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Porterville, California. I don’t want to paint all of its residents with a broad brush, so I’ll share some demographic information here:
Porterville is a city in the San Joaquin Valley, in Tulare County, California, United States. The population was 39,615 at the 2000 census. City limit signs currently have the population at 51,467. The city’s population grew dramatically as the city annexed many properties and unincorporated areas in and around Porterville. Porterville is considered part of the Census Bureau’s designation of the Visalia-Porterville metropolitan statistical area.…The racial makeup of the city was 49.75% White, 1.28% African American, 1.73% Native American, 4.63% Asian, 0.15% Pacific Islander, 32.71% from other races, and 4.75% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 54.45% of the population.
And look at this:
In the state legislature Porterville is located in the 18th Senate District, represented by Republican Roy Ashburn, and in the 34th Assembly District, represented by Republican Connie Conway. Federally, Porterville is located in California’s 21st congressional district, which has a Cook PVI of R +13[3] and is represented by Republican Devin Nunes.
Yes, that Roy Ashburn. The Republican who was caught with an “unidentified man” in the car after leaving faces, Faces, the gay bar Ashburn frequented, and arrested for DUI? He had a 100% anti-gay voting record before this dragged him out of the closet. He later, as these storylines usually play out, figured out that voting anti-gay because his constituents are homophobes was not the right thing to do:
“I would not have been speaking on a measure dealing with sexual orientation ever prior to the events that have transpired in my life over the last three months,” Ashburn told his colleagues. “However, I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation and the rights of individuals. And so I am doing something that is quite different and foreign to me, and it’s highly emotional.”
Constituents like Sam Usher of Porterville, who expressed this in a letter to the editor of the Recorder Online. Let the batsh*ttery begin.
Society should be protected from homosexualityEditor,
The tragic and destructive spread of homosexuality across the country is a major evil of our time. The John Birch society reported that thousands of boys per year are stolen from their parents to feed homosexual pornography.
I recommend that American citizens study anti-homosexual books available at Christian book stores. And to read anti-homosexual books which are out of print.
W. Cleon Skousen in 1958, wrote a warning about the communist conspiracy. The book was called, “The Naked Communist.” The book warned that the communists would set out to turn America into a moral cesspool, including corrupting America with rampart homosexuality, flooding America with pornography and sexual anarchy, and thereby seeking to destroy the family institution.
Not every homosexual is a communist, but every communist supports the militant homosexual war against mankind. Why? Because it attacks the family. Homosexuality, as well as every kind of heterosexual immorality, is a destroyer of freedom.
Many homosexuals are basically decent men and women who took a wrong turn. The gospel of Jesus Christ says satan is the prompter of all sexual immorality, including homosexual perversion therefore homosexuality is wickedness. Society should be protected from it.
Sam Usher
Porterville
We have a long way to go, even if the law tilts to our side one day. The homobigotry doesn’t go away even if laws protect your rights. Racism surely hasn’t disappeared.
And that’s why Republicans like Roy Ashburn and Ken Mehlman need to not only come out of the closet, but use their votes, power and money to stop feeding the bigotry and ignorance of people like this unfortunate man. You cannot fight for equality by electing low-tax, small-government homophobes. You have to draw a moral line somewhere when it comes to party and principles.
P.S. – And that goes for Dems too. We’ve seen what electing Blue Dogs does for passing civil rights legislation.
11 Comments
I lived for several years in VisaliaMy parents live there still.
There is, almost literally, a church on every street corner, and even the Episcopal parish is more Assemblies of God than High Church. The Episcopal Diocese of the San Joaquin was the first to split away from the denomination after Gene Robinson was elected Bishop of New Hampshire; its bishop, John-David Schofield, was thrown out of the church by the House of Bishops for malfeasance of his pastoral office and deliberate violations of his oaths to God and the church.
While I attended the local community college (College of the Sequoias) I dated a guy from a Mormon family. We broke it off when he gave in to intense pressure from his family and church to get married. He admitted to me that he hardly knew the girl. I found out latter that she had been an open lesbian at Cal State Fresno, also from an extremely Mormon family and also pressured mightily to get married and begin squirting out brainwashable gods-in-training.
And remember that the San Joaquin Valley is home to the Free Republic (based in Fresno) and some of the most vicious, horrific acts of racism and homophobia in the western United States.
So yes: letters like the one quoted above are exactly what I would expect from Porterville and other towns in the region.
Thousands….“……of boys per year are stolen to feed homosexual pornography.”
That kind of out-and-out lie makes me want to choke him. It’s amazing how these people NEVER get their feet held to the flame over this blatent bullshit. Quoting from a slanted study from anti-gay “social scientist.”
But then he adds more logs to the fire by throwing communists into the mix. I love the blend of the two hatreds. Proof that someone who is terrified of homosexuality and communism can make sweeping generalizations about events that never happened.
The only things I’ve ever seen from Communists are lots of black clothing, coffee shops, college angst, bad poetry and community awareness. Yep, terrible bunch there.
BTW, isn’t the gay man who kidnaps young men for sex or porn kind of an urban legend? The only men I’ve heard do that are serial murderers like Gacy and Dahmer. That’s two. I ran out of fingers trying to count the hetero serial killers.
The fact that he is referencing the John Birch Society should be a clueThe JBS was born out of the Red Menace of the 1950s, and makes the Tea Party look like rational discussion. I am not at all surprised that they still have supporters in Porterville.
For Dems, why just Blue Dogs?I mean, Obama signed an executive order in connection with the health insurance bill reaffirming and extending civil rights offenses against women. And, he is a homophobe as evidenced by his actions against LGBT equality.
If you’re including Obama as a Blue Dog, that’s fine. But if not, why are restricting it to Blue Dogs?
Raise your handIf you or anyone you know was abducted as a child for homosexual pedophilia!
Has this guy been living under a rock? Seriously what has to happen in someone’s life to have such a narrow and distorted view point of the world?
A line needs to be drawn. The more people in power and in the actual educational circles let this shit slide, the more crazies are going to come out of the woodworks.
I’d hate to see a sudden spike in hate crimes that could have been prevented by the professionals coming out to refute these blatant lies.
Red CaliforniaThis area is so Red California. As TechBear points out lots of churches and in this area that means anti gay Babble followers. Visalia itself has had more than it’s share of anti gay hate crimes. Don’t forget that just south of here in Kern County’s Bakersfield, that the County Registrar and Clerk had her office stop performing ALL civil weddings so as not to have to follow that law and perform weddings for same sex couples.
You can find letters like this up and down the red Central Valley. Don’t forget that Prop H8 Attorney Pungo (sp) is running for Congress just north of here.
Yes unfortunately homobigotry and the expression doesn’t go away even if laws protect the rights of all citizens in the state, but at least there can be repercussions if that anti gay bigotry crosses the line. So sad that is not true in much of the country.
i’m from porterville thanks pam for picking this up!porterville has a long history of these kinds of letters to the editor plz feel free to write to this paper
http://www.recorderonline.com/…
“Letters can be submitted electronically here or sent to:
The Porterville Recorder, 115 East Oak, Porterville CA 93257″
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
http://www.portervillenerd.com/
Greetings from Porterville!I thought I’d share a bit more about our “lovely and loving” town.
- A bit of video journalism that was done here last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Especially note the repugnant quote from then-Mayor, now-Vice Mayor Cameron Hamilton. I have heard the entire > 9 minute interview and discussed it with the reporter. She tells me that she had to work hard to find a single snippet that wouldn’t take her piece into “adults only territory”. It was truly vile.
- Porterville was the ONLY city in all of CA whose City Council passed a resolution in favor of Prop 8. That was unanimous, and activated our opposition. We have been fighting tooth and nail for 2 years now.
- Porterville voted nearly 75% in favor of Prop 8, as the dog that was waved by the Council’s Resolution dog that urged them to vote that way, to do the dirty work of the Council instead of the Council representing the People.
- Last summer, the Council proposed a Resolution AGAINST SB54, the Legislature’s bill that recognized Harvey Milk Day.
Somehow, our efforts since the previous fall paid off. In a contentious public hearing, we were subjected to hours of locals literally preaching the Gospel to Council 3 minutes at a time, but we were able to get 3 of 5 votes to shoot down the Resolution. The locals were stunned. The holdouts were the aforementioned Cameron Hamilton, and the author of the September 2008 Resolution, young Mormon Brian Ward.
- Earlier this summer a pro-equality speaker at City Council was the victim of assault and battery twice by a leader of the anti-gay hate groups. This took place in full view of the entire Council, maybe 30 witnesses of the public, and 10 or so City Staff, including the Chief of Police who was a mere 5 feet away. When asked why no arrests were made, the Chief simply shrugged.
- During a recent 18 month period, Porterville Police managed to initiate and escalate routine incidents into “Police involved shooting deaths” 4 times, a per capita rate that were it to happen in San Jose would mean 80 police shooting deaths a year. PPD, Council, and City Hall just continue to issue “attaboys” to local law enforcement.
- Now Council is wrestling with whether or not they should address the Arizona immigration issue somehow.
This is in fact the reddest of the red in California, and arguably in the country. But not everyone is that way. We are badly outnumbered and doing much, and winning, with nothing.
We can do even more with your help!
We gladly welcome your contributions from afar, and if you want to come visit and participate, just as we go to LA and SF regularly, we’d love for you to make the drive. I promise it will be worth it to come speak at our Council meetings, which are 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month, at 6:30 PM.
Oh yeah, here is a bit more…Someone mentioned College of Sequoias in Visalia up above.
A bit of geography – Visalia is the largest city in Tulare County (~ 120,000 population). Porterville is the 3rd (~50,000). Visalia is about 30 miles away, nothing but orange groves, olive groves, and dairy farms between here and there.
But despite the injustice here, I don’t want you to think that we are taking this laying down. Not only have we been inspired and energized by the September 2008 Porterville Resolution, but another local hero has emerged in a larger scale out of Tulare County, and in fact out of the aforementioned College of Sequoias.
Readers here surely are familiar with the work of our friend Robin McGehee and her new organization GetEqual. What not everyone knows is that Robin is currently on sabbatical and is a long-time professor at COS.
So yes, we are fighting on every scale here in tiny Tulare County, and we appreciate your joining us, not only in your town, but deciding to take a trip here and letting OUR town of Porterville know that it is NOT an island, that what happens here DOES get noticed by the outside world, to the detriment of our economic development efforts.
See you soon!
I wonder if I know RobinHer name is awfully familiar. I was at COS in 92-94, graduating just as the Triangle Club was getting started.
Robin McGehee and COSShe is in the Speech/Drama Department or something similarly named. I am sure google is your friend. I don’t know how long she has been there, a while I think, but that long, I can’t say.