This is hilarious. Tennessee’s Stacey Campfield, author of the state’s now infamous “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, who last week explained, among other things, that AIDS is the result of a gay pilot having sex with a gay monkey, and who has an entire state’s progressives laughing and cheering after he was thrown out of a Knoxville restaurant this weekend, was interviewed by David Pakman today, and the interview is so full of goodness that I have decided to live-blog it. Let’s watch together!
0:30 Why is homosexuality harmful, Stacey? Well, he says that as long as you are having heterosexual sex with people who are not addicted to drugs or gay or “from Africa,” you should be fine. New campaign slogan for Stacey: don’t have sex with Africans!
1:40 David points out that anti-gay wingnuts are really fixated on what happens when two men have sex. [Note to Stacey: your chances of catching HIV through lesbian sex are basically nil.]
2:25 Stacey says homosexuality is harmful because the average homosexual lives nowhere near as long as the heterosexuals. David points out that Stacey got his info on that one from a widely discredited fraud named Paul Cameron.
2:45 Stacey prattles on awhile about how insurance is more expensive for gays, due to gay, before getting to his main point, which is that
3:40 Animals who are gay are not actually gay, because they don’t have buttsex. Stacey has never seen two animals having anal sex, therefore it does not exist. One wonders how much time Stacey Campfield has spent, with binoculars, trying to catch members of the animal kingdom having anal sex, and then one shudders.
4:40 David: “So when animals have gay sex, it’s more of an S&M thing?” Stacey: “Oh, I don’t know why they’re having gay sex, because I’m not an animal mind reader. Stacey: “If you get online you can learn all about animal S&M.” [Paraphrased quotes.]
5:20 Stacey says anti-gay bullying is no big deal because we already have bullying laws. I guess the kids who kill themselves are just collateral damage. Stacey brags that Tennessee’s schools are 46th in the nation. Take that, four other Southern states!
6:45 We don’t need to talk about heterosexuality in school either! It’s not just gayness that we need to remain mum about. All sex bad!
8:00 Do people choose to be gay? Stacey: “well, the activity is a choice.” We all use Activity Period differently, I guess…
8:25 Hahaha, Stacey, you got kicked out of a restaurant in your hometown for being such an unrepentant, misinformed, hateful bigot. Do you feel like you were unfairly discriminated against? Does this make you sort of possibly understand what discrimination is like? Stacey claims he wouldn’t go to a restaurant that refused to serve gays.
But I guess one where gays are welcome but bullied relentlessly is all good, right, Stacey?
I’d like to remind everyone, quickly, that Stacey also got kicked out of a University of Tennessee football game a while back, due to the fact that he was wearing a Mexican wrestler mask, despite the fact that it had been well-publicized that for the safety of all in the stadium, masks were not allowed for this Halloween game. But Stacey wanted to wear it, dangit! So he made the cops chase him around the stadium for a while and whined before they finally got tired of it and booted him. His maturity level doesn’t seem like it’s improved in the years hence.
This is priceless. Just absolutely, breathtakingly priceless. Wingnuts in Minnesota are pushing a constitutional amendment to write anti-gay discrimination into that state’s constitution, and here is their strategery:
Minnesota pastors and lawmakers who support a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman aim to develop varied strategies to win voter support.
At a strategy session today, a gathering of ministers and politicians known as the Faith and Freedom coalition discussed ways to sell the marriage amendment to people who may not hold their fervent views.
Among their solutions: avoiding arguments over whether gays should have the right to marry, presenting marriage as a vehicle for child-rearing and reframing the issue as an opportunity for Minnesotans to exercise their right to vote.
The first rule of Gay Haters Club is that you don’t talk about Gay Haters Club! Yes, that quote really says that they intend to sell this by not talking about the actual stated intention of the amendment, and by simply trying to get Minnesotans excited that they get to vote! Everybody likes voting!
Many GOP lawmakers who voted for the amendment were at the meeting, but the room came to its feet for a last-minute appearance by Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who first proposed a marriage amendment when she was a state senator. Before a room full of supporters she described how to sell the amendment more broadly:
“I think if you want to talk to people who are not interested in talking about the morality you can also come at it as “should people be allowed to vote,” Bachmann said.
That’ll get ‘em excited about hurting their gay family members!
So it is almost the weekend, and I am doing the Random Ten on time again [!!!] because I remembered how to put headphones in my ears while I’m working. Towleroad reported yesterday that Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, along with a group of fellow Nebraska musicians, has written a letter to the Omaha city council condemning the effort by some in that body to block a nondiscrimination ordinance that would make Omaha a more friendly, progressive place for LGBT people to live and thrive. As we all know, cities that attract artists and LGBT people tend to be the most successful cities on a lot of fronts. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read your Richard Florida.
So, in considering what to start the Random Ten with, why not Bright Eyes? I am and always have been a shameless Bright Eyes fan boy, and if you have never heard “First Day Of My Life,” and moreover, if you have never seen the video, get ready for warm fuzzies. So we will watch that, we will have a moment and reflect, then we will hit shuffle on the old iTunes, see where we are ten songs later, listen to some more music, etc. More videos after the jump! PS, I totally stole the picture of Conor that Towleroad used, because oh, he is so cute.
Also, before we get to the shuffle, here is a video of otters holding hands. It’s topical, I promise.
1. Rage Against The Machine – “Clear The Lane”
2. Willie Nelson & Kid Rock – “Last Stand In Open Country”
3. Siouxsie and the Banshees – “Switch”
4. Chris Isaak – “Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing”
5. Ray Charles – “Come Back Baby”
6. Lightspeed Champion – “Tell Me What It’s Worth”
7. Local Natives – “Cubism Dream”
8. David Wilcox – “How Did You Find Me Here”
9. Red Hot Chili Peppers – “The Righteous & The Wicked”
10. Lightspeed Champion – “Dry Lips”
Oh, the David Wilcox song. Wow. Haven’t listened to it in years. One of my favorites.
When I was a little kid, we alternately subscribed to the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat. Back in those days, there was an actual rivalry going on between Little Rock’s two major newspapers, and they were constantly tossing subscribers back and forth, depending on who was doing a better job at that point in time. Then, of course, the papers merged and became the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Regardless, I loved it when the paper came, especially on Sundays. I loved the funny papers, of course, like any kid, but I also had this weird obsession with architecture and real estate, and the papers really delivered when it came to that kind of reporting.
My point is that I have history with this paper. So it’s sad to report that, when given the opportunity to break a little bit of ground and publish the commitment ceremony announcement of a gay couple, they chose failure:
Cody Renegar, 35, of Elkins, Ark. asked the Arkansas Democrat Gazette to publish an engagement announcement for his June wedding commitment ceremony, something Renegar said happens for other couples who would like to announce their impending nuptials.
“I called the newspaper and asked how I can submit our announcement for publication,” Renegar told Yahoo! News. “I was told that they won’t publish them until it’s legal.”
Renegar said the newspaper declined to run the announcement because of long-standing policy.
Lame. It’s worth noting that this seems to specifically involve the Democrat Gazette’s Northwest Arkansas affiliate, the Northwest Arkansas Times. However, it’s all the same company, and it seems all branches have the same policy. Also:
According to newspaper representatives, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette charges a minimal fee and has content length requirements, but does run announcements on a regular basis for heterosexual couples, including mixed race couples.
Oh, that is big of you, Democrat Gazette, considering the fact that Loving was handed down in nineteen-sixty-freaking-seven.
There is a petition at Change.org, asking the paper to, instead of being dragged into history as it happens, be a pioneer and refuse to discriminate against any of their readers, regardless of what state law says. Sign it.
Rod Dreher is one of those writers I don’t mess with much, not because he doesn’t consistently churn out nonsense — he does — but simply because there are a lot of bloggers who really revel in messing with him, and they do it well. We have our favorites over here too.
But, to make an exception, here is Rod Dreher writing at the American Conservative about how he completely believes Rick Santorum when he claims that he would love a gay son just as much as a straight son. Frothy’s quote first:
“I’d love him just as much as I did the second before he told me.”
Well, that’s nice. Personally I’m quite sure Santorum is using one of the lesser definitions of “love,” but that’s neither here nor there for Rod:
I completely believe him.
That settles that. Wait, there’s more:
I found out that in my small, very conservative and churchgoing Southern town, there’s a lot of affection for Ginger Snap, a local black drag queen. Ginger Snap has her own float in the community Christmas parade. I guarantee that if you polled the people along the parade route, both white and black, nine out of 10 would say that homosexuality is wrong and that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed. But they will also watch Ginger Snap roll by on her float and wave.
You see? These wingnuts think that Ginger Snap is a “morally wrong” person, and should not have the same rights as the parade-watchers, but they are willing to wave, and that is all you should be asking of fundamentalist Christians! I mean, it’s not like we live in a secular republic or anything or…oh, wait.
The idea that holding a critical moral position on homosexuality obliges one to hate this young gay man would strike most people around here as strange.
Sort of like how half of Mississippi still can’t get behind interracial marriage, but it doesn’t mean they hate the nice black lady who works at their kids’ school. It seems more to me, Rod, that what we are dealing with is Southerners who are ingrained with the notion that you can say or believe anything as derogatory or bigoted as you want about any human being or group, but as long as you begin all statements on the subject with “Now you know I’m not racist but…” and end them with “bless their hearts,” you remain officially in line with polite Southern decorum.
What’s strange is that Rod seems to notice that there is a Southern thing at play here, but draws asinine conclusions:
If you want logic to dictate social life, stay out of the South, and especially stay out of southern Louisiana.
That’s true, but when he next describes his town as a Love Your Neighbor kind of place, he doesn’t see that the people in his town don’t really love Ginger Snap, just like they don’t love the nice black lady who works at their kids’ schools, just like many wealthy white conservative Southern women are more than happy to have a gay interior decorator or hairdresser, but will vote against gay rights at the drop of a red hat, given the opportunity.
In short, this is the residue of the age-old Southern tradition of “diversity is great, as long as everybody knows their place.” Those of us who are Southern liberals tend to recognize this for what it is, because as the late, great Molly Ivins once said [I am paraphrasing], “Once you realize they’ve been lying to you about race, you question everything.”
But I reckon when you belong to a party for whom such meaningless platitudes know not the boundaries of dialect [refer to above Santorum quote], it’s a little bit easier to rationalize institutional bigotry and discrimination. After all, I’m sure Frothy Mix would wave at a drag queen if you asked him nicely, and Michele Bachmann’s husband might even add, “Oh that wig…bless her heart.”
This is welcome news, indeed, from Jamaica, which has a reputation for being one of the most anti-gay nations on the planet:
Jamaica’s newly elected first female prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, says discrimination against gay people is wrong. “No one should be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation,” Simpson Miller said during a recent election debate, adding that unlike her predecessor she would be open to appointing a qualified gay person to her cabinet.
It doesn’t mean the nation will change overnight — has the United States? No — but to have such a prominent voice arguing against discrimination is huge.
Vanderbilt University, one of the finest schools in the South and indeed, in the nation, has a strong anti-discrimination policy in place, which applies to all organizations on campus. There has been controversy recently, stemming in part from a Christian fraternity’s decision to kick a member out for being gay. Vanderbilt has no problem with religious organizations — indeed, there are thirty-six of them on campus — but is standing firm against pressure to allow certain groups to discriminate against students based on their beliefs:
“Student groups that wish to practice their faith are welcome at Vanderbilt; however, it is incumbent upon them to decide whether they wish to become registered student organizations at the university,” the statement read. “One of the requirements to be a registered student organization at Vanderbilt is that student organizations’ constitutions be in compliance with the university’s nondiscrimination policy and that they sign a statement that they will comply with the policy.”
There are 380 recognized student organizations at Vanderbilt, 36 of which are religious student groups. A university review found that 32 of those religious groups are in compliance with the school’s diversity policy. The remaining four have been placed on provisional status while the university review continues.
Vanderbilt’s review of its student organizations comes a year after a gay student accused a campus Christian fraternity of dismissing him because of his sexual orientation.
The above link notes that even the Congressional Prayer Caucus, including Tennessee’s shame [one of them], Rep. Marsha Blackburn, is exerting pressure on Vanderbilt, a private university, to give these four groups a special pass to discriminate.
The president of the College Republicans at Vanderbilt, of course, has been whining:
Siao also said he believes Vanderbilt is using the nondiscrimination policy to specifically target religious and conservative groups.
“I think what they’re trying to do is be a national leader on a progressive issue to get Vanderbilt’s name out there and show it’s not the school it used to be,” said Siao, “But I think it’s going to harm our community and the Christian faith.”
Siao also stated, “There are many devoted Christians on campus. They should have the right to govern their own clubs and assemble.”
Of course, but when 376 out of 380 organizations are able to comply with the policy, and 32 out of 36 religious organizations, perhaps the problem is the wingnut organizations, rather than the school’s policy.
This story has been brewing for a while — both of the above links are from the past couple of months — but the reason I bring this up now is that the Tennessee Equality Project has started a petition on Change.org, to support and encourage Vanderbilt in their decision to stick by their principles. Here’s what TEP has to say about it:
Tennessee Equality Project wants Vanderbilt University to know that people from all over the country support them in their decision to apply their non-discrimination policy consistently to all campus organizations. We have been hearing that the Board of Trust is under intense pressure to scale back the application of the policy. The Congressional Prayer Caucus and Family Action Council of Tennessee have criticized the University. We ask Chancellor Nick Zeppos to pass along our views to the Board of Trust at their meeting this week.
Of course the Family Action Council of Tennessee is involved. You’ll remember, from yesterday, that FACTn is a wang of the national hate group Family Research Council, and that it was recently revealed that they used a state senator, essentially, as a puppet, in the passage of the recent bill which disallows Tennessee’s cities from setting strong nondiscrimination policies, a direct attack on the LGBT people of the state. While I doubt that the overlap between FACTn donors and Vanderbilt parents is significant, far be it from a Religious Right organization to mind its own damn business.
Recently, Tennessee passed a bill which prohibited its cities from setting their own non-discrimination policies, or rather policies which are stronger than the state’s own pathetic non-discrimination law. It was pushed solely by the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a wing of the Family Research Council hate group, as an attack on LGBT people and our families. Regular readers might remember us posting a video of the extremely fey FACTn leader, David Fowler, wearing a pink shirt in a playground gloating about the passage of the law. A lawsuit has been filed to overturn the law, and the documents now being exposed, related to the passage of that law, are illuminating:
To satisfy attorneys in the gay rights lawsuit against the state last week, conservative Christian lawmakers coughed up 2,200 pieces of correspondence related to their wonderful new statute that overturned Nashville’s nondiscrimination ordinance in the last legislative session.
[...]
Just for fun, we pulled the filed marked “Sen. Mae Beavers” first and, right off the bat, we were delighted to discover an email to her from David Fowler—the Ralph Reed of Tennessee’s Christian Right and the driving force behind the state law. In this email, Fowler shockingly treats Beavers like a puppet on a string (do lobbyists really run things in Nashville?) and instructs her precisely what to say about the Tennessee Family Action Council’s bill. He obviously views Beavers as not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but useful just the same as his bill’s sponsor.
“The bill itself is not that complicated,” Fowler writes. “We don’t need more regulation of business and business sure doesn’t need the 348 different cities coming up with their own ideas of what a discriminatory practice is. That’s the line and you just repeat it like Glen Casada did last night when the bill passed the House 73 to 24.”
“Will the homosexuals be upset?” Fowler then asks. “Sure. But to be honest, they seem to be rather resigned on this bill.”
Ha, well, I know some of “the homosexuals” who filed the lawsuit, and they are anything but “resigned.” Or as the Nashville Scene writer put it:
Whoops! Fowler misread the temperature of gay activists there. Outraged by his law, they launched a campaign to embarrass just about every major corporation in Tennessee into renouncing it. When that was done, they filed their lawsuit painting the state legislature as a bunch of bigots.
Yep!
The truth of the matter is that Senator Mae Beavers probably isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it’s interesting to see just how much our opponents on the Religious Right view their elected officials as puppets. “We bought you, now read this word for word,” seems to be the order of the day.
The linked piece points out that, in order to prevail, those who filed the lawsuit must show that the bill was passed strictly out of bias against gay people, rather than to make it “easier to do bidness in Tennessee,” so it’s helpful that many of Tennessee’s major corporations are now squarely against the law. Reading the documents in Ms. Beavers’ file, showing e-mails spanning the wingnut diaspora, from the garden variety house-wingnut all the way up to Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, thanking her for standing up against ‘dem homoseckshuls, should give those involved in the lawsuit a hint as to what was really going on when one of Tennessee’s resident hate groups decided to lobby for special access to discriminate against LGBT people in the state.
The marriage of the Market Is God crowd with the Fundamentalist “Homophobia and Misogyny Are God” crowd has always been funny to me. Anyone who’s ever paid attention to that tenuous marriage understands that rank-and-file Republican leaders really don’t view social conservatives as anything more than useful idiots. Therefore it’s always entertaining when Big Bidness squarely slaps them in the face. This is one of those times:
Some of the nation’s most prominent corporations have joined the legal battle against the federal ban on marital benefits for same-sex couples, saying the law drives up employers’ costs and makes them the agents of government-sanctioned bias.
The 1996 law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA, “conscripts (employers) to become the face of its discrimination,” lawyers for 60 companies said Thursday in papers filed with a federal appeals court in Boston.
Participants included Microsoft, Google, Aetna, Nike, Levi Strauss, Starbucks, CBS and Time Warner Cable. The brief was also signed by several trade organizations and the city governments of Boston, New York and Cambridge, Mass.
DOMA denies federal benefits, including joint tax filings, Social Security survivor coverage and immigration privileges, to same-sex couples legally married in their states.
In short, DOMA makes it more difficult for them to do business, and it makes it difficult for them to treat their employees fairly. One place the corporate world is far and away ahead of society is that, as the piece points out, 94% of Fortune 500 companies prohibit discrimination against gay employees, to some extent or another. With DOMA in place, not only does it put an undue burden on corporations when it comes to things like paying for spousal health insurance, but companies have to go against what they actually believe in by treating their gay employees unfairly.
Corporations, of course, are equal opportunity donors to both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, when it comes to voters, the ones who are most likely to defend, at all costs, the rights of companies to do as they wish tend to be Republicans.
Oh, it must be confusing to be Tony Perkins these days!
Jim Burroway has two handy transcripts for us today! These are both from interviews done by Herman Cain:
(On October 16, Meet The Press)
David Gregory: A couple more. Same-sex marriage: would you seek a Constitutional band on same-sex marriage?
Herman Cain: I wouldn’t seek a constitutional ban for same-sex marriage, but I am pro-traditional marriage.”
Gregory: But you would let the states make up their own mind as they do now?
Cain: They would make up their own minds, yes.
– — –
(On October 22, The Brody File)
David Brody: Just so I understand, you’re for a constitutional marriage amendment as well?
Cain: Marriage should be protected level also. I used to believe that it could be just handled by the states, but there’s a movement going on to basically take the teeth out of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and that could cause an unraveling. So we do need some protection at the federal level because of that. And so, yes, I would support legislation that would say that it’s between a man and a woman.”
Brody: Because there is a concern that the defense of marriage act could be overturned?
Cain: It could be overturned because there are already attempts by some states and some groups to weaken the Defense of Marriage Act.
WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED TO HERMAN CAIN LAST WEEK?! Did a gay married couple cut him off in traffic or something? I love how he says in the second interview, “I used to believe” it could be handled by the states, which I suppose is technically true. “Last week I was under the impression that I really didn’t care all that much, but now, you know, I’ve learned that I really have to hate gay people to satiate the hatred of the Republican party base, and this has made me change my mind!”
Jim also points out that in the first interview, he was talking to David Gregory on the lib’rul NBC teevee show, whereas in the second, he was talking to CBN’s evangelical audience, so maybe he was just pandering.
