G&M Shuts Down the Haters

Jane Taber ran a piece on the Globe & Mail website this afternoon about Scott Brison's Christmas card, which has a lovely picture of him with his husband and their dog:



Right below it you will find the following:

Comments have been disabled
Editor's Note: Comments have been closed due to an overwhelming number of hateful and homophobic remarks. We appreciate that readers want to discuss this issue, but we can't allow our site to become a platform for intolerance.

First, kudos to the Globe & Mail for not just shutting down the comments but for saying in no uncertain terms why they did it.

Second, this is an extreme example of something I've been noticing over the past six months or so: commenters on news sites are lunatics who simply cannot be reasoned with.

There used to be some semblance of rational discourse and debate on these things, similar to what you usually find on the 'real' blogs. But now the voices of reason have been completely drowned out by the haters, the fanatics, and the most intransigent of partisans all trying to shout each other down.

I used to think that posting the occasional sane comment on news sites somehow helped to balance the debate and maybe win some hearts and minds. But now I understand that doing so only encourages the bedlam, and I refuse to participate any more.

Consider this my early New Year's Resolution: I will no longer post comments to any newspaper or television news website.*

Let them have it.

*just for clarification, I am not including Maclean's in this boycott - at least not yet. It's a magazine, they have real bloggers over there, and the discourse hasn't quite descended to the 'pissing in the wind' level yet

"Silencing the Christians" Infomercial Draws Fire

I was stunned on Saturday when I channel surfed over to the Buffalo NBC affiliate after the news and saw what appeared to be a current affairs program about The Secret Gay Agenda to Recruit Our Children and Criminalize Christianity.

No. Really.

I checked the TV guide and it turned out that this filth was, in fact, 'paid programming'. That's right - an infomercial disguised as a television special entitled "Speechless: Silencing the Christians" - airing the day before the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

If you must, you can watch the whole thing on their website, but let me save you the nausea. Not only do they promote the usual hate-filled, homophobic, 'gay agenda' screed, but they go a step further - blaming Pride events and gay rights demonstrations for incidents of violence against Christians.

(UPDATE: Yeah, 'cause that happens all the time.)

I'd tell you more, but I couldn't get through the whole thing without throwing up. Happily, it seems I wasn't the only one repulsed by this crap:

'Silencing Christians' paid program draws protest calls, e-mails

TAMPA - A flood of telephone calls and e-mails cascaded into WFLA News Channel 8 on Saturday afternoon and night over the airing of "Silencing Christians," a religious paid program that some say contained open hate speech against gays and lesbians.

Before the hourlong program ended at 8 p.m., the station had logged hundreds of telephone calls and more than 1,000 e-mails, all protesting the broadcast.

Stratton Pollitzer, deputy director of Equality Florida, has seen the program and said the message was clearly hate speech.

"I think this program is a piece of homophobic propaganda and it has no place on a major network like NBC," he said just after 7 p.m., as the program was airing.

According to the article, other affiliates refused to air it. I`m going to see if I can find out which ones.

"Silencing the Christians" was created by an outfit called the American Family Association, in partnership with the Inspiration Network (remember Jim Bakker and the PTL Club?). The AFA has a whole host of different projects, from promoting 'Tea Parties' to debunking global warming, but their main focus seems to be selling overpriced DVDs. In addition to the one-hour TV special, you can also buy 'Speechless' as a full set of 14, 22-minute DVDs dealing with everything from the forced reading of the Koran in public schools to the persecution to the persecution of Canadian Christians under our dreaded "hate crimes tribunal" ("America could be next!!").

Suggested donation for this inspirational series: $150.00

Even the faithful are having trouble swallowing that.

UPDATE: Whoops! Time to turn off the anonymous comments again - the nutters have found me. I've already had to delete one from some charming bloke calling me a whore and expressing his desire for someone to shoot me in the face. Niiice.