Wow. Here I thought Mitt Romney's cruel streak was in that he likes to fire people. Five of Romney's former classmates from a prestigious all-boys college prep school recall a "vicious" attack on a new student who Romney and others believed to be gay.

The Washington Post reports:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Romney never received any punishment for his actions.

Lauber was expelled from the school after being caught smoking on school grounds. He "came out" to family and close friends. Among other jobs, he later worked as a civilian contractor in Bosnia and Iraq. He died of liver cancer in 2004, according to his sisters.

Auto-correct can be a very helpful feature of any word-processing program. But when conservatives use it, they run the risk of embarrassing themselves.

The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website, for example, takes its AP articles and replaces the word “gay” with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.” Readers learned:

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

Continue reading »

Yeah, that would be just horrible, wouldn't it? {{shudder}} I mean, who would want to live in a cosmopolitan place full of art, culture, diversity and some of the best restaurants in the country if it means that your neighbors might be, you know, homosexual??? The bald faced bigotry that people feel comfortable expressing in this day and age never fails to horrify me. PageOneQ:

The town of Eureka Springs is turning into the "San Francisco of Arkansas," warns the American Family Association, and it can happen in your town too.

The presentation in the AFA trailer [available at PageOneQ], "They're Coming to Your Town," tells the tale of an uncharacteristically diverse resort town's government infiltrated by "a handful of homosexual activists" and bent to their will through the enactment of the town's domestic partner registry on June 22, 2007.

"Watch, and learn," says the trailer, "how to fight a well-organized gay agenda to take over the cities of America, one city at a time."

Eureka Springs, most recently, has gotten an honorable mention from unlikely celebrity and Oklahoma House Rep. Sally Kern, who propped it up as an example of the "gay agenda" that she has called a "death knell" and a larger threat than international terrorism, in addition to comparing such an "agenda" to cancer.

Do be sure to see the video that AFA created over at PageOneQ.

When it comes to kicking Americans out of the military because they’re gay, the occasional defense — offered by conservatives who know the policy is absurd — is that the Pentagon is merely following the law. If Congress wants able-bodied, patriotic, American volunteers to join the Armed Forces, regardless of sexual orientation, lawmakers should change the policy. If not, the Defense Department doesn’t have a lot of choice.

Except, that’s wrong. Gay soldiers discharged under the DADT policy have dropped from 1,200 a year in 2001 to less than half of that now -- and it's probably not a coincidence.

The U.S. military says it is enforcing the ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, as it has for decades, in the face of statistics that show a sharp drop in the number of discharged homosexuals as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue.

Homosexual rights advocates cite the plunge as evidence that the military is losing interest in enforcement and lets openly homosexual men and women serve because commanders need every able-bodied troop.

"Truth be told, I don't think the Pentagon is a big fan of the law anymore," said Steve Ralls, spokesman for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is pushing for the ban's demise.

Then maybe it's time to end the ban?

(Photo of hands warming up on a cuppa hot coffee via di+mars.)

The Sunday Talking Head thread is up and ready for perusal this morning.  It's a whole lotta Iraq and bloviating, and not much else, frankly.  But there could be some interesting sparks on CNN's Late Edition if Rep. Tom Lantos gets asked about why Rush Limbaugh is an ill-informed, bloviating moron.  (Here's hoping Blitzer gives him the chance...but I'm not exactly holding my breath.)   I wanted to highlight a story from Nova Scotia that one of my readers (Audrey -- thanks!) linked up in my comments.  It makes for much better Sunday morning contemplation.  Via the Chronicle Herald:

Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt.

The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.

The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.

"It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

"I made sure there was a shirt for him," David said....

So, what's catching your eye in the news and on the blogs this morning?

I don't know why, but this cracked me up...

NZ Herald: Female koalas indulge in lesbian "sex sessions", rejecting male suitors and attempting to mate with each other, sometimes up to five at a time, according to researchers.

The furry, eucalyptus-eating creatures appear to develop this tendency for same-sex liaisons when they are in captivity. In the wild, they remain heterosexual.

Scientists monitoring the marsupials with digital cameras counted three homosexual interactions for every heterosexual one.

"Some females rejected the advances of males that were in their enclosures, only to become willing participants in homosexual encounters immediately after," say the researchers.

"On several occasions more than one pair of females shared the same pole, and multiple females mounted each other simultaneously. At least one multiple encounter involved five female koalas.

My husband cautioned me not to make a snarky remark about the necessity of men when all your needs are seen to by others lest you think I was being disingenuous with my Valentine's dedication, so for his sake, I'll refrain. I can just imagine homophobes' heads spinning when they bring their little impressionable children to the zoo and find the cute koalas in a five way lesbian encounter.

I wonder if Ted Haggard knows this guy...

Kansas City Star:

The attorney for a former Baptist church leader who had spoken out against homosexuality said Thursday that the minister has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman.

The Rev. Lonnie W. Latham had supported a resolution calling on gays and lesbians to reject their "sinful, destructive lifestyle" before his Jan. 3, 2006, arrest outside the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City.

Authorities allege that Latham asked the undercover policeman to come up to his hotel for oral sex.

Latham's attorney, Mack Martin, filed a motion to have the misdemeanor lewdness charge thrown out, saying the Supreme Court ruled in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas that it was not illegal for consenting adults to engage in private homosexual acts.

"Now, my client's being prosecuted basically for having offered to engage in such an act, which basically makes it a crime to ask someone to do something that's legal," Martin said.

Both sides agree that there was no offer of money, but prosecutor Scott Rowland said there is a "legitimate governmental interest" in regulating offers of acts of lewdness.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma has filed a brief alleging that Latham's arrest also violated his right to free speech.

Booman Tribune: President Bush continues to issue medals...

Categorical Aperitif: Behold this great litany of misdeeds, and then ask yourself: What exactly is healing about letting a man who does such things escape justice?

Unqualified Offerings: Unqualified Successes of 2006

Petrelis Files: Soon-to-be ex congressman, Jim Kolbe says he regrets his vote on Iraq, but in his homosexual heart, he can't find room to say he's the least bit sorry for his shameful vote for the Defense of Marriage Act

Atlantic Review: Remembering Marla Ruzicka

The Daily Background: An illustrated guide to some hidden anti-Bush administration messages in the new film Children of Men from Universal Pictures. The film opened its wide U.S. theatrical release last weekend

Dobson, the man of God and child psychology who beat his dog to formulate a book on beating your children has this to say about Predatorgate:

DOBSON: As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a -- sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages ... By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages. It is the first plausible thing I've heard in seven days..

Dobson is convinced a rumor about a prank is more plausible than every piece of real evidence there is. He's a scam artist in the first degree and a fake religious figure that raises huge amounts of money by selling snake oil. He has no shame defending Foley, but (I'm sure you know this) his real purpose is to shield the GOP because if they lose in November then his power diminishes.

Digby:

Spongebob holding hands with Big Bird on a video about tolerance is shocking homosexual brainwashing. Exchanging lewd e-mails with Republican congressman is good clean fun.

That's an allegedly professional child psychologist and religious leader there, adopting Drudge's GOP approved talking point that this whole sordid affair is nothing more than an elaborate joke perpetrated by the victims. No harm, no foul, no evidence. Let's have some tolerance for powerful Republicans who can't be bothered to stop a drunken congressman from hitting on teenagers. The kids are alright....read on

Values War and Piece

The emails Andrew Sullivan gets fuel my despair about where America is headed. The hatred, the intolerance. Why do Republicans hate gay people so??? And why do they let Rove fan the flames of this hatred which can only incite violence?

"I wonder if you noticed that yesterday all eleven states that considered the question of gay marriage voted to ban it. ALL ELEVEN. I think this sends a very clear message -- true Americans do not like your kind of homosexual deviants in our country, and we will not tolerate your radical pro-gay agenda trying to force our children to adopt your homosexual lifestyle. You should be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that we even let you write a very public and influential blog, instead of suppressing your treasonous views (as I would prefer). But I'm sure someone like yourself would consider me just an "extremist" that you don't need to worry about. Well you are wrong -- I'm not just an extremist, I am a real American, and you should be worried because eleven states yesterday proved that there are millions more just like me who will not let you impose your radical agenda on our country."

What happened to decency in America? What happened to the religious values of tolerance and respect for human life? Treating others as one wishes to be treated?