optics

But while we're on the subject of the "optics" of the health care reform vote, I would like to point out that what people saw on their TVs this weekend was a black president and an Italian-American female Speaker passing this bill over the protests of mobs of white teabaggers shouting "ni66er" and "fa66ot."

On a simpler level, though, it's also worth remembering John Madden's dictum about unpopular players and coaches: winning is a great deodorant. I suspect we're going to see some movement in approval ratings over the next week or two.

Also, so much for the GOP's charge that Obama isn't doing anything. Are we going to the "too busy" or "too much change" arguments now?

remember, kids, he's pro-life!

Rick Warren refuses to condemn a bill to make homosexuality (or even support for gay rights) a crime in Uganda, sending gays to jail for life, and executing HIV positive gays:

The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.

Unsurprisingly, the author of the bill is considered a "core member" of The Family, the Christian conservative organization on Capitol Hill. When he started catching some flak for this remark, Warren replied that, "Globally last yr 146,000 Christians were put to death last year because of their faith. No one, except Christians, said anything."

Nevermind the highly suspect and unverified nature of Warren's number, what's the lesson here from the good pastor for the kids at home?

1. that one cannot be Christian and gay at the same time;
2. that it's ok to stand by and watch evil happen, saying nothing, if your people were wronged on some previous occasion;
3. that gays can be punished for other people's crimes.

These political pastors, they really live the Word, ya know?

we hardly know ya

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Moral Kombat
thedailyshow.com
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Rep. Foxx calls Matthew Shepard murder "a hoax"

Good Lord. Judging from the press she's getting (and the reaction she's undoubtedly getting from Republican leadership -- at least, one hopes), I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that she does not make this mistake again.

Just so we're all clear on the story, this is what happened to Shepard. From an AP story dated Oct. 9, 1998 (via LexisNexis):

Shepard was found Wednesday evening by a man on a bicycle who at first thought he was a scarecrow or a dummy because of how he was tied to the fence.

He was unconscious, and his skull had been smashed with a handgun. He also appeared to have suffered burns on his body and cuts on his head and face. The temperature had dropped into the low 30s during the more than 12 hours Shepard was left outside.

From Shepard's Wikipedia page:

The beating was so severe that the only areas on Shepard's face that were not covered in blood were those where his tears had washed the blood stains away.

The men had a gun and some sort of cutting implement, yet instead of a quick kill and hiding of the evidence (or, I dunno, maybe just robbing him!), they chose to torture and mutilate the kid, tie him to a fence post, and leave him to die of hypothermia. And this horrible woman wants us to believe this was not a hate crime.

You can argue against hate crimes laws without downplaying the atrocity of hate crimes themselves. You can talk about "thought crimes" or relying on individual judges in individual cases to make the right calls or whatever, but don't try to tell us that Matthew Shepard was just some dude killed for drug money. It insults our intelligence and alienates the generation of Americans who were touched by this crime (my generation, in point of fact).

Iowa Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage

Whoa. From TPM:

Iowa's Supreme Court legalized gay marriage Friday in a unanimous and emphatic decision that makes Iowa the third state — and first in the nation's heartland — to allow same-sex couples to wed.

In its decision, the high court upheld a lower court's ruling that found a state law restricting marriage to between a man and woman only violated Iowa's constitution.

"If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded," the court stated in its ruling.

The first thing I will contribute to the din surrounding today's events is that this is a decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, which means they decided that the Iowa state constitution left no room for hedging on marriage rights. That constitution, according to the decision, contains an equal protection clause that precludes the statute in question. Whether or not you agree with gay marriage or "the Bible says so" or it's nature rather than nurture or it puts us on the road to Santorum's famous man-on-dog sex is all irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what the statute says, and what the Iowa state constitution says. So to all the pundits and columnists and talking heads sure to flog this story: until you have read the relevant passages of those documents (along with similarly relevant court precedents, of course), you have no standing to opine on whether these judges made the right call whatsoever.

The second thing I'll add is that I will be shocked if Iowa hasn't passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage by the end of 2010.

the best ad of the cycle

You are not prepared to tackle the feared Village People lobby, Roger Wicker. YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!

...floppity.

John McCain on July 13:

“I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption.”

John McCain on July 16:

"Sen. McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible," the statement added. "However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. John McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative."

Mmmm, that's some good straight talk!

This is increasingly becoming a bit of a "dog bites man" story.

it's because of the gays

why gay marriage is wrong

This is pretty funny. pico @dKos lists reasons why, after living in a stable gay relationship, he now knows that gay marriage is a misguided idea:

- CHORES

In a properly functioning heterosexual household, the chores are naturally divided for maximum efficiency: the woman does the cooking and the cleaning, and the man does all the heavy football-watching.

But in my household, we're both watching football while the kitchen goes un-mopped. At commercial breaks, we stare at each other puzzled: Who's going to bring us another beer? Who's going to make us more guacamole (the good kind of fat)? (1)

Meanwhile, our health is suffering. Neither of us can boil a pot of water, so we're ordering pizza and take-out Chinese with frightening regularity.

As further proof, we hear our female-female counterparts have mopped the kitchen so much that they've worn through the linoleum.

- HOLIDAYS

That's right - even holidays are so aligned as to show the absurdity of gay relationships. You might think that a bunch of days picked out for celebration - some arbitrary, some not - wouldn't affect the definition of relationships. Think again!

First, there are no "To my husband" cards that include pictures of half-naked men. At most, they may include pictures of half-naked women. He doesn't want to see that. I don't want to see that. Hell, outside of a few movies, I've never seen that at all. The industry is simply not prepared to muddy the waters of gender expectations.

Second, and more importantly: between the two of us, we manage to forget every single birthday, anniversary, and holiday in the calendar. And that includes our own. Clearly, homosexual relationships are a threat to the economic sustainability of the greeting card industry.

- NAMES

In a healthy heterosexual relationship, the man asserts his dominance in the household by granting his woman the use of his last name.(2) But in a homosexual relationship, without the clearly-defined power structures in place, how can we decide who gets to take whose name?

Our society is simply not equipped to deal with the amount of confusion that the name game causes. If we keep our names separate, no one will realize that we're a couple. But if we take the same last name, how will we answer the telephone operator who asks to speak to "Mr. So-and-So"?
"Which one?" I answer.
"The head of the household, please."
"Which one?" I answer.
"Mr. So-and-So."
"Which one?" I answer.

Simply put, the convenience of our social assumptions will be dangerous undermined.

And don't even get me started on the "Who gets to be called `Dad'?" issue.

- LAUNDRY

In a normal heterosexual relationship, laundry is a cinch. Usually, the woman can get it all done in a few hours with no confusion.

But my partner is roughly the same height as I am, and while it may be easy to sort through shirts and pants, one undeniable fact has presented itself: sorting through underwear and socks is a disaster. We end up with a pile of unmatched socks, not knowing whose are whose, and eventually give up and toss them all into one drawer.

I haven't worn a matching pair of socks in over three years.

If the good God had wanted people of the same sex to marry, he'd have created laundry baskets with separate compartments. The gender-neutral clothes hamper speaks volumes about reality's well-known heterosexual bias.

shoring up "the bigot vote"

Perspective, c/o ONN.

issues?

Here are the user statistics to the conservative-friendly version of Wikipedia, Conservapedia. Yes, it is a real thing. Yes, I know that's a sad statement about conservatism in itself.

Have a look at the most viewed pages.

what you heard last night on NBC Nightly News

(c/o Glenn Greenwald)
Really, marriage is under attack? By whom? And will it hold Charleston?

I have to confess: I actually watched this segment last night and didn't even notice. That's how utterly infected with rightwing tropes our news media is.

And if that surprises you, here's a fun question: What does Brian Williams listen to in his car?

Answer: Rush Limbaugh. No, seriously.

trolls and cruisers

You may notice on a different thread that I got my first troll! Now I'm big time!

In other news, here's an eye-opening story, from dKos:

Two weeks ago, the kids and I went on a trip to visit friends in San Antonio, Texas. On the way we stopped at a rest area just off the interstate. What happened next made me very uneasy...

I was drinking coffee heavily so that I would stay awake and needed to relieve myself pretty badly. I pulled into a rest area, locked the car doors, left the kids sleeping in the car, and went into the restroom. When I entered I noticed it was unoccupied except for a pair of sneakers visible under the second stall.

As I unzipped at one of the urinals and began to relieve my burning bladder I heard a voice say "Hey, what's up?". I looked around and there was no one else in the restroom. After a moments hesitation, I answered "Not much".

A little time went by and he says, "What ya doing?".

I didn't feel very comfortable talking to someone in a stall but I didn't want to be rude and answered, "Uh...we are heading to San Antonio to visit friends."

"Want to come over?", he says.

At this point I am really uncomfortable and I finish up and scoot over to the sink to wash up. "No I don't think so.", I replied. Wow, was this something else. I had never even had someone next to me with a wide stance before and now I've got someone in the stall asking me over!

As I reached for the paper towels to dry my hands I hear, "Hey man, can I call you back? There's some asshole in the bathroom answering every thing I say."

Hehe, gotcha.

Violent Femmes

THE LEZBOS ARE COMIN' TA GITCHA!!! WITH PINK PISTOLS!!!

What a bunch of dumbasses. And no, it's not reliable, in case any of you were wondering.

gay Republicans and victimization

In one of the weirder subplots of this year's CPAC conference, we have the story of Matt Sanchez, Marine reservist, "professional victim" as Atrios calls him, and... former gay porn star. The last bit, as you can guess, was not information he volunteered, but rather was discovered by the blogs after he accepted his professional victim award at CPAC and shook hands with a woman who, that same night, called John Edwards a "faggot" and implied that such a term should not be barred from civil discourse.

So here he is on Salon, decrying his treatment by the blogs. According to his account, he wrote an article at Columbia University, where he's currently a student, pointing out the anti-military bias of the students. As one would expect, FOX News discovered him and put him on Hannity and Colmes and Bill O'Reilly so he could tell all the red-blooded conservatives about the Godless commies at American universities. He even got to write a column in that paragon of unbiased journalism, the New York Post!

Eventually, he got invited to CPAC's annual meeting to accept an "academic freedom" award (which is really more of a "spread the word about Godless commies in academia" award) and get a big "Attaboy!" from one of the most famous bigots in modern politics, and as the furor over her remarks reached its pinnacle, he got targetted as well. That's when his adult film past was discovered and used to further denigrate him and he started getting all kinds of hate mail over it (so he claims, yet, as is typical of these allegations, he doesn't actually produce any).

Okay, as you can tell, I'm not super-sympathetic to this guy. He says he got hate mail, and if he did, there I can sympathize. People can be pretty ugly and really sanctimonious at times, and admittedly, there were some pretty nasty things said to him in the "letters" section of this article.

Here's my problem, though. First of all, the guy says he was "outed" on the little one sentence synopsis. Maybe that was the editors addition, maybe it was his, I dunno, but his suggestions of victimization by his past being exposed makes the same implication. This is not being "outed." People who are in the closet don't sell videos of themselves performing the very acts they are hiding. You can't make money off of being gay and then turn around and cry foul when people bring that fact up in response to your attacks. Aside from the fact that Sanchez is trying to draw people's pity and outrage for a moral crime that was not committed, this kind of slippery use of the term "outing" minimizes the pain and alienation that can accompany real, honest to God outing of people who really did hide their orientations.

Second, Sanchez is obtuse, willfully or otherwise, to the actual reasons for his ridicule. Matt Sanchez is lambasted by the left for the same reasons that Mary Cheney is: they're the Uncle Toms of their demographic. They support a movement that hates "their kind," wants their second-class citizenship enshrined in the Constitution, and is gleeful at the thought of their impending damnation in eternal Hellfire, and in return they are given money and fame to skew the arguments and distort the issues that would free their fellow gays to join the rest of the country in full, equal citizenship. Granted, this guy wasn't originally banking on his homosexuality for his victimization screeds (though he is now), but his self-applied identity as a victim of liberal anti-militarism was intended to support conservative talking points that all liberals "hate the troops" and "want the terrorists to win," thereby hamstringing liberal efforts to establish equality for GLBTers. It's all of a piece. And if he wasn't pushing those ideas himself, he was allowing and even encouraging Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and others to do so.

Mr. Sanchez writes:

"I am embarrassed to admit that was I worried that my fellow conservatives would distance themselves from me when the news about my film career broke. The opposite has happened. I've been asked to give my point of view, invited to speak at various functions, and invited back on television. My peers on the right have gone out of their way to give me a vote of confidence and avoid a rush to judgment."

Umm, duh! Because you support so many conservative arguments:
1. gays are debauched
2. liberals are hypocrites
3. liberals don't really support gays or Hispanics
4. liberals hate the military
5. the GOP is the "real" party of equality
and, of course, our brand new Ann Coulter approved talking point:
6. "faggot" isn't really about homophobia because, look, gays love people who say it!

The "professional victim" thing is also a tactic deplored on its own merits. In every group there are a couple of wackos; this is true of liberals as well as conservatives. When conservatives, however, push themselves into a large group of liberals and then cry about how a couple of students, or protesters, or anonymous blog commenters hurt their feelgoods, it reeks of hypocrisy because the wackos and name-callers on the conservative side get columns in the nation's marquee newspapers, an entire news channel and multiple think-tanks of their own, and prominent patronage posts in the federal government. And, of course, they write New York Times bestsellers.

This is all, of course, beside the rather obvious point that his "victimhood" relies on a number of false arguments, like how people who supposedly dislike wire-tapping were willing to dig into Sanchez's "private life"-- ya know, his super-secret private in-the-closet career in adult film-- and how this is about diversity "unless you don't agree with them." No, Matt, it's about selling out fellow GLBTers by supporting those who wish to oppress them (and you).

So forgive me if I don't cry you a river when a handful of powerless liberals write mean things about you.

a question for Ann Coulter

Where did Bob Ney (R-OH) go after getting nailed for corruption?

And what was Mark Foley's (R-FL) answer to getting out of the spotlight after he was outed as a sexual predator for male Congressional pages?

And Mel Gibson, after his "Jews are responsible for all the wars" tirade?

Where did Ted Haggard go after everyone found out he was sleeping with a male prostitute?

It sounds like the stock answer to the "Ann Coulter is a f*%king bigot" allegations coming from, well, pretty much everyone with ears to hear (even lots of Republicans) is to say that the "point" of Coulter's bigotry was to lambast the tactic of entering rehab to wash away past indiscretions by "the Left." This is, of course, a little different from the "you have to go to rehab after saying un-p.c. stuff" argument, which others have used, but the former is the defense Coulter herself used on Hannity and Colmes.

In any case, it appears that the most high-profile uses of the tactic as of late have occurred on the other side of the Great Divide.

I will give her this: she said that the American people don't buy it when people use rehab to wash away their sins. I think she's exactly right.