ON BASHING GAYS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/25/08)

After several decades as a psychotherapist in West Los Angeles working with many gay men and with a partner who was a politically active lesbian, I've concluded that gay bashing isn't only a hate crime but also a sex crime. Gay bashers are often, but not always, semi-literate, ill-educated "macho" types who are incapable of having successful, rewarding relationships with women. However, they're also found in board rooms and at country clubs as well. They subdue rather than win over.

In one of the most intimate of all human experiences, while the "bashers" may be able "to get it up," as the phrase goes, they can't get it up socially, ghettoed in a social homosexuality. Their one taste of power is to outnumber the vulnerable and bash them. In short, they're cowards.

Socially homosexual and contemptuous of women, they're profoundly impotent. As members of the Ku Klux Klan, they attack blacks. They batter women, abuse children, and bash gays, anyone socially vulnerable.

A society and thus its legal system are judged by the way the rights of minorities are protected and advocated, and that means the vulnerable. If ever they were a group of which the legal system needs to make an example, it is the "gay bashers." They should have the book thrown at them, giving them a taste of the abuse and humiliation they meet out to others so they would less likely to do it again. It's time for the conservative value of common decency.

JOHN MC CAIN DOESN'T KNOW

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/1/08)

“I don’t know as much about the economy as I should,” John McCain of himself. While it’s refreshing to hear him admit he’s ignorant, it’s dismaying to discover where he turns to cover his ignorance. Just as he used lobbyists for such brutal military dictatorships as Myanmar and oil tyrants as Saudi Arabia to advise him on foreign policy, he’s using Phil Gramm, a lobbyist for UBS AG, for advice on the economy.

Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy, were intimately related to the infamous Enron corporation, his wife being on the board of directors and chairman of its blind audit committee. Indeed, Gramm, a senator at the time, stealthily slipped in legislation exempting energy commodity trading from government regulation making the Enron debacle possible.

Presently, Gramm is a globe-trotting lobbyist for the UBS AG which is an investment bank for the wealthy. Amongst other things the UBS AG was caught destroying records of its connections with the Nazis. Recently, it has been exposed for its involvement with the sub-prime home loan crisis.

Gramm’s fundamental commitment has been de-regulation which means letting sociopathic speculators do what they want without any government oversight or control. The result has been the saving and loan disasters, the Firestone fiasco, as well Enron and the current home loan crises.

In short, McCain’s ignorance means he plans to continue Bush’s rapacious economic policies of enriching the rich, welfaring corporations, and bringing the country to its economic knees. He means an economy without justice or mercy.