What can you say about a country that earlier this week had a grand total of $217 in its national bank? You can say that it's poor. You can say that its government is a kleptocracy. You can say that it must be in Africa. All those things are true of Comrade Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, last on the list of members of the Disunited Nations, and last on just about every other list you can think of.
Comrade Bob, however, doesn't care about how his country looks in the eyes of the rest of the world. He will go his own way, and the West and the rest be damned. And many of his subjects agree with him.
One thing "Bob's-your-uncle" is adamant about is the immorality of homosexuality. He goes way beyond the stance of the Roman Catholic Church, of which he is nominally a member. The Church calls homosexuality "objectively disordered" but asks that gays be treated with understanding and compassion, and given pastoral help not to change their sexual orientation but to live with it in conformity to God's commandments.
Where that becomes difficult is in matters like same-sex "marriage". The Church, along with every other religion in the world, has always maintained that marriage is a solemn and sanctified bond between a man and a woman. It has been so since Adam and Eve. Until lately, that is.
Now we have the wimmin's libbers and gay activists clamouring for "equal rights", by which they mean licence to do whatever they damn well please, no matter what God or mere mortals may think, and no matter what damage is done to the fabric of society. Christianity is now so weak, and the LGBT agenda -- see WWW passim -- is being pushed so hard and so successfully that same-sex "marriage" is now legal in large parts of the so-called Christian world. (A better term would be "post-Christian West".)
The rest of the world -- Asia, the Middle East and Africa -- is different, and intends to remain so. You don't see people agitating for same-sex "marriage" in China or Japan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Uganda or... wait for it... Zimbabwe.
In fact, Zimbabwe proposes to make same-sex "marriage" illegal! Its leaders -- not just Bob but leaders of the opposition -- have approved the draft of a new constitution, to be tabled in the Zimbabwean Parliament on February 8th.
According to an article in NewsDay, Section 4.78 of the draft, on marriage rights, prohibits forced marriages, marriages of people under the age of 18 and between people of the same sex.
One of the co-chairthingies of the drafting committee called the clause a clear statement that Zimbabwe does not condone homosexuality. Said Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana, "This is the first time we have this clause in our constitution.... There will be other legal instruments to enforce it, such as the Sexual Offences Act. It's clear sexual relationships between people of the same sex are prohibited."
Mugabe has long been a fierce critic of homosexuality. He has often criticised it as unAfrican and branded gays and lesbians as "worse than pigs and dogs". He has also said, as the Church says, that same-sex relationships are ungodly -- not according to God's law or natural law.
Douglas Mwonzora, the other co-chair, said homosexuality was a criminal offence in Zimbabwe, as it is in many other Asian and African countries. "The constitution cannot prescribe a crime, but the issue of homosexuality can be covered under the criminal law of sodomy," Mwonzora said. "Same-sex marriages are prohibited and homosexuality is a crime under the country's criminal laws."
What should Western "gay rights" campaigners and same-sex "marriage" advocates make of third-world opposition to their agenda? Are the countries where marriage is still just for men and women backward and uncivilized?
Once upon a time the Christian nations sent missionaries to places like Zimbabwe to preach the gospel which says that homosexual acts are evil. (See St. Paul's epistle to the Romans.) Should we now send missionaries to say that those who came a century ago were wrong, and that what was once regarded as evil is now to be not just tolerated but encouraged? Don't be surprised...
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Archbishop besieged at home for opposing LGBT agenda
The demonstration was organized by a queer crypto-Fascist group known as ArciGay. They accuse the prelate of being a homophobe -- afraid of homosexuals -- and, sure enough, racist too.
Archbishop Crepaldi said that the protest was organized against him because of “the false and very grave accusation of being intolerant and racist.” He said that gay-rights activists are determined to gain approval for same-sex marriage, and toward that end will accuse all opponents of “homophobia.”
Their agenda is clear enough. In Italy as in North America the goal of the LGBT gang is to get “homophobia” defined as a crime -- some sort of "hate crime -- under which Christians (and non-Christians too) "who say publicly -- as the Catholic Church has always done -- that the real family is only that founded on marriage between a man and a woman" would be subject to prosecution under not just "human rights" legislation, but the criminal law as well.
Will they win? In Italy as in North America, politicians courting the gay lobby and its bloc of voters are running to get on the rainbow-striped bandwagon. Until now, Italian media outlets have ignored the incident, and some city officials in Trieste actually showed their support for the clearly illegal demonstration.
Two members of the local city council reportedly joined in placing the archbishop under virtual house arrest. In Italy. Can you imagine? Is there nowhere in the so-called Christian West where people, even clerics, can stand up for Christian values without fear of demonization and persecution? Queers rule, boys and girls... queers rule.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
A glimmer of common sense at Google
Ed. here. Earlier this month we were complaining that the powers that be at Google were trying to force those of us still stuck with Blogger's new "improved" user interface to upload our pix to Picasa in order to be able to drop them into our posts. Maybe I'm just technologically inept -- yah, maybe! -- or maybe I just had a brain fart that day, but the "insert image" menu no longer included a way to upload an image from Walt's PC. Whatever the problem was, it seems to have been fixed, as today we are once again able to upload our own pix directly to Blogger. A good thing too, because one of these days we might get a new pic of the Swazi girls, and we want to be sure all you gentlemen out there can see it.
To what do we owe the restoration of this image insertion capability? Could it be that other bloggers complained to Google? Did they actually pay attention to the feedback which they never acknowledge? If so, dare we hope that we might one day see them revert to the old, unimproved GUI? That would be sooo good.
Meanwhile, whatever happened, Walt and I express our gratitude for small mercies. It's not every day that software engineers exhibit the common sense of making something simpler rather than more complex.
Canucks choose world's first lezzie governor
Agent 3 has recovered from a dreadful hangover -- the kind where your hair hurts, your teeth itch and your mouth tastes like the Chinese army has run through it with muddy feet. So he writes from Toronto, where he was driven to drink (he claims) by the selection of one of these two lovely ladies (?) as the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.
The Liberals have the largest number of seats in the Ontario Legislature. Under the Canadian parliamentary system of government, the leader of the party with the largest number of seats becomes the premier -- the head of the provincial government, akin to being a state governor in the USA. So that makes Kathleen Wynne -- the less butch-looking of the two -- the new premier. She is Ontario's first female premier, and the first openly gay woman to head any government in any state or province or any country anywhere! Isn't that great?
Agent 3 doesn't think so. What's the problem with that, one might ask. Sexual orientation (or whatever the PC term is today) shouldn't be an issue in this day and age. Right? Well, that depends. Sexual orientation is a bit like religion. What works for me may not necessarily work for you, and if I try to force my beliefs and practices on you, you have every right (it seems to me) to tell me to go to my own chosen hell.
And that's the problem with Kathleen Wynne. It's not that she's a proud lesbian. It's that she wants to force the gay agenda down the throats of everyone else in the province which she now governs. [You used that metaphor a couple of days ago. Ed.]
Let it not be forgotten that Kathleen Wynne was Ontario's Minister of Education in the government of her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty. It was she who drove the attempt to revise Ontario's curriculum for sex education so that children as young as 6 or 7 -- first graders -- would be taught that it's OK to be gay, OK to have two female parents or two male parents, and so on ad nauseam.
Public reaction to the new curriculum was so negative that the government was forced to withdraw the proposal "for further study". And the lovely Ms Wynne was quietly but quickly moved to another portfolio where she would do less damage to the Liberals' chances of re-election. Now that she's in the driver's seat, how long will it take before a new Minister of Education (Laurel Broten will be made to walk the plank for the recent teachers strike) reintroduces the LGBT-friendly curriculum?
Walt predicts lots of queer things in Ontario's future. Lifetime pct .991.
Friday, January 25, 2013
How long will we stay in Afrighanistan?
So it has begun. The French have invaded Mali, the Americans are supporting them (kind of) and the Canadians are helping (a bit). Here's a roundup of facts and opinions as of this morning.
First, the Canadians. As reported in WWW a few days ago, the Canucks generously sent one (1) C-17 Globemaster to do a bit of the heavy lifting, literally. They committed the jumbo transport for one (1) week, which was to have ended Wednesday. (Canadians take loooong weekends.)
The usual gang of "progressive thinkers", led by ex-diplomat and former al-Qaeda hostage Robert Fowler, suggested that a week wasn't enough time to flatten even a bunch of sand naggers.
Canadian PM Steve Harper and his bumboys, Nancy Baird and Peter Machackey, are always ready for a scrap, as long as it's in defence of Israel. But defending the government of Mali is something else. Or at least it was until French President François Hollande cried "Shame, shame, al-Qaeda knows your name."
That moved Mr. Harpoon to extend the mission, not by sending another plane but by saying the C-17 would stay another three weeks. French applause was reportedly muted.
We turn now to today's opinion piece by Walt's old chum, Gwynne Dyer. Mr. Dyer know a lot about international politics, and has the courage to write the truth as he sees it, even when it goes against conventional wisdom and the party line. His peace-mongering political incorrectness has gotten him banned from a slew of papers in America and, err, Israel, but Google his name and you'll find lots of links to his columns.
Today, Mr. Dyer suggests the "Mali war could end up like [the] Afghan conflict" . Indeed.
Mr. Dyer tells us that the French prefer to draw analogies with Libya, rather than Afghanistan, since Libya was something of a success. The term is relative. What about the Benghazi "incident", still being downplayed by Hellery Clinton? And what about the British, just this week, ordering their nationals to leave Libya because of a "real and imminent" threat? But I digress...
The journalist points out the serious dissimilarities between Libya and Mali. First, in Libya, the French and British and their less-than-willing allies were supporting the rebels. In Mali, they are propping up a military government which came to power in a coup just last year. That government, composed as it is of black people from the southern part of the country, is like most other sub-Saharan African governments -- ignorant, incompetent and corrupt.
Moreover, the rebels -- mostly Tuaregs and other quasi-Arabic people from the north -- are, if not better organized than the Libyan rebels, certainly better armed. That's because a large chunk of the military aid sent to the Libyan rebels by stupid Westerners mysteriously vanished into the sands of the Sahara, only to reappear this winter in Mali.They're fighting us with our own weapons!
To make matters worse -- if that's possible -- the presence of Mali's army at the front is usually counter-productive (Dyer writes) as it is brutal, militarily incompetent, and prone to panic flight. The other African armies are of variable quality, but it is obviously French troops, and especially French air power, that will decide the outcome of the war.
What we have, then, is a Western-run war in a Muslim country, pretty much the same as what we had in Iraq and still have in Afghanistan.
And who is responsible for the sad state of the so-called Malian army? Step forward, the United States of America! It's not just Gwynne Dyer or Walt who says so. The BBC quotes the US military commander in Africa, General Carter Ham -- previously mentioned in WWW in connection with the Libyan affair -- as saying the Pentagon made mistakes in its training of Malian troops now trying to oust Islamists from the north.
Gen. Ham said American "trainers" had failed to teach Malian troops values and ethics, and had failed to inculcate "a military ethos". "We gave them plenty of tactical training," said the general, "but not enough ethics training."
The general was responding to reports of "abuses" -- meaning rape and pillage -- by Mali government troops taking part in the French-led counter-offensive. Murder too. Human rights groups have accused Malian troops of killing Arabs and ethnic Tuaregs as they advance north.
The reports have caused alarm and no little embarrassment in the West, not to mention the reluctance of Canada and other NATO countries to not involve themselves further in what is -- or should be -- another nasty and dirty little African affair. I haven't heard Ron Paul say "I told you so" yet, but well he might.
First, the Canadians. As reported in WWW a few days ago, the Canucks generously sent one (1) C-17 Globemaster to do a bit of the heavy lifting, literally. They committed the jumbo transport for one (1) week, which was to have ended Wednesday. (Canadians take loooong weekends.)
The usual gang of "progressive thinkers", led by ex-diplomat and former al-Qaeda hostage Robert Fowler, suggested that a week wasn't enough time to flatten even a bunch of sand naggers.
Canadian PM Steve Harper and his bumboys, Nancy Baird and Peter Machackey, are always ready for a scrap, as long as it's in defence of Israel. But defending the government of Mali is something else. Or at least it was until French President François Hollande cried "Shame, shame, al-Qaeda knows your name."
That moved Mr. Harpoon to extend the mission, not by sending another plane but by saying the C-17 would stay another three weeks. French applause was reportedly muted.
We turn now to today's opinion piece by Walt's old chum, Gwynne Dyer. Mr. Dyer know a lot about international politics, and has the courage to write the truth as he sees it, even when it goes against conventional wisdom and the party line. His peace-mongering political incorrectness has gotten him banned from a slew of papers in America and, err, Israel, but Google his name and you'll find lots of links to his columns.
Today, Mr. Dyer suggests the "Mali war could end up like [the] Afghan conflict" . Indeed.
Mr. Dyer tells us that the French prefer to draw analogies with Libya, rather than Afghanistan, since Libya was something of a success. The term is relative. What about the Benghazi "incident", still being downplayed by Hellery Clinton? And what about the British, just this week, ordering their nationals to leave Libya because of a "real and imminent" threat? But I digress...
The journalist points out the serious dissimilarities between Libya and Mali. First, in Libya, the French and British and their less-than-willing allies were supporting the rebels. In Mali, they are propping up a military government which came to power in a coup just last year. That government, composed as it is of black people from the southern part of the country, is like most other sub-Saharan African governments -- ignorant, incompetent and corrupt.
Moreover, the rebels -- mostly Tuaregs and other quasi-Arabic people from the north -- are, if not better organized than the Libyan rebels, certainly better armed. That's because a large chunk of the military aid sent to the Libyan rebels by stupid Westerners mysteriously vanished into the sands of the Sahara, only to reappear this winter in Mali.They're fighting us with our own weapons!
To make matters worse -- if that's possible -- the presence of Mali's army at the front is usually counter-productive (Dyer writes) as it is brutal, militarily incompetent, and prone to panic flight. The other African armies are of variable quality, but it is obviously French troops, and especially French air power, that will decide the outcome of the war.
What we have, then, is a Western-run war in a Muslim country, pretty much the same as what we had in Iraq and still have in Afghanistan.
And who is responsible for the sad state of the so-called Malian army? Step forward, the United States of America! It's not just Gwynne Dyer or Walt who says so. The BBC quotes the US military commander in Africa, General Carter Ham -- previously mentioned in WWW in connection with the Libyan affair -- as saying the Pentagon made mistakes in its training of Malian troops now trying to oust Islamists from the north.
Gen. Ham said American "trainers" had failed to teach Malian troops values and ethics, and had failed to inculcate "a military ethos". "We gave them plenty of tactical training," said the general, "but not enough ethics training."
The general was responding to reports of "abuses" -- meaning rape and pillage -- by Mali government troops taking part in the French-led counter-offensive. Murder too. Human rights groups have accused Malian troops of killing Arabs and ethnic Tuaregs as they advance north.
The reports have caused alarm and no little embarrassment in the West, not to mention the reluctance of Canada and other NATO countries to not involve themselves further in what is -- or should be -- another nasty and dirty little African affair. I haven't heard Ron Paul say "I told you so" yet, but well he might.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Free speech only for LGBT activists? Only in Canada, you say?
Walt just finished reading -- and recommends highly -- Egg On Mao, by Canadian author Denise Chong. (Random House Canada, 2009) It's a highly readable account of the life (so far) of Lu Decheng, a young man who threw a clutch of ink-filled eggs at the iconic portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square. This was in May 1989, just before the massacre of student protesters which even today may not be spoken of in China except in the most oblique terms.
We'll come to the risks of speaking truth to power in a moment. But first I want to recommend Egg On Mao as not just a polemic, but a great love story. Sometimes it reads like a novel -- very personal, very emotive -- but every word is true, as the author's notes confirm. Does the tale of brutality and repression have a happy ending? Well, first you must define "happy". Then you can read the book and find out.
Lu Decheng was not directly involved in creating the famous Free Speech Wall in Beijing just prior to the massacre, but, as Egg On Mao recounts, he and his companions plastered their own anti-dictatorship posters near the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Lu Decheng clearly approves of giving protesters space to express themselves.
So does Ian CoKehyeng, founder of Carleton Students for Liberty, a student activist group at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. (Denise Chong also lives in the world's second-coldest capital city, by the way.) Mr. CoKehyeng and his supporters thought it would be a good idea to set up a Free Speech Wall on the Carleton campus, to prove that free speech was alive and well, in spite of CU's tendency to ban speech it considers to be politically incorrect.
"What we wanted to promote was competition of ideas, rather than 'if I disagree with you I've got to censor you,'" the creators of the wall explained. So they installed a rather small and flimsy wall -- really just a wooden plank wrapped in paper -- in one of school's high-traffic areas, complete with a couple of magic markers with which people could write whatever they felt like.
That was on Monday. Not 24 hours later, the wall was gone, destroyed in an act of "forceful resistance," by one Arun Smith, a "human rights student" now in his seventh (7th!) year of studying and promoting "human rights" [like free speech? Ed.] at good ole CU.
Why did Smith do it? Because, he told reporters, the wall was an "act of violence against... [wait for it. Ed.]... the gay community." Mr. Smith is, you see, an "anti-homophobia" campaigner, or so he describes himself on Facebook.
Free speech is fine for him and all the others pushing the LGBT agenda -- see WWW earlier this week -- but not for people with contrary opinions. His twisted logic goes like this: "In organizing the 'free speech wall,' the Students for Liberty have forgotten that liberty requires liberation, and this liberation is prevented by providing space…for the expression of hate."
Yesterday CBC Radio -- always in the front lines of the war against "haters" -- asked Smith if he could explain himself a little more clearly. The answer was that the area around the Free Speech Wall was a "war zone", because the wall itself was nothing "but another in a series of acts of violence" against gays and gay rights.
He went on to call free speech an "illusory concept" and declared that "not every opinion is valid, nor deserving of expression." It's only his queer ideas that are "valid and deserving of expression", see?
Mr. CoKehyeng begs to differ. "Free speech is a friend of minorities, it shouldn't be people who feel marginalized in society who are trampling on free speech," he said. "Free speech is something you can't monopolize for yourself, you have to give it to everyone else." Indeed.
Commenting in the National Post on the ironies of this story, Jonathan Kay remembers seeing a Free Speech Wall last September at Bard College, in a private liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. (That's near Red Hook. You're welcome.)
Like its made-of-straw Carleton University equivalent [Mr. Kay writes], the Bard free-speech installation was 99% chalk-full of left-wing cant. But there were some heterodox opinions as well. And the best part was that it was a veritable brick-house of indestructibility: It's made of slate and steel. Should any "activist" want to destroy the thing because he didn't like what someone said about gay marriage or whatever, he would have to borrow his parents' car and then plow into it at ramming speed.
Why did the students of Bard build such a solid wall? Very simple. In the USA, unlike Canada, the freedom to express one's opinions is guaranteed by the Constitution, in the First Amendment. And Americans tend to take it seriously...at least at Bard College.
Lesson for Canuck free-speechers? Learn from the three little pigs. Use brick next time!
Comment on the CBC: Having been answerable to a Liberal government for decades, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation seems unable to adjust to having (nominal) Conservatives in power in Ottawa. They continue to give more-than-equal time to left-wingnuts like Arun Smith, and their propagandists ["reporters", surely! Ed.] listen respectfully to the veriest bullshit without batting an eyelash or cracking a smile. I don't know how they do it!
Footnote to book review: Denise Chong also wrote a moving account of what became of "the girl in the Vietnam photo". You remember the iconic [Stop overusing that word! Ed.] picture of the girl running down the road naked and on fire, having been doused with napalm made in Canada and dropped by Americans. Anyway, the book is called (appropriately enough) The Girl in the Picture.
We'll come to the risks of speaking truth to power in a moment. But first I want to recommend Egg On Mao as not just a polemic, but a great love story. Sometimes it reads like a novel -- very personal, very emotive -- but every word is true, as the author's notes confirm. Does the tale of brutality and repression have a happy ending? Well, first you must define "happy". Then you can read the book and find out.
Lu Decheng was not directly involved in creating the famous Free Speech Wall in Beijing just prior to the massacre, but, as Egg On Mao recounts, he and his companions plastered their own anti-dictatorship posters near the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Lu Decheng clearly approves of giving protesters space to express themselves.
So does Ian CoKehyeng, founder of Carleton Students for Liberty, a student activist group at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. (Denise Chong also lives in the world's second-coldest capital city, by the way.) Mr. CoKehyeng and his supporters thought it would be a good idea to set up a Free Speech Wall on the Carleton campus, to prove that free speech was alive and well, in spite of CU's tendency to ban speech it considers to be politically incorrect.
"What we wanted to promote was competition of ideas, rather than 'if I disagree with you I've got to censor you,'" the creators of the wall explained. So they installed a rather small and flimsy wall -- really just a wooden plank wrapped in paper -- in one of school's high-traffic areas, complete with a couple of magic markers with which people could write whatever they felt like.
That was on Monday. Not 24 hours later, the wall was gone, destroyed in an act of "forceful resistance," by one Arun Smith, a "human rights student" now in his seventh (7th!) year of studying and promoting "human rights" [like free speech? Ed.] at good ole CU.
Why did Smith do it? Because, he told reporters, the wall was an "act of violence against... [wait for it. Ed.]... the gay community." Mr. Smith is, you see, an "anti-homophobia" campaigner, or so he describes himself on Facebook.
Free speech is fine for him and all the others pushing the LGBT agenda -- see WWW earlier this week -- but not for people with contrary opinions. His twisted logic goes like this: "In organizing the 'free speech wall,' the Students for Liberty have forgotten that liberty requires liberation, and this liberation is prevented by providing space…for the expression of hate."
Yesterday CBC Radio -- always in the front lines of the war against "haters" -- asked Smith if he could explain himself a little more clearly. The answer was that the area around the Free Speech Wall was a "war zone", because the wall itself was nothing "but another in a series of acts of violence" against gays and gay rights.
He went on to call free speech an "illusory concept" and declared that "not every opinion is valid, nor deserving of expression." It's only his queer ideas that are "valid and deserving of expression", see?
Mr. CoKehyeng begs to differ. "Free speech is a friend of minorities, it shouldn't be people who feel marginalized in society who are trampling on free speech," he said. "Free speech is something you can't monopolize for yourself, you have to give it to everyone else." Indeed.
Commenting in the National Post on the ironies of this story, Jonathan Kay remembers seeing a Free Speech Wall last September at Bard College, in a private liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. (That's near Red Hook. You're welcome.)
Like its made-of-straw Carleton University equivalent [Mr. Kay writes], the Bard free-speech installation was 99% chalk-full of left-wing cant. But there were some heterodox opinions as well. And the best part was that it was a veritable brick-house of indestructibility: It's made of slate and steel. Should any "activist" want to destroy the thing because he didn't like what someone said about gay marriage or whatever, he would have to borrow his parents' car and then plow into it at ramming speed.
Why did the students of Bard build such a solid wall? Very simple. In the USA, unlike Canada, the freedom to express one's opinions is guaranteed by the Constitution, in the First Amendment. And Americans tend to take it seriously...at least at Bard College.
Lesson for Canuck free-speechers? Learn from the three little pigs. Use brick next time!
Comment on the CBC: Having been answerable to a Liberal government for decades, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation seems unable to adjust to having (nominal) Conservatives in power in Ottawa. They continue to give more-than-equal time to left-wingnuts like Arun Smith, and their propagandists ["reporters", surely! Ed.] listen respectfully to the veriest bullshit without batting an eyelash or cracking a smile. I don't know how they do it!
Footnote to book review: Denise Chong also wrote a moving account of what became of "the girl in the Vietnam photo". You remember the iconic [Stop overusing that word! Ed.] picture of the girl running down the road naked and on fire, having been doused with napalm made in Canada and dropped by Americans. Anyway, the book is called (appropriately enough) The Girl in the Picture.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Think Walt's kidding about queer propaganda? Look here!
It has been suggested to me that, contrary to my assertion earlier today, there is no giant conspiracy to push the LGBT agenda, to make us think being homosexual is normal and acceptable and we straight people are the old-fashioned, out-of-step, homophobic fuddy-duddies.
I stand by what I wrote. [And I stand beside Walt! Ed.] And as luck would have it, we have some proof from, of all places, Las Vegas. Check this out!
Yes, folks, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority wants you to know that in Sin City "Everyone's welcome, even straight people." Yessiree Bob! The city of all night gambling binges, group weddings, and free booze has plenty of other activities for you even if you don't enjoy fudge-packing and sushi-eating.
The LVCVA's latest flight of ads feature modelesque same-sex couples in fabulously fashionably outfits cavorting by pools and in swanky restaurants, while dowdy straight couples in polo shirts and sneakers happily observe the glamourous LGBT throngs in thongs. [The straights look kind of like Mr. and Mrs.Walt, don't they. Ed.]
In one image, a lot of buff men in very small bathing suits [but no moustaches? Ed.] splash water on one another and laugh while sipping cocktails, or possibly Shirley Temples. Observing the handsome scene with a look of wonder is a frumpy straight couple in awful tourist gear complete with Tilly hats. They're holding a camcorder, of course.
Another ad features a similar pool party, only this time it's sexy lesbians that are filling every corner of the page with their taut bikini-clad bodies. Again, a very square and very unfashionable straight couple looks on. The husband is wearing baggy khakis...with runners!
Now then, about the propaganda. The creators of the ads -- Las Vegas agency R&R Partners -- admit, "LGBT advertising is nothing new." For decades, the madmen explain, brands have told us they're "gay-friendly", and shown same-sex couples. All that's new here, they add, is asking people "to imagine a world where we have to remind the heteros that Las Vegas still belongs to them, too…so long as they're willing to share." Exactly Walt's point.
I stand by what I wrote. [And I stand beside Walt! Ed.] And as luck would have it, we have some proof from, of all places, Las Vegas. Check this out!
Yes, folks, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority wants you to know that in Sin City "Everyone's welcome, even straight people." Yessiree Bob! The city of all night gambling binges, group weddings, and free booze has plenty of other activities for you even if you don't enjoy fudge-packing and sushi-eating.
The LVCVA's latest flight of ads feature modelesque same-sex couples in fabulously fashionably outfits cavorting by pools and in swanky restaurants, while dowdy straight couples in polo shirts and sneakers happily observe the glamourous LGBT throngs in thongs. [The straights look kind of like Mr. and Mrs.Walt, don't they. Ed.]
In one image, a lot of buff men in very small bathing suits [but no moustaches? Ed.] splash water on one another and laugh while sipping cocktails, or possibly Shirley Temples. Observing the handsome scene with a look of wonder is a frumpy straight couple in awful tourist gear complete with Tilly hats. They're holding a camcorder, of course.
Another ad features a similar pool party, only this time it's sexy lesbians that are filling every corner of the page with their taut bikini-clad bodies. Again, a very square and very unfashionable straight couple looks on. The husband is wearing baggy khakis...with runners!
Now then, about the propaganda. The creators of the ads -- Las Vegas agency R&R Partners -- admit, "LGBT advertising is nothing new." For decades, the madmen explain, brands have told us they're "gay-friendly", and shown same-sex couples. All that's new here, they add, is asking people "to imagine a world where we have to remind the heteros that Las Vegas still belongs to them, too…so long as they're willing to share." Exactly Walt's point.
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