Facebook Or Hate Book?
Facebook, the six-year old social networking site that helps more than 350 million friends, families, colleagues, and companies keep in touch, is fast becoming the online home to another type of social network: anti-gay hate groups.
Fast-forming, often created by people who post false profiles just to gain the ability to create their hate group, anti-gay hate groups on Facebook are filled with claims of religiosity, or just plain unadulterated ignorance, bigotry, and hate. Facebook management has been criticized for their slow response and poor monitoring of new groups and content, despite the fact that these groups violate Facebook’s “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” its Terms of Service (TOS) which states,
“You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”
and,
“You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.”
And yet, despite many, many attempts to report these groups, they still exist. Facebook, it seems, all but refuses to remove them.
Eighteenth century Parisian writer and philosopher Voltaire is (mistakenly) credited to have said,
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.â€
Those days are long gone. The rest of Western Society has evolved. In 2008, the New York Times ran an article titled, “Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S.”
In O’Reilly, a well-respected tech blog, discussing Facebook’s “Holocaust denial and racist ‘white pride’ groups,” Caitlyn Martin writes,
“The Facebook pages in question do appear to violate the laws of at least 15 nations and the European Union as a whole. Despite clear prohibitions against hate and illegal, misleading or discriminatory activity Facebook continues to allow and indeed defend pages that violate it’s own terms.”
But here in the U.S., surprisingly, “free speech,” codified in our Bill Of Rights as part of the First Amendment to the Constitution, is not especially well-understood. For example, former-Governor Sarah Palin, famous for so many misstatements, exhibited her ignorance during the 2008 presidential campaign, stating,
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
Glenn Greenwald reminded Palin, and us, what our “First Amendment rights” are:
“The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you’re free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don’t like what you’ve said.
“If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.”
But when someone claims they can write or post whatever they want, on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog, they may be unaware that there actually are limits. And those limits can be dictated by the platform or website’s owners, like Facebook. Once an organization adopts service rules, it becomes their responsibility to administer them fairly and evenly and consistently. And Facebook has neglected to do so, despite numerous reports and requests.
In a litigious society such as ours, where libel and slander cases are often merely opportunities for financial gain, it’s amazing Facebook executives, who employ more than one thousand people and had revenue in excess of $300 million in 2008, have been so slow to react.
There are dozens, at least, of active anti-gay hate groups. Some have just a few members, some have a few hundred. Some, thousands.
Some, like “WE DONT WANT TO LEARN ABOUT NO LESBIAN’S OR GAYS AT SCHOOL!!!” offer this as their official description:
“beeing gay is an sickness, the goverment should use time to show them the right path, instead of just accepting it!!
give a lesbian girl some time with an boy,let her get to know him,let her use some time with him,sexually and the same thing with the boy and SEE THE DIFFERENCE!!
beeing gay, is just an confusion that has been created in the mind of the human, because HUMANS are afraid of the unknown!”
That’s verbatim, spelling errors and stupidity unedited.
Then there’s “Death Note,” a group with 575 members. It’s purpose?
“if you want 2 kill s 1 join this group
y3ni if u hate gays ; boyaas or anything like that just come here and write his/her name on the post and with 40 seconds the person will die of a heartattacku can change the time and type of death as you like”
I started to make a list of the anti-gay hate groups, but realized that there were just too many. “HELP US REPORT HOMOPHOBIC HATE GROUPS ON FACEBOOK” has an excellent list, most of which are still active, which means Facebook isn’t doing much, if anything, to shut these groups down, again, despite that these groups violate Facebook’s own TOS.
Here’s a partial list — only a small spattering — of anti-gay hate groups:
I’m against gay marriage, and I will not keep quiet about it!
I Bet I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Are Anti Gay Rights
STOP AIDS!!!!! KILL GAYS AN NIGGERS!!!!!!!!!
GAY ? news flash : we fuckin’ hate you !!
You may choose to dismiss these as tiny, or inconsequential, but I would disagree. Despite their obvious stupidity, inability to gather a large base, or spell, they empower their members to feel comfortable with their hate. And that’s dangerous, because hate breeds more hate. It multiplies, exponentially.
Facebook anti-gay hate groups simply embolden their readers and members to “come out” from any societal suggestions that hate is wrong. Even prominent members of mainstream groups like the GOP, and right-wing bloggers have taken to likening “political correctness” to “a war on Judeo-Christianty” and “Shariah law.” Shorter version: It’s OK to publicly spew your hate.
Because the net effect of their actions breeds acceptability of hatred toward the LGBTQ community, I believe groups like the National Organization for Marriage can be labeled hate groups. I believe working to ban same-sex marriage is a hate crime.
Also dangerous is a group like “Ban Same-Sex Marriage.” I first came upon it and for a split-second wondered if it were fair to include it here. I mean, I spend my days, and nights, working to advance civil rights and marriage equality, so of course a group like, “Ban Same-Sex Marriage” is anathema to my work and my life. But can you call it a “hate group” on the same plane as, for example, “Kill All Gays” if they are (“merely”) advocating banning same-sex marriage? Well, yes, you can.
But the group “Ban Same-Sex Marriage” is even worse. They pretend to be a Christian forum for discussing banning same-sex marriage:
“Well, being a Christian, I believe that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a wife, as described in the Bible. Therefore, same-sex marriage is an affront to the Bible and Godly standing, and therefore should not be allowed to stand.”
Blah, blah, blah, heard it a million times before.
But then, in their rules, they include this:
“This group only refers to the United States. Not the world, not foreign countries, not anywhere else. We as Americans cannot pass foreign laws on other nations and impose our will on them. However, in this nation, we can stop homosexuality right now. All framers of debate should keep this in mind when posting. We may make arguments about homsexuality [sic] as it applies to the world, but as for banning same-sex marriage, we are only talking about the U.S.A.”
Catch that?
“we can stop homosexuality right now.”
Wow.
So, this group, shrouded in the bible, well-written, and well-populated (1786 members as of this writing) wants to “stop homosexuality right now.” Not just “Ban Same-Sex Marriage,” but “stop homosexuality right now.”
What to do?
Well, first, visit all these sites, and the ones on “Get these anti-gay groups off facebook!” and click the link in the bottom left-hand corner that says, “Report Group.”
Second, tell all your friends, your neighbors, your family. Share this post with them. Repost it on Facebook, Twitter, email it, etc.
Third, join the following Facebook groups, and ask your friends and family to also. There is strength in numbers.
Petition to Remove All Anti-Gay Groups
Stop gay hate speech on facebook
Get these anti-gay groups off facebook! (Great site!)
And finally, take solace knowing that over 20,000 have joined the group, “Ban the “GAY EXTERMINATORS” from Facebook.”
EDITORIAL NOTE:
Success! Facebook shut down most of these anti-gay hate groups just hours after this post was published! Read, “Facebook Or Hate Book? Facebook Shuts Down Anti-Gay Hate Groups!“
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President Donald Trump thrilled his supporters in New York on Friday as he shared how he came up with his latest nickname for Democrats — his explanation included a spelling lesson.
“Blue means Dumocrat,” the president said. “That’s a new name I came up with.”
“I was, I was thinking about this character we have in the House. His name is Hakeem Jeffries,” Trump said to boos from the audience.
“And he’s a low IQ person, very low IQ.”
“And I watched what he was saying, and what the horrible things he was saying, and I said, ‘He’s a dumb guy.’ I said, Wait a minute, he’s a Dumocrat. That’s how I got the name,” Trump excitedly said.
“You take the ‘e’ out, you don’t use the ‘b’. A lot of people don’t know ‘dumb’ has a ‘b’ in it, actually. You don’t need it. You discard the ‘b.’
“But you take the ‘e’ out, and you replace it with a ‘u.'”
“They are Dumocrats. You know why? ‘Cause their policies are dumb. Their policies are very dumb. All of their policies.”
Critics mocked the president.
“His uncle taught at MIT, but Trump just recently learned there is a b in dumb,” wrote political strategist Jeff Timmer.
“Dumbo @realDonaldTrump here is the only one who doesn’t know there’s a b in DUMB,” said former GOP Congresswoman Barbara Comstock.
“It’s impossible to overstate how f— — stupid Trump looks on the world stage,” wrote another online commenter.
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s controversial Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is resigning.
“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” DNI Gabbard wrote to President Trump, Fox News reports. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
“During pivotal moments,” NBC News reports, “as Trump deliberated over possible military action or watched live video feeds of operations in Iran or Venezuela, Gabbard was often not in the room, underscoring her outsider status.”
“Gabbard has had a tough tenure being sidelined on Venezuela and Iran. Last month, Trump floated replacing her with Pam Bondi, but some advisers saved her,” reported WIRED’s Hugo Lowell.
President Trump wrote that Gabbard had done an “incredible job,” and “we will miss her,” while Reuters reports that the White House ”forced” Gabbard “to resign from her post, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Dave Brown called Gabbard’s tenure “tumultuous.”
Critics were quick to respond.
“Good riddance. The Iran war has been the biggest display of intelligence incompetence in decades,” wrote U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI).
“Tulsi Gabbard leaves this administration in disgrace after helping Trump drag the country into yet another forever war in the Middle East,” wrote political strategist Mike Nellis. “She built her entire image on opposing these wars, then abandoned that principle the second it became politically inconvenient. That’s her legacy: a complete fraud, completely full of s— — about the one thing people thought she genuinely believed in. Good f— — riddance.”
“Also, is anybody in Congress or the media going to get to the bottom of the whistleblower’s story about Tulsi Gabbard withholding classified intercepted intel for political reasons?” Nellis continued. “What the hell happened there, or are we just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”
“Are we ever going to found out if Tulsi Gabbard broke how many different national security laws by allegedly refusing to hand over investigative documents, or is that just going away now?” asked writer Charlotte Clymer.
Professor and policy analyst Adam Cochran called Gabbard’s resignation “shocking,” and added: “Can’t imagine what they would ask to do that is too out of line for her…”
Associate Professor of Political Science Christopher Clary said Gabbard “will go down as perhaps the most ineffective and incompetent DNI in the short history of that position.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump managed to effectively raise taxes on the majority of Americans through his tax policies, while handing the richest five percent a tax cut. Now, many Americans want to see the rich pay their fair share — and that could mean increasing their taxes.
The former chief economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Professor Zachary Liscow, argues there’s a “slow, boring” yet “easy” way to do so.
“The United States is seeing an increasing concentration of wealth at the very top and a worsening national debt,” Liscow writes in an op-ed at The New York Times. “For many Americans, taxing the rich more is an obvious move.”
He details some of the “novel proposals to curb the many intricate ways the rich make and hide their money,” including a wealth tax, a tax on unrealized gains, and a tax on “loans that billionaires take against their stock.”
But, Liscow warns, while novel, these methods would not raise the substantial amount of money the U.S. needs.
“The boring truth is that Congress can accomplish a lot simply by raising the rates of the taxes already on the books,” Liscow explains.
He examines U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) proposal to tax “fortunes above $50 million,” and says there are “serious constitutional and policy arguments for this idea, but the Supreme Court’s current members would probably strike it down.”
There is a billionaire’s tax proposal by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) that would tax unrealized capital gains, “the appreciation in the paper value of assets such as stocks.” That would likely find a Supreme Court challenge.
There are other tax vehicles, like fixing the “buy, borrow, die” loophole, which would tax loans taken against stock portfolios, but that would likely not raise sufficient funds: “It’s just not where the money is.”
He finds that “the most powerful lever is also the simplest one,” and concludes that “Congress has a simpler, tried-and-true tax policy to choose from: raising the rates.”
Liscow is advocating to restore the “top marginal ordinary income tax rate to its pre-2017 level of 39.6 percent” — where it was before Trump’s first term in office.
“In addition, raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent toward the 35 percent it had been set at historically would add hundreds of billions in revenue for the government,” he says.
“Raising the rates,” Liscow concludes, “the simple, boring answer — is where the real money lies.”
Image: Christopher Penler / Shutterstock.com
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