In an interview on yesterday’s Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pressed flailing Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum about his position that the now-extinct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy ought to be reinstated. The remarks Santorum made raising the horrifying specter of gay soldiers showering with other soldiers (*GASP!*) received all the media attention, but what seems to have thus far escaped notice is that he also cited discredited and dangerous “ex-gay” propaganda as a reason he believes that LGBT Americans, unlike African Americans, do not deserve their civil rights (for clarity’s sake, I’ve removed most of the sputters):
I mean, we’re talking about people who are simply different because of the color of their skin, not because of activities that would cause problems for people living in those, quote, ‘close quarters…’ I know the whole gay community is trying to make this the new Civil Rights Act — it’s not. It’s not the same. You are black by the color of your skin. You are not homosexual, necessarily, obviously, by the color of your skin… the idea that somehow or another that this is the equivalent, that being black and being gay is the same, is simply not true. There are all sorts of studies out there that suggest just the contrary. And there are people who were gay, and lived the gay lifestyle, and aren’t anymore. I don’t know if that’s the similar situation — I don’t think that’s the case with anybody that’s black. So it’s not the same and I know people try to make it the same, but it is not. It is behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that makes it [sic] all of the difference when it comes to serving in the military.
Santorum clearly suffers from a chronic case of the Gay Hysteria — he’s obsessed with gay people, gay sexual activities, gay soldiers in the shower, gay people having gay sex… in fact, he brings up gay topics with a frequency approaching the level of compulsion (take note, Karen). The former senator is so fixated on gay sexual acts that he is apparently unable to discuss gay people without talking about them in flagrante delicto. In fact, I’d be interested (horrified?) to know just how much time Rick Santorum spends thinking about gay sex.
Oh and yeah, by the way, the whole “there are people who were gay… and aren’t anymore” thing? Pretty sure nobodyagreeswithyou, Rick. It’s not possible to change from gay to straight and you can’t pray away the gay, so you’re going to have to be a little more creative the next time you go fishing for reasons to justify your bigotry. Thanks for playing.
Video of the sputtering Santorum here, courtesy of HuffPost Politics:
As I’ve said before, when the wingnuts start losing Fox, that really means they’ve lost the war. Porno Pete has a desperate missive on his little hate dungeon blog, begging Fox News to please make it clear that they hate and are as bizarrely fixated on gays as much as Pete is:
Dear Readers,
One of the reasons we are in such big trouble regarding the promotion of homosexuality in our culture is that “conservatives” have stopped acting conservatively on this particular (sin) issue.
When Pete uses the word “conservative,” he means “backwoods, uneducated and medievally bigoted for no other reason besides the fact that Mommy and Daddy taught me to be.”
A good example is frequent FOX News guest Margaret Hoover. She espouses legalized homosexual “marriage” as a Republican Party and “conservative” issue — despite the longstanding GOP platform planks against counterfeit “same-sex marriage” and other aspects of the larger homosexual agenda. Please read below as Hoover makes the same fraudulent connection between homosexuality and race that drives Blacks nuts when it’s trotted out by “gay’ activists and liberals…
Pete is so concerned about The Blacks that he capitalizes “blacks.” Of course, there are many The Blacks who aren’t driven “nuts” by that comparison. The late Coretta Scott King was a notable one. Civil Rights leaders like John Lewis, who actually know something about the Civil Rights Movement, are also worthy of mention. Julian Bond, the chair of the NAACP…
Et cetera, et cetera.
But please do remember, that Porno Pete is an expert on The Blacks, as he has a long history of co-opting them for bigoted purposes. They’re tight!
We Republicans have often found ourselves on the wrong side of civil rights struggles since the 1960s, but there was a reason that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father is said to have supported Republicans.
Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was a Republican. By supporting the [pro-homosexuality American Foundation for Equal Rights trial against California's Proposition 8 upholding traditional marriage as between a man and a woman] we have an opportunity to establish our historic credibility on civil rights issues once again. But we should support marriage equality because it is the right thing to do.
Gays and lesbians are our friends, neighbors, doctors, colleagues, sisters and brothers. Does it sit well with you that because of their sexual orientation, a factor outside one’s control, that they should have less rights and protections in the eyes of the law?…
That’s why the Supreme Court, in 1967 Loving v. Virginia, legalized interracial marriage –six years after our current president was born to an interracial couple. At that time 73% of the population opposed “miscegenation.” How long would it have taken to change popular opinion, for the minority to democratically win their constitutional rights? As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously asserted, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Yay, Margaret Hoover.
Anywho, he’s really upset that that was on the Fox News website, and that his beloved wingnut network is slowly beginning to tell his kind to go to hell on these issues. It’s a slow process, but it is indeed happening, and the reason, which Pete et al. have never been able to understand or accept, is that News Corp never actually cared about them or respected their beliefs as people, but simply saw them as a ratings demographic — the bitter, cranky, whiny, low-information white set of voters — and has played that card for all it’s worth. But Fox News also recognizes that, though there is still some steam in that demographic, even they are slowly starting to abandon the bigotry of old when it comes to gays. Simply put, there’s a hell of a lot of Teabaggers who have gay relatives and neighbors and sons and daughters, and though the network can still play ooga booga with them on make-believe black crime waves and presidential birth certificates, peddling anti-gay bigotry just isn’t such a safe bet for them anymore.
They never respected you, Pete. They wanted your money. Deal wit’ it.
Good morning, everybody. I’m drinking my coffee, listening to some Hot Recordz and glancing through my Google Reader and what do I find? Oh it’s one of the wingnuttiest writers, Ed Whelan, from one of America’s saddest websites, getting his panties in a wad over the fact that there are gay lawyers at the Justice Department, presumably being gay throughout the entire workday and even at lunch, and even working on cases that involve discrimination, and thus mucking up the wingnut’s sadly tenuous sense of security and warmth:
One of the attorneys on the DOJ brief is Aaron D. Schuham…A reader passes along that Schuham’s same-sex partner is (or, at least as of the 2009 White House Easter Egg Roll, was) Chris Anders, federal policy director for the ACLU’s LGBT Rights project.
Another of the attorneys on the DOJ brief is Sharon M. McGowan. As another reader calls to my attention, McGowan was also a staffer on the ACLU’s LGBT Rights project, and the New York Times announced last year her same-sex marriage to the Family Equality Council’s “federal lobbyist on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender family issues.”
Run away, it’s GAYS! Perhaps realizing what a sissy he sounded like in the above section, Ed quickly added at the end:
I will note that Schuham and McGowan are only two of seven DOJ attorneys on the brief—and apparently the two most junior—so I don’t want to overstate their possible influence. That said, I’ll also note…
Blah blah blah blah blah. Mission accomplished. The National Review readers who are most likely to lose their marbles over gays being anywhere at any time [likely, Ed's fellow writers, Kathryn Lopez and Maggie Gallagher] had already received the ‘fraidy message: teh gayz are a-comin’ to git yer!
The case in question involves a religious school and whether or not they are exempted from anti-discrimination laws. Adam Serwer asks the relevant questions:
What does this have to do with the merits of the case? Unclear, except that gay people, wanting all those special rights and whatnot, don’t really belong in a case involving a religious organization, since gay rights infringe on the rights of religious people to discriminate against gays, even though that’s not what the case is about. It’s about a teacher who claims she was fired because of her narcolepsy, and whether or not the so-called “ministerial exception” to federal anti-discrimination laws applies in this context. But you let gays near religious freedom cases, and pretty soon they’ll be…something terrible.
Something so terrible that we can’t even imagine it, much less talk about it. And we all know about the dangers of the homo-narcoleptic movement in this country. Or at least Ed Whelan knows about them. You’re getting very, very sleepy, Ed!
Adam, with the conclusions:
Part of Whelan’s problem is that since both Schuham and McGowan have backgrounds in civil rights law, they have no business um, working on civil rights cases.
Heh, yeah, that’s part of what passes on “thinking” for right wing morons these days. More conclusions:
But Whelan’s bigger problem, judging by his value-added, is that only straight people should be allowed near the law, lest it get all gayified. In April Whelan complained that the judge in the California Prop 8 case, Vaughn Walker, should have recused himself because he was in a same-sex relationship and so he stood to benefit directly from overturning the law. Of course by the logic of anti-gay rights advocates like Whelan, a straight judge trying to preserve his “traditional marriage” would also benefit directly, and should also recuse themselves. But since the latter wouldn’t have “trumped” the right of conservatives like Whelan to define and limit the civil rights of same-sex couples that wouldn’t have been so terrible.
Yep! Which brings us back to the headline of my piece! Heterosexual Conservative Christian Supremacists are so convinced of their own stupid lies, the ones they have been telling themselves for generations, at bedtime and on Sunday mornings, about how they and only they are the normal, real Americans, and how the rest of us are somehow lesser, that they view it as self-evident that only they should be the arbiters of what’s fair and just in this country. Of course, as the rest of society passes them by leaps and bounds in almost every area [but let's start with shoe-tying ability], their only psychological choice is to double down on the lies, if only in their own heads. So it is that they become more and more hysterical at the prospect of people who are different from them possibly having a real say in how things go in ‘Murka, and they forget to use their euphemisms, openly arguing for their own supremacist beliefs.
It’s weird and kinda sad to look at.
Now, the question is whether Ed Whelan actually believes this stuff or not. Meh, who knows? Thers brought up an important point last night, which we should always remember when we’re dealing with wingnuts of the National Review variety:
But please let’s not forget that the reason we have wingnuts is that wingnuttery is a heavily subsidized industry. Thar’s gold in that thar dumb. NRO is paid for propaganda, not a free market success. Townhall etc.
‘Zactly. As I said above, mission accomplished. There are still sadly those in our midst for whom the message, “It’s bees, bees, everywhere! GAYS, GAYS, EVERYWHERE!,” resonates, and folks like Ed are more than willing to take home a paycheck for the purpose of scaring them.
Sometimes my Google Reader likes to harass me by including Gay Patriot on the featured “What’s New” screen, which leads me to, oy vey, read it. So, in the interest of moving on to other things, here are two recent posts from the “Blatt” one, and why they are wrong. First of all: Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz anti-gay? [No, and the premise of this one is particularly stupid, even for gay wingnuttia.] Basically, Wasserman Schultz’s response to the Anthony Weiner Twitter Wiener scandal has been to shrug her shoulders and say “whatever.” However, Dan Blatt points out [!!!11!!] that back in the day when “a male colleague” [ahem, Mark Foley] was caught sexting congressional pages, she was a bit more outraged. Is this, Dan Blatt asks, evidence that Wasserman Schultz is anti-gay?
[W]e should also note that she has called for a much harsher censure of the man sexually drawn to members of his own sex while seeking to excuse the behavior of an apparently heterosexual federal representative.
Could it be that she used the pretext of the 2006 scandal involving Congressman Foley to draw attention to these misdeeds of a gay man, so reminding people of the shibboleth that gay men regularly prey on teenage boys? And yet she finds it excusable that a married straight man would use electronic media to flirt with a woman less than half his age. This Democrat appears more ready to criticize a gay man than a straight one.
Uh. No. The very Republican Mark Foley was INDEED sexting UNDERAGE TEEN BOYS, whereas Anthony Weiner was stupidly texting women who are of age. So for Blatt to take a victim stance over the “shibboleth [Dan loves him some $5.00 words. Makes him feel smart.] that gay men regularly prey on teenage boys” is bizarre in the extreme, considering the fact that Mark Foley was preying on teenage boys. It didn’t have jack squat to with his sexuality! Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t need to remind anyone of anything, as Mark Foley was reminding the nation, as he sexted teenage boys, that he was, frankly, kinda pervy.
Now, we know that it’s uncomfortable for Republicans because Democrats’ sex scandals [even when there is actual fire] tend to involve people who are of age and/or don’t tend to involve anti-gay politicians caught tapping their toes for sexy cops in airport bathrooms. We know. Our sex scandals are boring. No one is arguing that Anthony Weiner exhibited good judgment here. But Republicans like Dan have to know, on some level, that the weird, paranoid, moralistic obsession with sexual purity and cleanliness that is part in parcel of the Republican platform tends to lead people, upon hearing of a Republican sex scandal, to ask, “live boy or dead girl”? Because that’s just how their scandals go.
In short, the easy answer to the stupid question is no, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not anti-gay. If you’re going to try to manipulate the facts on the ground to score political points, you ought to do so in more intelligent ways.
Okay, gay wingnuts talk all the time about how they don’t support “equality,” because they have been so indoctrinated into their parents’ fear of the Red Menace that words like “equal” automatically mean Communism x Socialism x Islamofascism x Gay in their minds. [Yes, even gay wingnuts freak out at things that are a little bit too gay, because they're trying to pass.] They prefer the words “liberty” and “freedom,” because these are the buzzwords they have been taught to have good reactions to! Also, they understand the correct definitions of exactly none of these words.
So Blatt has been reading some book about Reagan [their continued obsessive adulation of the very mediocre, even by Republican standards, Ronald Reagan, baffles me to no end, and creeps me out, quite frankly], and apparently “The Gipper” is helping Dan understand why he doesn’t support equal rights for gay people. Because when you need a prop-up pillow for your self-hatred, go to Reagan!
Reading today in the the latest collection of the Gipper’s writings,The Notes: Ronald Reagan’s Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom, I caught this note which gets at my discomfort with all this “equality” rhetoric:
The real Am[erican] idea is not that every man shall be on a level with every other, but that every man shall have the liberty without hindrance to be what God made him. The office of gov[ernmen]t is not to confer happiness but to give men the opp[ortunity] to work out happiness for themselves.
The policy, it would seem, would then be to eliminate laws which constrain our freedom rather than to enact ones which (supposedly) ensure our equality.
Erm, good try, but no, as this is an absurdly limited understanding of the words “liberty” and “freedom.” You see, for “every man to have the liberty [without hindrance] to be what [...] made him,” in a nation whose founding documents theoretically guarantee that all men are, um, created equal*, one has to presume that all citizens would have [ahem!] equal rights and responsibilities and freedoms and liberties, etc. [Duh.] Some of these are conferred by the government getting its hands off, such as a woman’s right to choose, and others are conferred with government intervention. Marriage equality is one of those! You see, everyone, the government is the one providing the benefits and responsibilities of marriage! Therefore! In order to pursue an agenda of wingnut buzzwords Liberty and Freedom for all Americans, one would have to support all Americans equal access to the institution of civil marriage. There is nothing left to prove about the nature of sexuality that would make it anything other than a given that telling gay people that we can marry someone of the opposite sex is a ridiculous interpretation of equal access to this institution. Same goes for things like ENDA, which would ensure that bigots don’t get to deny people access to jobs simply because they don’t like the genital composition of their sexual relationships.
Of course, assholes will argue all day long that that would infringe on bigoted business owners’ rights to hire and fire at will, and it’s for the same reason they still not-so-secretly hate the Civil Rights Act. I don’t have to make a further point on that, do I?
I cannot believe I am having to explain these things, but then again, he was trying to score partisan political points above by whining that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is anti-gay because she went after a Republican politician for sexting teenagers, for god’s sake, so we’re at a very remedial level here.
Amanda Marcotte actually made a good point on this subject the other day, in a longer post about the bankruptcy of libertarianism as a philosophy, and it applies here as well:
The word for my beliefs is “liberal” or “progressive”. Or, if you like, “socially liberal”. Liberalism, at its core, is about maximizing freedom, but in a substantive and not glib way like so-called libertarianism is. We believe in civil liberties, but also other freedoms, such as the “freedom froms” that FDR spoke of: freedom from want, freedom from fear. Thus, regulating business and supporting labor maximize freedom for the most number of people. We consider the freedom to have a life outside of work for the working class to be more important than the freedom of the rich to make another buck, for instance. Using “libertarian” to mean “pro-freedom” is misleading; under a libertarian system, the vast majority of people live lives under the corporate bootheel and are not free people at all.
Ding ding ding! And now the corollaries: the government giving all the people equal access to marriage and an equal chance at employment and housing, etc., maximizes freedom for the most people! And paying lip service to a BS Republican idea of “freedom” and “liberty” means that whoever has the most influence and clout gets the most “freedom” and “liberty,” and the rest of the people pretty much get stomped on.
Liberalism: It’s freedom and liberty, but in a grown-up way!
*Yeah, “equal” is right there in the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson, that f*cking Islamofascist socialist Kenyan communist.
Here is Keith Ratliff, the pastor of the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines, speaking to some sort of anti-gay rally in Iowa, about how he knows better than Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, when it comes to the subject of the Civil Rights movement and gay rights:
“For those that spiritually see the big picture, this issue is a battle ground as we said and not a playground,” Ratliff said.
But Ratliff also spoke in favor of marriage between one man and one woman and allowing a vote on the issue.
The rally was organized by The Family Leader, an organization led by former three-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats. The activists are urging Iowa lawmakers, particularly Senate Democrats, to pass a measure that would set the stage for Iowans to vote on forbidding same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution.
Ratliff also declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was raised in a biblically structured home and would not have approved of the “deviant behavior” by the gay community.
“Rev. Dr. King, Jr. wasn’t taught to subscribe to private interpretations of Burger King brand religions, any ‘you can have it your way’ religions,” Ratliff said.
Speaking from the grave with a few choice quotes, telling Ratliff how pig ignorantly wrong he is, is Coretta Scott King:
“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice… But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ … I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing, and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.”
“We have a lot of work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say ‘common struggle,’ because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry & discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.”
“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”
God, she is so inconvenient for them. That’s why they never say a word about her.
We are upset because the argument for gay marriage is out of step with orthodox Christianity and Judaism and is seen by those who know the Bible as mankind’s way to make the Bible meaningless, and for man to insert his own sinful way. To put it another way, every time someone says that homosexuality is fine and gay marriage is just a “civil rights” issue, it feels like the devil handing us an apple to eat.
That came from a letter to the editor in the Baltimore Sun, in response to the paper’s endorsement of the marriage equality bill making its way through Maryland’s houses of government right now. I don’t usually quote letters to the editor, but that one just made me laugh. It feels like the Devil is Handing them Apples! I personally don’t know how that feels, but I’m not a professional victim, as Fundamentalists are trained to be. Well dude? You live in a secular democracy, and soon you will have to learn to deal with the fact that no, your religious beliefs do not trump my civil rights. So I ask: HOW YOU LIKE DEM APPLES?
A bunch of bigots got together in the Deep South to rally in support of a girl and her pet anti-gay bigotry, and they were not welcomed!
KKK members and representatives from the Supreme White Alliance rallied at ASU in support of graduate student Jennifer Keeton, who filed suit against the school in July for requiring her to learn about the homosexual community or face expulsion.
[...]
Although the KKK said at least 50 members would arrive at 1 p.m. and rally until 4 p.m., the group of a dozen showed up about 1:40 p.m. and left about a 30 minutes later.
The dozens of counter-protesters from homosexual and civil rights organizations made use of their time face-to-face with Klan members.
“I think obviously those who came in support of equality and love outnumbered those who came in support of white supremacy,” said Christin Meador, an Augusta native who traveled from New York City to organize a protest against the KKK. She founded Proud Ally in 2009, a national gay-straight alliance that promotes tolerance and education.
Too bad, so sad.
Nice work, Augusta.
Later on that night, the Klan had one of their extremely fey ceremonies where they burned a cross and they chose a new Miss Congeniality Grand Wizard, and they promised they’d be coming back to Augusta State, due to the way the hundreds of counterprotesters there hurt their fee fees:
“We’re coming back to Augusta because of the disrespect given today,” Johnson said. “(Protesters) never gave us a chance to say what we had to say.”
Johnson said he ended the rally in front of ASU early because “people there tried to make it about hate, but it was about constitutional rights.”
Would it be completely unprofessional of me to just respond with a “LOL,” rather than commenting with words?
Talk about co-opting the message of a Civil Rights hero…
The following ad is running for Tom Emmer’s campaign in Minnesota. It’s put out by the Minnesota Family Council [sic] and the National Organization for Marriage [also sic], and it shamelessly casts people’s right to “vote against same sex marriage” as a Civil Right.
Disgusting. They believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have supported the majority’s right to vote to take away/deny rights from a minority. There are no words for the grotesque, depraved, cynical minds that would use this logic.
It does show us how little respect they really have for the man, though. Wingnuts know that they will never have the moral authority of a man like Martin Luther King, Jr., and they know they’ll never truly be able to tarnish his image in the eyes of history, though they’d like to. So instead, they pretend that their own fights are somehow a continuation of King’s work. Sorry, but King’s closest confidant, namely his wife, stated on numerous occasions that he wouldn’t have supported bigotry or hatred in any form.
In case you need a refresher, here are some of Coretta’s words on gay rights.
Time to close down the week. Hopefully next week I’ll be Above the Weather and I’ll be back in my normal, crazy 10+ posts per day mode.
Instead of a round-up, this week, I’d rather leave you with two images. I mentioned when I posted earlier this week on Memphis’s March for Gay Rights that the really cool pictures were yet to come, as I attended the march with a brilliant, inspired black & white photographer with a little bit of Ernest Withers in his blood. The pictures are now being developed and I’ll share more next week, but for now, here are two pictures from two different struggles, two different times, two different views of the same place: The lawn in front of Memphis’s City Hall. The first shot comes from Ernest Withers himself, during the Civil Rights movement. The second comes from the aforementioned photographer at Monday’s March for Gay Rights. His name is Monty Shane, and you can see much more of his work here.
[Click to embiggen!]
As I said, I’ll be sharing more of his pictures from the march next week, but in the meantime, if you’d like any more information on his work, feel free to contact me.
Okay, music time! Some songs are simply epic. Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart” is one of them. I usually know what song I’m starting the Friday Random Ten with by Tuesday or so, but this week, I really had no idea until I was standing on my porch last night and I just started humming this song, even though I hadn’t heard it in months. And I was like “Oh. Yeah. That’s the one, definitely.” The introduction to the song is over four minutes long, and if you skip ahead, you’re doing yourself a disservice, because the slow building energy of the song is part of what makes it magnificent. So much tension and stress, plodding along, building, adding layers, second by second…yeah. So let’s start with that, hit shuffle and see what happens. More videos after the jump.
1. Drive-By Truckers – “Santa Fe”
2. My Morning Jacket – “The Bear”
3. X – “Arms for Hostages”
4. Roadside Graves – “Ruby”
5. Carly Simon – “The Right Thing To Do”
6. New Kids on the Block – “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” [Hahahahah, embarrassing.]
7. Pattern Is Movement – “Right Away”
8. Nina Simone – “I Loves You Porgy”
9. Bon Iver – “Lump Sum”
10. The Killers – “Goodnight, Travel Well”
What a weird random. And hello again, Nina Simone, who appears every single week.
