’t blame them from staying out of the papers(and news for that fashion).

All of you who think we’re backward. That may be but that this story is not an indicator of such a thing. I would like to know if the San Fransisco paper would have done the same thing(given their social climate).

but they have no reason that they HAVE to run an add that may or may not be offensive

How do you explain the Strib backing out of a signed contract even after the Pride committee changed the ad?

Why did they sign the contract if they didn’t think they would actually print the advertising?

It goes to show how big of rubes these people are!

What happens if the star tribune were to, say, refuse to print an ad with a mixed-race couple in it?

I suppose it’s true that the Strib doesn’t have to print something that it doesn’t want to (an exception for signed contracts, of course). But then the editors and publisher shouldn’t sit around wondering why nobody reads their boring, uninspired, backward coverage. Or why they can’t seem to draw new readers who are under fifty years old. As a major (though less major all the time) provider of information in the TC, I would argue that they have an obligation beyond merely being a business. They reflect the culture here, or at least they should. And in doing so, I’d be appreciative if they’d reflect the best of our culture, not the worst.

Cary, that was exactly my point. It’s caving into bigotry and just because one form is more ‘acceptable’ to the public at large than another doesn’t make it any less bigoted. Breach of contract is already illegal, but when your reasons for doing so are bigotry you’re only digging the hole deeper.

You can’t DEMAND your rights to free speech in the Star Tribune

Liberal answer: we’ve decided as a society that we won’t allow even private companies to discrimate on the basis of sex, race, etc. – and in Minnesota (as should it everywhere) this includes sexual orientation. This goes for hiring, as well as service. If I was black and walked into a store and they refused to serve me for that reason, I’d sue their pants off. The Strib is refusing service on the basis of sexual orientation. The only non-trivial link here is from the content of the ad to the customer, but being that the paper has clearly published kissing straight folks in the past, that seems like an easy connection to make.

Libertarian answer: these people are assholes, so let’s not buy their paper, and then they’ll cease to be assholes. Capitalism shall fix all!

Republican answer: the homoz are teh sux0r!! Jebuz saves!

Hmm.. I’ll take the former.

jeffk: Not all Republican’s are religeous zealots. In fact many aren’t, it is just they get the press and have been the swing vote for the last election. When women voters won the election for Clinton you didn’t have bitter Republican’s implying that every Democrat was a woman. The Republican answer to this is more on the lines that this is a private company and should be able to do what they want. If you don’t like it don’t buy the paper, much closer to the Libertarian (and correct) position.

I don’t work there, but I’m pretty sure the newsroom had nothing to do with the decision. At real newspapers, news and advertising are two very separate departments.

And the Strib has numerous openly gay reporters and editors in the newsroom, so it’s hardly a homophobic place. Newspapers in general are pretty decent places to work if you’re gay or lesbian.

As long as you don’t kiss your significant other in front of upper management at the holiday party. That would be inflammatory.

Hey we’ve got one example of one newspaper behaving in a liberal manner! They must all be liberal all the time!

The “media” is POPULIST people. Most media outlets give its viewers what they percieve they want (or don’t want) to hear. Thus, newspapers reflect the political views of the people who read them. Hey guess what! New York is a predominently liberal town. So, its paper being populist would generally lean towards liberal politics. Hmmm. Why doesn’t anyone quote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? Or the Salt Lake Tribune when talking about liberal press? Could it be that these are conservative leaning papers? Nah!

The added bonus of labeling the media as liberal. If you disagree with something in the paper, you can automatically label it as liberal. But, if you agree, then you do not notice how dumb the “liberal media” label truly is.

“You can please some of the people all of the time. You can please all of the people some of the time. You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” fits right into that concept.

Or we could make a fuss that embarrasses the Star Tribune, sue them for breach of contract, and remind them that, while they are not legally obligated to print anything they don’t want to, if they want to actually reflect the community they claim to report on, they should think hard about who they choose to exclude.

Oh, but this is not the Libertarian position, and, therefore, not the right one.

The Strib may have the right not to enter into a contract with GLBT Pride/Twin Cities. Or it may not. I don’t know whether anti-discrimination laws apply here.

However, the Strib does not have the right to enter into a contract with GLBT Pride/Twin Cities and then breach that contract. Liberals, Conservatives, and Libertarians should all agree that breach of contract is a bad thing.

The issue for the court, I suspect, is whether there was indeed a breach of the contract….

I knew a prostitute in Reno who actually couldplease all the people all the time. Reno Wanda. I won’t say she had a good figure, but I seen midgets hugging her to get out of the rain.

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

Date: December 14, 2005
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-1046

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.
These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.
“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”
“Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left,” said co author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.
The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.
Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker’s support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where “100″ is the most liberal and “0″ is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.
Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants  most of them college students  to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.
Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo’s method assigned both a similar ADA score.
“A media person would have never done this study,” said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. “It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don’t think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches.”
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.
“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets  Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”
The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.
“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Five news outlets  “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown,” Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and the Drudge Report  were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.
An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS’ “Evening News” and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.
Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” NBC’s “Nightly News,” USA Today, NBC’s “Today Show,” Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” CBS’ “Early Show” and The Washington Post.
Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.
Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.
“One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites,” said Groseclose. “Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media.”
Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.
“By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet,” Groseclose said. “Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post’s. If anything, government funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8).”
The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias  or the appearance of same  in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.
“No matter the results, we feared our findings would’ve been suspect if we’d received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided,” Groseclose said.
The results break new ground.
“Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers,” Groseclose said. “Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity  politicians.”

Would the men in the ad have rather kissed Reno Wanda than each other?

I’m pretty sure I saw an article (possibly on slate? salon? Not sure) right after that ’study’ came out that tore it to shreds. Its methodology was incredibly shoddy and essentially designed to show that result.

What a surprise!

Also, again, reality has a well known ‘liberal’ bias. That can’t be said enough. And I’m so sick of this crap pseudoscientific BS that comes out of the social ’sciences’ (which btw are not scientific at all, in case that wasn’t glaringly obvious to everyone already). Ugh Ugh Ugh–in any legitimate field of study that article would never have even been published in a journal. Don’t even get me started on the idiocy of breaking every complex issue down into the one-dimensional spectrum of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal,’ either. Just think of the fear and love axis from Donnie Darko* and you’ll get an idea of what garbage it is.

* sorry, I know I’m showing my youthful pseudohipsterdom with that reference

Would the men in the ad have rather kissed Reno Wanda than each other?

If not her, then her brother, Reno Wndel.

The Life Line is divided that way.

I have the sudden desire to put on a Duran Duran album and torch the home of a pedophile. Who’s with me?

Only if it’s Girls on Film.

I can’t believe some people here still trying to make the argument that the media isn’t liberal! Talk about close-mindedness.

From a favorite pundit of mine: “One of the blabocracy’s favorite lies is that the media is not liberal. They love this one, hauling it out at the slightest provocation, polishing absurd “studies” proving the media is — if anything — conservative, and running stories on “The Muth of the Liberal Media” and “the so-called liberal press.”

(Follows with specifics from the New York Times)

“So, maybe the Times is “pro-Republican” compared to the Berkely Student Union. But there is no possible calculus under which the Times could be called pro-Republican compared to “Americans” — arguably a more relevant control group.

“It ought to tell you something that the ‘conservative bias’ claim is too preposterous even for the New York Times to level. The Times regularly interprets standard Republican positions as fanatical, religiously based racist hate crimes. But even it can’t screw up the nerve to say the media have a conservative bias. Instead, self-respecting journalists, like those at the Times, create a smokescreen for the liberal monolith by viciously attacking any mention of a “liberal media.” The very idea is treated as a wacky theory hatched by troglodyte right-wingers. With some leftists babbling about “conservative bias,” the position of the reasonable middle is simply to deny that there is any slant whatsoever.”

I full agreement with the above sentences. You can fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Some of us can see through it, especially with the insipid journalism made in the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times.

Don’t even get me into talking about the “religious right”… there really is no such group. And try to get a liberal to pin who leads the “religious right” or who is in it, and they become exasperated.

thanks jesus, it’s been a few years since I’ve seen it now.

Three leaders of the religious rght: Robert Grant, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. I could list more if you like.

But the rest of your post, I am sure, is perfectly reasoned. After all, your favorite pundit certainly knows best what the exact center of American politics is, and how the media compares to that perfect center.

Rex Reed. Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. Those are three men who have been “leaders” of the religous right. They never got voted “President of the RR” but in a general sense, they have led that movement. You don’t want to believe such a movement exists? Hey, it’s a free country.

Or maybe this would be better: I’ll admit the religious right is a myth if you’ll admit the same about the liberal media.

msparber:

I actually have a lot of sympathy for the libertarian position. I really wish it would work, and it would if people were assholes less frequently. Unfortunately, we’re forced to enact legislation to protect minorities in our population.

tublecane:

as I understand it, religion is the difference between libertarians and republicans. I’m not a libertarian, but I recognize that philosophy as having a fairly solid reasonable backing. The difference between the two lies in social conservativism, which is generally indefensible, and is always tied directly to religious fundamentalism – it is the antithesis of freedom.

I think I meant RALPH Reed. Oops

(*Gasp!) A Liberal group suing a liberal newspaper over a sexual content ad between the two same-genders?! I’m shocked I’m telling you!

Crazy world, ain’t it. Right?

I myself have very little sympathy for libertarian positions.

does anyone know if the ads were submitted when the “contract” was signed between the Strib and the GLBT folks? Most of these comments are against the Strib but to be honest NONE of us knows whether or not there were stipulations or what advertising was approved. I would be VERY shocked if the Strib didn’t have pre-defined things that they would accept or decline for advertising. Just because a group signs a contract with the Strib has nothing to do with whether the Strib has to publish the ad.

This really doesn’t have anything to do with Left v. Right or Good v. Bad or Liberal v. Conservative. Most of you all are just spewing nonsensical stuff that really doesn’t apply.

I was waiting for somebody to bring that up. The fact that, regardless of the wisdon of the decision, the contract between the parties controls, and I’m pretty certain it provides for such contingencies as this (that’s right, the dreaded homoerotic clause, if you will). So I’ll bet the Strib was well within its rights to bar an ad that a significant portion of its readership and advertisers would find distasteful. A business made a business decision. So what?

As for the Times being left-of-center, of course it is. But it is more than balanced out by the right-of-Center Wall Street Journal. Both are first-rate papers, and both have their biases, which they both reveal on their op-ed pages on a daily basis for everybody to see.

Wow! When did two people kissing become erotic?

I thought that was all over in the 50’s. Wait that’s the time over 50% of Americans would like us to go back to.

That’s the fucking issue. When will all you fucking grow up and and start to understand that being homosexual is not all about sex, much as being married isn’t all about the sex.

But sexually repressed people will never understand that. I give up.

Wow! When did two people kissing become erotic?

Hehehe, not gonna tell you!

sexually repressed people

I don’t think there are a lot of sexually repressed people, I just think there are a lot of people who don’t need to go around demanding newspapers publish pictures of making out. People work, people eat, people screw, people do whatever else. So what? Why do we need to go throwing it in each other’s face? “Hey, look at me! I’m a man and I’m kissing my boyfriend! Everybody look!”

Big fuckin’ deal. What are you, 13?

Three leaders of the religious rght: Robert Grant, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. I could list more if you like.

Do you realize how absurd that is? A couple of names that are added to that list quite often: Pat Buchanan, and Gary Bauer.

Your insipid remark shows your shallowness of thinking. Consider these tidbits of information: Falwell endorsed Bush Sr. over Robertson for president. Robertson endorsed Senator Bob Dole over Pat Buchanan for president. Bauer endorsed John McCain — even as McCain viciously attacked Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance” and “forces of evil.” Buchanan defended Falwell — but not Robertson — against McCain’s attacks.

The point of throwing these men together as leaders of the religious right is not to explain or clarify. It is simply to say, “We don’t like them.” They are no more or less alike than any other four Republicans chosen at random.

Hhaven’t you noticed that few people would identify themselves as members of the purported “religious right”? It’s always something someone else is, like “sons of a bitches”. A Lexis Nexis search of the phrase “religious right” mostly turns up lots of people denying they belong to it. This could be because there’s no such thing as the “religious right.”

It is an imaginary threat. I suppose I shouldn’t hold it beyond liberals to create an imaginary enemy and try to train the public to hate it.

Which in the end makes me laugh. Because consequently they have a helluva time trying to win elections. My advice to the moonbats: keep doing what you’re doing if you want to create a stronger Republican majority.

Well, jeez, ya got me, hoss. There is no concerted attempt to redefine the politics and laws of the United States of America from an explicitly right wing, Christian agenda, and, because these guys sometimes disagree with each other, they are in no way spearheading this attempt. Nobody is pushing for prayer in schools. Noboy is claiming there is a “War on Christmas.” Nobody is placing stealth candidates onto school boards to try and force “Intelligent Design” onto the curriculums. Noboy is trying to overturn Roe vs. Wade or protesting outside women’s health clinics.

Is it possible that the phrase “religious right” is not meant to describe a star chamber cabal of men who sit and smoke cigars and make decisions, but instead describes a lossely affililiated collection of voters who share similar political viewpoints that are simulatanously conservative and Christian. Do you think that’s what we mean when we say “Religious right,” and don’t mean to imply that there is some sort of national organization that people purchase membership cards to? No. Obviously we mean what you decide we mean, and what me mean, by your definition, is somethign that doesn’t exist.

What the hell was I thinking? Oh, yeah, I was crazy, because I am part of the totally real group called “moonbats.”

PS: Do you realize how absurd that is? A couple of names that are added to that list quite often: Pat Buchanan, and Gary Bauer. It’s funny you added to this list when you earlier claimed that “And try to get a liberal to pin who leads the ‘religious right’ or who is in it, and they become exasperated.” My guess is they just become exhasperated with you.

You know who also don’t exist? The Jews. Because, you know, they don’t all vote the same way, and they all come from different places, and they have different religious practices, and some totally wear yarmulkas and some totally don’t. Go ahead and try to name a Jew, and I switch the definition of Jew on the spot so they don’t fit it!

I added to the list because I had a point to illustrate and these are names the left likes to throw around when describing the fictitious “religious right.”

To contrast, how often do you hear the right talking about the “athiest left”? It’s just as fictitious as the “religious right.”

I’d say that more than devout Christians are railing against Roe Vs. Wade. That is a shoddy piece of work, and it is indesputable that the Founding Fathers believed that there was a right to abort babies.

Speaking of your other moonbat accusations, I hardly see this happening anywhere. The most that has ever come of your “intelligent design” accusation that has ever happened was when the ACLU decided to butt in when a school put stickers on their books telling students to be open-minded when reading about the THEORY of evolution.

The left are absolute hypocrites about many many social issues, and when they are called out on it, they scream “foul” and start blathering about people who believe that the meaning of “separation of church and state” means that church and state are not one-and-the-same, not that you can’t utter a religious word without getting jumped on.

What happened to when you were the party of JFK and Hubert Humphery? Were these people too intellectual that when they had disappeared from the political scene taht you decided that you had to abandon the Catholics from your party and eventually place so-called “peace activists” like Cindy Sheehan as your spokesmen and Hillary Clinton as your leaders? Oh wait, I’m not allowed to criticize what Sheehan says because she’s grieving and how dare I attack the ridiculous statements that come out of her mouth.

Just keep putting people like that up there. Just keep offending Christians. Just keep defending the slaughter of babies. Just keep trying to hike the taxes. Just keep trying to defeat and retreat. Just keep with your race-baiting and slurs towards people like Michelle Malkin and Clarence Thomas. And see where that will get you.

There’s a reason why NOBODY trusts the Democrats and why they have such a hard time winning elections. People aren’t buying into the load of crap they are trying to dump off on the American people.

Thank you for helping to build what could eventually become a permanent Republican majority.

You have a right to free speech, exactly, but not a right to an audience.

Just keep with your race-baiting and slurs towards people like Michelle Malkin and Clarence Thomas.

I believe Anita Hill!

Wow! When did two people kissing become erotic?

Hehehe, not gonna tell you!

So the person that called me 13 actually typed hehehe?

WTF!

And I get fucking Breeder PDA thrown in my face on a daily basis. kwatt I’m guessing you’re not very bright. YES a personal attack…It’s warrented when you act like a homophobe.

Speaking of your other moonbat accusations, I hardly see this happening anywhere. The most that has ever come of your “intelligent design” accusation that has ever happened was when the ACLU decided to butt in when a school put stickers on their books telling students to be open-minded when reading about the THEORY of evolution.

All right, I just realized that arguing with you is pointless, because you don’t actually know what the hell you’re talking about. But try Googling “Intelligent Design” (here, I’ve already gotten you started!)and you’ll discover what the rest of us, who keep up on the news, is already aware of — that there’s been some quite recent developments beyond the school and sticker issue you just grotesquely mischaracterized. And, while you’re at it, go ahead and google the results of thelast election to find out exactly how many Americans voted for democrats in the last election. You know, actually, spend a few days with Google. Once you actually research your statements, you may reverse them.

But, yo know, until then, just keep tossign the word “moonbat” around, because it helps tothink the other side is crazy. Then you don’t actually have to reserach anything.

Doesn’t the whole concept of a permenant single-party majority smack of fascism? (Because it’s sure as hell not communism with the republicans)

Is that really something to aspire to? I mean, seriously?

Msparber, do you walk around with blinders on?

You should not talk about researching statements. If anyone doesn’t know what he or she is talking about, it is you. You haven’t researched a single one of your statements, you ramble on about a “religious right” that doesn’t exist, you make insipid remarks, and then you tell me to go use Google. Which then lists Wikipedia at the top of the list! WIKIPEDIA! You know, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Don’t you understand that Google doesn’t pull up quality data? It pulls up data from the people who are smart enough to correspond their meta data, header tags, and content to each other to get high rankings. Part of my job involves making sure our website ranks high in Google. So don’t harp on me about Google. Because if you don’t weed through your information there, who knows what you’ll get. I’m sure the DailyKos must rank highly in the searches that you are doing.

Just to check up, I used Fox and CNN to see the election results. Yup. Nothing new. Bush won. Republicans control the House and Senate. John Murtha thinks that we should “redeploy” our troops to Okinawa (has anyone bothered to tell him that for our troops to fly to Okinawa, they would have to fly over both Iran and China (countries it is safe to say who are not our friends) and that we’d have to land multiple times in each one to re-fuel. John Kerry says we should be out of Iraq on July 1, 2007 (which would be admitting defeat to the terrorists). Nancy Pelosi yammering about a culture of corruption while William Jefferson accepts bribes and sticks it in his freezer? Democrats out of touch? Nahhhhhh……

Take a look at these pictures. When was the last time you saw a huge group of Republicans acting like that?

What do you read? Do you punch things into Google, and read The Michael Moore version of the way things happen?

You never answered me.

When was the last time you saw a huge group of Republicans acting like that?

I’m not sure of yourpoint, but when’s the loast time you say liberals acting like this?

Let’s put it this way…

Republicans tend to perform house-cleaning and reject extremist views in their party. Do you see prominent Republicans putting up nutters who carry around signs saying “God hates Fags”?

On the other hands, Democrats embrace these people (such as Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore), who despite their absolutely crazy viewpoints and antics, get put up on pedastals.

There’s the difference right there. A HUGE difference.

This debate is so idotic. No wonder the average joe has difficult to see the difference between the two parties these days: Dems slamming dems, Republican slamming Republicans over issues like Gays in the media or the Iraq war itself. My god! Can’t you people get on the same page without further dividing your party status?

“Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious solder, put them at a table together—what do you get? The sum of their fears.”
*Quote from Winston Churchill

Do you see prominent Republicans putting up nutters who carry around signs saying “God hates Fags”?

Nah. Just Ann Coulter, O’Reilly and Santorum.

Oh wait……

Republicans tend to perform house-cleaning and reject extremist views in their party.

You’re absolutely delusional.

You’re putting O’Reilly on the same whack-o meter as Pelosi and Micheal Moore?

Do O’Reilly and whack-o-meter have anything to do with phone sex?

I broke my whack-o-meter last week after a marathon of Tori Welles films.

I love Tori Welles.

Here is a commentary that Jim Kelley, Prez of GLBT Pride/Twin Cities submitted to the Strib regarding the lawsuit.

The title is “What’s Wrong With this Picture? The Gist of Gay Pride.”

Every year at this time, GLBT/Pride Twin Cites, an all-volunteer organization, presents a series of events to commemorate and celebrate the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT for shorthand) communities rich diversity and history, including the confrontation between police and GLBT individuals at New York Citys Stonewall Inn on the last Sunday in June, back in 1969.

At Stonewall, our community finally stood up after years of abuse by New York Citys police department and said: we will no longer be harassed, we will no longer hide, and we will no longer be ashamed of who we are and who we love. No more. We will be proud of who we are and proud of our love for one another. And so, some say, the Gay Pride movement began.

Fast forward to 2004: the Minneapolis Star Tribune Company signed a sponsorship contract for our Pride Celebration. Under this contract, the Star Tribune received numerous benefits, including extensive advertising in exchange for advertising our Pride events in the Star Tribune newspaper and on their web site. But the Star Tribune ultimately rejected our ads for the Gay Pride Celebration.

The supposedly objectionable advertisements showed (along with other images and text) two young white men, standing in an open embrace, fully clothed, outdoors (as if they were at the Gay Pride Festival). Its the same kind of kiss that appears, between opposite-sex couples, over and over again in advertisements published in the Star Tribune.

Why were our advertisements rejected? The Star Tribune has changed its story over time, but the initial explanation was that the paper does not publish pictures of people kissing because that violates their policy on community standards and taste. Really? We couldnt believe it either.

Our decision to include a same-sex kiss in our ad was deliberate and thoughtful. Months before the actual Pride events, the Board of Directors of GLBT Pride/Twin Cities choseDreaming Out Loud as the theme of the 2004 Pride Celebration. In Minnesota, the GLBT community dreams about health insurance for our partners, equal rights to visit our partners in the hospital, and yes, we dream about simple random, casual acts of public affection.

A kiss does not just represent passion and sex. A kiss (even a same-sex kiss) can express joy, celebration and love. To be able to kiss your same-sex partner or friend in public, without fear, is something our community still dreams about, although every straight person takes that right for granted. Advertising our Gay Pride Celebration with an image of a casual same-sex kiss went right to the heart of Dreaming Out Loud about Gay Pride.

The Mission of GLBT Pride/Twin Cites is to inspire the achievement of equality and challenge discrimination. Our Board of Directors concluded that if we allowed the Star Tribune to censor our ad, critics of corporate involvement in Gay Pride events would be right. We would indeed be held captive by the business side of the Star Tribune, which essentially told us that maybe we could dream, but not out loud, and certainly not in their newspaper. And yet these business interests were happy to take the advertising and publicity benefits of sponsoring Gay Pride. We simply had no choice but to challenge this unlawful act of discrimination and plain old-fashioned hypocrisy by the Star Tribune Company.

We wanted to challenge the Star Tribunes decision, but we did not want to litigate. We tried to get a private meeting with Star Tribune Publisher and President Keith Moyer to discuss the incident. The Star Tribune, through the attorney for its parent company The McClatchy Company, refused. We then filed a discrimination complaint with the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, which emphasizes its use of mediation, an alternative to litigation. We were later told that the Star Tribune would not mediate the dispute unless we dropped our request that it acknowledge it erred and our request that it change its kissing policy.

Then, after ten months (but after only one or two interviews, not quite the extensive investigation described by Ben Taylor, the Star Tribunes spokesman), the Department concluded that it did not have the power to resolve the dispute under the current language of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance. Because we believe that legal interpretation is wrong, we appealed to the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission, which took another six months to uphold the Departments decision.

So, sixteen months after filing a public complaint and two years after the initial events, we find ourselves telling the Star Tribune, see you in court, all over a kiss. It doesnt have to be this way. But we will insist on the right to advertise Gay Pride the same way that straight pride is advertised in the Minneapolis Star Tribune almost every day.

Comment: That last point is the response to the “free speech” issue–no one is telling the Strib what they can and cannot print. All we are saying is that if you print ads with opposite sex couples kissing (and they do–all the time–and in more, ahem, provocative poses), you can’t refuse to publish a picture of same-sex couples kissing (especially when you sign a contract to sponsor gay pride!). Let the Strib know you care about this issue.