02/08/2006
REPORT: New claims of HIV/AIDS virus cure. Scientist: "We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
Jacob Robida shot himself during Arkansas shoot-out, police now say. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is saying that a "climate of hate" created by the Christian right wing's obsession with homosexuality is at the root of Robida's actions. (Background...)
Man who stabbed three marchers in Jerusalem pride parade last summer is sent to prison for 12 years after being convicted of attempted murder: "Ishai Schlussel told police he was on a mission from God to stop what he described as the abomination of homosexuals and lesbians marching through the holy city."
Gay vigilante posters in Northern Ireland calling for action against perpetrators in a series of recent attacks raise fears of inciting additional violence: Poster: "This is war - Homos get off your arses and fight back now, this is your life."
Posted 9:13 AM EST by Andy Towle in Elsewhere | Permalink
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Given this wrinkle to the Northern Irish 'Troubles' - which have been gruesomely going on since way before I was a kid - I wonder, not so much about ethnicities, but about places. Are there masses of land that, for reasons possibly arcane now and maybe explicable by science in days to come, are intrinsically hateful? Is it conceivable that the hundreds of years of Brit burning/torture/oppression, happily carried on even under the rule of my otherwise revered Elizabeth I, has sunk so deeply into the soil that an essence of evil has permeated the land itself?
Don't mean to wax all metaphysical. But this shit over there rivals the MidEast in perpetual horror.
Posted by: Jacko | Feb 8, 2006 10:44:14 AM
Re: Jacob Robida. What a coward. I hope he has fun burning in hell.
Posted by: Tread | Feb 8, 2006 11:23:26 AM
How in the sam hell is the NGLTF blaming Robida on the "religious right?" Go back and read this nutcase's MySpace profile. Scroll down to the vital statistics area. Read what he list's as his religion:
A-T-H-E-I-S-T
That's right, athiest. There is no way the RR logically can be tagged on this one, no way. A complete impossibility given the facts on hand.
If the NGLTF wants to score political points off this tragedy and trash some religious interest group, What they need to be doing is launching a campaign "against the climate of hate and amorality caused by rampant secular humanism and godless ATHEISM in this country."
Posted by: Cato | Feb 8, 2006 11:30:40 AM
Can we at least hearing some cheers for the Israeli judicial system that seems to have a keener sense of justice? The news has this Jewboy kvelling! :)
Posted by: samguy | Feb 8, 2006 11:52:55 AM
Cato, that's bullshit and you know it. The NGLTF may be going out on a limb to say the Religious Reich had something to do with it, but in a real sense, they march in lockstop with the Neo-Nazis and KKK when it comes to their treatment of gays. This perpetual sense of hate and loathing is caused by these "interest groups", as you so lightly put it.
As for your claim that humanism and atheism is the cause of Robida's sickness, that's laughable to the extreme. Religion is one of the world's foremost problems. If less people solidly believed in these adult fairy tales, the world would have fewer problems. As for humanism being a problem... My secular humanist belief tells me you're a whiny ass troll.
Posted by: Tread | Feb 8, 2006 12:15:45 PM
Love Towleroad. I just strap on an army helmet now, when I drop by....
Posted by: Jacko | Feb 8, 2006 12:21:59 PM
Let's hope the gays in Ireland have more balls then those in America. Gays in America would rather 'talk about it' and do nothing. Last week my call to 'take the fight to them' met with tepid response. Good luck Ireland! My prayers are with you. I say kick their asses!!!
Posted by: Matthew Schooler | Feb 8, 2006 12:52:04 PM
"...going out on a limb..."?!?!? When the NGLTF tries to tell the world a self-professed atheist got his motivation to kill from religion, the NGLTF looks like a horse's ass. It is not good PR for an organization that purports to represent us to be making such patently idiotic statements.
They may march in lock step as you say but that in no way calls for making a cause and effect link between the RR and the atheistically inspired Robida. Which is what the NGLTF stupidly did.
Posted by: Cato | Feb 8, 2006 12:57:01 PM
BTW Robida's original profile has been taken down, and someone has stepped in and has replaced it with some political statement of some sort. HOWEVER the original profile is still available using Google cache and here is a cut and paste copy of his "Details" section; note the "Religion: Atheist." Read it and weep, atheists, read it and weep!
Jake Jekyll's Details
Status: Single
Here for: Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends, Networking
Orientation: Straight
Hometown: NEW B
Body Type: Average
Ethnicity: White / Caucasian
Religion: Atheist
Sign: Gemini
Smoke / Drink: Yes / Yes
Children: Undecided
Education: High school
Occupation: middleman
Posted by: Cato | Feb 8, 2006 2:36:32 PM
If you think atheism had something to do with his actions, you're incorrect.
Robida was a sick kid, plain and simple. Unfortunately, we'll never know what caused him to go on his spree, because he was a coward who feared life and the world.
Posted by: Tread | Feb 8, 2006 4:58:37 PM
Re the NGLTF's assertion that a climate of fear created by the Christian right wing's obsession with homosexuality is at the root of Robida's behavior: Robida's atheism or lack thereof is irrelevant to a discussion of homophobia vis-a-vis Robida's actions. Not all religious people are homophobic or non-homophobic, and not all atheists are homophobic or non-homophobic. What a 1999 University of Georgia study DID demonstrate is that homophobes are really latent homosexuals (or, at least, afraid of their own homosexual inclinations). A number of studies have replicated this study's results. Every time a-holes like Robertson, Falwell, Phelps, Dobson, etc., etc., etc. open their mouths, I just want to shout: "Keep talkin'! The more you open your stupid-ass ignorant pie-hole, the more I know you want someone to stick a dick in it!" These morons' lack of insight and self-awareness, and their constant incitement of hatred towards queer people, DOES contribute to the suffering and murder of our gay brothers and sisters, as would the same propagation of societal homophobia if it came from atheists. It's not about monotheism, polytheism, or atheism, it's about people being afraid of their own natural drives, and people believing the bs that has been handed down from so-called "religious" individuals who twist the words of the very prophets they claim to revere.
Posted by: JOE 2 | Feb 9, 2006 2:51:33 AM
Yes, but if you are a self-proclaimed atheist, then you have conditioned yourself against any such societal propagation from the mouths of religious people, whose views you utterly reject.
Any homophobia an atheist might harbor has to come from a non-religious source.
And in any case I'm not even sure homophobia (latent-gay or otherwise) was the root cause here. It seems to me the primary motivation was that he wanted an attention-grabbing "suicide by cop" which he did indeed achieve, in a way.
You know, there is an eerie simularity between Robida and Andrew Cunanan...initial gay murder, escape by car, national cross country manhunt, cornered by police..and then suicide right before capture. Was Robida a Cunanan copycat? Facts point to yes.
And crime copycats are motivated by one thing: glory.
And why did he want to kill himself in a Cunanan-like blaze of glory? Again, his web site supplies all the needed clues. If you read the comments left by his equally sicko atheist goth friends, it seems they were all part of the same atheist sub-culture of death worship. Most of the post-death comments left by his atheist friends were congratulatory! I kid you not. Go to the Google cache site if you don't beleive me!
I beleive the root cause of this tragedy was radical atheism. HOWEVER as Tread correctly points out we will never know FOR SURE what caused this; my belief is speculation. However, it is well-founded speculation which fits the facts we know...unlike the speculation of the NGLTF pinhead which does not fit the facts at hand, not one tiny bit, and which seems to have been disingenously crafted to advance a political agenda.
Posted by: Cato | Feb 9, 2006 11:36:17 AM
But he was hospitalized with two bullets to the head. So now he shot himself? I don't see why they're bothering to lie about it - he killed a cop, they were justified in shooting him.
Posted by: anissa | Feb 10, 2006 1:17:21 AM