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20-Plus Years Of Anti-Gay Hate From The NRA

20-Plus Years Of Anti-Gay Hate From The NRA

Published with permission from Media Matters for America.

NRA Top Lobbyist On May 20: Societal Acceptance Of Transgender People Is “Perverted” And “Twisted.” Chris Cox, who is the NRA’s top lobbyist and directs political efforts as the head of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said at the NRA annual meeting that “everything we’ve always known to be good, and right, and true has been twisted, perverted,” before citing as an example, “The media tells them Bruce Jenner is a national hero for transforming his body, while our wounded warriors, whose bodies were transformed by IEDs and rocket-propelled grenades, can’t even get basic healthcare from the VA”:

CHRIS COX: The America we know is becoming unrecognizable. Everything we believe in, everything we’ve always known to be good, and right, and true has been twisted, perverted and repackaged to our kids as wrong, backwards, and abnormal.

[…]

Who are our kids supposed to respect and admire? The media tells them Bruce Jenner is a national hero for transforming his body, while our wounded warriors, whose bodies were transformed by IEDs and rocket-propelled grenades, can’t even get basic healthcare from the VA. [NRA Annual Meeting, 5/20/16]

NRA Head Wayne LaPierre: Obama Admin. Is “In The Toilet” Because Of Efforts To Prevent Discrimination Against Transgender Students. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre railed against the Obama administration’s recent guidance explaining that public schools must allow transgender students to use facilities, like bathrooms and locker rooms, that correspond to their gender identity:

WAYNE LAPIERRE: Felons with guns, criminal gangs with guns, and drug dealers with guns are getting away with murder literally in places like Chicago and Detroit and beyond. Where the full weight of existing federal enforcement of federal firearms laws is absent. A Clinton White House would be a dangerous extension of the Obama White House. And where has this White House put its full weight? In the toilet. In bathrooms in North Carolina, in school districts all over our country. [NRA Annual Meeting, 5/20/16]

NRA Board Member Blamed Isla Vista, CA, Mass Shooting On Gay Marriage. After a gunman motivated by his hatred of women went on a shooting and stabbing spree in Isla Vista, CA, in 2014, Ken Blackwell, NRA board member and senior fellow at anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, blamed the shooting on “the attack on … natural marriage”:

KEN BLACKWELL: When you see there’s a crumbling of the moral foundation of the country, you see the attack on the — on natural marriage and the family that has been a part of the, not only the moral foundation and the upbringing of our children but the teaching of sexual roles and the development of human sexuality in our culture. When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing and that is a flood of these disturbed people in our society that are causing great, great pain. And as opposed to dealing with the foundational problems, we look for ways of blaming the Second Amendment, or blaming knives or blaming cars when they are used. At the end of the day, you have just underscored the problem. This is a convenient way of avoiding talking about what’s at the root cause. [5/29/14, Right Wing Watch via Media Matters]

Blackwell Compared Gay Marriage To Incest. In a 2009 column on D.C. legalizing gay marriage, Blackwell compared same-sex marriage to incest and also bizarrely suggested that transgender and bisexual people would use same-sex marriage laws to demand participation in polygamous marriages:

Remember, we’ve all been schooled in that LGBT formulation. That means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered. The advocates of counterfeiting marriage cannot leave out their B and T. So, what will that mean? How can they deny ‘marriage equality’ to a bisexual person who wants to marry two significant others? Or what about a person who has attempted through surgery and drugs to change his sex? Should such a person, if married, be denied the right to marry another person? If love and commitment make a marriage, why cannot brothers and sisters marry? Or fathers and daughters? What the District [of Columbia] Council has done is to open the door to polygamy, to incest. [Patriot Post, 12/21/09, via Media Matters]

Blackwell Claimed That Gay People “Created” HIV/AIDS Epidemic. During the discussion over whether the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy should be repealed, Blackwell wrote in his column, “Already, this alternate lifestyle has created what the gay groups themselves refer to as a Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Do the American people want to bring this health crisis into the ranks of our volunteer military?” [Patriot Post, 2/23/10 via NRA On The Record]

NRA Board Member Ted Nugent Mockingly Suggested The NBA Should “Host A Homosexual Night” Where “Homosexuals Could Come Down On The Court, Hold Hands And Prance Around The Court To Music By The Village People.” NRA board member Ted Nugent slammed the NBA’s decision to fine then NBA star Kobe Bryant for using an anti-gay slur, complaining in a 2011 Washington Times column, “Bryant committed this egregious verbal foul because he used a word demeaning to homosexuals, the most protected class of people in America”:

Basketball superstar Kobe Bryant was socked with a $100,000 fine by the NBA last week for calling a referee what the NBA thinks is a derogatory, ugly and vile name.

To be exact, Mr. Bryant committed this egregious verbal foul because he used a word demeaning to homosexuals, the most protected class of people in America.

Gay rights groups applaud the decision of the NBA, which must make all the homosexual basketball fans feel peachy and special. Who knows, maybe the NBA will use Mr. Bryant’s $100,000 to buy courtside seats for gay basketball fans. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Show some gay pride, NBA.

Those among us who work tirelessly to shut down (and shout down, if the need arises) speech they disagree with must also be absolutely gay with pride and satisfaction over this fine.

[…]

If the NBA had any true gay convictions, the NBA should host a Homosexual Night. During halftime, the homosexuals could come down on the court, hold hands and prance around the court to music by the Village People. The NBA could then give each homosexual a pink basketball as a symbol of solidarity.

[…]

Homosexuals are a protected class in America. If you think what happened to Mr. Bryant was a travesty, just wait until you see what homosexuals in the military do when they claim they have been mistreated because of their sexual orientation. [The Washington Times, 4/19/2011, via Media Matters]

Nugent Said It’s “Despicable” When Men “Have Sex With Each Other’s Anal Cavities.” From a 2000 interview on Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes:

TED NUGENT: I got to tell you, guys that have sex with each other’s anal cavities — how can we offend guys that actually have anal sex? Don’t you think that might offend some of us who think that’s despicable? [Fox News, Hannity and Colmes via Nexis, 6/29/00]

Former NRA Board Member Praised Dictator Robert Mugabe For Calling Gay People “Perverts Who Do Not Deserve Civil Rights.” Jeff Cooper, a longtime board member whom the NRA honored by naming a shooting range after him when he died in 2004, praised Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe in his often-homophobic “Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries” newsletter:

Reluctant as we may be to compliment a dictator who prefers to be addressed as “Comrade,” we are compelled to do so in the case of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He officially refers to homosexuals as “perverts who do not deserve civil rights.” In his words,

“Let the Americans keep their sodomy, bestiality, stupid and foolish ways to themselves. Let the gays be – gay – in the United States and Europe, but they shall be sad people here.”

How about that? [Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries, January 1996, via Coalition to Stop Gun Violence]

Cooper: “Lesbians Make Lousy Shots” Compared To “Normal Girls.” Cooper wrote in 1997 in his newsletter, “We are now given to understand by a police firearms instructor of wide background and experience that lesbians make lousy shots. Normal girls, on the other hand, tend to do rather well on the range. Is there a point to be learned here?” [Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries, November 1997, via NRA On The Record]

NRA Board Member, Iran-Contra Figure, And Fox News Contributor Oliver North Mocked Gay People During A GOP Fundraiser. According to the Williamson Daily News, during a 1993 GOP fundraiser held in Virginia, NRA board member Oliver North “told the crowd that he tried to telephone [Bill] Clinton, but the White House switchboard wouldn’t let him through until he disguised his voice with a lisp.” When a local LGBT group asked him to apologize, North responded, “If it angered some subset, that’s their problem.” [Williamson Daily News, 3/18/1993, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3/20/1993, via NRA On The Record]

NRA Board Member And GOP Rep. Don Young On Gay Artist’s Work: “Butt Fucking … You Think That’s Art?” During a speech before high school students, NRA board member Don Young slammed the art of gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe:

U.S. Rep. Don Young said he was just trying to educate high school students when he used an obscenity to refer to anal sex while denouncing government funding of the arts.

Young, Alaska’s lone congressman for 22 years and a former teacher, told the auditorium full of 15- through 18-year-olds that the federal government has funded “photographs of things that are absolutely ridiculous” and “photographs of people doing offensive things.”

When students asked which pictures he was talking about, Young said, “butt f——…. You think that’s art?”

At West Valley High School, his words Friday had the roughly 150 students laughing or grumbling.

Later, Young told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that he thought his comments would have lacked impact if he had used different words. “I was a teacher. I was trying to educate,” he said.

He apparently was referring to the Cincinnati exhibit in 1990 of homoerotic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. [Anchorage Daily News, 4/23/1995, via NRA On The Record]

NRA Board Member Described Gay People As “Degenerates.” In 1993, Wayne Anthony Ross, NRA board member and Sarah Palin’s failed nominee for Alaska attorney general, wrote a letter in response to an anti-discrimination ordinance. The letter read, in part:

This bill seems to give extra rights to a group whose lifestyle was a crime only a few years ago, and whose beliefs are certainly immoral in the eyes of anyone with some semblance of intelligence and moral character.

It is a shame that you folks don’t have some causes you could become involved in that are of benefit to society in general. Instead, you support degenerates.

[…]

None of you has done anything publicly (to my knowledge) to attempt to protect the millions of lives of innocent children killed each year through abortion, yet you collectively contribute $5,000 to the cause of sexual perversion. [Wayne Anthony Ross, 1993, via The Mudflats, Anchorage Daily News, 4/11/2009]

 

Occupy Global via Flickr

While America Mourns, Gun Manufacturers Profit From Spiked Sales

While America Mourns, Gun Manufacturers Profit From Spiked Sales

As the nation mourns the 49 victims of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, some are experiencing the benefits of a mass shooting: gun manufacturers.

On Monday, the stocks of the two leading gun manufacturers, Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. went up by 8.8 percent and 4.5 percent respectively.

Gun sales usually spike following mass shootings. According to an analysis of federal background checks by The New York Times, “fear of gun-buying restrictions has been the main driver of spikes in gun sales.”

Gun lovers, apparently fearing an attempt by the Obama administration to “take their guns,” buy weapons at increased rates immediately after mass shootings.

Last January, guns sales jumped up after President Obama announced an executive action to expand background checks and bolster licensing requirements for dealers as a response to the attack in San Bernardino, which killed 14 people. The FBI ran more background checks than in any other January on record.

The number of background checks is currently the best way to estimate gun sales, but that figure only counts transactions, not the number of guns bought in each sale, and it excludes private gun sales in 32 states which do not require a background check for private sales.

After the Paris terrorist attacks, shares of Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. also went up because of high sales. In fact, just two weeks after the attack, on Black Friday, more Americans background checks run on them in order to buy guns than on any other day on record, according to data released by the FBI. That December, more guns were sold than in any other single month on record.

The previous record month is December 2012, the month of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that killed 26 people, of which 20 were children.

The Sandy Hook sparked a gun control debate, and as the NRA fired up their efforts, encouraging Americans to defend their 2nd Amendment right and stop scary Democrats from passing gun control laws, huge amounts of money poured into the National Rifle Association, which received $96.4 million in contributions and grants in 2013, 11.5 percent more than the previous year.

Money manager Louis Navallier noticed there was a big opportunity for profit when he realized stocks went up after the Bataclan Concert Hall attack in Paris. He started buying stocks and accumulating positions in both Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. That investment would greatly pay off. After both the San Bernardino shooting and President Obama’s executive action announcement, stocks once again rose.

“Mr. Obama is the best gun salesman on the planet,” Navellier, who is the chairman of the investment firm Navallier & Associates, told CNBC in January, before adding that none of his investors had concerns about the moral implications of profiting from gun sales. “They just want us to make money.” He said.

The NRA has remained silent on the Orlando tragedy, something it tends to do after mass shootings. When they do comment on tragedies like this, it is often hours or even days after the fact. Sometimes, as in the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting, they just ignore the tragedy altogether. That Friday, they wished “shooters” a “happy Friday.”

When they do comment on shooting tragedies, the NRA’s response is usually to call for more gun sales, sticking to their core argument that “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.” That was their response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy that killed 26 people, of which 20 were children. After waiting a couple days to comment, the NRA suggested that teachers ought to carry guns.

“Why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect the president of our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in our schools?” NRA president Wayne LaPierre asked.

There was an armed guard at the door of the “Pulse” nightclub.

 

Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club, where as many as 20 people have been injured after a gunman opened fire, in Orlando, Florida, U.S June 12, 2016.  REUTERS/Steve Nesius

University Of Central Florida Puts Places Sorority, Fraternity On Probation

University Of Central Florida Puts Places Sorority, Fraternity On Probation

By Denise-Marie Ordway, Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, FL — In the latest incident involving Greek students and alcohol at the University of Central Florida, a fraternity and sorority have been put on probation for a year.

The chapters were disciplined after a fraternity member was charged with sexually assaulting a member of the sorority. But the decision was not connected to the rape case, in which Marlon Austin De La Cruz, 22, of Orlando, was arrested in early April.

Instead, the Delta Zeta sorority and Zeta Beta Tau fraternity were sanctioned earlier this month because the incident involved drinking and other conduct violations, school officials said.

The rape investigation prompted UCF to look into what happened after a social the chapters held together at a downtown Orlando bar in late March.

Earlier, UCF suspended its Chi Omega sorority chapter for alcohol-related misconduct and hazing. Three sorority members were accused of blindfolding two pledges, forcing them to drink an entire bottle of rum and then abandoning them in a campus parking garage to find their way home.

A year ago, UCF lifted a suspension it had placed on many Greek activities during an increase in allegations of hazing and alcohol abuse. At the time, officials said they took such drastic steps to try to change Greek culture.

Four fraternities and sororities have been disciplined for alcohol-related misconduct in the past year, said Chad Binette, a university spokesman. It was not clear whether those included the latest incident.

On March 27, a member of the Delta Zeta sorority said she was sexually assaulted in the back seat of a car on the drive from the bar in downtown Orlando back to UCF. The woman, whose age was not released, told police she was so drunk she could not stop the attack or call out to her boyfriend, who was driving the car.

De La Cruz was suspended from Zeta Beta Tau after the allegation surfaced, said Laurence Bolotin, executive director of the fraternity with headquarters in Indianapolis. Bolotin said De La Cruz had been kicked out of the fraternity by the time the State Attorney’s Office charged him May 13 with sexual battery, a second-degree felony.

Because of student-privacy rules, UCF officials could not say whether they have taken or will take any disciplinary action against De La Cruz.

The university sent letters to the local chapters of Delta Zeta and Zeta Beta Tau on May 27 and May 12, respectively, saying their probations would last through the spring 2015 semester. All events held by either must be alcohol-free.

Binette said neither organization had been disciplined or sanctioned by UCF for any offense within at least the last five years.

Staff writer Tiffany Walden contributed to this report.

Photo: University of Central Florida via Flickr

Man Visiting Florida Is Second MERS Case In U.S.

Man Visiting Florida Is Second MERS Case In U.S.

By Kate Santich, Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. — A growing global threat of the potentially deadly MERS virus has spread to Orlando with the case of a 44-year-old man visiting from Saudi Arabia, health officials reported Monday.

He becomes the second U.S. patient with the respiratory illness, which has infected more than 500 people worldwide and killed 114.

MERS — or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome — is considered serious because of its fatality rate of about 30 percent and because there is no vaccine or specific antiviral treatment. But health officials emphasize that it is spread only through close contact, including touching, coughing or contaminated fluids. About one-fifth of those infected are health care workers, as is the Orlando patient.

The man, who works in a Saudi Arabia hospital, arrived in Orlando on May 1 but did not seek treatment until May 8, when he went to the Dr. P. Phillips emergency room. A trio of laboratory tests confirmed MERS.

“The patient is in good condition and is improving,” said Dr. Antonio Crespo, an infectious disease specialist and chief quality officer for the hospital, part of Orlando Health. “We are taking every precaution, but believe the risk of transmission from this patient is very low since his symptoms were mild and he was not coughing when he arrived at the hospital.”

Symptoms of the virus include congestion, cough, fever higher than 100.4 degrees, shortness of breath, pneumonia, body aches and diarrhea.

The man’s family members and hospital workers who had contact with him are being monitored for signs of the disease. Following protocol from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the exposed hospital workers are being placed on temporary paid leave and asked to stay home.

CDC officials said Monday they expected additional MERS cases in the United States because of a recent spike in cases in the Arabian Peninsula, primarily in Saudi Arabia. The virus was first identified there in 2012.

Florida Department of Health officials in Orlando emphasized that the patient — whose name is not being released for privacy reasons — did not visit local theme parks or other tourist spots.

In the current case, the patient left Saudi Arabia April 30 and began experiencing muscle aches, health officials said. He flew first to London, then to Boston and Atlanta before arriving in Orlando on May 1. By then, he had a slight fever, and he later developed diarrhea and ultimately a cough. According to CDC officials, more than 500 passengers on U.S. segments of those flights were exposed and are being notified.

So far, no one exposed to the man has reported symptoms, which typically take five to 14 days to develop.

Dr. Kevin Sherin, director of the state health department for Orange County, said only those who have had some contact with an infected individual are at risk.

“If they weren’t in Saudi Arabia or had exposure to someone from Saudi Arabia, I don’t know that (we) would even start thinking about MERS … ” he said. “We would probably (suspect) flu.”

The patient was placed in isolation once MERS was suspected. He remains there in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery, Crespo said. The virus was confirmed through a series of laboratory tests on blood and other bodily fluids.

So far most cases have been transmitted through caring for or living with an infected person. The fatality rate is expected to drop as more patients with mild symptoms or even no symptoms are identified through laboratory testing.

The first confirmed case of MERS in the United States was reported in a traveler Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That person had traveled to London, then on to Chicago and Indiana before being hospitalized in Indiana April 28. The patient is now recovering, the CDC reported.

laurabillings via Flickr