ISBL Asshat of the Week: Josh Miller

About eleven years ago Josh Miller was in a catastrophic car accident. Both he and his passenger were so drunk at the time that neither one of them could recall who was actually driving that night, but Miller broke his neck and was left paralyzed for life.

Luckily, for the uninsured Josh Miller, Medicare and Medicaid stepped in to pay the $1 million bill for his hospitalization and rehabilitation.

But this week, as the Arkansas legislature is debating continuing its privatized Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, Josh Miller, now an Arkansas State Representative, and Republican, of course, declared his opposition to Medicaid expansion.

What was good for the goose ain’t apparently so good for the gander.

To make matters worse, it has been reported that Miller still receives ongoing coverage through the government programs, including Medicaid-covered personal care assistance. Funny, no, that someone who has reaped the benefits of insurance paid for by the government would work against expanding those same benefits to others?

But its typical GOP goose-stepping; when Miller needed help, and it was offered, he took it, but if, say today, another young kid, uninsured and drunk off his ass, wrecks his car and ends up paralyzed, josh Miller thinks he should pay his own medical bills.

When asked about his apparent contradiction, Miller said the difference between young and drunk and stupid Josh Miller and everyone else,  is that some of the 100,000 people who have gained coverage through Arkansas's Medicaid expansion don't work hard enough or just want access to the program so they can purchase and abuse prescription drugs.

So, he’s going to punish everyone because of the actions of some.

I wonder how he might have felt, lying in that hospital bed all those years ago, hearing he would be in a wheelchair for life, with a one million dollar hospital bill hanging over his head, if some Arkansas asshat politician had said to him, Well, it’s your own damned fault you were so drunk, and your friend was so drunk. Pay your own way.

Josh Miller ISBL Asshat of the Week.

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United Methodist Church Won't Prosecute Minister For Officiating Same-sex Marriage Ceremony

In October 2012, the Reverend Thomas Ogletree performed the marriage ceremony for his son, Thomas Rigby Ogletree. Trouble was, Thomas the younger was marrying another man, Nicholas Haddad, and what started out as a deeply personal act, turned into a full-blown church scandal. [See my post HERE]

After the Reverend Randall Paige saw the Ogletree-Haddad wedding announcement in the New York Times, he organized other members of the Methodist clergy to file a complaint against the Reverend Ogletree  [right].

As a result, back in May 2013, the United Methodist Church [UMC] condemned Ogletree’s participation in the ceremony, calling it a public display of ecclesiastical disobedience since the church does not allow its clergy to perform same-sex weddings. Ogletree faced a possible canonical trial for his actions.

Faced.

This week, the UMC dropped its case against Ogletree. Bishop Martin McLee [left] — who leads the UMC's New York district, which covers over 400 churches in New York and Connecticut — called on all UMC church officials to stop prosecuting pastors for officiating at same-sex ceremonies.  McLee also said he hoped his actions in dropping the case might spur a dialogue between church members, clergy, and LGBT parishioners on how to move forward.

Ogletree was happy with the bishop’s decision, but was "even more grateful" that McLee promised not to prosecute similar cases, and his decision is considered a victory for Methodists who have defied an old church law that considers homosexuality "incompatible with Christian teaching."

Conservative Methodists continue to urge church leaders to discipline clergy who preside at gay weddings, and the Reverend Paige announced that he was "dismayed by the settlement:"

"It makes no acknowledgement of the breaking of our clergy covenant. There are no consequences for such violation. The impact of this settlement today will be that faithful United Methodists who support the church's teachings will feel ignored and will face their own crisis of conscience, as to whether they can continue to support a church that will not abide by its own rules."

Funny, though, with support for marriage equality nearing the 60% mark, I think its people like Paige who will be left behind in their homophobia and intolerance, while the rest of the UMC  — which has some 12 million members worldwide — moves forward.

The better news is that the dismissal of the case against Ogletree comes entirely without conditions; the settlement does not require Ogletree to say he'll never conduct another same-sex wedding, or say that what he did was wrong. In addition, Bishop McLee has asked Ogletree to participate in a public forum later this year that will include discussion of how the church deals with sexuality.

And the march goes on … even in the churches.

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Kristian Nairn Comes Out

Kristian Nairn, an actor from Game of Thrones, has come out as a gay man, though he says he's always been out, but no one has ever asked him about it:

"Well, in all honesty, when you talk about “the gay community,” you are talking about MY community, haha. I AM aware of it yeah, and I think it’s really lovely. There’s not a day that I don’t get a few messages, but 99% or more are super sweet and nothing smutty at all! Again, it’s a privilege, and I really mean that. I’ve never hidden my sexuality from anyone, my whole life in fact, and I’ve been waiting for someone to ask about it in an interview, cos it’s not something you just blurt out. I’ve tried to lead the questions a few times, to no avail!"

Welcome Out, Kristian, and let's be clear: we don't have to be asked about being gay. We just need to be open about it, and not hide behind vague gender pronouns.

Welcome out, and please accept as our gift to you the Obligatory Coming Out Toaster Oven and your own copy of the Gay Agenda.

Welcome Out! 

via Towleroad

Roberto Arango Comes Out ... Though He Might Not Get The Toaster Oven

It’s no surprise to anyone who reads this bloggy thing that I am pro-Coming Out. I think the more of us that come out, the better; there is, in fact, strength in numbers, and in visibility. Plus, the closet is a lonely place, when we tend to lie about ourselves, and tell half-truths and outright lies.

And it’s dark for a reason; many closeted gay folks are the most homophobic people in the world because they live under the notion that if they are vocally anti-gay no one would ever suspect that they are, indeed, as gay as the day is long themselves.

Think Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee chairman and manager of former President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign which used opposition to same-sex marriage as the GOP platform in 2004. Then, eight years later, Mehlman came out as gay. Yes, one of our own, so deeply closeted actually worked against us out of fear of being outed and being himself.

Now, think Roberto Arango, who, in 2009, resigned from the Puerto Rican Senate in the wake of a scandal over a number of nude photos of him on a Grindr profile that was leaked to the press — and there are far more explicit pictures that that one over there. 

At first, Arango denied it was him in the photos, but then, as it became clear that he was in fact the man in the pictures, he then claimed he had taken them to document his weight-loss under a new diet plan. But then how did the pictures get on a gay men’s pick-up app? Arango had no answer for that.

Until now: in 2014, Roberto Arango has come out as  gay. Quelle surprise.

But, before we talk about his gay-ness, let’s review what living in the closet meant for Roberto Arango:

In 2004 he mocked a San Juan mayoral candidate at a political rally by suggesting the other man was :::gasp::: a homosexual, by holding up a plastic duck and making quacking noises. The word for duck in Spanish is ‘pato’ and it is often used as a slur against gay men in Puerto Rico.

So, the closeted gay man hurled a homophobic epithet at a straight man, as if to say, Don’t elect him, he’s a homosexual. 

But that’s not all:

In 2007 Arango embraced a conservative religious coalition and personally received thousands of signatures they had collected against same-sex civil unions as he vowed to defend so-called Christian values in the Puerto Rican senate and prevent changes to the civil code. 

Yes, the closeted gay man worked his ass off to fight same-sex marriage.

Also in 2007, Arango led the effort to amend the Puerto Rican constitution to ban recognition of any unions that were not those between a man and a woman. Now, while that effort ultimately failed, let’s be clear that a gay man, once again, worked against his own community because of his deeply closeted self-loathing.

And, in 2009 Arango defended efforts by his conservative colleagues in the Senate to pass a bill banning adoption rights for same-sex couples.

Then the Grindr pictures came out and Roberto Arango ran. He left Puerto Rico and moved to the United States, saying he wanted to spend his time raising a daughter from a previous marriage — yes, the closeted gay man married a woman and had a child — and to  concentrate on his “personal life.”

I'll leave that last part alone :::cough cough::: hook-ups :::cough cough:::

But last May, Arango reappeared publicly to urge the conservative party in Puerto Rico — the same party he worked with to ban same-sex marriage and gay adoptions — to back  a number of measures to protect members of the LGBT community from discrimination; that measure actually passed in Puerto Rico.

And now, almost four years after the Grindr scandal, Roberto Arango has finally come out as gay, during a radio interview:

REPORTER: Following the controversy over the photos there was a lot of speculation about your sexual preference. Isn't it time for you to state whether or not you are a homosexual?

ROBERTO ARANGO: Well, the day someone asks me I will give a reply. In that respect, I have nothing to hide.

REPORTER: Are you a homosexual?

ROBERTO ARANGO: Yes. And on top of that I am a businessman. On top of that I am a father, I am a brother, I am a son. On top of that I like doing community work and volunteering. On top of that I like helping different communities. I like it and I am someone who likes to bring changes and progress and to give opportunities to those who want it.

REPORTER: When did you realize you were one.

ROBERTO ARANGO: I think it happened when I accepted it and I may not be a psychologist or a specialist in that field...

REPORTER: And did you accept it before your exit from the Senate?

ROBERTO ARANGO: No. It was after. My exit from the Senate and the process itself was what led me to accept myself.

So, he’s come out. Good on  him. I imagine after decades of being closeted, and hooking up with men anonymously, and in fear of being discovered, coming out is a good thing. And, as I said, coming out is a choice made by the individual to decide when the time is right.

But, I can’t reward him and welcome him to the club, the same way I couldn’t reward Ken Mehlman to the club. After one spends so much time working against your own community, denigrating your own community, using the mere thought of being gay as an insult, well, Welcome Out, but that’s all you get. Oh, don't get me wrong, i think it's good he came out, but you don't get an Instant Pass after spending years being a homophobe and a bigot because you're closeted.

If, though, one day, Roberto Arango proves himself to be a fully accepting gay man, and works towards equality for the LGBT community, in Puerto Rico,, and elsewhere, and equality for all, maybe then we’ll dust off the Coming Out Toaster Oven and the copy of the Gay Agenda.

For now, though, all he gets is a ‘Welcome out.’

And an ‘It’s about time.’

And the wish that, now that he knows better, he’ll do better. See, Roberto Arango might be running for mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, this time as an openly gay man.

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Lindsay, Ep 1: Reality? Check.

Okay, so let’s begin with “Lohan Facts”:

Lindsay was born July 2, 1986, in New York City, to Michael Lohan — an ex-Wall Street trader-slash-jailbird — and Dina Sullivan Lohan — a television personality, manager, and intoxicated party-goer

At age three she was hired by the Ford Modeling Agency and began doing commercials. By age ten she appeared in her first TV, the soap opera "Another World", and at 12 she starred in her first film, “The Parent Trap.” Lindsay as a child actress is precocious and talented and seemingly very good at her job.

In 2007, at age 20, she was nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for "Bobby" and also had her first stay in rehab, at the Wonderland Center in LA.

In May, 2007, Lindsay was arrested, for the first time, for a car accident in Beverly Hills. Not yet twenty-one she is charged DUI, possession of cocaine, and misdemeanor hit and run; she was hospitalized briefly, then released, and then had her second stint in rehab at Promises in Malibu.

A month after her release, in July 2007, Lindsay was arrested again, in Santa Monica, and charged with DUI, possession of cocaine, transporting a narcotic into a custody facility and driving on a suspended license. With bail set at $25,000 and paid, Lindsay checked into her third rehab facility.

In court in August 2007, Lohan was charged with seven misdemeanors from the May and July 2007 incidents, and plead guilty to two counts of being under the influence of a controlled substance, and no contest to DUI charges and reckless driving. She was sentenced to 36 months probation, an 18 month alcohol education program, 10 days community service and court-ordered rehab — her fourth time — at the Cirque Lodge, and 1 day in jail.

In November 2007, Lindsay reported to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California, for a minimum 24-hour stay; she was released after 84 minutes due to overcrowding.

For a while, all is calm on the Lohan front, but then, in March 2009, an arrest warrant was issued after Lohan violated her probation; county paperwork shows that she had not violated probation, and the warrant is dropped.

In October, 2009, her three year probation sentence from the 2007 arrests was extended a year so she could complete required alcohol counseling. In May 2010, Lohan failed to appear in court after she ALLEGEDLY lost her passport at the Cannes Film Festival; a judge issued an arrest warrant and set bail for $100,000, which is paid.

Later that month, Lindsay appeared in court after completing 10 of 13 required alcohol counseling sessions and new conditions of her bail are set: no alcohol, weekly random-drug testing, and she must wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet. Two months later, in July 2010, Lindsay is sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating probation and missing those last three alcohol counseling sessions.

On August 2, 2010, once again in court, Lindsay is handcuffed and taken to jail, where she serves 13 days before heading to court-ordered rehab — her fifth time — at UCLA Medical Center. Just three short weeks later, Lindsay is released from rehab when a new judge decides she can complete the program at home.

A month later, on September 24, 2010, Lindsay appeared in court after failing a drug test on a controlled substance; her probation is revoked, and she is jailed. The decision is later overturned, and she is released on $300,000 bail and ordered to wear a new alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet. Three days later she checks into Betty Ford — her sixth rehab stay.

On October 22, 2010, a judge ordered Lohan to remain in rehab until January 3, 2011 for probation violation. She is released just after the New Year, and three weeks later, on January 22, 2010, Lindsay is arrested while shopping in Venice, California, after walking out of a store wearing a $2500 necklace.

In February, 2010, she is arraigned and booked on felony grand theft charges and released on $40,000 bail. At the end of the month, back in court on that same charge, she is told a plea agreement will mean jail time, and she requests, and receives, an extension to consider the deal; in March, she rejected the plea deal.

A month later, Lohan is sentenced to 120 days in jail for violating her 2007 drunk driving probation; she is also sentenced to 480 hours of community service, 360 hours to be served in a women's center and the remainder at the LA morgue. Directly after the sentencing she is taken into custody, but her $75,000 bail is posted and Lohan is released from jail within hours of being taken into custody.

On April 22, 2011, the grand theft charges are reduced from felony to misdemeanor, reducing the jail time, if convicted, to a year or less. The next month, Lohan begins community service at the Downtown Women's Center where she completes just three hours of her 360 hour sentence.

On May 11, 2010, at a hearing for the theft case, Lohan avoids a trial and enters a plea of no contest. The sentence remains the same as was handed out on April 22 with two days credit for time served plus 3 years probation. Three weeks later Lohan arrives at LA County jail to serve her 120-day sentence, but due to overcrowding she is again fitted with an electronic monitoring device and sent home to serve her sentence — reduced to just 35 days — under house arrest.

In June, 2011, Lohan is in court in connection with her probation for the 2007 drunk driving case. The judge orders her to entertain no more than one person at a time after she once again fails a blood alcohol test and pictures of her partying while under house arrest surface.

In October, 2011, in court again, Lohan's probation is revoked, bail is set at $100,000 and she is removed from the courtroom in handcuffs. She makes bail within 2 hours and once again begins her court-ordered community service in the LA County Morgue.

The next month, at a scheduled hearing, Lohan is told she must serve 30 days in jail beginning November 9, 2011, and, following that 30-day term, if she does not show up to work 12 days at the county morgue and attend counseling sessions, she will be locked up for another 270 days. Lohan reports to jail early to begin serving her sentence and serves just a few hours of her 30-day sentence.

In March, 2012, a judge ends Lohan's felony probation, but she remains on informal probation for two more years on the 2011 misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. Lindsay Lohan is twenty-five, and has spent 250 days in rehab, 35 days on home confinement, 67 days doing community service, 19 days in court, and has made six trips to jail.

A quiet summer — in Lohan terms — ends on September 19, 2012, when Lindsay is arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident, after driving into the parking lot of the Dream Hotel in New York and ALLEGEDLY striking an employee of the restaurant next door. In November, Lohan is again arrested following an ALLEGED altercation at a Manhattan nightclub. The nest month her probation is revoked for the 2011 theft case.

In March, 2013, Lindsay pleads no contest to misdemeanor charges stemming from the 2012 car crash and is sentenced to 90 days in a rehab facility, 30 days of community service and 18 months of therapy.

It is after that 30 day rehab stint — number seven for those keeping count — that Lindsay sits down with Oprah for an interview, and agrees to a reality show docu-series on OWN.

Now, let’s talk about that ….

The show begins with Oprah and Lindsay speaking “privately” — on camera, naturally — before the interview actually begins and Oprah puts on her best Oprah Is God face while Lindsay puts on her best This Time I’ll Be Better expression.

The reality show docu-series is about Lindsay moving to New York for a fresh start after her seventh rehab stint , and maintaining her sobriety and reducing the amount of chaos in her life, which, she says, is the root of her addiction issues.

So she begins looking for an apartment in New York, which is a struggle for most people, but quite the task for Lohan, who has the reputation of having trouble circle her. She reprimands her real estate broker because he never told her she'd need "renter's liability" insurance before she can move into her new apartment. 

"I can't get it," she tells him, "because of who I am."

And the chaos continues. Lindsay looks at ten apartments during almost two months, and when she finds one she likes she gets the “renter’s liability” insurance line  and so that apartment is lost. However, rather than soldier on, Lindsay demands that she get a new room at her hotel, so  she can have a new view, and her assistant is sent packing, to do the packing of all her stuff, littered everywhere in the room, to carry it to another room in the same building where, I guess, the chaos is lessened.

She says that, while she still felt like a prisoner "all the time" because of paparazzi and media attention, she needs to separate and isolate herself from the "craziness" and "insanity" around her. Then she shops; and shops. And smokes; and organizes jewelry and goes to a fashion show. And shops.

A scene of Lindsay’s hotel room looks more like a high-cost Hoarders episode, with Lindsay’s clothes strung all-around the room and the floor littered with her jewelry. And then to add more chaos to the mix, she heads to mama Dina’s house where the rest of her stuff in being stored until she finds an apartment.

This, in my untrained mind, is the most screwed up relationship of all. The two women profess their love for one another, yet Dina constantly nitpicks Lindsay and every time Dina reaches out to hug her, Lindsay seems to pull away. It feels like a Camera Only Relationship.

As she says time and again, she is best when she’s working, but she doesn’t want to work a film premiere for Paul Schrader’s The Canyons because all the talk would be about rehab and jail and not about her art; she cancels a trip to London. Instead, she agrees to do a cameo in a short lingerie film because she's friends with the producers, but when  they unexpectedly ask her to add a few lines of dialogue, Lindsay gets angry; Lindsay gets teary; Lindsay storms off.

Lindsay does not make the cameo in the short film because, as she says, it would have "compromised my sanity and my sobriety."

Part of her attempt at sobriety is going to AA meetings, but we see none of that because Lindsay will not go to a meeting lest a photographer follow her; she claims it wouldn’t be “fair to the others" if she showed up with a trail of paparazzi. I got the feeling that was just an excuse.

One thing I noticed, though, is how much Lindsay complains about doing everything herself, when, by the first episode, it’s clear she has at least one assistant — a man, though a woman is there, I guess, just to remind Lindsay about how fun it was “when we fill in the blank” — and a sober coach, and a realtor. Lindsay, in fact, doesn’t do much at all for herself.

I get the feeling Lindsay thought this reality show docu-series would keep her on the path of sobriety, but she doesn’t seem to have changed any of her ways. She still has people around her telling her how fabulous she is — even the sober coach acts more like a fan — and she is still deeply embedded in the chaos that ruins everything, be it her apartment hunt, which goes on, and her need to have rooms filled with things to keep her happy and occupied, her mother's co-dependency.

The Lindsay that appeared in the Oprah interview last fall, the one who seemed to acknowledge her addictions and issues, is nowhere to be seen; instead we get unkempt Lindsay, shopping Lindsay, chain-smoking Lindsay, snappy Lindsay chaotic Lindsay. And the cycle seems to continue.

I get the feeling that Lohan kept herself mostly in check — or at least as much as possible — while she filmed the show, but the minute it was over, Lindsay was in a fight in Miami, saying she was robbed in new York, and back to bar-hopping with friends.

We’ll see. 

Lindsay Facts via CNN

WTF? Lara Pulver

This is actress Lara Pulver, a British actress rather well-known for her nude appearance as Irene Adler on Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch.

And by the looks of this dress she loves being nekkid.

Or looking like she's been White Tarred and Feathered.

He Said He Was Attacked, Then Said He Wasn't

I have always said that The Gays are like the Visa card; everywhere that you want to be. I mean, we work, pay our taxes, mow our lawns, take care of our homes, children, pets, lives; we go to church, or don’t, we belong to gyms, or don’t; we’re normal, in that regard, like most everyone else.

But, we are also thieves and liars and adulterers and murderers and criminals; we are rude and uneducated and just plain mean; we’re normal, in that regard, like most everyone else.

Still, I get especially angry at members of our community when they do things that might not make me as angry were they done by the heterosexual folks.

As in the tale of a transgender teenager — a fifteen-year-old at Hercules Middle/High School in Hercules, California — who said he was beaten and sexually assaulted in a school bathroom.

The teen, who is biologically female but identifies as male, told police he was leaving a boy's bathroom one morning when three other boys pushed him inside a large stall and attacked him. Officers took his statement and opened an investigation that included a sexual assault examination, but the investigation only uncovered more questions than answers, such as the time frame for when the attack allegedly occurred and the lack of any physical injuries to his head, face and hands.

Now, it turns out, the boy has admitted that he made the entire story up.

That’s right, when members of the LGBT community are being assaulted daily around the world, and when we have to fight to have the attacks and beatings and assaults and murders dubbed hate crimes, this young boy decided to lie about it.

And no one seems to know why because the boy isn’t talking about that part. Detective Connie Van Putten of the Hercules Police Department said she could not speculate as to why the boy had lied, but seemed to suggest that she’s leaving the door open to charge the teen with making a false police report.

Who knows why he lied, what made him lie, but the fact that he did lie bothers me greatly. Now, whenever someone reads a report of a transgender teen, or adult, being assaulted, there’s going to be that shadow of doubt. Did it really happen? Is it all a lie?

On the plus side, a spokesman for the West Contra Costa Unified School District, said school officials are less concerned with punishing the student than making sure he gets the support he needs to feel safe and comfortable at school:

"We recognize that life is complicated, and at the end of the day this is a request for help."

And hopefully he will get the help he needs if he did lie, though some believe it may have something to do with a similar situation at the same school last fall, when there was an on-campus fight involving another transgender student and three girls that was captured in a cellphone video.

That transgender teenager, Jewlyes Gutierrez, a biological male who identifies as female, was charged with misdemeanor assault, but asserted that she had repeatedly complained about being harassed at school for being transgender before she fought back.

So, did this other student make the whole thing up, for attention for himself, for attention to an ugly situation at Hercules High School? Or, as Ben-David Barr, executive director of the Rainbow Community Center, which sponsors LGBT youth groups in Contra Costa County, seems to suggest, maybe he was pressured by his family or law enforcement to recant his story.

And that would also be awful, as it would send the message that if you are gay or transgender and are assaulted, it’s best to keep quiet about it.

It reminds me of another story that I posted here about a man who said he was attacked for being gay when all that happened was that he did a back-flip on a sidewalk and landed on his face [JosephBaken: The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf], and the guy who said he was burned and hit with a pipe for being gay, only he was lying [Quinn Matley Is A Liar...TheWorst Kind]. Had either of those stories been true, or this story of the transgender teen been true, they would have been Hate Crimes.

As it stands now, since all three appear to be lies, those crimes are Hateful Crimes. As I said, we are all kinds of people, good and bad, right and wrong, but all it takes are a few bad apples and our whole community gets labeled by those on the Conservative Right. We lie; we make up stories; there is no such thing as a Hate Crime.

We need to stop this; it serves no purpose to anyone.

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Sunday Funnies