Grrrr.

Dan Blatt of Gay Patriot, in the comments section of his piece reporting on the Washington legislature passing a marriage equality bill:

I voted against Prop 22 in 2000 and Prop 8 in 2008. And regret that they are valid.

As long as they don’t prevent the couples from living together, they pass constitutional muster.

If that statement is true, so are the following:

1. As long as they don’t prevent interracial couples from living together, it’s okay to ban their marriages.

2. As long as they let black people ride on buses, it’s okay for them to be forced to ride in the back.

3. As long as they provide black people a water fountain, it’s okay to ban them from using the white people water fountain…

Just sayin’. How there is a certain segment of the population, even among the gay community [?!?!?!] that still does not understand that people’s fundamental RIGHTS should not, ultimately, be handed out or denied by simple majority votes, is beyond me. That third branch of government was sorta created for a reason…

Granted, it’s fine when legislatures and voters do support our equality, but ideally, things like this should not be left up to the whims of the majority.

[Duh.]

I support this idea from GOProud’s Chris Barron wholeheartedly, as it would continue and amplify the sideshow of failure that is the GOP primary process, to the amusement of normal people everywhere:

I love Herman Cain. I have spoken with him at length and I believe he is a good and decent person. I believe he is someone who speaks from the heart, someone who hasn’t been a product of our broken political system and someone who brings decades of real world business experience to this race. For me, however, this race has always been about the message and not just the messenger – and none of these allegations, true or false, about Cain’s personal life change the message one iota.

[...]

Every other candidate in this race is just another politician. Nominating any of them would do nothing to fundamentally transform the GOP and do nothing to strengthen the GOP. Herman Cain’ s campaign remains the only hope for Tea Party conservatives to show that politics as usual is over in the GOP.

It’s funny because Herman Cain not only seems to be a serial adulterer, but also because he’s a really, really bad candidate who would lose gloriously to Barack Obama while shouting “9-9-9!”

So please, yes, Herman Cain, stay in the race, to make your wanna-be wingnut gay lover happy, and to amuse America.

We’ll close with these words from Roger Ailes [the good one]:

The fact that Herman Cain spent 13 years trying to “help someone financially” and failed to do so should tell you everything you need to know about the Cain Presidency. “The economy just might turn around beginning about five years after my second term.”

For some reason, gay wingnuts think that any time a law is passed which allows people more freedom to play with guns, it’s a victory for gay rights. Now, I’m a Southern liberal, which means I have no problem with guns in general, but that I also support sane gun control laws. But this, a measure passed in the House Judiciary Committee to allow conceal-and-carry reciprocity between states, has absolutely nothing to do with gay rights:

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a measure which would give gay Americans a tool to help us defend ourselves against gay bashers.

[...]

It’s unfortunate that Democrats, to paraphrase Joe Biden, have no notion what it’s like for a gay man or lesbian to be on the other side of a thug intent on beating him up — with no means to defend himself. Let’s hope that organizations concerned with the welfare of gay Americans, like the Human Rights Campaign, will denounce House Democrats for their insensitivity to gay bashing.

Yeah. Um. The writer of that quote lives in West Hollywood, which is totally the Wild West of gay bashing.

I don’t feel the need to address the fundamental dishonesty of the suggestion that, by opposing the expansion of gun rights, Democrats are being “insensitive to gay bashing” — that’s just one of the trademarks of the garden variety wingnut blogger. “Stick it to ‘dem lib’ruls at all costs!,” is their mantra. And to their credit, even his regular commenters are going “what the hell does this thing have to do with that thing?”

But I’ve seen this argument before from gay wingnuts, and every time I see it, all I can see is abject fear of the outside world. Sad.

Chris Barron of GOProud:

Meant to post this earlier… For those of you who haven’t read it, please read the excellent piece by my friend (and fellow homocon) Bruce Carroll (aka GayPatriot)… Bruce’s endorsement of my man Herman Cain means another homocon is on the Herman Cain Train!

Talk about real diversity – gay conservatives backing a black conservative for President! Put that in your pipe and smoke it liberals!

Yeeeeeah, buddy, way to go! Way to stick it to the liberals, by saying, in essence, “Look, we have a black too!”

It’s difficult to parody them, as they make a mockery of themselves so effortlessly.

No, folks, you’re not reading an Onion article: in a press release today, the folks at GOProud announced the appointment of polemicist Ann Coulter to the post of “Honorary Chair and Gay Icon” of that organization’s Advisory Council. Coulter joins other wingnuts notable conservatives including Andrew Breitbart and Grover Norquist on the council.

Apparently, as far as the self-loathing conservative gays at GOProud are concerned, being on the wrong side of every major LGBT rights issue (opposing the repeal of DADT and DOMA and the passage of ENDA and hate crimes laws, endorsing “reparative therapy,” etc.) presents absolutely no impediment to a person being arbitrarily declared a “gay icon.”

For a refresher course on Ann Coulter’s long history of homophobia, check out this list compiled by Media Matters.

Ann Coulter, gay icon? Who’s next, Anita Bryant? If anyone out there still believes that GOProud serves any function other than being a shill for the extreme anti-gay right wing, today’s insanity should put those misguided views to rest. Perhaps it’s time to break out the straitjackets for Barron & Company.

In a blog post earlier this week, Chris Barron of GOProud took it upon himself to enlighten the rest of us as to why the big, bad, monolithic “Gay Left” is really picking on poor Michele Bachmann (hint: it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s a bigot):

Having followed Congresswoman Bachmann’s career, I am certainly troubled by things she has said and by things she has been purported to have said. However, the attacks on Michele Bachmann and her family by the gay left have absolutely nothing to do with gay rights. In fact, these attacks have little to do with Congresswoman Bachmann or what her [sic] or her husband believes. The truth is that they are nothing more than part and parcel of an orchestrated effort by the left to destroy the Tea Party.

Seriously, Chris?!?

Truth Wins Out’s recent investigation exposed the Minnesota clinic co-owned by Michele and Marcus Bachmann by confirming that it offers morally, spiritually, and scientifically bankrupt “ex-gay therapy.” We went public with the story because it illustrated the depth of Congresswoman Bachmann’s anti-LGBT views. TWO felt that American voters deserved to know that a candidate for the presidency of the United States is intimately tied to an extremist, voodoo “therapy” that not only falsely promises to “pray away the gay,” but also harms people by increasing their chances of depression and suicide.

We didn’t go after the Bachmann clinic because our megalomaniacal liberal overlords bid us do so in an attempt to cripple the Tea Party. TWO is actually a nonpartisan organization; we go after extremists without regard to political affiliation. (Remember Crackpot Kim?) No, destroying the Tea Party had nothing to do with it. We went after Marcus and Michele Bachmann because:

1.) They wrongly believe LGBT people can “pray away the gay”
2.) They make money by falsely promising the same
3.) So-called “ex-gay therapy” is ineffective and harms people
4.) The Bachmann clinic receives state and federal funding despite these dubious practices
5.) Michele Bachmann wants to be President of the United States, and we want voters across America to know more about her archaic and extremist anti-LGBT beliefs.

That’s it, Chris. It has everything to do with LGBT rights and nothing to do with bringing down the Tea Party. Nice try though.

Yes, really, he has a post up wherein he explains to you, the gentle reader, why you hate him.  Look:

The left rarely engages me on policy, which is smart considering they support intellectually and morally bankrupt policies and I support time-tested policies that would actually improve the lives of all Americans – including gays and lesbians. Instead of engaging on policy they rely on personal attacks and name-calling, which is fine, I am a big boy and I can take it.

Eh, uh, no. The left may indeed rarely engage him, personally, on matters of policy, because he is mostly a blow-hard, but not because he has better ideas.

But let’s be honest, the left doesn’t hate me because I am mean or brash or too aggressive – the same label can be applied to many of my critics. No, the left hates me because I have the audacity to stand up to them. They hate me because I am a conservative who happens to be gay. They hate me because I won’t be bullied by them. They hate me because I have dared to wander off the liberal plantation, because I refuse to play the victim card, and because I have rejected their failed big government agenda.

Yeah, that’s it. It can’t be because your entire platform is insane. As for “victim cards,” I hear more whining from wingnuts than I will EVER hear from liberals. Indeed, their entire worldview is built on “stickin’ it to the liberals.” But anyway, now you know why he thinks you hate him. It’s useful to remember that at least 85% of what wingnuts believe involves a massive case of projection.

But in the interest in giving lie to his claim that the left doesn’t engage on matters of policy, here is a long list of liberal sources which spend time every single day engaging on policy, debunking the crap spewed by the Right, and generally informing people far more than any wingnut blog or news organization ever will. As a bonus, they use facts! This is what I like to call the Grown-Up Side of the Internet:

Allison Kilkenny
AlterNet
AMERICAblog
Balloon Juice
Box Turtle Bulletin
Crooks and Liars
Emptywheel
Eschaton
FireDogLake
Gin and Tacos
Glenn Greenwald
Good As You
Hullaballoo [Digby]
Joe.My.God
Lawyers, Guns and Money
No More Mister Nice Blog
Obsidian Wings
Pam’s House Blend
Pandagon
RH Reality Check
Rumproast
Right Wing Watch
Sadly, No!
Salon: Joan Walsh
Talking Points Memo
The Mahablog
The New Civil Rights Movement
The Rude Pundit
Think Progress
Truth Wins Out
Whiskey Fire

Don’t see your favorite source of real, policy-driven analysis and information in that list? Those are my favorites. Suggest yours in the comments!

There are gay conservatives.  I know this.  When I have the sense of humor for it, I try to read their words and figure out where they’re coming from, and how they got there.  There is a common, oft-repeated complaint among gay conservative bloggers and pundits [all three of them] that the Big Gay Left constantly carries water for other liberal causes.  They assume that this is something that happens without forethought, which is always strange to me, because liberalism and LGBT equality go hand in hand.

Indeed, it’s actually conservatism, with its competing strains — disproven economic theory meant to serve Wall Street and Wall Street only vs. libertarianism which hates Wall Street; making the government so small that you can drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist so famously said vs. a social conservatism that hates democracy and seeks to use the government to damage the lives of LGBT people and women from coast to coast, and so forth — that is anything but an aligned movement.  Liberalism?  Not so much.

Amanda Marcotte highlights this in a larger post about John Edwards’ troubles, lamenting just how sucky it is that Edwards has turned out to be such a giant ass in his personal life, as his presidential campaign was one of the few in recent history which actually tied together all the different arms of liberalism into one defining philosophy, and who explained it in terms that made sense to the average voter.  And it really is one defining philosophy. She outlines the three major arms of liberalism and starts to connect the dots:

1) Economic justice. This is labor movements, anti-poverty initiatives, fair taxation, health care reform, social services, government that is functional, etc. Anything that helps secure the middle class, bolsters the economy, and lifts people out of poverty.

2) Social justice. Feminism, anti-racism, gay rights, anti-colonialism, things like that—anything that divides people against each other on the basis of identity hierarchies.

3) Environmentalism and rationalism. Preserving the planet, promoting science, basically using the now to work towards a better tomorrow.

Obviously, a smart person sees how these are interrelated and that you really fail at anti-racism if you don’t think about poverty and that you’re not a good environmentalist if economic justice isn’t part of your worldview, and you’re not an effective feminist if you treat science like it’s a lark.

They really all do go together. I’d add that you’re not really going to understand the gay rights struggle if you aren’t a rationalist who believes in science, and you’re not going to understand the need for marriage equality fully if you don’t understand the real economic results of policies that serve the whole population well — as opposed to just those at the top. This seems like a good time to point out that gay conservatives tend to be upper-middle class white men, or those who dream of one day being so, and are willing to overlook where they actually are in service of who they might be, maybe one day, if things go well for them. And Amanda’s right — there are a million other intersection points between those three arms.

One thing I’ve been encouraged by over the past year has been that, more and more every day, Truth Wins Out readers are coming from more and more diverse areas out of the greater liberal spectrum. Surely there is a huge case to be made for why moderates and conservatives should also support equality for LGBT people, as there is really no philosophy aside from theocracy that it doesn’t fit into. But for those who wonder why educated gay rights activists also tend to support the rest of the planks of liberalism as well, well, now you know why.

Look, I appreciate groups like GOProud to a point, just because watching people like Tony Perkins pull their hair out and have temper tantrums is hilarious, no matter who’s causing it.  But I’ve got to say, it’s really kinda weird to me that these people are so willing to beg for an embrace from people who don’t respect their fundamental dignity as human beings, and no, people who do not support equal rights for gay people do not respect gay people’s fundamental dignity as human beings.  This isn’t 1965.  There is no legitimate excuse for a sentient person to “agree to disagree” on these issues.  You either view us as lesser, or you do not.  Dan Blatt at Gay Wingnut:

That said, as is, [Ben Smith's] word choice suggests that gay Republicans have adopted a confrontational tone with the GOP. That may have been try in Log Cabin’s early years, but today, we’re not so much demanding acceptance as finding a welcome.

Yeah, there still remain social conservatives loath to include us in conservative conclaves, but, by and large, we’ve found a welcome.

And yet, the GOP still can’t run a presidential candidate who doesn’t perform the Stations of the Anti-Gay Cross for the frothing morons who make up their base. Some “welcome.”

Conservatives today are more concerned with the size of government than they are with the private lives of individuals — and pretty much have been for the past forty years, only the media do seem to dwell on the presence of religious conservatives in the movement as if said indviduals define it, rather than represent one aspect of it

Uh, maybe in New Hampshire. Not in Alabama or Georgia or any of the other GOP strongholds.  Oh, and the House GOP is hellbent on defending DOMA right into its grave.  What a hill to die on.

With the first primary debate last night, the GOP, as Matt Taibbi said yesterday, “kick[ed] off the long process of burying their party as a mainstream political force for the next decade or so.”  [Read Taibbi's whole piece, by the way.]  The standard-bearers for the party are, with two exceptions, wingnuts so extreme that they couldn’t appeal to anyone beyond the True Believers if their lives depended on it.  And of course, the exceptions [Pawlenty, Romney], as Taibbi points out, are so painfully boring — and decidedly doubleplusungood when it comes to catering to the wingnuts who will vote in the Republican primaries — that they have little chance of making it out of the primaries, much less having a decent showing in the general election.

In a way, I feel gay conservatives’ pain, because it must be alarming to watch their beloved party go even further into Bachmann-land, but at the same time, since they don’t seem to be asking for dignity or respect, maybe it’s just as well.  I mean, Michele Bachmann’s family watches Glee, right?  As long as she’ll let the gays watch it with her [I mean, they have to sit outside and peer in through the window, of course], and as long as they can shriek the word “diva!” at Ann Coulter, it’s not like they need to be treated like first-class citizens.

So there!  If ever there was an “ex-liberal” pundit I’ve suspected that the Religious Right actually may have created in a secret dungeon, it’s Star Parker.  Because she says things like this:

I became a conservative in church. I thought I was doing okay in my previous life — scamming the welfare system, going to the beach, soaking in my welfare-subsidized hot tub, treating sex as a hobby, and abortion as birth control.

You see, she was one of those “welfare queen” Rush Limbaugh is always talking about, scaring the old white ladies so! And to be fair, Star did have four abortions, so she knows what she’s talking about. [No, she doesn't.] Anyway, she would like to explain why she did not go to CPAC now:

Yes, the reason I declined was the inclusion of GOProud, a group identifying itself as representing “gay conservatives and their allies,” as a sponsor of the event.

[...]

The founder and chairman of GOProud removed any doubt on my part that not participating was the correct decision by dismissing these groups as “losers,” “clowns,” and “not relevant.”

For once, yes, GOProud actually said something to imply that perhaps they are deserving of dignity and shouldn’t be a doormat for the rest of the conservative movement.

I, of course, have been accused of being worse than a clown.

WORSE THAN A CLOWN? There is nothing worse than a clown.

The idea of “gay conservative” is an oxymoron.

“Gay” is everything that “conservative” is not.

[...]

It’s a worldview that is man-centered rather than God-centered. It is a worldview that rejects eternal truths passed on from the beginning of time. Although the worldview that “gay conservatives” choose to invent may diverge from the worldview of liberals, their common ground is they make it all up.

Ah, it’s the old “we’re smart because we believe our interpretation of things in an old faith book, without any corroborating evidence, you’re stupid” approach. It’s adorable because it’s so mindblowingly stupid.

Conservatives believe that there are objective and eternal truths, not of the product of any individual human mind, that are transmitted through the generations.

Like Old Wives’ Tales!

“Gay” is liberal, not conservative, regardless of what their stand may be on government spending or taxes.

Okay, got it.  Gays not conservatives because gays don’t believe in old wives’ tales, and I used to be a welfare queen, so I’m an expert.