Just to address one of the most glaring problems with your endorsement(though the pro-death stance of this candidate should be enough for you).

Universal Health Care is one of the scariest propositions ever put forth to the American people. Putting Government in charge of health care gives to the secular state a control that has apocalyptic implications. In future it would be all to easy for the state to decide to withhold healthcare from people of a certain age, or have diseases that would not be cured by the care. It would be all to easy for government to decide to let persons die who would not have the “quality of life” that some decision maker thinks they should have.

I have one friend who was in a dune buggy accident at 18 and has been unable to hold a job outside of menial work for many years, his health care has been astronomical over the years to pay for. He cannot converse with you and looks to the world to be stupid and in articulate. He is even in recent years unable to fingerspell or do simple signs any more because of the deterioration of his health.

However he is a valued member of our faith community, and his repertoire of moaning a bit to a song or worship is heartening to those of us who know he is openly and without shame expressing his love for God. He quick and snappy moan to a joke from someone he knows can make us all laugh. He has suffered for about 30 years looking weird and unable to date or even make friends outside of those of us who know him well. He drools easily and coughs in a gross way at times, becuase he cannot control these things. Yet when he survived a recent bought with Pneumonia there were several hundred people including Bob who were grateful for the “miracle” that kept him alive.

Think about it.

Letting us know that courthouses will be burned down if abortion rights are sufficiently messed with, and declaring if that happens, it will be the fault of the likes Fr. J:

(no problem)

Endlessly detailing and recycling his personal life here — his heroics in Sri Lanka (and to the extent all that is true, well, kudos to you, digby) and his hellish suffering in the yokel-infested pits of the American south, his Republican family, and his brother’s experience with guns across the pond, an enumeration of his donations to the Obama campaign, etc., etc., etc, :

(what could possibly go wrong there?)

Calling Fr. J a “jihadist” and nominating him to be the beer-garder chaplain of brown-shirted thugs.

(crickets chirping, pretty much)

Analyzing Pope Benedict’s speech and mannerisms in terminology lifted from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (as applied to homosexuals) — note I am not referring to the bowdlerized version he presented here:

(presumably the pope had it coming)

But when I say, digby, wait a minute: given all the stuff you regularly fixate on in these threads, what do such analyses say about you? Well now, that’s apparently way out of line and one of the malicious personal attacks ever entered on Vox Nova. Do the progressives here just ignore digby’s rantings and vituperation? The cries of homophobic fasc|st and the like? Honestly, which is more likely to get you in trouble these days — being called a homophobic brown-shirted thug or the hypocrisy of showing a peculiarly strong attachment to a Broadway movie while at the same time deconstructing others for what certain mannerisms might mean.

Is it really considered a sin among you people to be suspected as being gay. I mean, did anyone ask me if I was gay or straight? As if I would possibly care one way or the other what people think? Feel free — I mean, I did know about that song after all. Who knows? Besides, if you’ve tried to live as a Catholic for any length of time and have resorted to abstinence for any reason, you will be subject to gay rumors as surely as people like digby trot out gaydar analyses of people they don’t like (i.e. as night follows day). Some of us learn to deal with it, while others start screaming about it — that is, unless such speculation comes from a well-credentialed progressive of sufficiently enlightened opinion and is directed at popes and others held in sufficiently low regard, and if it is accompanied with a lamentation bewailing the other side’s lack of “empathy and compassion”.

For the record, I’d have been happy not to get into all this, and declined when asked on 8/23 9:27 am, and only divulged more when I was called “barbaric” for refusing to do so. After the calls of brown-shirted thuggery and whatnot. So go ahead and pretend that I’m the one who is out of line here. Or better yet, in the future, just ignore me. Please. Do me the honor. Why is that so hard, anyway, given that — as I’ve attempted to explain — I dish back only a small fraction of what is dished my way, and even then, sometimes reluctantly.

And as for threats, that comes straight from digby as well. Perhaps you were not here when digby warned us that people in his line of work are routinely fired for exhibiting certain tendencies. Though he is safe out of the clutches of the yahoo’s of Albuquerque who would stoop to that level, presumably he might one day have to return to the befouled shores of the USA, so it might make sense for him not to limit his options.

Of course, he might have just been hyperventilating regarding such threats. It wouldn’t surprise me and they certainly didn’t come from me, as I explicitly noted. But for the record, it was digby that insisted that I come out, so to speak, with a detailed breakdown of what I was alluding to: “It really is a barbaric thing to do, to attempt to intimidate someone with some unknown factor, and then to refuse to divulge whatever it is.” But maybe you missed that too.

Also, if you prefer “chattel slave recognized by all to be available at a moment’s notice for intimate services” to “boy toy”, so be it. I rather think my terminology got the point across more succinctly, but if it is too pithy for you, well, I will stipulate to your version. Not that it changes much.

I did forget to mention the gender breakdown of Gerard Manley Hopkins you also offered us vis a vis Walt Whitman on some other recent thread. Again, it seems to be a recurring meme in your posts. You know, if it is of interest, I understand Cardinal Newman had an unusually bell-like high-pitched voice. Perhaps at some point you’ll get around to analyzing that too, and whatever it might reveal about him. Similar analysis of voices and speech patterns to the one you have given us can be found on every schoolyard to “prove” one thing or another. If that’s OK according to your rules, so be it. Bring it on — life is a cabaret, old chum. But don’t be surprised if once you open that box, whatever is inside comes back to bite you. And then to claim that I’m the homophobe here? That’s a tad defensive, and it involves a certain amount of projection.

As for rephrasing your words about Pope Benedict’s gaydar in less vehement and catty terms than you originally used, it’s a nice try, but the fact that you chose to tone it down considerably this time says a good deal. Indeed, if the words I’ve used on this thread register as “homophobic fasc|st” on your meter, the phrasing in your original post would send the needle off the chart. Again, you ought to look in the mirror of that glass house more closely.

The fact that anyone could possibly be damned in my estimation (or the pope’s), simply by being (or appearing to be) gay or closeted, is — to be blunt — just another display of your flair for screechy, hysterical theatrics. And if you don’t want anyone surmising what that particular aspect of your personality might mean with regard to your own “more-than-normal emotional involvement” on a given issue, perhaps the same courtesy could be extended to the pope, no?

Lastly, I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this, digby: however you choose to live your life or whatever you choose to acknowledge on this site is of little concern to me, except to the extent where the hypocrisy of it becomes a way of demonstrating the emptiness of the other positions of yours I disagree with (and would take issue with regardless of whether the person holding them was straight, gay, or something else altogether). Besides, what could possibly be wrong with a show tune every now and then?

Oh, and as for refusing to reply to my posts, be my guest. I honestly very much look forward to that. If you don’t believe me, call my bluff.

My interest in the oppression of “gay” people represents, purely and simply, a desire to preserve basic human rights. I never called the centurion’s slave his “boy toy,” but, rather, his chattel slave, with all the prerogatives over him that Roman law and custom granted the master, and insisted that Jews and others in the Lord’s audience would have recognised that clearly–something which is clearly relevant to our present-day understanding of that particular Gospel story, and which Biblical exegetists have been citing regularly for the last several years.

I never spole “on behalf” of “courthouse burning” feminists, but only said I was acquainted with a few–which, I suppose, based on THEIR rhetoric (not mine), I suppose I am. Your insinuations of my support for their fanaticism are similar to what those of your fascist ilk have tried to do to Obama over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but “guilt by association” is a logical fallacy which only the “great unwashed masses” of Yahoos whom you probably like to bay at would fall for.

I can’t remember the reference to the source of Waugh’s characterisation of Lord Marchmain, but what you say I wrote about it is a fact. Evelyn Waugh was a Tory, but that means a sensible, moderate BRITISH “conservative”–one not likely to demonize “homosexuals,” since they are and always have been vibrant contributors to some of the most important fields of Western arts and sciences. “Gay-bashing” is a trait of fascists like you, not of true “conservatives.”

And, finally, my comment about Pope Benedict was meant to illustrate the self-loathing of many effeminate men that religion-inspired homophobia induces in certain Western cultures. I don’t really know or care whether the Pope is is “same-sex-attracted,” but I DO believe that the extraordinary vehemence of his extreme opposition to “gay rights” is indicative of a more-than-normal emotional involvement with the issue. Of course, in Ratzinger’s particular case, it may be the emotional residue of his much-reported hysterical response to the “student rebellions” of the 60s, but it IS unusual and the theological positions that he and his sponsor, John Paul II, have taken regarding the “intrinsic sinfulness” of the “homosexual orientation” and the exclusion of “same-sex-oriented” priestly candidates DOES represent a volte-face against the positions taken by their predecessors.

But I suppose the fact that I even KNOW about these subjects damns me in your estimation. As I said above, you are an especially evil person, and I will not be talking to you here, or anywhere else at Vox Nova.

Actually, given your rather seething homophobia-laced takedown of Pope Benedict, I suspect they have more pressing concerns than putting up with the likes of me, but whatever you say. As I noted, everyone is entitled to his or her specific interests.

If someone wants to look up the post I am referring to (I suspect it might have been deleted) I think it was in the same thread where digby informed us about the actively homosexual British nobleman who was Waugh’s basis for Lord Marchmain and some time before he assured us that the centurion’s servant in the Gospel was likely a “boy toy”.

In any case, those who keep returning to such matters are better off not sneering at a pope in the way you did for acting gay. Likewise, those who regularly characterize their opponents in the effusive terms you regularly employ should not then complain about a lack of compassion or empathy on the opposing side. Finally, those who speak on behalf of courthouse-burning fanatics they are personally acquainted with should not be characterizing those who stand against them as “jihadists”.

In fact, I would think that one so vehemently opposed to the war on terror should avoid a “Bush-speak” word like jihadist when attempting to insult his enemies, especially when he has previously noted sympathetically how the initial reactions to 9/11 he encountered were that the chickens had indeed come home to roost. Too many crossed signals there.

You really ARE a fascist jerk, and your ridiculous conclusions about me, in particular are fantastically off the mark.

When I see rubbish like this, though, I really understand what “gay” people have to put up with, from the likes of you.

You are actually evil, and I will not respond to anything more you say.

Perhaps — especially, I would suspect, if one’s specific interests veer as strongly as yours do towards Isherwood, movie musicals, show tunes, and “handsome” blond German boys. The relevance (or lack thereof) of that last bit was what I was referring to, but thank you anyway for attempting to fill us in on the rest.

There are exceptions to any classification scheme, and whether or not you happen to be such an exception is of no concern to me (no matter how much of your personal life you insist on broadcasting here), but I believe the commonly used term for those of us whose interest in the above-listed subject matter doesn’t measure up to your own is not ‘philistine’, but rather, ‘heterosexual’. Granted, some might claim there is not much difference between the two, but in the interest of proper literary analysis, the distinction is one worth making — even to someone who has vehemently ridiculed the current pope on this site for displaying flamboyantly ‘fey’ mannerisms, though as I recall, your language was far more colorful and impassioned (and sneering).

Finally, I would still advise against against calling someone a philistine and then immediately proceeding with a cut-and-paste job from the likes of imdb and Wikipedia, especially when it has so slight a connection to the point that was being raised. That being said, thank you for including that part about casting decisions and dye jobs — I did not realize how relevant that was to understanding the song or the musical, but I suppose I stand corrected. And after all, everyone is entitled to his or her specific interests.