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.

[h/t John Cole]

It is the first time this has happened since the last time he was on the computer, so obviously we are dealing with breaking news:

By the way, if you’re a servicemember with privacy concerns, forget about it. You will be forced to share open-bay showers with leering homosexuals and living quarters with fellow soldiers who may want to jump your bones. “The creation of separate bathroom facilities or living quarters based on sexual orientation is prohibited, and Commanders may not establish practices that physically segregate Service members according to sexual orientation.” That’s an “in your face” to General James Amos, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who openly mused about the prospect of doing those very things. He’ll be looking for work before long.

So he came up with some “idea” to stop implementation of DADT repeal:

So the House Republicans can stop this disastrous repeal in its tracks by refusing to appropriate the gargantuan budget the RIT is going to require to jam this deviancy policy down the throats of the entire military.

Jamming and throats! It’s always jamming, throats, and men in uniform with these people. GO ON.

The repeal of the ban on homosexual service was rammed down the throats of the American public in a shameful and undemocratic lame duck session of Congress, by lawmakers who had been voted out of power by the American people. The Democrats’ death rattle could be heard from coast to coast, but they reached out from the grave and grabbed the military by the neck in one final frenzied spasm.

And now ramming and throats, with a “final frenzied spasm” on top for good measure.  All righty!

Peter’s got a post up where he cries about Wayne Besen some more, and accuses mean gays of having “homosexual hissy fits” over his hilarious post on gay TSA agents.  Of course, gay bloggers rarely have anything rising near to the level of a “hissy fit” over anything Peter says; we simply make fun of him.  The fact that he creates an alternate reality where gays actually take his arguments seriously is telling, as it exposes where his real frustrations lie.

Anywho, in his new post, he has this picture:

There it is, y’all. The greatest aging male wingnut fear of all. For the life of me, I never can understand why they assume that gay men are attracted to aging male wingnuts. They’re not pretty people. Indeed, if Barney Frank WAS a TSA agent and he had to frisk Peter LaBarbera at the airport, I would assume that his facial expression would probably be approximately what you see above, but a little more grossed out.  This quote from Peter is revelatory:

As we noted, that doesn’t mean every “gay” male TSA agent is going to get his jollies frisking a man (or a boy…?), but neither would every hetero male TSA agent get over-excited frisking a woman (or a girl).

Why would we assume that TSA agents are getting sexually aroused by doing their jobs?  Do we assume that physicians [many of whom are either men, women, straight or gay] get aroused when they see their patients naked?  No.

Unless we are conservative wingnuts, for whom every instance of body contact sends is a direct line to erection city, apparently.

Anti-gay wingnuts always bristle and protest at being called “homophobes.”  It bothers them, because “phobes” are scared of things, and Real ‘Murkan Men aren’t scared of things!    Amanda Marcotte tackled this the other day in writing about the super crazy positions held by Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s erstwhile political party, the Independent American Party:

TPM reported on Sharron Angle’s affiliation with the Independent American Party, which TPM describes as “Christian conservative-cum-libertarian”, which is wingnut-ese for a co-commitment to patriarchy and white domination.  Unsurprisingly, these are folks with high level fears of contamination from all sorts of scary Others.  And they aren’t afraid to advertise it!

Independent American Party supporters could buy “Homophobia – No | Homonausea – Yes” bumper stickers for the special low price of $1.

To you or I, this may seem like a distinction without difference.  But this is a very big deal for the Real American Men of the wingnutteria. To suggest that they experience “homophobia” is to suggest that they experience fear, and that is basically saying they aren’t men, but 6 foot tall vaginas with legs.  So that breathless hysteria about homosexuality they express that looks exactly like fear is totally not fear.

To digress a bit, this mentality is basically an inescapable trap.  When you fear being exposed as someone who has fears because this makes you less of a man, you’re in a constant state of fear, i.e. non-manhood.  Which you have to desperately cover up, which creates more fearful behavior that you have to cover up.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Watching homophobic men react to being called “homophobes” is usually pretty funny, actually.  They get their backs up and protest just a little bit too much.  Meanwhile, witnessing the hysteria over DADT repeal, with wingnuts from all corners screaming “BUT THE SHOWERS!” with their hands over their crotches, has been a pretty good lesson in the very real fears involved in homophobia.

Also revelatory?  Lou Engle recounting the nightmares his son had about three story homosexuals.  And so on.  Of course it’s fear.  It’s deranged, cornered, shivering under the covers because the Village People are having a reunion tour in the closet sort of fear.

I just don’t get it, and none of the straight people I know get it either, but then again, we’re all secure in our sexuality.  Is it wrong that I find it funny?

Call me Jezebel.

If you were Lou Engle, you would. He would call all of you Jezebel. In fact, he did last Tuesday night in St. Louis at a revival at the Gateway House of Prayer. As Wayne reported on Friday, Lou Engle and the team from TheCall are holding a series of revivals/schools every night from June 19 to July 12, open to the public. Thus, it was as a member of “the public” that I traveled to St. Louis on Tuesday to attend one of these sessions, alongside approximately two hundred of Engle’s faithful followers.

Most of the crowd was under thirty, and the striking thing was that most wouldn’t have looked out of place at Starbucks. They were suburban, to be sure, but there were also more than a few visible tattoos in the room. This is Lou Engle’s “Elijah Generation,” which represents a shift away from the overly coiffed, good-haired fundamentalist men of stereotype as well as reality. Quite frankly, I didn’t feel out of place, physically. However, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, it was soon made very clear that, though no one in the Gateway House of Prayer made so much as a move to speak to me or welcome me*, they considered me not only to be an enemy, but moreover one of the greatest threats to their well-being. This was disconcerting to experience as an adult, fully removed from the angst-ridden, closeted paranoia of my conservative Christian adolescence, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

The evening began with a worship team leading the crowd in singing what some might call “songs,” for almost an hour and a half. However, they really weren’t “songs,” but more repetitive kindergarten-level chants. The praise leader would seize on a line like “I love you Jesus” or “Worthy is the lamb,” or a short, equally simple verse, and then lead the group in singing it over and over again, sometimes for more than ten minutes, before going seamlessly into another simple phrase and melody. The overall effect, I noticed, was a sort of hypnosis that fell over the crowd, as the young people in that room showed how serious they were about praising God by swaying, dancing, holding their hands in the air, and the like. Those in the front were the first to stand and sway and raise their hands, and, like a slow wave, the physical expression moved backward through the rows until it reached, and passed behind, me. The congregants would call this “The Holy Spirit,” perhaps, but really, it was just good old fashioned peer pressure. More than anything, the word that kept going through my head was “occult.” They were doing nothing less than going into ceremony, as Lou Engle’s bodyguard/bouncer kept a watchful eye from the front corner of the room, perhaps peering into the crowd for evidence of uninitiated outsiders or insiders not fully toeing the line.

Behave as a member of the tribe, or be discovered. And so I did, until Lou Engle finally stopped rocking back and forth in his seat in the front row and began to speak. I have embedded, in several segments, most of Lou Engle’s talk.** For each, I will summarize, analyze and comment on what was said, and the implications therein. If you’re pressed for time, I’m putting the most significant/egregiously awful quotes in bold print. The summary starts after the jump.

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