A few days before the recent U.S. Presidential elections, my LDS cousin’s married, adult daughter posted the following on Facebook as a “call to arms”:

Tomorrow is a day of fasting and prayer for our faith. Whoever you are and whatever your beliefs, I invite you to join with our family in spending the day remembering God and this great nation and asking for His blessings on us this Tuesday.

After the election — when Mitt Romney, the LDS candidate she fasted and prayed for — did not win, I posted this:

Wow this stuff really works. My prayers WERE answered on Tuesday.

She retorted with a somewhat typical Mormon response that blamed my supposed iniquity as the root cause of why I would disagree with her political beliefs (not to mention the whole “fast and pray so Romney wins” mantra):

You can have your own need for all things immoral and inane validated by the Democratic Party and turn your back on what you once professed to be true but that doesn’t give you props for being a schmuck on my status.

Her father pulled something similar several years ago when he sent out a blast email exhorting people to give a good rating to his son’s newly-launched music album on Amazon and iTunes. My older brother questioned the propriety and honesty of this request in an email response back and this man proceeded to call my brother “an apostate and embittered ex-member” [of the LDS church] as a way of showing who was on the right side of god.

Interesting tactic.

Not sure entirely how I feel about yesterday’s killing of Osama bin Laden by US troops and the CIA, but am somewhat gladdened that this facet of the attacks on September 11, 2001 is behind us.

I was happy to see President Obama stand up from the political mire and make a decision that for probably only a brief moment, reunited the American people.

Will it end “the war on terror”? Hardly.

I’m not sure ultimately what it solves or resolves and I suspect that from small things will come even greater tragedies.

We were years behind in freeing the slaves as well.

Mexican court upholds capital’s gay marriage law
By MARK STEVENSON (AP)

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a fledgling law allowing same-sex marriages in Mexico City is constitutional, rejecting an appeal by federal prosecutors who argued that it violated the charter’s guarantees to protect the family.
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I know when the LDS church says they were not involved — other than sending out a letter to Argentinean members asking them to read The Family: A Proclamation to the World once again — they really meant it.

Imagine my surprise to see this headline:

LDS official did have role in Argentina gay-marriage battle
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
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Right is right.

“Sen. Norma Morandini, another member of the president’s party, compared the discrimination closeted gays face to the oppression imposed by Argentina’s dictators decades ago.

”What defines us is our humanity, and what runs against humanity is intolerance,” she said.”

(more…)

The funny thing is, we are sometimes not that far from these irrational fears and attitudes in this country.

Police arrest five ‘gay’ Kenyans

(BBC) – Police in Mtwapa, just north of the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa, say they have arrested five men whom they accuse of being homosexuals.

District officer George Matandura said two of the men had been found with wedding rings, attempting to get married, in Kikambala beach resort.

The other three men were handed to the police by members of the public; two of them had reportedly been beaten.
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This story continues into the new year, which does not bode well.

While the three US-based ‘evangelists’ disavow actually advocating the killing of gay people, there seems to have been no concerted effort on their part to undo this evil they have introduced into Uganda.

Is there no end to the to the real evil that man does?

After U.S. Visit, Uganda Weighs Death for Gays
By Jeffrey Gettleman | The New York Times

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
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Rachel Maddow has addressed this on her MSNBC show the last couple of nights. This article from the Huffington Post spells out the details.

Uganda Considering Death Penalty For Gays

Katherine Houreld & Godfrey Olukya

KAMPALA, Uganda — Proposed legislation would impose the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, and their family and friends could face up to seven years in jail if they fail to report them to authorities. Even landlords could be imprisoned for renting to homosexuals.

Gay rights activists say the bill, which has prompted growing international opposition, promotes hatred and could set back efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. They believe the bill is part of a continentwide backlash because Africa’s gay community is becoming more vocal.

“It’s a question of visibility,” said David Cato, who became an activist after he was beaten up four times, arrested twice, fired from his teaching job and outed in the press because he is gay. “When we come out and ask for our rights, they pass laws against us.”

The legislation has drawn global attention from activists across the spectrum of views on gay issues. The measure was proposed in Uganda following a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual. However, at least one of those leaders has denounced the bill, as have some other conservative and liberal Christians in the United States.

Gay rights activists say the legislation is likely to pass. But the bill is still being debated and could undergo changes before a vote, which has not yet been set.

The Ugandan legislation in its current form would mandate a death sentence for active homosexuals living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. “Serial offenders” also could face capital punishment, but the legislation does not define the term. Anyone convicted of a homosexual act faces life imprisonment.
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The London Times is reporting today that there are now acknowledged instances of voter fraud in Iran’s presidential election. The risible part is the explanation given for why this was disclosed.

The emphasis in the article is mine.

Iran admits 50 cities had more votes than voters

Martin Fletcher | The London Times

In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state’s election watchdog admitted today.

The surprising admission by the Guardian Council was, however, designed to undermine the claims of the defeated candidates that the vote was rigged.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s main rival in the hotly-disputed election, and the other two losing candidates have claimed that the vote exceeded eligible voters in as many as 170 districts.

Abbasali Kadkhodai, a spokesman for the council of senior clerics, told the state television channel IRIB: “Our investigation shows that the number of districts they announced is not correct. Based on our preliminary report, 50 districts face this issue.”
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I think we are seeing a sea-change in Iran right now. When the ‘Supreme Leader’ told the vote-protesting Iranians to stop it and accept the published results, I thought to myself, “you’ve opened a can of worms, Ayatollah”.

(An analyst on NPR noted that the Supreme Leader is the “chairman of the board” and the disputed president is the “CEO”)

It sounds like what a certain Utah church would like to have happen: head up a theocracy that pays lip service to democracy (a throwback to Brigham Young in the 1850s).

And yet the Taliban — who are doing the same thing — are feared because of their inherent violence and ties to the 9/11 attacks.

It really is all about control. How fucked up is that?

Here is the CNN article referencing the title of this entry:

‘Neda’ becomes rallying cry for Iranian protests

(CNN) — “RIP NEDA, The World cries seeing your last breath, you didn’t die in vain. We remember you.”

That post on Twitter came from a man who identified himself as an American guitarist in Nashville, Tennessee.

Amid the hundreds of images and videos of Saturday’s brutal crackdown on protesters in Iran that flooded the Internet, it was the graphic video showing the death of a young woman that touched a nerve among those following the events in Tehran for more than a week.
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