Elaine Donnelly, whose “job” I assumed would have disappeared by now — all she ever really did was fight against gays serving in the military, and that bird has flown — is very upset with Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for failing to pledge to re-weaken the United States military by reinstating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), coordinated the survey. She says she is disappointed that Romney recently told the Des Moines Register he does not plan to change the law mandating homosexual military service.

“Governor Romney told the Des Moines Register that, well, yes — Congress shouldn’t have rushed the repeal bill through, but it’s happened now, and the wars are winding down, so now it’s okay,” Donnelly notes. “That was disappointing because it’s just like with ObamaCare — Congress made a huge mistake in passing that law.”

And the CMR president does not understand why the issue of “gays” in the military has not created the same outrage that followed ObamaCare.

“All of the Republicans are saying it is time to repeal ObamaCare. Why then would we say that the mistake made by the lame-duck Congress with regard to our military should be allowed to stand indefinitely?” she wonders.

Time for an episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions, Elaine: the reason the issue of gays serving openly in the military has not created any outrage is that a super-majority of Americans supported repealing the bigoted law. I do understand that wingnuts have to tell themselves thousands of lies per day in order to keep their heads from exploding, but in all the months leading up to repeal, every poll showed that Americans thought the ban on open service was stupid and bigoted. Ergo, repeal did not lead to “outrage.” Or, simpler: Elaine, nobody cares what people like you think about these sorts of issues anymore, save for the shrinking segment of the population that lives in your hateful, misinformed little echo chamber.

Sorry.

Actually, in the original version, Chris Wallace actually committed an act of journalism, when he read a quote from one of the leaders against desegregating the military without telling Frothy what it was, and asked if that was how Frothy felt about the repeal of DADT. Of course, Frothy did.

But this version, with Joan Crawford, is even better.

We’re very used to Peter LaBarbera seeing any signs of affection exchanged between two people of the same gender and immediately conflating it with Hot Sex, but usually he does it with men. [Haha, I see what I did there.] We’re not used to seeing him do it with women. [Zing!]

No, seriously, though, Peter LaBarbera saw the now historic picture of the first same-sex Navy “first-off-the-ship” kiss, and immediately his mind went to sex.  He said the following not-so-smart thing on Janet Mefferd’s radio program:

As far as the lowlights, I have to say that the worse would be what’s happened in the military, we just saw the story—we were talking about it off air—of the traditional first kiss of a Navy ship just went to two lesbians intentionally. Under Obama’s Navy, lesbians get the first traditional kiss; the sailor comes off the boat greeted by his spouse which is a woman usually, man-woman, woman-man, but now under Obama this political correctness we’re going to pretend that homosexuality belongs in the military. And actually Obama posted the photo of these two women kissing on his Flickr page which to me is another first—a president posting an indecent photo on his Flickr page because homosexual sex and homosexual practice is still indecent. It doesn’t matter what the trends say what the political correctness says, it matters what the truth is, and we go by the word of God and that’s indecent behavior. And to see our president glorifying it and saying this is one of his greatest accomplishments is really a sad day.

Yeah, here’s that kiss again:

You have to be kinda weird to look at that picture and see nothing but sex. I would hate to imagine a life where I couldn’t recognize the sheer elation of love and reunion without my bigotry getting in the way. It almost makes me feel sorry for Porno Pete.

Almost.

Our society has made remarkable progress in the fight for LGBT equality in my lifetime. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was completed this year, and most Americans support ending discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace. In 2010, for the first time, two separate polls indicated that a majority of Americans support the freedom of same-sex couples to marry. The well-documented generation gap in support for LGBT rights ensures that anti-equality forces in the United States are ultimately fighting a losing battle.

But as the GOP presidential primary is so vividly reminding us, much work remains to be done in the struggle for LGBT equality. Of course, the usual suspects in the anti-gay pantheon remain the most vocal exponents of homophobia, but even well-meaning, LGBT-affirming individuals can and often do reinforce homophobia and heterosexism without even knowing that they’re doing it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself in the following situation: a supportive, well-meaning friend or family member is introducing me and my spouse to someone we don’t know. This person makes the introduction as follows: “Hi, so-and-so! This is John, and this is his [insert occasional awkward pause here] partner [or 'boyfriend,' or 'lover,' or 'friend'] Michael.”

Michael and I have been married for nearly six years. Still, we regularly find ourselves in the situation outlined above. I suspect that people have a wide variety of reasons for using non-marital terms to describe our relationship in social situations. Perhaps they aren’t (or are?) aware of the religious or political views of others and wish to sidestep any potential awkwardness that might ensue. Perhaps they themselves, while outwardly professing to support equality, still struggle silently with acceptance of our marriage. Perhaps they wish to save us from embarrassment or retribution. Even LGBT-identified friends of ours slip up on occasion, introducing Michael as my “partner” or asking me whether my “boyfriend” and I will be able to attend their holiday party. I suspect that in these cases especially, force of habit is the culprit: same-sex couples have been excluded from the rights and privileges of marriage for so long that many LGBTs don’t even think of committed same-sex relationships in marital terms.

However varied the reasons may be for using less contentious terms to describe our marriage, the result is always the same: it denigrates our love, telling us that our marriage is somehow unworthy of the term, inherently unequal and intrinsically less valuable than the marriages of our straight counterparts. It reinforces the still-powerful cultural taboos surrounding LGBT people and our relationships. It implies that honesty about the nature and definition of our relationship is less important than accommodating the prejudice of others. It tells us that it’s best to be silent.

I am not entirely without guilt here, either. Early in our marriage (perhaps due to my Catholic upbringing or the sometimes sadistic nature of Midwestern politeness), I often adapted my own terminology to suit my audience. For friends, family members, and people under 40 I used the term “husband,” but for elderly and conservative people, and in work-related situations, I retreated into the relative neutrality of “partner.” I’m no longer shy about making universal use of the term “husband,” but I’ve still occasionally been reticent to call others out for neglecting to do so themselves.

No more.

I can no longer concern myself with whether or not my marriage makes others uncomfortable. I have to be true to myself, my husband, and the love that we share. I refuse to make any concessions whatsoever to bigotry; from now on, I will correct anyone who disrespects the way Michael and I define our relationship. I will not allow my marriage to be denigrated in my hearing.

Of course, there are some in the LGBT community who make the conscientious decision not to describe their committed relationships in marital terms. I respect those decisions and would never suggest that those relationships are any less equal, committed, valuable, or meaningful than mine. However, decisions about how to define a couple’s relationship are for that couple, and that couple alone, to make. Michael and I define ourselves as husbands (as does the State of Vermont), so referring to us by any other term is a sign of deep disrespect that I, and hopefully others, will no longer tolerate.

This holiday season, when you’re introducing your married LGBT friends at a party, remember to respect the way they choose to define their relationship. Michael is my husband. Get used to saying that, because from now on, I’ll be correcting you if you don’t.

Note: This piece, which can also be found on the Huffington Post, is a retooled version of a post that originally appeared in the Bilerico Project in December 2010.

In addition to being a tireless advocate for his constituents and the American LGBT community, Rep. Barney Frank is well known for telling things like he sees ‘em. I find his candor and passion refreshing, especially in the often stilted world of contemporary American political discourse.

Three of my favorite examples of Rep. Frank’s famously quick wit follow below:

1.) In 1995, Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey infamously referred to Rep. Frank as “Barney Fag” in an interview. Armey retracted the slur and chalked it up to an innocent slip of the tongue. Frank responded: “I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

2.) During the height of debate in the summer of 2009 over the then-proposed (and subsequently enacted) health reform bill, a constituent confronted Rep. Frank at a town hall meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts about his support for health reform, asking why he continued to support what she offensively termed a “Nazi policy.” Frank responded:

“On what planet do you spend most of your time? … You stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis. My answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

Watch:

3.) Rep. Frank made the following remarks at the enrollment ceremony in December 2010 where Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal law:

“Four years ago, a Republican running for congress in Indiana said… [that] if [his Democratic opponent] won, Nancy Pelosi would become speaker, and she would let me enact the ‘radical homosexual agenda.’ So let me own up to that agenda: it’s to be protected against violent crimes driven by bigotry, it’s to be able to get married, it’s to be able to get a job, and it’s to be able to fight for our country. For those who are worried about the ‘radical homosexual agenda,’ let me put them on notice: two down, two to go.”

Watch:

If you’re looking for more of Barney Frank’s greatest hits (including an epic takedown of Bill O’Reilly and a confrontation with our favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann), Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic has a great compilation.

Yet again, the Religious Right has wasted American time, money and oxygen lying and complaining about our society becoming more open and accepting, in this case with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, only to have absolutely nothing they warned of come true:

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Since the lifting two months ago of a longstanding U.S. ban on gays serving openly in the military, U.S. Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime.

“I’m very pleased with how it has gone,” Amos said in an Associated Press interview during a week-long trip that included four days in Afghanistan, where he held more than a dozen town hall-style meetings with Marines of virtually every rank. He was asked about a wide range of issues, from his view of the Marine Corps’ future to more mundane matters such as why he recently decided to stop allowing Marines to wear their uniform with the sleeves rolled up.

Not once was he asked in Afghanistan about the repeal of the gay ban.

Because it’s fine, and because our military is composed of finer, stronger people than our Religious Right. Moving on…

[h/t Jeremy]

John Shore has this story for us, and it is absolutely insane. Here’s the basic set-up. A pastor at a relatively large church, who had really stayed away from the issue of homosexuality, in general, posted an article about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on his Facebook page. Though he is personally pro-equality, he did not make any commentary on the repeal — just posted the article. So here’s what had happened was:

I’d like to share with you what’s just recently happened in my life. I’ve been serving as the Pastor of [Super Cool-Sounding Job Title] at [Church Name] in [Big American City] for the past five years. My wife and our two boys (at the time; our fourth is due in December) moved here from [State] to join [Church], which at the time was a small church of two hundred. Now it is a thriving community of over 1500 people committed to [Slogan That Could Be Easily Googled to Identify Church].

However, four weeks ago, all that changed. Four weeks ago the discriminatory law of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was finally abolished. Even though no one in my church community was aware of my views on homosexuality (I have been intentionally tight-lipped about it, knowing how divisive that issue is), and I’ve never talked about it, I felt like it was good to celebrate the end of discrimination. So I posted a link to an article about the end of DADT on my Facebook page. I made no commentary on the article–which was not about the “issue” of homosexuality at all. [He shared the article to which he linked: written by a leading politician, it simply could not be more innocuous.--J.]

Over the next few hours, several people from my church started commenting on my wall: “How can a Christian be pro-homosexuality?” “Why is a pastor actively promoting the gay-lifestyle?” and so on. Even more people were calling/texting/emailing our lead pastor and the chair of our elder board.

What resulted over the next six days was not fun. The chair of the elder board called for an emergency board meeting to deal with me. I was summoned to the board meeting, where I was forced to give my stance on homosexuality (even though the church has no official stance on the matter, and has never before talked about the issue). And even though I reminded them that we all agree on our church’s statement of faith, ultimately, when they learned that I don’t view homosexuality as a sin, and that I would be in favor of two gay people being allowed to get married, they came to the conclusion that I was unfit to be a pastor at [Name of Church]. And within a week of posting the article on FB page, I was fired from a church I’d served faithfully and helped to build for five years.

Three cheers for the inner workings of [some] Christian churches! Please click over to read John’s entire piece, which includes the entire letter from the pastor. John describes it, quite rightly, as “shameful, shameful bullshit,” and I could not agree more.

Oh, the things that, to quote my friend Wendi Thomas, get wingnuts’ “delicates in a wad.”* I’m looking through my news sources and whatnot, and I have a found a DADT dead-ender writing a letter to the local paper, and man oh man, is she worried about the gays in the military! Look:

The military’s job is to be ready to defend this country whenever necessary, not to pander to people’s personal whims, especially one regarding sexual deviancy. This requires personnel to be in excellent psychological and physical shape.

And gays simply cannot do that! We do not have access to counseling or other mental health care, and we certainly never go to the gym to keep our bodies in fine form. Next:

It is a well-documented fact that homosexuals suffer from greater rates of depression, drug abuse and physical diseases than the general population.

It’s also a well-documented fact that where those statistics are greater, the root cause is discrimination from people like youuuuuuuuuu.

Can we expect them to perform at their best under the stressful environment of life in the military?

They can, and we know it, because gays have been fighting for the wingnut’s right to write whiny letters into the local paper for DECADES. She just didn’t know it.

The American Psychological Society did no favors to homosexuals when it removed homosexuality as a psychological disorder because now they can’t get the proper help and counseling they need to lead healthy, fulfilled lives.

Yes, it is terrible that we are no longer allowed to get counseling in order to lead healthy, fulfilled lives. Oh, wait, in the wingnut’s head-in-the-sand world, there is no such thing as a gay who is also living a healthy, fulfilled life. I understand.

We can expect to see promiscuity increase in the military, as homosexuals have many more partners than heterosexuals.

Yes, because straight soldiers are never slutty.

What about clergy and their religious freedom? Will they be forced to perform civil unions for homosexual soldiers? How can they counsel freely?

Wingnut definition of “freely”: Will they be free to unleash unnecessary, medieval hatred upon gay and lesbian servicemembers?

What about living quarters? Will the military and our tax dollars now have to pay for homosexual “bathhouses?”

Because all civilian homosexuals live in bathhouses.

If you think this can’t happen, then you are very naïve.

That’s why we are very thankful that Random Wingnut Lady wrote a letter to the paper. Otherwise, I don’t even think the worst, dumbest professional gay-hater has ever suggested that the military will have to fund bathhouses. Because, hi, it makes no sense.

There’s a reason that homosexuality has been anathema in human history for thousands of years. It is an unnatural manifestation of the human condition and is an aberration in society that requires help for those afflicted with it, not validation of their disorder.

Such big words for such a small mind!

The far-reaching ramifications of this decision are too numerous to list in a short letter.

Therefore she won’t! Time to go learn more about bathhouses and stuff, I guess.

“Delicates in a wad,” indeed.

*Great article, by the way, about straight people attending gay pride in Memphis. Read it!

Ding dong, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell really is dead. The Marines showed up with a booth at a Pride event in Pasadena, California:

With the official repeal last month of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the Marine Corps, the service that was most opposed to ending the policy, appears to be leading the charge into new recruitment territory.

The end of the hush-hush era opens up another qualified pool of applicants, said Sgt. Monique Wallace, marketing and public affairs representative for the Marine Corps’ Recruiting Station Los Angeles.

Carlos Ramirez, a board member of San Gabriel Valley Pride, said he believed that his group’s Community Unity Day was the first Southern California pride event to host military recruitment. San Gabriel Valley Pride is a nonprofit group dedicated to raising awareness about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture. Other pride groups in the region, Ramirez said, had held events before Sept. 20, the formal end of the military’s 17-year policy that barred gay men and women from serving openly in the military.

Here is the part that will annoy Tony Perkins:

Tom Carpenter, a former Marine fighter pilot and a member of the board of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said he was impressed “Marines are leading the charge.” He said the move would improve the pool of candidates strained by two wars.

“They had tens of thousands of felony waivers, and they were taking people convicted of drug use,” Carpenter said. “This will increase the pool of people available and allow people who want to serve the country to join.”

Translation: with gays allowed to serve openly, the quality of recruits will go UP, which will make the military, even the Marine Corps, ultimately stronger. Sorry, bigots.

But it’s okay, you guys, because gay wingnuts aren’t like those whiny liberal gays who think the rights laid out in the Constitution apply to them! Silly liberals.

Here’s Chris Barron, carrying water for Ann Coulter, who thinks it’s totally okay for Republicans to boo gay soldiers:

“Ann’s position on this clear, and so is GOProud’s,” says GOProud chairman Chris Barron. “We respectfully disagree. We aren’t the pod people here at GOProud. We can disagree among ourselves. Unlike the left and their RINO enablers we don’t believe that every person who opposes DADT repeal is anti-gay. Indeed Ann has done more for gay people — courageously speaking out at CPAC, for example — then most of the gay organizations here in D.C.”

The people who oppose gays in the military are not anti-gay, you guys! They just think that the military should be open to only some of the most qualified people in this country, not all. The fact that the ones they want to keep out are gay people doesn’t mean they’re anti-gay! Not in the slightest! Why, I bet some of those anti-DADT-repeal people would piss on gay people, if they were on fire!

But as I said weeks ago, Barron and Coulter look like they just might share a plastic surgeon, so we can understand why he would want to keep Waiting Room Time from getting awkward.