The following article originally was published March 30, 2009, by Grand Junction’s Free Press.
Everyone is welcome at Hamburger Mary’s
“Homosexuality is seen as a violation of this natural, created order,” State Senator Scott Renfroe said February 23 on the Senate floor. He called homosexuality an “abomination,” a “detestable act” worthy of the death penalty in Old Testament scripture. He said that adultery and murder are also sins, and “all sin is equal.”
Fast forward to March 24. Josh Penry, Senate Minority Leader whose name often comes up in discussions of possible Republican challengers to Governor Bill Ritter, spoke to the Denver Metro Young Republicans at Hamburger Mary’s in Denver.
The restaurant’s web page explains, “Hamburger Mary’s franchises are ‘open-air bar and grilles for open-minded people,’ where guests enjoy a flamboyant dining experience. Everyone is welcome at Hamburger Mary’s, but our concept is unique in that we are the ONLY national franchise actively marketing to the gay community.”
Open-minded Republicans. Who knew?
Penry told Tim Hoover of the Denver Post, “I’ve got a traditional view on marriage, and a similarly traditional view that you shouldn’t spend your life judging others. And so I don’t.”
Thomas James, president of DMYR, told Hoover that the group picked the restaurant for capitalistic reasons, not political ones: the burger joint offered a “suitable layout” at a “good location.”
James added, “DMYR welcomes any individuals who share its five core principles: individual rights with personal responsibility, small and limited government, free-market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the rule of law.”
We think it’s a very good thing for Republicans to befriend homosexuals and for homosexuals to befriend capitalists. It could be a match made in heaven.
Ward Churchill: Another big story from Denver is that Ward Churchill appeared in court last week to get his job back at the University of Colorado.
The people who really deserved to be fired were those responsible for hiring Churchill in the first place. The entire premise of offering Churchill a job was that he was supposedly a Native American who would write leftist attacks on the United States. Churchill never had the appropriate credentials for the position. And there’s not a shred of evidence suggesting he has any American Indian ancestry.
Search online for Churchill’s “Winter Attack,” and you will find that Churchill sold reproductions of a work that he had copied, with a few minor alterations, from the deceased artist Thomas Mails.
Churchill was a fraud before his job at CU, he was a fraud in getting that job, and he was a fraud as a professor, plagiarizing the work of others and fabricating “facts.” The true scandal is not that Churchill fought to get his job back but that he ever landed the job in the first place.
Then of course Churchill compared the American victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Nazis. He wrote of the destruction of the World Trade Center, “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”
In an added fraud, Churchill claims that his “right” to keep his job is protected by the First Amendment. It is not. The First Amendment forbids censorship, government restraint of free speech. The First Amendment does not require employers to provide the resources for employees to speak. For instance, you do not have the right to give a speech in your office promoting racism.
Churchill may have been protected by his employment contract — again a problem that CU created — but the First Amendment has nothing to do with job protection. True, because CU accepts tax dollars, more government protections apply. But just imagine how seriously the left would take Churchill’s First Amendment claims if, for instance, a professor argued that homosexuals deserved to be beaten. Churchill’s leftist supporters would be the first to demand a firing (and we would agree, again subject to contractual constraints).
Ah, but Churchill is cool, he has a persona, bangs a drum, wears a Che hat with sunglasses and poses with guns, and says things the left enjoys. And that is enough for young sycophants and feeble minded leftists to ignore Churchill’s fraud and their own hypocrisy.
Bill 1984: Local Representative Steve King is a House sponsor of an atrocious bill that would collect DNA samples prior to criminal conviction, based only on arrest. The bill is officially numbered 241, but we call it Bill 1984 because of its Orwellian implications.
Nothing is more basic to our system of justice than the presumption of innocence, which Bill 1984 threatens. One thing the bill would do is give the police an incentive to arrest people on some pretext just to get a look at their DNA. We have enough Kings in the horror business, Steve.