Kansas has been my home almost all my life. It is a place I dearly love, with beautiful landscapes, fields of sunflowers, and the friendliest people I have ever met. I take it personally that this sorry excuse for a man condemns my state due to the stupid comments of one hot-blooded zealot who, by the way, gets picketed everywhere he goes, including my former high school. By nature I am not a violent individual, but if Gary Younge ever sets foot in my community, I will rip him a new one.
Another tidbit I find interesting is Younge's references to Thomas Frank's book, which doesn't even have an original title. "What's The Matter With Kansas?" was originally a famous op-ed penned by the author William Allen White in 1895. By the way, Kansas' response to Thomas Frank is "What's The Matter With YOU?"
The writer is a bigot.
These b*stards have no idea what they're talking about!
Someone was going to write a book called "What's Wrong with the UK," but there wasn't enough paper.
In all due respect, Kansas is not a microcosm of America. Neither is New York, Indiana, Washington or Texas. When you think of America you have to think of her as a whole or she doesn't make sense.
Kansas is wonderful, this guy is a loser. Don't get worked up.
I'd be tempted to knock him on his ass myself.
Matthew would not have been beaten to a pulp if he had paid his meth dealer in a timely fashion.
This is complete BS but what do you expect from The Guardian. It could very easily pass as if it were from The Onion.
These days whenever I see that name in this kind of article, I usually just move on. A gay friend is far more critical about Shephard than I am and we both agree that waving the bloody Matthew shirt is an easy way to "prove" one is on the "correct" side of all issues. The fact that there hasn't been another Shepard to take on the role of Star Victim in all these years since his murder kinda disproves this fool's point.
Dude--you know NOTHING about America, and merely pick and choose a few facts to try to assemble a fictional image of what this country is. Now go pray for the failure of the millions who would never have a chance at democracy if not for the evil red state George Bush presidency. And fix your teeth.
Wonder if Thomas Frank is related to Barney Frank-they seem to have the same priority at the top of their list.
You'd think some poof in Britain would have other things to cry about than what goes on in Kansas. Try being openly gay in the Third World...
Mind you, there is one major political figure, who Fred Phelps has worked for: Al Gore, in Gore's 1988 campaign.
K-State Grad here. Don't let the bastards get you down.
Anytime they compare black discrimination with public non-acceptance of a death-dealing, hyper-promiscuous, unnatural lifestyle, then you know you're dealing with the type of folks who "do" hundreds in meth & sex parties and wake up not knowing their own name and what kind of perversion they're physically carrying in their elimination system.
LOL, wait until they find out that the Aryn Nation is moving to KCK. Seriously, I am more than happy to keep losers like this away from Kansas. Of course, the weather could do that too. Phelps is an idiot. The fact that he's one of the few in Kansas makes him more noticable. And they chose Topeka as the lead case in Brown v. Board of Education because Topeka was the only place that they could find where there was separate but equal. It was big enough to have the two separate school systems and the black schools were as good as the white. It tested the single issue. Most of Kansas had integrated schools way before the 50s... and puleeze, lets not hear anyone in England lecture about segregated schools - one of the most class ridden systems in the world.
Whew! (Wipes forehead)
I saw the title of this thread and thought that Brit Hume was slamming the "red states".
The numerous states that have passed amendments have done so in defense of marriage and other institutions from an attempt to redefine them by a topsy-turvey PC-speak language of the left and some agenda driven gays wishing to make their manner of conduct mainstream. Sensible voters recognize this and merely amend to preserve the definition that marriage and the like have always have so as to prevent this language perversion and the related surmounting of the laws that would go along with such new definitions.
This writer, like countless others, falsely claims that the amendments are worded to "deny" something or take some "right" away, when instead, they merely want to preserve common understanding and in no way prevent homosexual citizens from making arrangments of sensible civil nature.
Likewise, the majority of sensible average voters understand the excess of Phelp's daughter's rhetoric and refuse to accept her as a prudent local council person -- hence her defeat as of a few days ago. America's vast middle is conservative in culture unfailingly if not always in politics and the first council of conservatism is Prudence -- a trait the the whole Phelps miniature circus has always lacked.
Likewise, he doesn't understand race in Kansas. He neglects to mention the Kansas was the original "Free State" and that my forefathers were virtually crazily abolitionist. I can say that as I have a great grandfather accused of being one of those that assisted in the raid at the Pottawatomie Creek. He also thinks that Brown v. Topeka State Board lasted ten years. What a mental midget. Brown and the legacy it left continued into the last decade. Three computer centered elementary schools were built in the most modest areas of Topeka by a board that had a white majority, all as a continuation of honest attempts to right wrongs and live by the rule of law. Guess what? The community was together in praising the results.
Likewise, the issues of state school boards participating in rolling back the general contempt shown to religions in general gives great amusement to the bulk of Kansans that see it as just deserts for educators that have ignored the electorate and promoted Secular Humanism. The vast middle on this question is letting those passionate about the evolutionary excess have their way to a great degree because they feel that educators have failed to serve the electorate in general and they need their chain jerked.
Speaking of jerks, I'll let you know what conditions I find for freedom in London before too long. I'll let you know what has been surrendered since the Glorious Revolution and we will see which locale has taken the wrong turn.