They are all smiling because they believe they deserve greater rights than you and I do. Of course, if the tables were turned, we’d never put their rights to a vote, because we have character.

A few minutes ago, somebody posted this picture and quote on Facebook, and I’m not sure how new/old it is, but it so simply encapsulates the worldview of the people in the above video [click to embiggen, of course]:

[h/t Joe for the video]

Occasionally it’s good to check in and see what our favorite anti-gay hate groups are up to when they’re not hating gay people. Lest we fail to understand that the fights for LGBT equality and reproductive rights are inextricably linked — they are both about the ability of fundamentalist Christian men to control the bodies and sex lives and autonomy of anyone who doesn’t look like them — let’s take a look at the “personhood amendment” being debated in Mississippi right now.

If you’re not familiar with a “personhood amendment,” it goes like this:

Garden variety “pro-life” people tend to be concerned with stopping abortion, and favor using the law to enforce that, rather than actually fighting for things like economic freedom for poor women and sex education, things which have been proven to reduce the need for abortion. [Those are the things the pro-choice movement works toward.] However, there is a subset within the activist anti-choice movement which seeks dominion over all female bodies, and will go to any length to achieve it. A “personhood amendment” would codify in a state’s Constitution that human life begins at the point of fertilization and grant that embryo all the rights of an actual human being. This is patently insane to anyone with a rudimentary  understanding of the human reproductive process. By this definition of “personhood,” millions of people “die” every day when embryos which haven’t yet implanted simply don’t turn into actual pregnancies. They aren’t even miscarriages.

The result of such an amendment would, of course, go around Roe v. Wade and ban all abortion in a state, but it would also put in danger lots of other things 99% of women take for granted in the United States. Irin Carmon has a great piece in Salon today which exposes what Mississippi is trying to do right now:

[T]he Personhood movement hopes to do nothing less than reclassify everyday, routine birth control as abortion. The medical definition of pregnancy is when a fertilized egg successfully implants in the uterine wall. If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation – something a woman’s body does naturally all the time – could be considered murder. Scientists say hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers.

On the chopping block: the morning-after pill, IUD’s, most forms of in vitro fertilization and, according to some, the regular old birth control pill. Moreover, the door would be open to investigating women who have recently miscarried. It happens in lots of countries.

You may be reading this and thinking, “that is insane. Nobody is that insane.” Have you met Fundamentalist Christian men before?

But a Colorado-based Personhood activist, Ed Hanks, is more than willing to publicly take things to their logical conclusion. He wrote on the Personhood Mississippi Facebook page that after abortion is banned, “the penalties have to be the same [for a women as well as doctors], as they would have to intentionally commit a known felony in order to kill their child. Society isn’t comfortable with this yet because abortion has been ‘normalized’ — as the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest.”

[...]

At several public forums organized by the secretary of state to discuss ballot initiatives, resident Scott Murray’s statement was typical: “I know there is an issue with pregnancies, unmarried pregnancies, but I tell you the greatest prevention is God, and we’ve got to return to God.” So was Stephen Hannabass’ assertion that “we’ve got to repent. We’ve got to come before God and beg for mercy for our state and for our country.”

You see, if Mississippi just “repents” and “turns back to God,” there won’t be any problems anymore! Left unmentioned by these men, of course, is the fact that Mississippi has one of the worst infant morality rates in the nation, as well as one of the worst rates of child poverty. For these people, life truly begins at conception and concern for it ends at birth, especially if you happen to be a woman.

Irin explains that this measure [which was once supported by most Mississippians, until they actually heard the details of it] didn’t really have legs until one of our favorite hate groups got involved. Yes, the American Family Association is an anti-gay hate group, but it’s also an anti-woman and anti-family hate group:

It was the American Family Association endorsement that put media muscle behind the movement in Mississippi, with email blasts, radio PSAs and interviews, promotions on its own website, and combined with the grass-roots energy, the state’s anti-choice groups took notice. Suddenly, people who had previously focused on incremental change – parental consent laws, waiting periods, ultrasound laws – were ecstatically heralding an end of the “murders.” Mike Huckabee keynoted a fundraiser and even presumed GOP front-runner Mitt Romney to endorse the concept on his show.

Ta-da! When they’re not letting Bryan Fischer lie shamelessly about gay people and screaming and crying about hardware stores being mean to them, the AFA is quietly working to take away most of women’s fundamental rights over what they can and cannot do with their bodies. I cannot imagine what the next step would be, should something like this ever pass. Once they have women’s reproductive systems firmly in their hands, will they move on to controlling what they eat or when they speak? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Please, do yourself a favor and read Irin’s whole piece. The part about how this could affect the treatment of ectopic pregnancies will make you sick. There is a good chance that, as the details of the Personhood Movement, and their true goals, come to light, that this will go down in history as one of the patriarchy’s grand overreaches. I hope so. Again, 99% of women think birth control is just great.

And remember — groups like the American Family Association don’t just hate you as an LGBT person. They hate you in any way you might be different from their poorly conceived, bastardized fundamentalist “Christian” view of how people should live.

[h/t LGM]

UPDATE: Two more things. First, here is the video from Freda Bush, a proponent of the amendment, who is also an OB-GYN. Watch as she lies through her teeth about what this bill is about.

Her lies are solidly refuted in Irin Carmon’s piece.

Also, please read PZ Myers, an actual scientist, on the matter.

As Joe points out, this is quite a righteous rant. Well spoken, sir.

Look, it’s Wingnuttia’s favorite football player, Denver Bronco and Focus on the Family spokesperson Tim Tebow, sharing a loving and enthusiastic kiss with Demaryius Thomas on the field:

Andy reminds us that Tebow is not allowed to talk about same-sex marriage anymore, presumably because his wingnut views on the subject really don’t play well with the American public anymore.

PZ Myers put out a call today for All Radical Homosexuals to go take this survey. It’s that “Public Advocate” thing, the website anti-gay wingnut Eugene Delgaudio set up to project his delusions of grandeur, and he’s looking for data to prove that people really don’t support gay rights. It’s a really easy survey — just five questions! It’ll take you two seconds. Go help him collect the data he needs!

Mitchell Gold, friend of Truth Wins Out and founder of Faith In America, went on MSNBC this afternoon and discussed anti-gay bullying, and the root cause of it, which is spiritual terrorism inflicted by the Religious Right, on the kids of this country. Refusing to mince words, he called the religious messages of hatred against LGBT people exactly what they are: “child molestation of a child’s mind.”  Here’s the pull-quote:

I would say this, that clergy people who stand at their pulpit and they speak about gay people as sinners and an abomination, that is bullying a young kid. That is really — and I know this may sound exaggerated — but that is nothing less than child molestation of a child’s mind. [...] It is devastating to a 14-year-old-kid to hear their rabbi or their imam or their priest or clergy person say that they are a sinner or an abomination…and I’m here to tell them, they are full and whole and wonderful and they will learn as life goes on that there are many, many people who feel that way.

Preach it. The Religious Right doesn’t particularly like to hear that they are at the root of the higher rates of bullying, depression and even suicide that gay teens experience, but we at Truth Wins Out aren’t in business to make the bigots feel better. Here’s the video:

I’m working on a story right now on the boys in Gibson County, Tennessee, who were assaulted while trying to attend a service at one of the guys’ father’s church. According to reports, the attackers were the boy’s father [the pastor] and two deacons [one of whom is the boy's uncle]. So here I sit, compiling my notes on that and making phone calls, and then I see this story, out of a different part of Tennessee:

MADISONVILLE, Tenn. – A 17-year-old senior at Sequoyah High School was reportedly shoved, bumped in the chest and verbally harassed by his principal last week for wearing a T-shirt in support of efforts to establish a gay-straight alliance (GSA) club on campus. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Tennessee sent a letter to the school district today demanding that students’ rights to free speech be protected in the classroom.

The ACLU has been assisting the student, Chris Sigler, in his and other students’ efforts to overcome resistance from school officials to establish a GSA. Principal Maurice Moser had previously threatened to punish students who circulated petitions about the club.

“It is totally unacceptable that a young man who was peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights would have his speech shut down by the public school principal,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. “Last week’s incident clearly illustrates the hostile environment LGBT students face at Sequoyah High School. Given this context, it’s especially important that supportive voices like Sigler’s can be heard in order to overcome the school’s resistance to a GSA.”

Here, I will answer my own question as to what the hell is wrong with Tennessee:

Anti-gay wingnuts are babies. They are not adults in any sense of the word. They react to any perceived slight to their fragile, ignorant worldviews no better than toddlers. They lash out and scream and cry and no amount of reasoning or coddling will sate them. The problem is that these babies are adult-sized and they have been granted positions of authority in Third World states like Tennessee. [Sorry if you're from there. So am I. I'm slinging shit at my own here.]

When the people we are brought up to show respect and deference to fail to pass the simplest smell test of what it means to be a “grown-up,” we end up with situations where high school principals physically assault kids, pastors and deacons physically assault kids, and state “family values” leaders bitch, moan and then gloat about what a good job they done did hurtin’ LGBT families across the state. And they know that, in the age of the internet, their antics travel fast, leading to millions of people at all points across the country and beyond beginning to mock, scorn and laugh at them, and in a way that makes it worse, as their resentment against the “cultural elites,” the people they hate and of whom they are secretly painfully jealous, causes them to dig their heels in even further and strengthens their commitment to hurting anyone who challenges their pea-brained worldviews.

It’s a sad situation, but that, in short, is what the hell is wrong with Tennessee.

[h/t Towleroad]

In case you hadn’t heard, an app developed in France for Android smart phones has caused quite a bit of controversy over the last week. The app, called “Is My Son Gay?,” asked users 20 questions that, it claimed, would enable the app to determine a child’s sexual orientation. The questions, largely based on outdated stereotypes and caricatures of gay men, included: “Does it take him a long time to do his hair?,” “Does he like to dress well and pay close attention to his outfits and brands?,” “Before birth, did you want that child to be a girl?,” and “Is his father absent?” The app offered three results: “gay,” “normal and modern,” and “not gay;” if the user’s answers yielded the third result, the app reassured them that yes, their son would indeed father grandchildren. And all this for the low, low price of €1.99.

Yeah. Pretty offensive stuff. The app’s creator said in an email to Rue89 that it was “…designed with a light-hearted approach.” Because homophobia is just SO funny, right?

Well today, we have good news to report: according to the Advocate, Google has pulled the “Is My Son Gay?” app from the market.

Sheesh, you’d think that app developers would know better than to market homophobic smart phone apps by this point…

This is entertaining. Faced with a bigoted campus preacher, a drag queen who appears to be ready for Rocky Horror Picture Show decided to just go ahead and do his anti-gay dog and pony show for the preacher, and better. My favorite part is when the preacher says, “but the difference is that we’re sincere and you’re not.” Uh, exactly, dude, you are the loon, and gurl is acting. She wins.

[h/t Jim]

My notion of an average day in Peter LaBarbera’s life:

1. Wake up.
2. Get upset about gay thing.
3. Poop, while upset about gay thing.
4. Go down to office/dungeon/whatever it is and worry about lots of gay things.
5. Eat, while upset about gay thing.
6. Sleep and dream terrifying or maybe hot dreams about a gay thing.

But yesterday was exciting because he got to go on the radio and be upset about gay things! Brian at Right Wing Watch reports that Pete went on the Janet Mefferd show yesterday and lost it about the following stuff:

LaBarbera: You know I’m trying to get Christians to understand, look, it’s not about tolerance anymore; it’s about celebrating homosexuality.

Mefferd: Right, well we saw that just this week with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It was one side of the story, everybody was in the streets rejoicing, everybody was happy, all the sudden the sun has come out, completely ignoring the fact that there were plenty of Americans who were grieving that particular decision.

LaBarbera: Absolutely Janet, that was so sad to see. I was looking at our Chicago Sun Times, two full pages celebrating the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal. The media now pretends that there is no other side in this issue and we have to work around that. But the homosexuals are sort of knowing that they have the media with them, are trying all these techniques, and the gay activists are sending me taunting messages, ‘you’re next Peter!’ This is how bad it is. People don’t understand; we don’t use the term ‘homo-fascism’ lightly.

…

The CDC just reported that 2 percent of men who have sex with men are responsible for 61 percent of AIDS cases, if it were any other behavior in this culture, wouldn’t we see a mobilization by governments state, local, federal, by private organizations, everybody would be saying, ‘we have to stop this unhealthy behavior.’ But in homosexuality it’s the opposite, we’re actually promoting the very behavior that’s killing people.

…

It’s a hateful thing to say Peter LaBarbera, Janet Mefferd, these Christians are hateful, that in it of itself is raw bigotry and hatred. Total dominance is what they’re after. It’s not about tolerance it’s about dominance. Yes they’re on a march. This is one of the most successful American power campaigns that has ever existed. Consider in sixty years they went from being an aberrant, taboo lifestyle, which was ‘don’t even mention it,’ to now driving society. Even Ann Coulter is bending to the gay lobby, she joined GOProud, she wrote a book called ‘Demonic’ and it’s about the mob, the liberal mob, and guess which group she happened to leave out? The homosexual activists, who rose to power through a riot in Stonewall, they fought the cops; they threw bottles at the police. If there’s not a gay mafia that controls Hollywood and the media, even the liberals talk about the gay mafia now it’s that powerful, and yet Ann Coulter of all people left it out of the book, because she knew it might threaten her prominence in the media.

Okay, so it must be exciting to have a buddy to be upset about the gay things with! But let’s break this down real quick:

1. No one is asking anyone to “celebrate” anything, any more than we celebrate it when Peter and his wife do whatever it is they do. But not one gay activist has ever tried to take away Peter’s constitutional rights [the ones he actually has, rather than the ones he thinks he has], and we’d like the same courtesy.

2. The number of people “grieving” DADT repeal is so sadly minuscule that it doesn’t merit mention. David Duke’s/Tony Perkins’ mailing list probably was grieving about all sorts of things that day, most of which aren’t real, and there’s no need to send a camera to cover their weirdness. Upwards of 70% of Americans supported DADT repeal. No need to present “another side.”

3. He doesn’t use the term “homo-fascism” lightly because he made it up and thinks it is clever. Wingnuts don’t tend to understand the definitions of words, in general, but they get excited when they can tack “fascism” or “islamo” onto something and make a biiiiiiig word. Why he thinks this word is clever is beyond me, because Americans, for the most part, aren’t really worried about the “fascist” threat from us homos. That’s why we have majority support for pretty much every single equal right we want.

4. “It’s a hateful thing to say Peter LaBarbera is hateful” = “I know you are but what am I.” Again, though, most Americans understand that extremist Christians like Peter are among the greatest purveyors of irrational hate in this country.

5. His calling the gay rights movement an “American power movement” and suggesting that we’ve even captured Ann Coulter (!!!) is hilarious, as it shows off the wingnut motif of turning their ideological opponents into superheroes imbued with magical powers. It’s the ultimate exposition of a victim complex, coming from a sector of the population which has had an inordinate amount of influence on this nation’s history for a long, long time  now. Watching white, male, fundamentalist Christian men come to grips with the fact that they are actually on the same footing as everybody else is adorable.

Okay, I’m done. Brian has the audio at Right Wing Watch if you want to hear it. I don’t want it cluttering my blog.

Music post next? Yes.