Drunk On Sour Grapes - The Quotable Mitt Romney

Back in March, Mitt Romney got a little taste of political success in Illinois.  It was a mixed blessing, really, because the politics of Illinois (particularly Chicago) have become a dog whistle to Republican operatives seeking to tarnish Obama's reputation in the blogosphere and social media.  While Obama's familial home-base is Hawaii, Republicans have had more than their share of self-induced political misfortune in the Aloha State, leaving them with only Chicago (and sometimes the Republic of Kenya) to alienate in their propaganda.  For some unexplained reason, however, Romney's big win in the Land of Lincoln was short on dignity and long on misfired bravado.  While Romney isn't known as a "guy you could have a beer with", the Huffington Post/AOL reported that Romney slurred his words and stumbled in laps around his perfectly working teleprompter.

That being said, it is not Mitt Romney's inarticulate moment that I want to call your attention to... I want you to notice what Romney had PLANNED to say... what his entire campaign presumed to be fit for the scrolling screen in front of their candidate.  It's no "gaffe" that I'm sounding the alarms on here - it's what the so-called "Believe in America" troupe actually believes about America.  Ironically, it was the following sentiment that Mitt Romney spoke clearly without stuttering:

"I have had many business successes and failures over the years. Each step of the way, I learned something about what it is that makes our American system so powerful.  You can't learn that by teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago."

This is a direct quote from a victory speech that the Romney campaign crafted and Mitt Romney read aloud from a teleprompter after an Illinois Republican Primary win.  Not only is it rather unbecoming of any professional to mar a victory speech with unnecessary character attacks against their eventual opponent, but it's also very telling that Romney and his campaign chose this line of attack to commemorate their small victory in Illinois. Mitt Romney knows that our President's achievements are far greater than his few years spent as a civil rights attorney and college professor.  Although Romney is 15 years older than President Obama, he received his Business Degree from Harvard University where Obama would ultimately become Editor and then President of the esteemed Harvard Law Review.

More egregious than the implied insult and elitist dismissal of both the President and the University of Chicago, is Mitt Romney's contempt for Constitutional Law itself.  In Mitt Romney's world, the almighty dollar makes the world go around and there's no place for "governmental intrusion" in the private sector.  It is this lack of ethics that has led Mr. Romney into trouble throughout his various attempts at political office. He has personally signed his name to the dotted line allowing American jobs to disappear into foreign sweatshops. He has hidden the majority of his income from taxation - ultimately depriving the United States of the only dues he owes to this great country.  He has sought to convert the United States Government into an agency that conducts its affairs with his best financial interests at heart.  He has built his entire campaign for the Presidency with insults and personal criticisms, all the while avoiding the requisite details to explain his own positions on important matters.

These transgressions are not just the mark of a bad politician... They are cowardly and selfish. They are bad for America.  These immoral actions might be "business as usual" to someone like Mitt Romney, but small business owners and employees who pay their taxes and respect the laws founded in our Constitution will not likely adhere to Mitt Romney's myopic view of America as his personal ATM machine.

Mr. Romney never got around to explaining exactly "what it is that makes our American system so powerful". Hopefully, whatever it is, it will be used to help us all in our journeys toward freedom, independence and peace. We know it's already been used for quite the opposite purposes at times.

"NARTH Vader" Descends On West Palm Beach

In Brief: This post discusses Julie Harren, a licensed therapist who believes for religious reasons that it is her duty to convert homosexuals to make them straight.

Julie Harren is the director of Worthy Creations Ministry, INC. - a conversion therapy program for "people recovering from homosexuality". Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale has been known to refer people to this program as well as Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

On November 21st, Julie Harren (now Harren-Hamilton) will make her first appearance as President of NARTH at the Marriott Hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida.

N.A.R.T.H. stands for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals. It is a small but well-funded, religious, for-profit group of therapists whose aim is to take away civil rights from gays, lesbians and transgendered people by singling them out and labeling them as having a mental disorder.

The "Social Issues" section of their website reads like a horror film... all the worst most negative aspects of gay life are drudged up, re-hashed and emphasized over and over again by NARTH... Everything from obscure groups of men who wish to contract HIV to sado-masochistic tendencies and the perennial "pedophilia" accusation. If gay life were even one tenth as bad as NARTH makes it sound, I would have offed myself long ago...

NARTH shares a building with the corporate offices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). In fact, their offices are right around the corner from the temple. They are strongly supported by The Traditional Values Coalition (better known as The House on C Street or "The Family").

But back to Julie Harren Hamilton...

Would you pay for advice on child-rearing from a woman who has never had kids? Would you accept marital counseling from someone who still has rice in her hair from her recent wedding? I know I wouldn't...

So how does a poor counselor from a religious college in Chattanooga Tennessee become the President of the most well-funded anti-gay organization in America? How does she move so quickly from being a Republican spinster in a 1 bedroom apartment to a married marriage counselor and college professor, living in a half-million dollar oceanfront property in West Palm Beach?

She sells the cure for a disease that nobody really has.

When you first Google her name, you are directed to her website called Homosexuality101.com, Which is just a brochure-style webpage offering her "scientific" explanation of how gay people are "lead off the path" from being happy, healthy straight people. She claims that homosexual men are the products of distant, absent or abusive fathers and that they never learned how to bond with other boys as children because they were afraid of their dads and their mothers became over-involved with their lives. And in true keeping with the hogwash technique, she affirms that the damage is done before your child's 5th birthday! I wonder how many other therapists have been able to talk parents into starting their children in on $125/hr therapy before they start 1st grade?

In short, she blames your parents for your "disease" and she can make them feel guilty enough about your "painful lifestyle" to pay her lots of money to "help you".

Click around a little bit more and you see that she is hocking her DVD's for 15 bucks a piece, too. Do some more online research and you finally get to the foundation of her rationale:

"As Christians we are vessels of God's love. So I just want to challenge us all to go out into the places we live and work and BE vessels of God's love because people are hungry for God's love..."

"It's God who does the transforming but first people need a relationship with him."

On July 23, 2005, she gave a talk at the Exodus Freedom Conference called "Educating the public on the topic of homosexuality". It was here that she really raised some eyebrows at Exodus Inc. and breathed new life into the dying carcass of conversion therapy.

You see, Harren-Hamilton takes a different approach. She mixes the old with the new... She is willing to accept that there are biological pre-dispositions which lead to being gay and she even professes to "love" her subjects and see them as equals. With her twittery coo, she blesses everyone and calmly explains that gay people did not make a choice to be gay... but they CAN still make a choice to become straight.

This new approach to the presentation of conversion therapy is becoming quite popular in some Christian ministries because it takes the focus away from their lack of success and away from the fringe hate-groups that back them and puts the focus back on "Christian love".

But what is Julie Catherine Harren-Hamilton's experience and why is this issue so important to her?

She is experienced only in public speaking and money-making. She only became married herself about 2 years ago (to Robert Tyler Hamilton who is 6 years her junior). She has never been a lesbian - recovered or otherwise. Nor has she ever been a mother or had a child - gay or straight. Most importantly, she has yet to present one solitary person who is willing to come forward and testify that her therapy works.

The more difficult question to answer about Julie Harren-Hamilton is why converting homosexuals has been her sole focus for more than 10 years.

Perhaps the good "Doctor" suffers from an Obsessive Personality Disorder with a dash of Histrionics and Narcissism... (I'm just sayin'... you know, maybe she's CRAZY?)

Maybe she had an unrequited grade-school crush on the local Clay Aiken and now she's bitter...

Whatever the reason, she's swimming up stream without a paddle and she's about to drown in Fort Lauderdale's ocean of loving gay/straight families who don't take too kindly to being called "diseased" and "abusive".

November 21, 2009
Please join us in showing NARTH (and the world) that our love is not a disease and many of us have excellent relationships with our parents and friends.