Gay Iowa senator gets death threat

[kpete]

Source: Chicago Tribune

Gay Iowa senator gets death threat

Associated Press
7:41 AM CDT, April 14, 2009

DES MOINES, Iowa - An openly gay state senator has received a death threat.

Public safety officials say Sen. Matt McCoy, a Des Moines Democrat, received the threat by telephone on Monday.

The threat was made as opponents of gay marriage continue to pressure lawmakers to take steps against a ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriages in Iowa.

McCoy confirmed it was a death threat, but declined to talk about details.

Courtney Greene of the Iowa Department of Public Safety says McCoy met with state troopers at the Capitol, but because the threat wasn't received at the Capitol, it was referred to Des Moines police.

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ia-senatorthreatened,0,2602181.story

[Ian David]

1. The terrorists hate us for our freedoms. n/t

[IndianaGreen]

2. Afghanistan has its Taleban, we got ours!

In both cases, we find the actions of people acting on behalf of a hateful and bigoted God.

[Politicub]

3. So much christian love

People who threaten others are nothing more than domestic terrorists and should be prosecuted as such.

[sarcasmo]

14. Christian Love, that's funny, thanks for the laugh.

[get the red out]

4. And Religion brings peace?

What part of not killing do these Christo-facists not get? Oh yea, they don't get any of it. The only parts of their own religion they buy into are the ones that give them the hard-on of death.

[sarcasmo]

25. I still think a world with no religion would be a wonderful place.

[Swede Atlanta]

5. Xtians are so discriminated against.......

I don't recall any Xtians getting death threats because of their religion. But they sure as heck think that death threats are the inspired work of God. Boy will they be surprised when they get to the Pearly Gates.

[SoCalNative]

8. Well..there was that ONE....

eom

[polmaven]

10. First, not all religious people

are anti gay. Second, not all who are anti gay are religious. Please STOP with the blanket statements.

Thank you. Your assistance is appreciated.

[No Elephants]

17. I never met one anti-gay person who was not religious. Not one.

[polmaven]

20. Well, then,

you must live in a bubble. You obviously need to get out more.

At least you aren't trying to tell me you have never met a religious person who isn't anti-gay either.

[HillWilliam]

6. More Talibabdist terrorism that will go completely unreported by M$M

and excused by the Rushbo crowd. It's a sickass bunch that hollers "pro-life" out of one side of their mouths, then cheers death, war, and destruction out of the other. It's also a sign just how weak their faith is to be so easily threatened.

Funny place, this post-* America. We're still so worried about vague "mooslum" terrorists somewhere far, far away, yet we totally ignore the pseudo-christian terrorists within.

At our peril.

[ieoeja]

9. The Chicago Tribune is not mainstream? n/t

[HillWilliam]

11. Love the Trib 'n' all

and for Chicagoland, that's about as mainstream as it gets. Out here in the hinterlands, not so much. NC only recently seceded from Dumfuckistan and our membership in the Union is still tenuous at best. Did you know that the very first day our new General Assembly met, some yay-hoo from the southeastern part of the state put forth a bill to amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage? As progressive as NC can be -- and it's pretty progressive -- it's still weird in spots. News of talibabist antics doesn't make the news in Billy Graham-land, trust.

It might be news in Chicago, but it goes totally unreported here. More's the pity.

[ieoeja]

13. I grew up in southern Indiana and still visit relatives there.

So I know what you're talking about. The 2000 election made for some especially eye-popping visits. I remember going down there just after W did/said something particularly stupid, and found ZERO mention of it in the local news. Everyone was still talking/writing about the most recently debunked Gore "lie" with no mention of the debunking. What I found was....

- Chicago and Indiana media reported every pro-Bush/anti-Gore story
- Chicago media reported every pro-Gore/anti-Bush story, but Indiana media did not

My relatives kept insisting this was because of Liberal media bias in Chicago. I tried to argue the point that the media giving you only half the story must be the biased one, not the one giving you the whole story.

And a conversation with my brother was particularly telling. My brother is a screaming Liberal who voted for Jesse Jackson Sr when he ran for President back in the days before the vast rightwing conspiracy bought up all the rural media sources. We calmly went through each and every Al Gore "lie" with me able to provide evidence that Gore either never said it, or it really was true. When all was said and done, he just shook his head and said, "I guess Gore didn't lie about any of these things, and I had heard that some of these accusations might not be true, but they keep saying that is because everyone just assumes he is lying because he is such a well known liar."

{Face meet palm.}

Constant, unchallenged propaganda works on even intelligent, thinking people. The Internet both hurts and helps. Because the propagandists are spamming the f--- out of both, but can not censor people in the rural communities from finding the truth if they are willing to look hard enough. I encourage my relatives to send me the Rightist spam so I can tell them what is (rarely) true and (usually) not.

[HillWilliam]

15. Southern Indiana? You ARE feelin' it.

My partner when I lived in Chicago (may he rest peacefully) was from downstate IL, just across from Terre Haute. Dude thought he was a Repub, about the only bitter arguments we ever had. For such an intelligent man, he had two blind spots: the Catholic church and the pub party, and I could never convince him of his complete conditioning in either case. Any mention of either was a complete conversation-stopper or an argument-starter if he kept up. That was long ago, well before the Internet and easy fact-checking and propaganda-debunking. I'm a very, very patient man, but eventually even my buttons get pressed.

NC isn't nearly as backward as some places I've lived. I grew up in NC, but my career has taken me more places than Hank Snow ever got to. We're actually surprisingly progressive, despite our presidential votes since Carter. Our GA is and always has been largely Democratic and we usually have a Democratic governor. Asheville, my old home town, has always been a center for the eclectic, the arts, and pretty progressive thought. My family, though thoroughly Appalachian, are all deeply Democratic. (Appalachia gets a bum rap on DU, mostly undeserved -- I wear "hillbilly" proudly. True hillbillies are truly committed Dems, always have been.)

Oh, but there are parts of the state we could easily bust off and give back to Dumfuckistan. Scotland and Cumberland counties, parts of Yadkin and Wilkes... the Wurlitzer has done a number on those, sad to say.

[jmowreader]

19. You might as well add Robeson County to that list

Robeson County is notionally 80 percent Democratic, but from having dealt with that county for over a year I can guarantee it's only that way because Daddy said on his deathbed never to vote for a Republican, and Daddy died in 1969 when Jesse Helms was still a Democrat. I know the chairman of the Robeson County Democratic Party, and this exact sentence came out of his mouth: "Now all we need to do is get John McCain in there." He said it right in front of me.

[HillWilliam]

21. Come on over to Caswell

It's pretty, it's rural, it's green, it's Blue. If you don't mind a couple gaydudes (my partner and me) for neighbors, that is. The Democrats up here and real Democrats. We've got this little Blue corridor from Guilford through Pittsylvania County, VA (where Danville is, 15 miles north of where I live). Won't hurt to make it a little Bluer.

[jmowreader]

22. I live in Fayetteville...

but I'm a Pacific Northwest person, so if I move at all I'm going to move to the west coast, to a nice little plot of land with a house made from five welded-together 40-foot shipping containers, on enough land I can park my truck when I'm on home time.

But thanks for the invitation. Anything's got to be better than Fayettenam.

[HillWilliam]

23. I know that's right

You're in redredred country, pure wacko hell. The NCGA rep who keeps putting the bill forth to amend the state constitution against same-sex marriage on the first day of every new assembly is from your neck of the woods. I'm sorry. He doesn't get any more useful than that.

I've taught classes in Portland and I got to see a bit of the countryside. If I could trade any place for Caswell or for the mountains, it would be the Pacific Northwest. It reminds me much of where I grew up in western NC for its green-ness and how nice the people are.

My partner and I have looked into shipping containers for additional space. They're cheap and darn-near indestructible. If you're handy (which I'm not), they finish out nicely, can be made super-super efficient (have you checked into SIPS and expanding foam insulation?) and with solar power and the new LED lighting you can be as off-grid as you like. We've got almost 9 acres, so we're looking at ways to make quiet, efficient use of what we've got.

Best of luck to you.

[jmowreader]

26. I don't think I'm going off-grid...

A huge amount of the Pacific Northwest's power comes from Bonneville Dam, and that's about as renewable as it gets.

I'm fairly handy, but there are limits to my time so I'll have to have the foundation built and things like that...I can weld the containers together, spray the foam insulation and cut out the interior walls. SIPS are okay, but I'd rather use douglas fir furring strips on the perimeter walls, probably metal studs on erected walls, and install drywall.

The big advantage of container construction is that you can buy them for $1800 each--yes, the very desirable high-cube 40-footers are that cheap--and welding them together is fairly easy if you know how to weld anyway. 1600sf for $9000?

[rurallib]

7. Fear - the right wing's best weapon.

[No Elephants]

18. That's so unfair to

ignorance, not to mention falsehood and bias. Without them, their fear tactics would not work anywhere near as well.

[roguevalley]

12. I'm so tired of this crap, of homophobes and their tiny man/womanhood issues.

[Doctor_J]

16. Lots of death threats from the loony right lately

Bachmann, Beck, Weiner, and the rest are getting their message across

[sakabatou]

24. The American Taliban raises its head again