http://www.loudountimes.com/news/2007/jul/...across-loudoun/


Scooter made the front page! I am 100% in agreement with you!

That ad was terrible. It makes me sad to see it.

Way to go Scooter.

What is a "practicing" homosexual anyway?

Same as a practicing heterosexual: someone that is lucky enough to have sex every now and then.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that article. My entire interaction with the reporter consisted of exactly one e-mail, and at no time did he say that our "conversation" was for attribution. Live and learn.

Oh well, I certainly didn't mind helping to shine a spotlight on that reptilian pastor Jay Ahlemann. What a tool.

How ignorant can people be?... the scariest part is that these people have followers.

I agree that the ad was absurd -- as is the argument made by people that the passage of the proposed law will prevent preachers from preaching. That's ridiculous. I do not, however, support "hate crime" legislation of any type.

Scooter did a nice job -- even with a just a a passing knowledge of the Constitution!

He's a tool with great grammar...

"I got no control over people sitting out in the pew,"

He even comma splices in conversation. "Jail won't be big enough, there are thousands of people like me."

No need to buy a vowel RCB.

Are you coming to the party tomorrow? I can't imagine you looking like anyone other than Ronald Reagan, as such I have to meet you in person.

I love how he uses "practicing homosexual" not once, but twice. Is that similar to practicing medicine? Does one need to be board-certified?

Furthermore, what's with his boast that he "physically embraced" a gay man? Were his congregants surrounding him, yelling, "Don't touch him! Don't touch him! You'll get the AIDS!"

Sheesh.

+ 1

In my experience it certainly would have helped some of the fellas I've "known" (wink wink).


Now upon that I can shed some light. The embrace he refers to was a community meeting where Ahlemann suddenly grabbed and hugged David Weintraub, the head of Equality Loudoun. David wrote about the incident in his blog... funny stuff.

Interstingly -- the best way to shine the spotlight in this wacky Pastor is to let him run his wacky ad -- so that people can see and be outraged by it. The good news is -- the political process of free speech really does work. He gets to run an ad that absolutely ticks people off -- and you and others get to eat his lunch for doing so.

After all -- he certainly has the right to run the ad -- assuming a paper will except it. And, of course, you have the right to rip him a new one for it.

It's all very refreshing.

Well, that's what I kind of objected to in the original article.

If this was about people complaining and being outraged about the ad, well, fine. There are a number of reasons why I wish that ad hadn't run, too.

But if this is about saying that this group doesn't have the right to run the ad--well, I'm not on board. I believe in a two way street--they can run it, and anybody who doesn't like it can complain. Sometimes its tough to take, given the content, but...its better this way than the way speech is handled a lot of other places.

The only caveat to that is -- no paper has to take the ad. People outraged by the ad are well within their rights to work to influence the papers not to accept those ads. The papers, making their own judgments about the economic impact or fidelity to advertising policies can then make a market-based decision.

This crap has been circulating for a while -- I read it on another prominent blog 3 weeks ago. Getting this nonesense into a paper actually brought more attention to it from the silent and not so silent majority.

One poster said it best -- "who follows these people?"

I agree - the paper had the right to run the ad, but now the market can dictate the response for them having done so.

If you throw away every local paper in the trash like I do, you'd never be upset of seeing them.

Yes, I agree with that also.

The problem is, we cannot stop the Easterner from being shoved in our mailboxes. If there is a way, someone let me know!

I think we should all collect our Easterners and dump them at their offices every week. For those of us who are so inclined, stop frequenting businesses that advertise in the Easterner and let them know why.

Which is what I'm doing. The Easterner can run whatever ads they want to run, but they shouldn't act surprised when there's a backlash. It's a cliche but it also happens to be true: free speech isn't free.